Esperanza Street

by Niyati Keni

  My room could only be reached through the kitchen. It had a window, but it fell under the shade of trees and so remained dark and cool most of the day. It was small: if I sat on my bedding with my back against the wall and my legs stretched out, the span of them took up more than half of its width. Nonetheless it was mine. Apart from my bedding, I had a small bookcase and a chair and table where I read whatever I found. I did my schoolwork at the kitchen table or in the dining room after the household had eaten and the boys were in their rooms but, when I read for myself, I preferred the quiet of my room where I could create a world entirely in my head without the intrusion of America’s singing or the carriage clock’s rigid division of the evening.

  Above the table, I’d taped to the wall a photograph of me as a boy of perhaps two or three with my mother. In it, my mother squinted under a bright sun while I reached forward from her arms, towards the camera. The picture was taken by my brother, on a camera he bought at a pawnshop, much to the disapproval of my father who chided him about his spendthrift nature till the day he left home. I still remember the day he took it, but only vaguely, like a texture rather than an image. I remember the bright light, the sensation of being held higher than the ground, of being smaller than everything.

  I’d tried once to sketch a portrait of my mother as I remembered her, to display on my wall, but I was no artist and soon gave up. Instead, I put up pictures from magazines that Aunt Mary was throwing out. And so, flanking the photograph of me with my mother were the exotic spires of the Sagrada Familia and a man in a cigarette advertisement. The man had thick black hair (though not as long as Dub’s), a long, straight nose and European features, except for his eyes, which were narrow like my own. He sat casually on the edge of an office desk, one foot on the floor, the hand holding his cigarette resting on his thigh. In the doorway behind him stood a woman, her image blurred so that her features couldn’t really be made out, though it was clear that she was watching him. She had blond hair. I liked these two pictures and they had stayed up the longest, so long in fact that the rectangles of wall beneath them were brighter than that surrounding.

  In the evening after dinner, Benny came to my room. I heard his footsteps along the corridor but I didn’t quite believe them until I saw him in the doorway. He hadn’t been to my room in years and he looked around now, inspecting it. ‘Smaller than I remember,’ he said softly. He reached up, tried unsuccessfully to touch the ceiling, laughed. He looked at the magazine pages I’d pasted up, at the photograph of me as a child in my mother’s arms; he gazed at that for a long time. He’d seen it before, but he looked at it now as if it were new to him. He pointed at one of his own sketches, a portrait of me, and smiled. He’d made me pose for it, sitting at the table with my hands folded in front of me, my face framed by towers of jars filled with America’s homemade pickles, pyramids of vegetables. He’d taken a long time to arrange each object, explaining his composition as he went. He’d leaned back to check everything when he was done and told me to look serious but I’d struggled not to laugh as he drew me, and he’d captured in his sketch the tightness of my mouth as I held it in. It was the same expression my mother had when she was trying to stay angry at my father while he clowned around to distract her.

  Benny sat down against the wall facing my bed. He crossed his legs, laid his sketchbook across his lap and started, silently, to work. I knew better than to try and make conversation. I picked up the book I’d been reading, one of BabyLu’s, about a village girl in England whose fate lay not in her own hands but in the hands of two men. I struggled to imagine the damp, green valleys that filled the book, the encircling silences; they were like nothing I’d ever known. I tried to read again now, but had made no progress at all when, several minutes later, Benny pulled out a photograph from his sketchbook and, leaning forward, placed it on the bed next to me. I picked it up slowly and looked at it, at the girl, her eyes narrowed against the sun, her image flashing under the bleak electric light in my room. I looked at the photograph on the wall over my table, where my mother creased her eyes on a sunny day. ‘Who is she?’ I said at last and wished for a moment that I hadn’t, for the question seemed to break into the stillness of the room, crashing over the walls like surf.

  ‘She was my mom,’ he said. I looked again at the girl in the photograph, her small neat features, the long fingers on narrow hands. Her hands, her eyes, her mouth were Benny’s. I stared at him, not knowing what to say. I opened my mouth but he shook his head and I was relieved; I was sure that nothing I might have said then would have been right. He worked at the sketchbook for a while longer and then he gathered his things together and, placing the book flat on the floor, tore the page out and handed it to me. I looked down at it and he left. I closed my eyes to listen to him moving away over the stone flags of the passage and the kitchen beyond.

  When I could no longer hear him I opened my eyes again and looked at his sketch. In the centre of it I lay on my bedding, a book by my side, open but discarded, and instead in my hand was a photograph, the girl under the yellow bell tree recognisable even from the few lines that gave her substance. Behind me, the walls of the room crumbled away to reveal a rich landscape, not the concrete and colour of Esperanza Street but a jungle thick with palms and creepers, prehistoric. Over the shattered walls vines crept in, reclaiming the room, the house, and in the centre of it all I lay without fear, a look in my eyes of certainty, of belonging.

  I went to the kitchen to find something to fasten the picture to the wall. America was lying on her mat, her arm over her face and her eyes closed, but she wasn’t asleep. As I came in, she rolled away from me. I searched through the drawers, wary of making too much noise. ‘What are you looking for?’ she said crossly but I’d already found where she kept the tape in a tin box with scissors, strips of paper and a pen; America liked to label everything. ‘You put that back when you’re done,’ she said without opening her eyes.

  Back in my room, I held Benny’s sketch up next to the photograph of my mother and taped it over the man in the cigarette ad.

  When I returned to the kitchen America was sitting at the table. I sat down opposite her. ‘He’s told you,’ she said and she sounded relieved. ‘I’ll tell you the rest if it’ll stop you pestering me, but you’d better not breathe a word.’ She leaned in to me, trying perhaps to be menacing, but all I saw was how exhausted she looked. She’d have been asleep at this time on any other day.

  ‘It’s Benny,’ I said, softly.

  She took a slow, deep breath, nodded. I guess she was trying to build up some suspense but I wasn’t impatient, I knew she wanted to tell me. It must have been a lot to carry all these years. I smiled at her and she frowned. Maybe she’d imagined the moment of telling someone differently. ‘The girl was called Dorothy. She was Mary’s housemaid, one of many when he was still around. Of course he took a liking to her. Careless, selfish man. It was bound to happen. She tried to hide it for as long as she could until I spotted it.’ America tapped her temple. ‘You know, the way she stood, the way she walked, even before it really showed. It was Captain Bobby that told her she had to go, the day he left for Manila on business. He threw some money onto the piano and strolled out the door. More money than the poor girl might have seen in a year. He expected Mary to banish her there and then, expected to return to an orderly house. Well, that man never appreciated the kind of stuff his wife was made from. She took us all to her country estate – me, Dominic and the girl – leaving the houseboy in charge here. She saw the girl through her pregnancy and promised her the baby would be cherished. I remember her saying it. Cherished. She had to explain to the girl what it meant. Afterwards, she told Dorothy to disappear without a fuss and she did. She never came back, though she did send letters. A lot of letters. The first ones were addressed to Mary, then after that to Benny. He never got any of them. As far as I know, Mary never answered any either, so Lord knows what the girl was thinking. Most of them she burned without even opening them. I thought about
suggesting she kept one or two for him when he grew into a man. But she was young. Who can blame her?’ America paused for a moment, tracing a square on the tabletop with a finger, watching me coolly. ‘I hid the photograph or she’d have burned that too. I thought he’d find out some day and have a pile of questions. There wasn’t really anywhere else I could put it,’ she glanced over at her mat on the floor. ‘Maybe I hoped it would fall out one day.’ I stared at her. ‘Anyway, I’d forgotten about it.’ She frowned at me again. ‘That man would have come back from Manila to find an empty house. Well, good. You know she left a message with the houseboy that her husband wasn’t to follow us and that if he did he wouldn’t be let in at the gate. He never showed his face.’ Even after so long, she looked disgusted. ‘Sure, he phoned. Once or twice. Anyway, a few months later, we came back, Mary carrying a new baby that she’d called Benito, after her grandfather.’ America sighed heavily. As she got up she said, ‘You know, that man never even asked about the girl.’

  ‌Pearls

  Lola Lovely looked round the dining room with the mournful expression of someone visiting a landscape after a long time to find the places of her youth obliterated. ‘There were only ever friends and family in the house when I was here,’ she said. ‘Strangers don’t respect a place in the same way.’ She ran a finger over the side table, looked disappointed to find it clean. She rubbed her fingertips together anyway but didn’t inspect further. ‘We’d have the priest round for dinner regularly in those days. Ah, but it was Father Lucien then, a handsome Frenchman. Everyone asked him to dine.’ She stopped at the window, gazed out, perhaps seeing the garden as it might once have been. ‘Always in the sun, chut, that child!’ I peered past her but the garden was empty. Lola Lovely ran her hand over her cheek and I imagined her suddenly leaning out of the window calling down to where Mary Morelos, the schoolchild, sat alone playing jacks. America! Tell that child to play in the shade at least. I don’t want her getting dark.

  She glanced round the room once more, at the bowl of glass fruit, the cutwork place mats, the glossy surface of the table. She frowned as she looked in my direction and I moved aside, so that she could complete her inspection. ‘Things have got a little tired over time,’ she said, ‘but do what you can. And put out the best china, Joseph.’ And with that she left, pulling her pañuelo round her shoulders as if she was cold and the thin silk might provide any warmth.

  I polished the dining table again and checked that everything was straight and lined up. Lola Lovely wasn’t in the room – she’d gone to check on America – but the sensation of her scrutiny persisted. When I’d finished, the room looked no different so I was glad she’d seen me get to work, for she nodded, pleased, when she came in again. I doubted either Father Mulrooney or Pastor Levi would take in the state of the room; the dinner invitation was hardly a social one anyway, more to discuss what could be done to halt Eddie Casama’s scheme.

  Lola Lovely, assured that all preparations would be carried out to her satisfaction, went to take her siesta and I found myself in the sala with Aunt Mary, who had managed to avoid her mother most of the morning. We sat together, in silence, Aunt Mary on the piano stool, me on the rug polishing the boys’ shoes. I liked these moments; there were fewer of them now. More often these days, Aunt Mary left me to maintain the house without her direction, closing the door of her study softly behind her.

  The blinds had been lowered part-way and the windows of the sala thrown open. Through them came the fragrance of the jasmine that was in full flower, mingled with the scent of the hot street and, somewhere, faintly, an open gutter. The noise of the street felt close and intrusive but it was too hot to close the windows again.

  Aunt Mary sat with her back to the keyboard, a pile of sheet music on her lap. The piano lid was open, but Aunt Mary hadn’t been playing. She frowned as she ran her hand over each sheet, as if the texture of the paper or the music it described might ignite some lost memory. The sheet music had been ordered and reordered countless times: alphabetically by composer, or categorised by style, genre, era. It was a kind of meditation for her. I’d never heard her play. I watched her out of the corner of my eye, saw her hands pause over the pile and then, without warning, she exclaimed, ‘Damn it, Joseph.’ Startled, I jumped to my feet, uncertain what I’d done wrong. She waved me down again, apologising. Then she marched into the hallway straight to the telephone. I heard her exclaim, ‘Constanza! Mary Morelos here. Oh! Connie, then. I was wondering if you and Edgar are free this evening. I know it’s very last minute.’

  Dub and Benny, called by their mother, came down just as the doorbell rang at seven. They kidded around with each other as they walked down the stairs. They were uncomfortable to be dressed smartly, in shirts chosen by their mother that I’d pressed for them that afternoon. They stood awkwardly side by side in the sala, like acquaintances waiting to be introduced at a wedding.

  Father Mulrooney and Pastor Levi were punctual. I was conscious of the slightest throb of disappointment as I opened the door to them, but only because I’d steeled myself for the arrival of Eddie Casama. Aunt Mary stood behind me as I opened the door, to direct the men into the sala. Father Mulrooney, less crumpled than usual, was wearing a shirt and slacks. I’d expected him to come in his robes. Perhaps Lola Lovely had too, for she said as he entered, ‘How fashions change, Padre.’ He smiled at her and she held her hand out as if expecting him to kiss it. He hesitated and then took her hand in his, bending his face only slightly towards it, an abbreviated but polite gesture. Lola Lovely held her hand out to Pastor Levi and said, ‘I’m sure I remember you as a boy. Why, nothing really changes.’

  Mulrooney smiled again and Pastor Levi said, ‘I was born in Esperanza, ma’am.’

  ‘Of course you were,’ Lola Lovely said. ‘I probably knew your mother.’

  Pastor Levi introduced his wife. Eveline didn’t possess the kind of effortless beauty that BabyLu had, or that Lola Lovely had once exulted in, but she’d taken some trouble for the evening. Her dress, long and plain in cut and the colour of an afternoon sky, flattered her. She’d applied a little colour to her face and, though it seemed obvious, inexpert somehow, the effect was agreeable, like a high-school teacher chaperoning at a prom. Lola Lovely’s eyes sparkled as she took her in and, beaming, she reached out and squeezed Eveline’s hand, pulling her gently towards the piano, where earlier I’d laid out a selection of drinks.

  The priests turned to speak to Aunt Mary but only for a moment, for now Lola Lovely drew away the shawl that she’d draped over her cast so that Eveline exclaimed and the men turned to look. Mulrooney said, as Cesar had several days before, ‘I hope it’s nothing serious.’

  Lola Lovely’s cast drew a nonchalant arc. ‘An inconvenience,’ she said serenely. I started towards the piano but she waved me away. She lifted a bottle of Johnny Walker Black Label, her cast dismissing Mulrooney’s mild objections without even turning to look at him. She poured the priests a tumbler each. Neither man’s protest was sustained. Lola Lovely poured slightly more modest glasses for herself and Eveline and then raised her eyebrows at her daughter. ‘Fizzy drink?’ she said.

  Dub stepped forward, smiled disarmingly at his grandmother. ‘I’ll get ours,’ he said. Lola Lovely moved to the settee and sat down. She looked for a moment as if she might commandeer the centre of it, leaving the men with too few seats, doomed to stand, but then she sat on one side and patted the seat next to her for Benny to join her. He shot me a look as he sat down. Lola Lovely arranged herself with more than her usual care, her feet neatly turned like a dancer. I saw Benny glance down at her feet and wondered if he too saw the artificiality of it. I knew from America that Lola Lovely had never been a dancer, though after she started courting she took to affecting a certain gait and poise when walking or sitting. She was always pleased, America said, when later, in those circles, people often asked if she was, though she never quite confessed, admitting only to loving the ballet. I imagined Lola Lovely’s disappointment when her d
aughter, despite being sent to the most expensive dance academies, showed neither aptitude nor interest.

  Aunt Mary left for the kitchen and it was while she was out of the room that the doorbell rang again. I expected her to come out into the hall as I opened the door to Eddie Casama and his wife but she did not. I showed them both into the sala. My eyes were drawn to Dub as I followed them in. Dub had got home late and, kept occupied by America in the kitchen as she doubled up on ingredients and grumbled good-naturedly about stretching the chicken, I hadn’t had a chance to warn him. I saw now how his easy manner wavered when Eddie’s eyes levelled with his and appraised him for longer than they might have. If the older man was troubled in his turn by Dub’s height, his beauty, he showed no sign.

  By the time Aunt Mary returned, Connie had seated herself and I’d served both her and Eddie their drinks. I was surprised, knowing how old-fashioned Aunt Mary was about certain things, preferring to welcome invited guests herself. ‘I’m so glad you could make it,’ she said easily as she came in. She was unreadable as she shook first Eddie’s hand and then pressed her cheek to Connie’s.

  ‘Eddie rearranged a few things,’ Connie said.

  ‘I hope I haven’t caused you any trouble,’ Aunt Mary’s voice sounded sufficiently concerned but not apologetic.

  ‘We hardly see you,’ said Eddie, ‘or your boys,’ he smiled at Dub. ‘Joey Robello was saying only the other day how you hide yourself away.’ Aunt Mary showed no outward tremor at Eddie’s casual mention of Judge Robello.

  Beside Eddie, his wife fiddled with her necklace. Connie Casama’s face was somewhat heavy-set with age, but she was nonetheless a handsome woman. She looked eagerly at Lola Lovely, at her cast, her face twitching into sudden concern as she said, ‘Does it hurt still?’