by Niyati Keni
‘I could ask Aunt Mary if she knows any more,’ I said, dropping the pitch of my voice to match his. I wouldn’t ask her, of course. I’d ask America instead and she’d probably just tell me off, like she always did, for being inquisitive.
‘Naw. You keep it close to you just for now, ok?’
‘Sure,’ but I was disappointed, a kid again.
‘Levi’s going up there this week to check the facts.’ He nodded uptown. ‘Maybe it’s nothing, eh?’ But he said it too carefully.
‘I hear anything, I’ll let you know.’
Uncle Bee smiled. ‘Ok, tough guy,’ he said.
He told me to wait and called to Suelita to wrap a couple of biscuits for me. After a minute we heard her knock on the counter to let us know they were ready. I stood up and reached out to shake his hand. He smiled at me again, raising his eyebrows when Suelita rapped, more loudly, a second time. He shook my hand, placing his other hand on my shoulder. It felt affectionate, easy, the kind of thing a father would do when his son might feel too old to be embraced.
At the hatch, Suelita held the parcel out to me without so much as a glance in my direction, continuing to stare down at the newsprint clippings spread over the counter. She’d knotted her hair back, secured it with an array of pencils. She tapped the handle of her scissors against her lower lip with her other hand, pouting slightly as she concentrated. I took the parcel and her hand folded in again like a makahiya leaf touched by rain. I stood there a little too long after taking the biscuits, imagining unfolding the newspaper to find a message from her, decoded slowly from the words she’d cut away – nothing obvious or sentimental, but something that would make me feel like an accomplice. Of course I knew the paper would contain no such thing, but I also knew I’d check anyway and consider keeping the paper, if only because she’d thought to press the top of the parcel into a handle. Then, for no reason, I pictured her handing a secret message to Rico instead and I flushed. She chose that moment to look at me, and gave me a questioning look: why are you still here?
I turned to go, stuffing the biscuits self-consciously into my mouth like a child. I crumpled the wrapper and pushed it into my pocket, to keep for the boarding house trash can, Aunt Mary’s voice in my head reminding me how uncouth it was to drop litter. I thought I caught Suelita’s smile as I started off but when I looked back she’d turned away again and was frowning down at her newsprint words, the luckiest scissors in the world tapping her plump lower lip.
Hen-Coops and Fish Baskets
The curandero’s alley split in two as it moved away from Esperanza Street. To the right, it widened and finally grew a sidewalk before leading to the basilica, the Chinese shops and restaurants and, eventually, the expensive apartment blocks higher on the hill. To the left, the alley led into the heart of Greenhills, so called by the inhabitants, though it was the colour of dirt and was flat, in mockery of the circumstances in which they lived: in Manila, Greenhills was where the rich lived; in Puerto it was a slum. If one continued walking through Greenhills in the direction of the sea, one came to Colon Market, quiet only at night, its stench declaring its presence long before and after its boundaries.
At the spot where the alley split stood the Espiritista chapel. Uncle Bee’s grandmother had established the chapel in the 1920s. The congregation had grown steadily since then but the chapel, hemmed in by wooden double storeys, had stayed the same size. To accommodate everyone, the rough wooden pews had been moved outside to line the courtyard in front of the chapel and the services were now all conducted standing. Even after mass, when the worshippers lingered awhile in the courtyard, people remained standing for there was nowhere left to sit, the pews having gradually accumulated ranks of potted plants: flat-leaved palms or succulents in empty paint cans, rusty pails, gallon vegetable-oil canisters with the tops cut jaggedly away. In one corner of the courtyard, empty fish baskets and firewood were stacked. In another stood a hen-coop, its inhabitants noisy, ruffled by the presence of the congregation. After everyone had left, the chickens would be let out to scratch and shit. Or if it was late, they’d settle where they were while Nening, Uncle Bee’s sister and the Espiritista priestess, swept the yard clean.
People came to the Espiritista chapel from a distance sometimes. In the alley, some evenings one might see a car that didn’t belong – a BMW or a Mercedes – its owners in the congregation, searching for something money couldn’t buy. The cars always drew an audience, children mainly, who were watched in their turn by the chauffeurs that leaned against the bonnet smoking or singing along to the hymns that drifted out into the evening. Most of the congregation, however, were from Greenhills or from the lower half of Esperanza, people whose skins were dark from working long days under the sun.
I attended the Espiritista church once with America, but only the once, for Aunt Mary made it clear afterwards how much she disapproved. It was two years after my mother died and I’d heard America talk about the Espiritista priestess contacting the dead, drawing power from them to heal the sick. I was ten years old and couldn’t resist; I pleaded with her for weeks before she agreed to take me.
We went to an evening service. In the chapel yard, the air was heavy with incense and the scent of night jasmine. Standing behind America, I watched the chickens squabble in the hen-coop and the lizards slip between the plant pots. Inside, the chapel was like a shop, with a counter but nothing for sale. It wasn’t what I’d expected at all. I’d pictured Nening in a flowing white robe and behind her a high arched chapel, its shadows filled with echoes. She came out to meet us, a plump woman – brown arms bleached a European white in patches by some skin ailment – wearing a faded skirt printed with orange flowers, a pale-green shirt, rubber sandals. Perhaps she’d half read my mind, for she said to America, ‘I’m the High Priestess of fashion too, no?’ And on seeing me, ‘Yours?’
America said, ‘Naw. This is Joseph. Dante Santos’ boy.’
‘O-oh,’ said Nening. I didn’t like the way she stretched the word out, as if my identity was quite a revelation.
The service was to be at nine o’clock. The congregation started arriving around half past eight but by nine they were still drifting in through the gate, no more than forty of them in total perhaps, and Nening didn’t call for everyone to be silent until about twenty past the hour.
I stood close by America. A girl, not much older than I, came to the front and sang the national anthem in a thin, high voice, first in Tagalog, then in English. The people were silent; some looked about to see who else was present. I looked about too, but America squeezed my hand and I turned back to the girl. Thy banner, dear to all our hearts, its sun and stars all right, never shall its shining feel be dimmed by tyrant mice. I grinned up at America. She gave me a stern look. From all around us came a murmur of approval, scattered claps. The girl slid back into the crowd.
Nening stepped forward again and led the worshippers into a hymn. There were no song sheets or books. The congregation sang ‘Abide with Me’ and ‘Come Holy Ghost’. I didn’t know all the words and joined in intermittently, worrying the whole while that my efforts might not be enough to draw my mother. After the voices had died away, Nening raised her hands for silence again. The worshippers, whispering to stragglers that had joined the group during the singing or fidgeting against the night insects, became still. A clamour arose from the chickens and a barrio dog, unseen and unheard during the singing, was spotted nosing around the hen-coop. A man – I recognised Uncle Bee – stepped forward and chased the dog away. He addressed the dog as sir while he ran it out the gate, which made me giggle. America clicked her tongue at me but even some of the adults had started laughing softly.
When people had subsided again and the chickens were some way to settling, Nening read from the Bible, a short passage about raising the dead, cleansing lepers, casting out demons. She started reciting a prayer. I tried to listen but it was late and her voice and the night air, sweet with flowers and sweat and putrefaction, conspired to make me
sleepy. I yawned loudly, but America didn’t notice. I looked up into the faces of the people around me; some were swaying as they prayed, eyes closed, trembling. After a while the voices of the congregation rose and the trembling for some became shaking. Nening called out for the Spirit Protectors to come and to keep away the evil spirits, those that might for their own reasons mean her flock some harm. She called for the Spirit Protectors to speak. The people pushed forward and one or two started to speak in Tagalog, but words that I didn’t understand. I wanted to move forward myself, hear what was being said, but America, her lips still moving in prayer, gripped my shoulder and held me back. Then Nening, in a shrill and urgent voice, called out a name and someone in the congregation answered. One by one she called out more names and someone came forward and laughed or wept or cried out and I waited for the moment when she would call out my mother’s name or mine. It never came.
We didn’t idle in the yard after the service. America knew many of the congregation and she called to them in passing, pausing only to make me recite my thanks and a good night to Nening. The priestess winked at me cheerfully as she said, ‘Your father came to mass here too. Once or twice only. After your mother died.’ I was young and didn’t know how to ask then if my father had found what he came for, or if he too had left disappointed.
I thought about my father at the Espiritistas all the way back to the boarding house. He’d kept his visits there a secret. After my mother died, he’d carried a vigilant look in his eye, as if he’d misplaced something that he might, without warning, come across again at any moment. It had taken a long time for that look finally to leave him and be replaced by a kind of dullness.
America pulled me home quickly. She’d not told Aunt Mary she was taking me to the Espiritistas. I’d worked hard all afternoon to complete my chores and my schoolwork and had assumed that Aunt Mary would have no objection, but I was wrong. She was even less pleased with America for taking me and I didn’t attend an Espiritista service again, though Nening called out in greeting whenever she saw me.
Village Girl
Dub took to staying at the garage later and later, hanging around even after Earl had packed up and gone. I’d see him there as I passed by on my way back to the boarding house with whatever I’d been sent to fetch: candles or torch batteries, shrimp paste and powdered chilli – objects that demarcated the boundaries of my life. He’d wheel his bike out into the centre of the forecourt and polish it carefully, tinkering with it before revving it hard and cruising slowly onto Esperanza for the short ride home. He started strumming on his guitar during his lunch breaks, on a crate on the forecourt, his cap pulled low over his face to keep off the sun.
Whenever I saw him there, I looked up at the balcony of the second-floor apartment opposite and more often than not I caught the curve of her profile as she watered her plant pots or a flash of colour from her dress as she threw open her doors to the early evening air. To anyone else their presence at such times would have seemed nothing other than coincidence, but to me it was as if there were an invisible thread of electricity that ran between them, animating first his hands on the bike engine, then hers on the petals of her bougainvillea. They were utterly aware of each other at those times. Then, one day, I was sent to enquire of Dub whether he was ever going to sit down to dinner with his family again and, as I approached, BabyLu waved to me from her balcony and I waved back and in that instant Dub looked up and followed my gaze to her and there was no reason for him not to wave at her too. She was down on the forecourt within a few minutes.
‘You’re gonna polish that bike away to nothing, Elvis,’ she said.
‘I like things to look good, my lady,’ Dub replied.
‘Shallow, huh?’ she said, leaving Dub chewing on air for an answer. ‘Hey, Joseph,’ she turned to me. ‘I’ve seen you walking around. Are you well?’ She’d remembered my name and I felt my face grow hot. ‘Eddie sent lots of food today and then rang to say he wasn’t coming. You two want to help me eat it? I hate to waste it. Still the village girl at heart.’
‘I should get back,’ I said, looking at Dub.
‘Girl needs a chaperone, Joseph,’ she said. ‘You look like a gentleman, whereas you … ’ she said to Dub. ‘You look like trouble.’
Her apartment surprised me. I’d expected it to be full of new things but the furniture was old and heavy like the narra wood at Aunt Mary’s. She had a dresser and an armoire and a long, dark dining table with six chairs. Every surface was crammed with things: vases with paper flowers, ornaments, glass decanters, stuffed toys and books. A lot of books. I’d imagined a hotel lobby, of the type I’d seen in some of Aunt Mary’s magazines, but the place was more like a museum or maybe a library, and it was clean, no dust anywhere. I leaned in to study some of the titles, my hands clasped behind my back. ‘They’re real,’ BabyLu pouted, but she was laughing. ‘You can even touch them!’ I picked one up: Thomas Hardy, an English author. Aunt Mary had a few of his books too. ‘I’ve read quite a lot of them now,’ she said. ‘Eddie likes me to be in if he calls.’ She shrugged. ‘You can borrow it if you want.’
Dub moved around the room looking at things. He smiled at a figurine; it was not dissimilar to something his mother might possess. He moved over to an armchair and, lifting a pile of papers from its seat, flopped into it. He looked around for somewhere to place the papers but every nearby surface was full. He looked at the floor, at BabyLu and then at me, the pile in his outstretched arms. I affected not to notice, my eyes on BabyLu. She smiled at me as she turned away and walked into the kitchen. Dub placed the pile precariously on the chair’s armrest. He sat back, studying the objects around him, his hands folded neatly in his lap like a boy waiting outside the headmaster’s office. I eyed the pile of papers for a second or two and then stepped forward to retrieve it. I placed it on the dining table. Dub shot me an uncertain smile. BabyLu walked back into the room with a jug of water. She set it on the dining table, took glasses and plates out of one of the cabinets. ‘It’ll take a few minutes to heat things up,’ she said. ‘I’ll be in the kitchen but I can hear you if you speak up.’
I felt like an impostor, invited to eat at this flat as if I wasn’t Dub’s houseboy, but his friend. I hesitated at the kitchen doorway, nodded at the parcels of food as she unwrapped them. ‘I can do that,’ I said, but she laughed at me and pushed me back into the dining room. She pointed at a chair like a schoolteacher. I sat down.
BabyLu wedged the kitchen door wide open so that we could hear each other more easily as she threw the food into pans. She talked as she worked. ‘Most of the furniture was here when Eddie bought the flat. Belonged to the previous owner. A professor.’ She peered round the doorframe at me, her eyes gleaming. ‘Eddie wanted to get rid of it but I liked it. I didn’t have anything much of my own anyway. Most of the books were here when I came too but some I bought myself. Eddie brings me books sometimes, but he only likes ones with a particular kind of cover.’ She stopped stirring to count off on her fingers: ‘Hard covers. Leathery. Gold lettering.’ She picked up the spoon again. ‘He doesn’t care who writes them. He never looks.’ I wondered about the kind of man who chose a book like he would an ornament, buying it for its binding, as if opening it to discover its real value was out of the question.
Dub was quiet but it didn’t matter because BabyLu talked for all three of us, as if all the loneliness and boredom that besieged her in this apartment full of things had, while we were here, only a brief time to purge itself. ‘I used to be Eddie’s maid, but then his wife caught us fooling and gave him an ultimatum. He brought me here. It’s ok I guess. I left the village when I was fifteen. I have nine brothers and sisters. I’m not used to silence. It’s unnatural, don’t you think?’ She peered out from behind the doorframe again to solicit our responses.
BabyLu was talking even as she brought the food out, but while she served it she fell silent. She arranged the food carefully on each plate, her every movement reflected in the polished dark wood
of the table, the bird’s egg blue of her shirt becoming sky mirrored in water. Hers was the only movement or sound in the room then, for instead of picking up the weft and continuing to weave a conversation, Dub and I watched her work. BabyLu kept her eyes on the plates, but as we looked on her breathing quickened, and when she was done her colour was high.
The food was good and there was plenty of it. Dub picked at his plate and tried now not to stare at her. Still, she caught him watching her several times and glanced away quickly as if bashful, though I thought once that she looked pleased. She ate carefully, self-consciously, and when at last Dub witnessed her splash sauce down her chin, she blushed and, flashing a wounded look at him, cried out: ‘Psychic surgery! Do you believe?’ We stared at her, astonished. She pointed with her spoon at the pile of papers Dub had moved off the armchair earlier, that she had pushed aside to make room for the food. On the top was a flyer: The Reverend Julio Orenia, World Famous Psychic Surgeon, Is Coming to Heal You! I’d seen the same flyer just a few days ago. America had brought one home only for Aunt Mary to remove it, though it was soon replaced with another. They were everywhere, especially thick in the vicinity of the Espiritista chapel from where they’d no doubt originated. BabyLu wiped her chin stealthily, spoke in a rush. ‘Such people are extraordinary, don’t you think? He’s restored eyesight and made people walk again. He’s cured cancer! And all with the power of spirit. He doesn’t claim it for himself.’