Coconut Dreams

Derek Mascarenhas

• Publisher: Book*hug Press
• Year: 2019
• Print ISBN: 9781771664813
• eBook ISBN: 9781771664820

Coconut Dreams explores the lives of the Pinto family through seventeen linked short stories. Starting with a ghost story set in Goa, India, in the 1950s, the collection weaves through various timelines and perspectives to focus on siblings Aiden and Ally Pinto and their experience of growing up in a predominantly white suburb with innocence, intelligence, and a timid foot in two distinct cultures.

Here, Derek Mascarenhas takes a fresh look at the world of the new immigrant and the South Asian experience in Canada. A daughter questions her father's love at an IKEA grand opening; an aunt remembers a safari-gone-wrong in Kenya; an uncle's unrequited love is confronted at a Goan Association picnic; a boy tests his faith amidst a school-yard brawl; and a childhood love letter is exchanged during the building of a backyard deck. Singularly and collectively, these stories will move the reader with their engaging narratives and authentic voices.

The Call of the Bell

May 25, 1946

Felix Pinto’s birth in a cemetery was never forgotten by the village of Colvale. Mysteries, like tragedies, are long remembered.

Felix’s mother, Rosetta, attended the funeral of her former elementary school teacher that morning. While she was trying, and failing, to squeeze her pregnant belly into her best black outfits, Felix’s father, Miguel, wearing dark slacks and a dress shirt, suggested she stay home and rest. “Even the monkeys stop running on the roofs in this heat.”

“I’m not a monkey, and I don’t intend to run on any roof.” Rosetta finally pulled a brown dress down over her belly; fifteen days overdue, she was rounder than she’d ever been with her two previous pregnancies.

“You should stay and rest.”

“Miguel, I’ve known Mr. Lopez since I was a girl. The least I can do is attend the service.”

The house was quiet. Rosetta and Miguel’s two sons had already returned to Bombay to get ready for school. The boys’ Nunna had accompanied them, so Rosetta wouldn’t have to make such a long journey so close to the baby’s arrival.

“At least let us try to catch a ride at the road, then.”

Rosetta nodded. It wasn’t far to the church, but she knew Miguel wanted to feel useful. He fixed machines in the cotton mills. He needed to fix things, but not all of life’s problems could be solved with the same mechanical exactitude.

On their way to the main road they saw a bullock cart approaching. The cartload of coconuts was pulled by two giant oxen with coats, eyes, and wet noses the same jet-black colour; their white horns curved skyward.

Miguel waved the driver down.

“I’m heading to the Mapusa market, but I can drop you at the church on the way,” the driver said, and gestured to the back. “As long as your husband is okay sitting on the coconuts, Madam, you can join me up front.”

As the driver helped Rosetta into the passenger seat, she noticed the sinewy muscles in his forearms, concluding that he must also climb the coconut trees himself.

With Rosetta up front and Miguel settled atop the many green, football-sized fruits, the driver gave the oxen a tap on their rears with a thin bamboo stick; the cart rolled through the humid air, the oxen’s heads bobbing and dust billowing behind them.

The cemetery was adjacent to the tall stone church built by the Portuguese. The church, painted a bright seashell-white, stood in sharp contrast to the jade palms and indigo river behind it, and the ground of tiny, red xencare. These small stones had been rounded by rain on their journey down from the high hills.

Rosetta and Miguel thanked the driver as he got back on his cart. Miguel asked him if he was taking the hill path to Mapusa, pointing to a dirt trail that started at the cemetery and led straight up the hill to a lone, empty house at the top. Rosetta’s brother claimed that the house was haunted, though most houses that stayed empty for long were conferred that status.

“It’s the fastest route. I need to let the oxen drink by the river first, though.” The driver gave another tap on the oxen’s rear, but one of the animals groaned and bucked, nudging a single coconut off the cart. It hit the ground with a thud. Miguel picked it up and handed it back to the driver, who smiled, embarrassed, at the animal’s disobedience.

“Good luck at the market,” Rosetta said, as they waved goodbye.

Miguel led Rosetta by the hand to the crowd gathering outside the church. “So many people,” he said.

“He was well-liked.”

Mr. Lopez’s quiet kindness had been his way of conveying an innate belief in every student’s potential. It was what brought most of his graduates back to visit him years later. Rosetta had gone back to ask Mr. Lopez’s advice many times herself.

The bell tower chimed every few seconds to let everyone know the service was starting. Shielding her eyes from the sun, Rosetta could see the silhouette of the bell operator up in the tower swinging the bell’s rope. She had heard his signal the night before: the prolonged gap he’d left between each of the three chimes had indicated that someone from the village had died.

The crowd parted to let Rosetta through. She gave them a funeral-appropriate half-smile. In spite of this, her dimples still showed. Everyone’s eyes were on her belly, a bulging jackfruit ready to drop.

Miguel helped Rosetta to a seat near the back of the church after a few parishioners made room. She was thankful to sit once again; a short distance felt like a marathon in the day’s sweltering heat.

Once everyone was sitting, Father Constantine stepped up to the pulpit. His bushy grey eyebrows rested above thick rectangular glasses, and he rushed through the mass as if it were community announcements.

As he spoke, Rosetta eyed the closed coffin of simple, unvarnished wood at the front of the church. She had heard that the only thing included with the body of their beloved schoolteacher was his iron walking stick, and pictured it now, folded in his hands.

After the mass concluded, Father Constantine led a procession of pallbearers outside. Rosetta let the rest of the congregation exit first, before she followed with Miguel. She felt the blazing sun as soon as she got outside and took her time walking past the stone statue of St. Francis of Assisi—painted the same seashell-white as the church—to the shade offered by the cemetery walls and trees. Mr. Lopez had once told Rosetta and the rest of her class—to prevent them from cutting through the cemetery—that those walls weren’t built to keep people out but to keep spirits in.

Rosetta’s friend Nina intercepted her halfway.

“Have you seen Noah?” she whispered, sweat on her forehead and worry in her eyes. “He normally works late, and if he doesn’t come home he stays at his brother’s, so I wasn’t worried. But I just saw his brother in the church and he said Noah didn’t come over last night.”

“Maybe he’s still at his office?” Miguel suggested.

“I hope so. I’ll go check as soon as the service is over.”

Miguel, Rosetta, and Nina joined the crowd gathered around the grave. The muggy air was heavy, absent the mercy of even the faintest breeze. Rosetta could feel the sweat under her arms and breasts. She shifted her weight in discomfort but couldn’t get comfortable; Miguel stepped behind her, letting her lean back into him.

As Father Constantine flicked the coffin with holy water from a silver aspergillum, he mumbled Latin prayers that Rosetta and most of the village didn’t understand. Before the coffin was lowered into the ground, he called for a final moment of silence. During this time at funerals, the silence was often broken by a murmur, sniffle, or sob. Occasionally, mourners were so overcome with emotion that they wailed and cried; rarely, someone would actually faint. But today, when the quiet was interrupted, it was not by one of the mourners.

A cry for help came from above.

The voice seemed to emanate from the top of a tall palm tree beside the cemetery. And within its fronds, Rosetta saw a waving arm.

The voice shouted, “Nina!”

Nina raised a hand to her forehead to block the sun. “Noah? How did you get up there?”

“I don’t know. Help me get down.”

A woman from the crowd hollered, “Why don’t you climb down?”

“I don’t know how. I need help.”

“Fetch Diego,” someone else suggested, “he’ll handle this.”

Rosetta felt the baby move, followed by Miguel giving her hand a squeeze and then releasing it. “I’ll go run and get the boys by the river,” he offered.

Rosetta thought maybe it was a mistake to let him go, but he returned with three boys and a coiled rope, which one of the boys put around his waist before they climbed up the tree, one then the next in tandem. The boys hugged the tree and curved their feet around the trunk, shimmying up half body lengths at a time. Once up top, they tied the rope around Noah’s waist and began to lower him to the ground as if he were a cluster of tender coconuts.

Rosetta watched from below. The boys had the same sinewy strength in their limbs that she had noticed in the bullock-cart driver. Noah’s body, dangling like a tea bag on a string, was comparatively short and pudgy, and his limbs flailed like those of a caught insect.

Nina ran over and hugged Noah. Disoriented, he asked for water. A clay jug was fetched from the church, and as Noah drank and regained his composure, Diego rode up on his white horse. He had broad shoulders, a thin moustache, and wore the khaki-coloured uniform of the Portuguese officials, complete with black leather boots, navy blue blazer, and matching hat, brimmed on only the left side.

Diego nodded to Father Constantine, who stood impatiently beside the grave, Bible in hand.

From atop his horse, Diego addressed Noah. “So I hear you got stuck in a tree. How did that happen?”

“I don’t know. Last I remember I was on my way home.”

“But how does that get you up a tree?”

“Arrey, I told you, I don’t know.” He shook his head from side to side. “I woke up, and I was up there.”

The crowd murmured nervously. Nina made the sign of the cross, and the act spread to others around her.

Diego turned to Father Constantine. “We can discuss this later. For now, Father, please continue the service.”

Father Constantine made a show of clearing his throat, and took his time opening the Bible to the exact plac...

Table of contents

• Copyright
• Dedication
• The Call of the Bell
• 1994
• Carriers
• Birds of a Feather
• Picking Trilliums
• When the Good Shines a Little Brighter
• Two Islands
• Small Things
• So Far Away
• Fallen Leaves
• 1997
• One Hundred Steps
• Private Property
• Learn to Care
• 1998
• Snapshots
• 1999
• åGrand Opening
• 2000
• The Elephant in the Mountain
• 1996
• Hold It Like a Butterfly
• 2006
• Coconut Dreams
• 1995
• 1996
• Acknowledgements:
• About the Author
• Colophon