Proof I was Here

by Becky Blake

  Manu was quieter than usual as we walked to the hotel site. When we got there, we climbed up and down the stairs for a long time before he picked out a room. On our first night together, he’d taken me straight to the top floor, but every night since he’d been having more and more trouble deciding which room to stay in. Lately, I’d been wondering where he and his father had been on the night of the earthquake, if maybe they’d had a choice to be somewhere else and had made the wrong decision.

  I followed Manu up another floor and waited at the stairwell as he walked the length of the building, slipping in and out of rooms, moving forward, moving back. At the far end, he walked into a room and didn’t come out again. I waited another minute, then went to join him. He’d already laid out our blanket in a corner and was sitting on it with our knapsack open in front of him. “I have to go back out for a while,” he said.

  “Really?” We didn’t usually leave the hotel after we’d set up for the night, so I was curious where he was going.

  “Don’t worry,” he said. “I won’t be gone long.”

  He seemed embarrassed, so I didn’t ask for details. Maybe he was working with the beer sellers who also sold drugs to tourists.

  When his footsteps had faded down the stairs, I walked over to the edge of the room. It was my first time alone at the construction site. I forced myself to sit down with my legs dangling out into the empty space. At first I felt a swoop of dizziness, but I ignored it. After a few minutes my vertigo faded, and I was able to appreciate the view. It was a powerful feeling to be balanced above the city with no barrier between us.

  I sat there for a long time, feeling like a god or a queen, and thinking of all the things I might change if I had the power. I would make sure Manu’s family had enough money so he didn’t have to steal. I would find Yaya a teaching job, and maybe even sign up for his class. Fanta would get her debt paid off and be able to bring her mother and son to Spain. For me, all I wanted was a way to start a new life here – a little apartment where maybe Manu would keep me company, a place where he could draw and I could paint. Once we had a home base, I could look for a job – one that might provide me with a work visa so I could legally stay. Renting a small apartment was something I could do any time with the money I’d saved. I decided to ask Manu what he thought of moving indoors as soon as he got back.

  I stood up and got ready for bed, changing into my old clothes again, then putting my coat back on. Even though it was the end of May, it still got chilly at night. I heard Fanta coming up the stairs. Her whistle sounded more urgent than usual. I whistled back until she found me.

  “Where’s Manu?” she asked, jutting out her chin. Someone had left a bloody scratch on her face and she was sparking mad.

  “He just went to the store,” I said. I had no idea how long he’d be gone, but I wanted her to think he’d be coming back soon. Even though Fanta was friendly with us, I didn’t fully trust her. The interest on her debt was probably rising each day at a slightly greater rate than what she could earn. People without hope were unpredictable. “Are you okay?” I asked.

  She didn’t answer.

  I offered her a towel from our pack so she could clean up her face, but she waved it away.

  “Evidence,” she said, pointing at the blood. The heart-shaped decals on her fingernails had been replaced by little palm trees.

  I opened a can of beer and held it out toward her. She snatched it from my hand on one of her trips pacing back and forth. After some time, she tossed a plastic baggie into my lap.

  “How much do you think I can get for that?” she asked.

  I picked it up. It was heavy, and it looked like cocaine. “I have no idea.”

  “A thousand?”

  “Maybe.” I shrugged and handed back the baggie.

  Fanta let out a breath, then started to laugh, deep from the belly. “That man is going to be mad!” she said.

  I watched as she emptied out her tiny purse and stuffed the drugs inside. I was worried that maybe she’d taken too big of a risk and might be in danger. But there was no point in saying that. What’s done was done. She’d stolen something with enough value to maybe tip the scales in her favour for once. It was a bigger score than anything I’d ever stolen, and I figured it must have been triggered by a bigger need than any itch I’d ever felt.

  She gave me her cell phone and some makeup to hold onto because they wouldn’t fit back in her purse. Her pimp was whistling for her down below on the other side of the fence.

  “Keep those for me until I come back,” she said. “And tell Manu I need to talk to him.” She tugged her skirt into place and was gone.

  Something was going on that she and Manu didn’t want me to know about. I wondered if Manu was trying to protect me. I scooped Fanta’s things toward me and curled up beside them in the darkness. Her phone was flashing like a tiny lighthouse, and I dozed off waiting for either her or Manu to return.

  I awoke to a man’s voice shouting up the stairs in a language I didn’t understand. I lay very still. There were so many rooms that he wasn’t going to find me as long as I stayed quiet. I heard his heavy steps pass by my floor and keep on going. Then he stopped on the stairs and a few seconds later, the phone beside me started ringing. The ringtone was a Bob Marley song, the one about how everything was going to be all right. I jumped up and grabbed the phone, but I couldn’t see how to shut it off. Then the angry man was there, and Manu was still gone, and there was no way to prove I was a person who anyone might miss.

  Manu’s knife was probably in his pocket, and I couldn’t think of anything else to use as a weapon. The man was shouting a bunch of words, his spit flying into my face, his lips the colour of bruises. I started toward the stairs, but he grabbed my arm and yanked me back. I held out my hands, showing that they were empty, showing that I didn’t understand. A heavy gold ring with a square blue stone flashed in front of my eyes, then cut through my cheek as he backhanded me across the face. Little chips of light framed the man’s silhouette.

  I wiped my cheek and looked at the blood on my fingers. The man picked up our knapsack and dumped its contents onto the floor. He squatted down and began pawing through our things, throwing them around. When he found the bread bag with my money in it, he put it into his pocket without even checking the amount, without being impressed at all by how far I’d come from nothing. Suddenly I was on top of him, hitting at his broad back, pulling at his thick hair with my bloody fingers. I didn’t try to get the money – I already knew he was going to take it from me – but I wanted him to know I was angry, just like him.

  He stood to shake me off, and I landed hard on my shoulder. Before I could get up, he started kicking at my ribs. Each time his foot made contact, my body curved a little more. The taste of dusty floor filled my mouth. Eventually I heard a pair of voices above me. Everything was going to be all right now. Manu was having another nightmare. We were having it together. I wrapped my arms around his neck and closed my eyes. When I opened them again, I realized it was the security guard who was holding onto me, swearing a bit under his boozy breath as he stumbled with me down the stairs. Don’t worry, I wanted to tell him, I won’t say anything. But I couldn’t think of the words in Spanish. Couldn’t think of any words in Spanish.

  When we reached the ground floor, he opened a gate in the fence and tipped me out of his arms and onto the sidewalk. “No te quedes aquí. Él va a regresar.” Then he closed the gate and left me lying there, alone.

  I repeated his words in my head until the translation came to me in slow motion. “Don’t stay here. He’s coming back.” The cobblestones were cool against my face. I remembered my first night at the hotel, how I’d imagined walking to the edge of the room and beyond: five seconds of falling, maybe ten. It had taken a lot longer than that, but finally I’d hit.

  I tried to get up but something in my chest had come unhinged. It was broken, and it h
urt to breathe. Also I was shaking. At first I thought it was from the cold, but no – it was from fear.

  “Please.” I sent the word up into the air, followed by a bunch of promises: I’d go back to Peter’s, go back even further if I needed to, all the way back to the beginning, to the very start of having nothing if I could just get up and get away.

  My words fell back to the ground, uncaught, unheard. No one but me would know if I kept my promises.

  Get up, I told myself. Get off the ground.

  I tried once again to rise.

  Part Two

  10

  The sheet under my fingertips was cool and crisply pressed. I blinked several times, my eyes adjusting to a strong light streaming in from a large window. The door of the room was ajar, and from the hallway I could hear the murmur of voices and beeping machines. The air smelled of fake lemons. In the corner, a chair was angled attentively toward my bed, and for a second I wondered why Peter wasn’t in it. Then I remembered, and I wondered where Manu was.

  The contents of my coat pockets were laid out on the bedside table in a patch of sunlight: the red paint chip, a handful of coins, a metro ticket and my collection of stolen IDs. Someone was going to want an explanation for those.

  I tried to push myself to sitting, but a sharp pain tore through my left side. I eased myself back down. Other parts of my body were hurting as well: my elbow and shoulder, my knee and my face. I touched the gauze patch that was taped to my cheek. The angry man’s eyes had been the darkest I’d ever looked into, all compassion extinguished. I didn’t think he would be able to find me here, but just in case, I reached for the call-button cord beside my bed and held it in my hand.

  There seemed to be a backward drag on each of my thoughts – the effect of painkillers maybe. I studied the low ceiling, trying to piece together what had happened. Manu had left me alone, and then Fanta had come looking for him, possibly to help her sell the drugs she’d stolen. For some reason, Manu hadn’t told me what was going on. I knew he wouldn’t have put me in danger on purpose, but I wasn’t sure about Fanta. Maybe she’d robbed the angry man and then blamed me. The man had definitely lost something. And when he couldn’t find it, he’d taken something of mine.

  The ache in my left ribs was spreading through my body. I lay a hand on my chest and felt my heart beating underneath. It was a gesture of Rosa’s, something she’d done when I’d gotten hurt as a child. “Still alive?” she’d ask, teasing a little, but holding her hand there for as long as it took until I felt better.

  I closed my eyes, and all the sounds of her apartment came rushing back: the chaotic chatter of her kids and grandkids when they came to visit on weekends, the music on her radio, the telenovelas and soccer games on her television. A large pink seashell in her bathroom whispered when I held it to my ear. In her tiled kitchen, Rosa’s slippers made a swishing sound while she cooked, and then no sound at all as she walked me back across the carpeted hall when it was time for me to go home. In my apartment, it was always quiet, my mother either sleeping or at work. Except on our balcony. Out there, I could hear the rumble of streetcars, ambulance sirens, the hum of the expressway. People on the street below came and went in different coats depending on the season. There was a rusty ashtray filled with rain-bloated cigarette butts in the corner, sharp flakes of peeling paint on the railing under my fingers. In the distance, Lake Ontario was a thin static line. Compared to the lusty roll of the Mediterranean’s waves, it would now look like the line of a heart monitor gone suddenly flat and lifeless.

  In the hospital room next door, a bare voice was climbing up and down the ladder of a flamenco song, the emotion spilling over and creeping through the hallways, under doors and into cracks. I didn’t want to live outside anymore, or spend time in places where sadness and danger seemed to collect. The angry man had taken my savings, but I wasn’t going to wait any longer before moving indoors. I had to get some money another way.

  I rolled the call-button cord between my fingers. If I asked the nurses to contact Peter, I knew he’d come within the hour. I pictured him sitting by my bed, reaching for my hand and then breaking down – admitting that sometimes he missed me so much he felt like dying. But no, that wasn’t right; that’s not what he would say. There was definitely a drug in my system, pulling my thoughts backward to times that were gone. For the last two years, I’d thought that Peter would know if I was hurt, but the chair in the corner was empty. He had unattached himself from me, and the next time I saw him, I needed to be standing up, not helpless in a bed as if the damage he’d done had broken me.

  The singing voice next door was swelling, breath by breath, toward a wet and ragged protest: life was unfair and it hurt each time we remembered that. The many points of injury in my body joined together until they were all connected. Tears slid sideways into my hair, and I allowed them to fall, but just until the song was finished. Then I made sure the call-button cord was still in my hand and let myself drift back toward the cloudiness of sleep. The next time I woke up in this clean white room, I would see if I was strong enough to stand.

  I stayed in the hospital for another night. Whenever the nurses came to check on me or give me some pills, I pretended not to understand the questions they asked in Spanish – questions about what had happened to me, and where I felt the pain the most. All I wanted was to rest for as long as possible; I couldn’t seem to get enough sleep.

  The next morning one of the nurses brought in a doctor who spoke slowly and clearly to me in English. “What is your name?” he asked.

  I blinked.

  “Your name,” he said, tapping his name tag.

  I picked up Suzanne Tomkinson’s licence from the bedside table and handed it to him. When the cleaners had been in my room the day before, I’d slipped the other ID cards into their garbage bin. I knew the cards’ disappearance was suspicious, but at least the most blatant proof of my criminal activity was gone.

  The doctor studied the licence, then said something to the nurse in Catalan. I heard the word policia. He turned back to me. “How do you feel today?”

  If he was going to call the police, I had to sneak out of the hospital before they arrived. “Tired,” I said. “Like I need to go back to sleep.”

  The doctor frowned. “We’ll come back in one hour.”

  “Thank you.” I closed my eyes.

  I heard the click of his pen, then the soft squeak of the nurse’s shoes following his brisk footsteps out the door and down the hall.

  I waited for a few minutes to make sure they were really gone. Then I got out of bed and dressed as quickly as I could. The bruises on my body ranged from purplish red to yellowish green. In front of the mirror over the sink I removed the gauze patch from my cheek. The cut underneath was smaller than I’d imagined, but uglier: a half-inch smile of black wiry stitches crusted over with dried blood. When I pulled on my coat, the pain in my ribs spiked. It was going to be hard to deal with once the painkillers wore off.

  I collected my things from the bedside table, then looked out into the hallway. There was an exit sign at the end, no hospital staff in sight. I stepped from the room and walked down the corridor at an even pace, then rode the elevator to the ground floor. The lobby was crowded with a mix of slow- and fast-moving people: the sick and the well. I increased my speed and headed for the sliding front doors.

  Outside, a garbage truck was blocking the street, traffic piling up behind it. Motorcycles squeezed by me on the narrow sidewalk, their drivers honking out quick insistent messages. My hospital room had been safe and quiet. Now that I was back on the other side of the sliding doors, it was time to start taking care of myself again – time to go back to Peter’s for my wallet.

  I didn’t know what day it was, or if he would even be home. All I could do was go ring his buzzer and find out. I crossed through the gridlocked traffic to the shady side of the street and looked up to the thin scraps o
f skyline for a clue to my location. There were no mountains, no churches. I guessed at a downhill direction, hoped I was heading toward the sea.

  Each step I took seemed to hurt a little more, as if my body was trying to prevent me from reaching my destination. I reminded myself that I was strong enough to survive an attack; going back to the apartment wouldn’t kill me. All I had to do was go upstairs and pack some things in a bag. I’d spend as little time as possible there – say as little as possible to Peter – and then I’d be able to go find Manu. Together we could decide what to do next, whether to stay at a hostel or to find a room to rent for longer. Once I had my credit card and bank card, we’d have lots of options, at least for a while.

  I was a little surprised that Manu hadn’t come looking for me, but that was probably unfair. Even if the security guard had told him what had happened, Manu still would’ve had to find the right hospital, describe who I was and then somehow prove that he knew me. I wondered what he was going to say when I invited him to come and stay with me indoors. When I thought about cooking at a stove and eating at a table, it was hard to picture the two of us together in the frame.

  Suddenly I wanted to see Manu right away, to find out what had happened on the night I was attacked and to close the gap of days that was opening up between us. Looking for him before going to Peter’s was a kind of delay tactic – I knew that – but it also made sense. Once I’d found Manu, he could come with me. He could wait outside the apartment, and that way I’d be sure to come back out.

  At the first major intersection, I spotted a sign for the metro in the distance: Sant Antoni station. After that I knew where I was; the metro system was more familiar to me than the streets. I considered going underground, but there was no way I’d find Manu on the trains. It was better to stay aboveground and look for him in places where he might be stationary for a while.