Esperanza Street

by Niyati Keni

  ‘To speak to Cesar,’ Mulrooney said to Aunt Mary.

  ‘Cesar was cagey. But I got it out of him eventually.’

  ‘They submitted the application months ago,’ Mulrooney said, ‘but it was buried. Displayed publicly all right, but in English and on some village official’s door.’

  ‘He came to discuss it with me a few days ago,’ said Aunt Mary. ‘Bobby and I had friends in government. Engineer Reyes and Joey Robello were part of Bobby’s poker crowd. And the Robellos are related to me by marriage. I suppose those men might not normally have been in Mr Casama’s circle.’ She glanced at Mulrooney and added carefully, ‘Of course, a man like Mr Casama hardly needs my support.’

  ‘Yes, yes, Joey Robello, Engineer Reyes,’ said Mulrooney darkly. I shot a complicit smile at America, but she stared back coolly. She knew I’d never met either of those men even if, like everyone else, I’d heard their names. Joey Robello, a judge like his father and grandfather before him, had his eye on a seat in the Senate and Engineer Reyes had been elected to the District Council three times, though it was unclear who exactly had voted him in. There was a story about Engineer Reyes known to everyone in Esperanza. Fresh out of university and ambitious with his father’s money, he had tried to dig a basement under his father’s house, planning to turn it into a games room – I remember Abnor repeating the words over and over with obvious amusement: a room just for games. The basement was barely excavated when it flooded and though it was drained and the work restarted, it kept on flooding. Finally, the foreman explained to him that there was an underground spring, which eventually led to the sea, running beneath the street; the same water that was tapped further along its course by the pump in the market hall. Reyes, known then simply as Frankie Reyes, was furious. Why hadn’t the man thought to tell him before? The foreman explained that he’d assumed Reyes had known all along, he was, after all, an engineer. Work ceased and, after some wrangling, the men were finally paid, though less than they’d originally been promised: a mistake on Reyes’ part for the whole of Esperanza quickly heard the story. From then on he was always addressed as Engineer Reyes, though he never practised as one.

  ‘They’re all in league with each other,’ said Mulrooney. ‘Busy lining each other’s pockets.’ I thought I heard in his voice a note of defeat, or perhaps if not defeat, then doubt, as if the odds against Esperanza were approaching some critical threshold. But Esperanza Street was used to change, I thought. Like anywhere, it had been formed in layers, each one built upon the last by the generations of people that had lived and died here, though until now the process of its changing had been like the gradual shaping of a shoreline over centuries. ‘Of course he’s arguing that it will bring money into the local economy,’ Mulrooney said, ‘implying that everyone stands to benefit.’

  ‘Did he mention the full extent of it?’ asked Pastor Levi, and he watched me closely as he listed street after street in Greenhills, including, finally, my father’s. For a moment I thought it sounded too ridiculous and I couldn’t believe that anyone would allow it. Then Levi added, ‘Cesar said they plan to build a multi-storey car park over the north half of the cemetery.’

  America grabbed my hand, squeezed it hard and I gaped back at her. If our dead, my mother among them, were not to be allowed their rest, I thought, then there was little hope for the living.

  ‌The Best Coffee on the Island

  The Coffee Shak was my favourite place on Esperanza; it felt like somewhere things could happen. It was also Esperanza Street’s famous place, being listed in foreign guidebooks. I passed by it most days, but once a week, if the Bougainvillea had foreign guests, I got to go inside to pick up ground coffee. In its present form the Shak was relatively new to the street, but it had been around in other incarnations for years, starting life as an unnamed, brightly painted vendor’s cart – a wooden contraption on wheels with room for a small motor underneath to run the grinder and a big steel urn bolted onto the counter. When Aunt Mary’s stepsister Cora first met Ignacio Sanesteban he was running a shop selling machine parts on Esperanza Street, but he didn’t have much of a head for it and was, as she often recounted, bleeding money. She took charge and turned his shop into the Shak, the only place for miles around where tourists and expats, tired of being served cups of lukewarm water with sachets of instant coffee, could relax with the real stuff. It was immediately popular.

  Cora took to grinding the day’s beans fresh in front of the first customer every morning. It was this ritual that earned her a place in the guidebooks, framed pages of which decorated the pillar nearest the door, alongside a large, framed photograph of the old cart.

  Inside, the air was thick with the smell of coffee and vanilla and it was as heavy to breathe as that on the street, barely stirred by the ceiling fans that churned overhead. A sign on the door said ‘air conditioned’ but the cooler was always just being fixed. Cora usually kept the door wedged open instead which made no difference except that the scent of freshly brewed coffee hung in the air outside.

  Ignacio Sanesteban was straightening the tables and putting out the fresh flowers that his wife insisted upon. He looked up as I walked in. Ignacio was a big man with a sleepy voice and heavy-lidded eyes that gave him an air of languor or conceit, though he possessed neither. He rose at four every morning to bake the pastries that drew regulars from as far afield as Cabugon or Pasay, including Eddie Casama, who sent his driver down at least once a week.

  I looked round the Shak to see what was new. Every wall and pillar was busy with paintings, mostly Cora’s own. Some were really good, as good as you might see in any gallery. A few were framed, most were stretched between bamboo canes, the canvases ragged at the edges. There was one of Abnor sitting at his tea-stall in a bleached early-morning light, the kind you’d get on a day when it might become too hot to move later. Foreigners were always trying to buy it and Cora invariably refused.

  From the back of the Shak, the sound of the Eagles started up from an old Wurlitzer that stood by the kitchen door casting its colours in a fan over the wall.

  Ignacio slipped back behind the counter. He smiled at me, pushing a dish towards me across the glass. It was full of coins, tips from customers. I sifted through it, picked out a few. Ignacio started to tip beans into the grinder. I walked through to the back, towards the Wurlitzer.

  In the furthest booth, next to the jukebox, sat Cora. She wasn’t alone. Benny was with her, his back to me. I hadn’t seen him for days. He’d stayed in his room, emerging only to eat and sometimes not even that, so that America or Aunt Mary would send me up with a tray, which he’d make me leave at the door. I hadn’t been worried; he often immersed himself in his drawing, filling page after page at his desk, reappearing suddenly to raid the Frigidaire or pilfer food straight out of America’s pans before gathering up garlic bulbs and bunched banana leaves for a still life. It seemed quite natural now that I should see him here, surrounded by so many paintings, even a few of his own. He didn’t look pleased to see me. ‘Joseph,’ he said, with a slight formality.

  On the table in front of him his sketchbook lay open, loose pages spilling out, each containing a series of frames like a komik book. The images were bold, arresting. I leaned forward to take a look but he angled the pages away from me. I moved over to the Wurlitzer. Cora said, ‘Tell him I’m wise to him. He never did like the Eagles.’

  I shifted the coins in my palm. ‘You think I could get away with Sam Cooke today?’ I said.

  ‘Not a chance. You know him. It’s got to be a girl.’

  I scanned down the list, selected Dusty in Memphis. Cora moved aside on her bench and patted the red leatherette next to her. I sat down. The upholstery, already sticky with the heat, was warm and pliant from her body. Ignacio arrived with three Cokes and a plate of cookies. He slid them onto the table, tapped the rim of the cookie plate with his fingernail. ‘That’s for Dusty,’ he said. He returned to the counter and carried on polishing glasses and cutlery, all the time smiling his
approval at the neat lines of pastries layered with fruit and cream and curls of chocolate that sat chilling under the glass. Ignacio said little as a rule. Cora, in contrast, seemed to talk at a thousand words a minute. I thought, as I had many times before, how unlike Aunt Mary she was: prettier, livelier, with a deep, grating laugh. It was hard to imagine they were related. I looked down at the sketches. Benny started to slide them back in between the leaves of his book but Cora placed her hand on them.

  ‘They’re good,’ I said. Benny scowled at me.

  ‘Revolutionaries!’ Cora said gleefully. She held up a sheet to look closely at it and as she did so, from underneath it, the gloss of a photograph caught my eye. The girl under the yellow bell tree. I was surprised; it wasn’t like America or Aunt Mary to leave anything lying around. Benny reached out to tuck the photograph away again, but Cora had already spotted it. She took it from him, squinted at it; a pretence, her eyesight was sharp enough when a customer glanced at a pastry or edged towards the door without paying. ‘Girlfriend?’ she said.

  ‘No!’ Benny said.

  ‘Who then?’

  ‘She used to work for Mom.’ Benny’s tone was light enough but I looked hard at him then; his voice carried something new. He avoided my eye.

  ‘Pretty. Bet your father was always sniffing around her,’ Cora said. Then, a second later, ‘Sorry.’

  Benny shrugged.

  ‘You know, I think I remember her. Doring or Dora or Doreen or something. She didn’t last long.’

  ‘What was she like?’

  ‘Oh, well, I have no idea. Never really spoke to the girl. Never really spoke to any of them. The pretty ones were always gone in no time.’ Benny stared fixedly at the sketches on the table.

  ‘Did you know Pop?’

  ‘Not as well as he’d have liked!’ And then again, ‘Sorry.’ Cora sighed. ‘You know how it is, baby. A snake only knows how to be a snake. In case you’re worried, you’re nothing like him. More like your mom.’

  Benny’s eyes jerked up at her and then, unexpectedly, he exclaimed, ‘I wish you’d been my mom.’

  Cora gave a high, crisp laugh. She sat back and studied him and after a minute reached out and stroked his cheek with her thumb. ‘Just look at you! She did a great job. Really she did.’

  ‘I just meant … ’ but he didn’t continue.

  ‘I hear your Lola’s in town,’ Cora said. From behind the counter, the sound of the grinder stopped.

  ‘Yeah,’ Benny said reluctantly.

  ‘Give the old lady my regards.’ The sound of the grinder started up again. Ignacio started humming along to Dusty, his eyebrows arched, a faint smile on his face.

  ‘She broke her wrist,’ Benny said.

  ‘Shucks,’ said Cora. Benny’s eyes flashed at her and she added remorsefully, ‘Ok, ok.’ She leaned across the table, planted both palms flat on it as if she were about to push herself up, but she stayed sitting. ‘I know just what’ll cheer you up. You want to help me paint something really big?’

  ‘Sure, why not,’ Benny said.

  ‘Come at the weekend. Your mom won’t mind.’

  Ignacio brought a bag over to the table. The smell of freshly ground coffee puffed out of it as he set it down. ‘With compliments,’ he said.

  I reached out and tugged gently at Benny’s sleeve to uncover his watch. He looked annoyed for an instant but then he held his arm up for me to take a look, tilting it so that the clockface was the right way up. I slid towards the edge of the booth and as I did so Cora started after me, bouncing herself softly along the upholstery. Seeing her move, Benny got slowly to his feet. He looked at me ruefully.

  We walked back to the Bougainvillea together. The rhythm of walking seemed to soften his mood and he started to talk about the komik he was working on, The Black Riders. His voice had deepened recently and he’d grown so much taller than me and I noticed now too how, like his brother, he’d started to carry himself differently as his body filled out. I felt a flush of pleasure as he talked; he’d hadn’t discussed his ideas with me for a long time. He talked about the komik all the way home and it was only after he’d gone up to his room and closed the door behind him that it occurred to me that he’d left no openings in which I might have asked about the girl in the photograph.

  ‌Barefoot Midwife

  Down at the jetty, the House-on-Wheels was preparing to move on but Lorna was nowhere to be found. ‘Hard to misplace someone that big,’ said Lottie irritably. They’d already stayed a couple of days longer than planned because Lorna had complained she was exhausted from moving all the time. ‘Two days,’ Lottie said to Jonah, holding up two fingers, her voice fast, shrill. ‘Two days, getting more conspicuous by the minute, the police sniffing round, helping themselves to cigarettes, letting the kids shine their shoes for free.’

  ‘Baby hormones,’ said Subong cheerfully and he looked at my father for a response. But my father was barely listening. He stared out at the boats and the boys shifting cargo further down the beach, trying perhaps to imagine how the place would change: the jetty standing empty, the smaller cargo boats and outriggers landing further up the coast near the passenger ferry, being unloaded by a new Jonah, a new Subong, a new Dante Santos.

  ‘Stupid cow,’ said Lottie. ‘She’ll get us all in trouble. We should just go. Let her walk round the whole country looking for us.’ But she stayed where she was, the sack and the pots and the bedding still unpacked and draped variously over the House-on-Wheels behind her.

  Lando put his hand on the warm wood of the House. ‘She’s a good girl,’ he said. ‘She’ll be back.’ He edged his thumbnail slowly along the grain, towards his wife. Lottie watched his hand like she might have eyed a cockroach before swatting it.

  ‘If she’s not back by the evening we’ll all go looking for her,’ Jonah said. ‘What about you, eh?’ he said to me.

  ‘Sure,’ I said reluctantly. Even if Aunt Mary didn’t need me, I wasn’t sure I wanted to spend my evening scouring Esperanza for the girl, pregnant or not. ‘I’ve got schoolwork,’ I said, but it wasn’t much of an excuse and I added guiltily, ‘I guess it can wait.’ It could wait, too. I’d lost interest in school lately and my grades were beginning to slide. I couldn’t seem to help it. I found myself daydreaming whatever the subject; nothing held my interest. At school, everything felt dead and flat. Yet, in the evenings when my time was my own, I read everything I could find – Aunt Mary’s art books, books about American or European history, novels by long-dead English authors in which the language curled round itself before blooming out and presenting an idea like a bud. I was consumed for days by unexpected images: an artist walking along a coast in pursuit of the ship that had sailed with his life’s work on board, succumbing to a fever before he made the next port; the architecture of an ancient people of another continent whose blood, brought here by the Spanish, flowed in our veins too. Every day brought a new thing to light and, though I couldn’t have put it into words back then, I think now that I read with the hope something would finally arrive that would illuminate everything, a single piece of knowledge that would show me how my life was meant to unfold. Back then, my life didn’t feel like my own; anyone else – my father, Aunt Mary, God – might have a better plan for how I might live it than I. And so I coasted at school, though I was sure my grades wouldn’t escape Aunt Mary’s attention for long and I’d be reminded soon enough of the importance of accurate punctuation.

  I turned to leave for the boarding house but my father gripped my arm tightly. ‘Some time with my boy,’ he said.

  Jonah looked surprised; my father was never one to ask for slack if there was still work to be done. ‘Sure, Dante.’ He clapped my father on the back, gently, waved us on. I’d noticed recently how he’d started giving the younger boys the heavier loads.

  My father pulled me for several paces along the sea wall before letting go of my arm and then he kept walking. I followed. Fed well by America, I’d grown quickly this year and my father seemed sudd
enly smaller to me, more tired, his strength diminishing as mine grew. When we were out of earshot he said, without catching my eye, ‘I know where she is.’ I stared at him but still he looked away.

  ‘Where?’

  ‘Walk with me, boy.’ We cut through the market and into the curandero’s alley to the sari-sari store. Rico and his boys weren’t around which meant, no doubt, that Suelita wasn’t on duty. I felt both disappointed and relieved.

  Fidel was at the hatch chewing gum. He was reading a komik and started when my father rapped on the counter with his knuckles. My father opened his mouth to speak but already Fidel was ducking beneath the partitioning curtain. We heard him call out to his mother. Missy was on the stoop in an instant, a half-gutted fish in one hand, a knife in the other. When she saw my father, she raised the fish in acknowledgement. She stepped back inside and we listened as she snapped orders at her son to deposit the fish in the Frigidaire, to sluice water over her hands as she scrubbed them at the pail in the yard, to bring the rubbing alcohol from her midwife’s bag, to put it back.

  Missy Bukaykay might have been slight but her frailty was a deception. She had a certain kind of doggedness about her, slow-grown like a callus on skin. Inevitable perhaps for the eldest of nine, born of peasant farmers who made their way to Puerto when they lost their land: a teenager when she came for the first time to the city. Missy had never undertaken any official training to become a midwife. Still, it was said she’d never lost a baby, even in the worst of conditions, so no one paid much mind to the details of her state midwifery licence, which was displayed on the wall of the shack and was several years out of date.

  She was back on the stoop within minutes, her midwife’s bag in hand. She sniffed at her fingers. ‘Better not arrive today. Be a shame for that to be the first thing to smell on coming into this world.’ She held out her fingers for my father to sniff but he waved them away, smiling.