by Niyati Keni
‘You think it’s a joke?’
I slumped back in the pew like a child. ‘You took in Lorna. That wasn’t your mistake,’ I said quietly.
‘What has this to do with her? I’m older than you. You’re at the beginning of your life.’ In fact, I felt at that moment as if I were at the end of it, as if everything was worn out. I looked about me at the shabby chapel. I could imagine a hundred places I would rather have been with my father and yet I’d obligingly followed him here. I waited for him to say something else but he closed his eyes and bent his head to pray. I sat without moving, my hands balled in my lap until he’d finished. When he was done, he stared up at Jesus again, at the hands and feet bleeding red paint, and said with an air of finality, ‘Missy won’t help you. Neither will Bee. You stay out of other people’s trouble.’ And he started to his feet before he’d even closed his mouth again, afraid perhaps of allowing me any chance to respond. I thought to myself that he might just as well have stayed seated, for his words alone left no room for mine. He inched round into the aisle, his knees still bent, for the pews were placed too close together in order to allow Jesus a little more leg-room. My father’s shuffling movement seemed suddenly comical and I looked away quickly. He straightened up and moved down the aisle to where Jesus’ arms seemed to embrace the candle stand and the donation box beside it. My father plucked out the stub of the taper he’d placed in the stand earlier. The candles were cheap and, having sagged almost immediately in the heat, had spilled their wax over the side of the stand onto the floor, exhausting themselves too quickly. He tossed the stub into a nearby pan. When the pan was full, the wax would be melted down, the wicks picked out, the candles refashioned so that they could bleed their gritty whiteness over the floor again in a day or two. He rubbed his fingers together and, seeing him do it, I rubbed mine too, imagining the greasy feel of the cooling wax as it clouded and flaked off his fingertips. He lit another taper and pushed it into place, throwing me a look. This one, his eyes said, is for you.
Dub took his supper at the boarding house that evening, the first time in a long while that he’d done so, and ordinarily Aunt Mary would have been delighted by his presence at the table. Her manner was certainly light, almost cheerful, through the meal, but there was a tautness to her voice and she watched me more closely than usual. America had said something to her, I thought. As I served him, Dub looked up at me and smiled. I looked away, glancing automatically at his mother. Had she been looking our way just then, she might have read something in my eyes that disquieted her, might have seen the shade of complicity between her houseboy and her son. Afraid of what I would give away, I retreated to the kitchen as soon as I could.
Usually the first to leave, Dub lingered at the dining table as I cleared the dishes. When I started back with the last of them, he excused himself to his mother and, smiling at her as he slid his chair neatly back under the table, followed me to the kitchen. He didn’t look at America but said to me, ‘Can you bring me up some coffee?’ He slipped away again quickly. He was usually happy to fetch his own coffee and America glared at me as I prepared it, but she didn’t pass any remark.
When I reached his room, Dub was waiting by the door. He closed it behind me. He ignored the coffee in my hand and said, ‘Did you get them?’ I looked down at the cup for a minute, puzzled. ‘The herbs, Joseph.’ I held out my free hand, palm up, spread the fingers. He stared at it for several seconds, as if on closer inspection, it might not have proved to be empty. He pushed both hands through his hair and turned away. ‘She hasn’t told him yet.’
‘They won’t give them to me.’
‘Can you take them?’ he said quietly. I pictured the rutted turquoise of the Bukaykay stoop, the smooth brown of Suelita’s thigh. The cup grew suddenly hot in my hand. I looked for somewhere to put it down. I remembered my father’s face in the chapel, his hand on the wooden pew, candle grease on his fingers but not on mine. I looked away. Dub threw himself onto the bed. ‘She’ll have to tell him soon,’ he said softly. ‘You have to think of something. I don’t know who else to ask. Can I trust you?’ He pushed himself up on his elbows and looked at me for a long moment. The closed door seemed to hulk behind me and I felt myself rounding my shoulders against it. I nodded. He lay back again, staring up at the ceiling.
‘Where do you want me to put your coffee?’ I said.
He waved a hand without looking at me. ‘I don’t feel like it now,’ he said dolefully. I walked out, closing the door behind me. I paused on the landing and looked at the cup in my hand. It didn’t feel like the same coffee I’d carried in and I held it at arm’s length as I moved down the stairs. America looked at it sourly as I came through the door. I emptied the cup into the sink.
‘He doesn’t want it?’ America said. I stared at her aghast for a moment. She waited for me to say something and when I didn’t she said, caustically, ‘You think I want to ask you your important business? You’re such a big man.’ I imagined pulling a face at her. Maybe she guessed because she added, furiously, ‘You think I even care?’ I’d long since learned when it was best to keep quiet, and soon enough America subsided, though she watched me for a while as I busied myself at the sink.
Dub didn’t come down for another coffee or for any other drink that evening, staying in his room all night and leaving for the garage before I could see him the next morning.
A Lighted Window
From Earl’s forecourt, I watched the light from BabyLu’s apartment shift over the dusky terrain of her balcony as someone moved about inside. The balcony doors were open to the evening and the light washed out, gilding the leaves of her potted palms, the fronds of her bougainvillea. I couldn’t hear any music coming from inside, though it would have been hard to tell; Prosperidad was busy. I looked up and down the street. There was no sign of Eddie’s car. Still, I stayed where I was in the shadows around the forecourt, rehearsing what I might say. I imagined myself, just for a moment, as a character in one of Aunt Mary’s books: an elderly man, staring up at a lighted window from a Parisian square, the edges around him softened by the evening, waiting to see the beloved face that he hadn’t set eyes on in decades. The thought made me feel a little ridiculous and I laughed at myself softly, becoming conscious as I did so of the attention of people coming home from work or bringing in their washing from the nearest balconies of Prosperidad; I’d been standing there with no discernible purpose for a while. And so, though I scarcely felt ready, I crossed the road and climbed the stairs to her apartment and, on reaching it, still hesitated at the door. But she must have been waiting after seeing me loitering below for, the very moment I knocked, the door flew open. She looked at me, her eyes grave. It occurred to me that I should have thought to bring one of her books; it would have been a better reason for being there.
I sat down at the dining table. I hadn’t been in her apartment since I’d eaten there with Dub. She’d been animated that evening, a light in her eyes that wasn’t in them now. I thought about the baby she was carrying, how in other circumstances, the knowledge of it might have made her eyes even brighter.
‘How have you been, Joseph?’ she said, and I felt abashed. I should have asked her first.
‘Ok,’ I said. ‘He told me.’
‘No foreplay then?’ she said tersely. I flushed deeply. Looking remorseful, she said, more kindly, ‘You want a drink?’
‘Sure,’ I said but she stayed in her seat.
‘Did he tell you the first thing he said was shit?’ She exaggerated the word, pulling her mouth into an ugly shape as she said it. I opened my mouth and closed it again. I felt ashamed for Dub. ‘Not quite how I pictured it,’ she laughed, her voice throaty, rich. She’d been crying.
‘What do you want?’ I said.
She leaned towards me, her eyes moist, beseeching. ‘You know he never asked me that?’ I wasn’t sure which he she meant, or perhaps I just didn’t want to think it might be Dub. Maybe she realised that because she said, ‘I haven’t told Eddi
e yet, but I’m going to. Tonight.’
I didn’t feel like defending Dub just then, but I said, ‘He hasn’t been able to think about anything else.’ It was the truth at least.
‘Really?’ she said, more brightly.
‘Sure,’ I nodded.
‘I do know what I want, Jo-Jo,’ she almost whispered. Her eyes glistened. Her face was soft, her lips slightly parted. Even with reddened eyes and fatigue seaming her face, she looked exquisite. Of course, I knew then what she wanted and wondered that Dub could have missed it. I should have asked but instead, seeing my opportunity on the brink of collapse, I said, ‘I know a woman. There are herbs. I can take you to her. She can sort things out.’ The words stumbled out of me and lay scattered and dreadful between us. I watched BabyLu’s face change.
Her breathing became shallow, controlled, and she was pale as she said, ‘Did he send you to say that?’ I felt sick. I wanted to gather everything back up and start again. She stood up. ‘You tell him not to come round here again.’
‘BabyLu …’
‘I thought you might understand, but you’re just his flunkey. You do as you’re told, whether you think it’s right or not,’ she cried, her voice brittle, the words like fragments of glass. ‘Or maybe you just don’t think at all.’ She jabbed at her temple with her finger furiously, her nails long and scarlet. I wanted to fold her hand softly, safely, into mine but I didn’t. I leaned forward, my palms out, wanting to apologise. Her eyes flared and she groped around on the table for something to pick up, but, finding nothing, she crossed her arms again. ‘Go away,’ she said petulantly, like a child. She looked small, her very daintiness an accusation.
It felt almost unbearable to leave everything poised at that point and yet I was grateful to have been dismissed. As I reached the door I turned to look at her and, seeing me turn, she clenched her jaw, raised her chin; she would hold everything in until I was gone.
I ran down the stairs and out into the night and set off down Prosperidad, away from Esperanza Street and the Bougainvillea, a dull, hard feeling in my chest.
The apartment blocks here were at least four storeys tall with jutting balconies overlooking the street. In soft globes of lamplight, people ate together, talked over the sound of TV sets, rolled out bedding. It was a street where neighbours hung over railings and called to each other in the darkness, the red tips of cigarettes looping through the air as they talked. I tried to imagine what it might feel like to once again belong somewhere like this, perhaps even with someone, by choice rather than happenstance. But I couldn’t quite capture the sense of it, as if there had grown over the years some barrier as light as gauze, floating between me and everything else. BabyLu was right, I thought. It didn’t matter whether I knew wrong from right when all I did was whatever I was told, without questioning the role that had been written for me by everyone but myself. And when it was required of me to break through the gauze, when it really mattered, I could not.
I walked about aimlessly for some time before I realised I was crying. I wiped my face with my arm, grateful for the darkness, and then I started running. I tore back through Prosperidad, heedless of the surprised faces around me. As I neared her building, I looked up at her balcony, the room beyond it still full of light. I ran up the stairs. I might not have been so hasty had I recognised the Mercedes, half in shadow, rolling softly away onto Esperanza.
I hammered on the door and when she opened it she looked frightened. I hadn’t meant to alarm her and I started explaining all at once as I blundered into the room, still out of breath, imploring her forgiveness.
‘Joseph,’ she began.
‘You were right. I am his flunkey.’ I clutched at her hand. ‘But what does it matter that I can think or act for myself when nobody requires it of me?’
Behind her, Eddie Casama stood up from the chair I’d occupied only a short while ago, his jacket slung across the back of it, a tumbler in his hand. His tie was loose, his collar buttons undone, a man returning home after a long day at work, hoping for tranquillity. He looked at his watch. He seemed amused and I wondered if this might be a good sign. BabyLu shook her head at me.
‘If you had the time,’ Eddie said, ‘I’d ask you to make up some of your delicious calamansi juice, but you seem in such a hurry.’
BabyLu pushed me gently towards the door and out onto the landing. I let her steer me as I stumbled backwards, offering no resistance. She held my gaze as she closed the door, her eyes the last thing I saw as the sliver of light between the edge of the door and the frame narrowed to nothing and I was left standing in the darkness.
Soil and Sand
This last encounter with BabyLu was so unsettling that it seemed only fitting when, shortly after it, a sorcerer visited the market hall. When he came, America and I were at the boarding house making leche flan and, though she didn’t mention anything at the time, she later claimed a stab of dread at the precise moment the sugar melted in the pan.
The sorcerer was first seen walking along the coast road from the direction of the passenger jetty. His shirt and trousers were worn thin but, according to Jonah, he walked like a prince. He smelled bad and later, when Jonah retold the story, he said that the smell had preceded the man by quite some distance, so that when he eventually came into view there was little doubt that his presence meant something evil. He was clean-shaven and young, unremarkable except for his eyes, which were penetrating, like a bird of prey’s. Over his shoulder he carried a bamboo vessel strung on a cord, and it was this that first gave him away; this and the fact that he made no attempt to disguise it, though of course everyone was already certain what it must contain. He walked unhurriedly, and those he encountered crossed the road to avoid him. When he arrived at the jetty, he paused as if getting his bearings before turning in towards the market hall. The market was quiet when he arrived; most of the day’s business had already been completed and the sun was beginning to edge towards the horizon. At the end furthest from the jetty the market hall housed a water pump, at the site of an old well that had long been boarded up. This tap and the well before it supplied all of the surrounding households. The sorcerer took a good look about him and sat for some time on the wall of the old well. He knew of course that no one would ask him to move on. So he lingered, washing his feet under the tap, rinsing his mouth, head and face.
When he left, no one saw in which direction he walked, for it was dark by then. Later still, it was conjectured that he’d made himself invisible, transformed himself into a creature or simply disappeared. At any rate, it was a while before anyone approached the tap, and when they did, what they saw sent them straight to the curandero. When Uncle Bee arrived, he found what he’d feared he might. On the wall of the well was a dead insect, seven legged, with a hair tied around its middle, and next to it a skull, perhaps that of a dog, under which was a small pile of soil and another of sand. Uncle Bee, a healer trained to cure people’s ailments with botanics and Latin prayer, was at a loss. Word spread quickly, and soon everyone had shut their children and pregnant women indoors and the elders of the households stood together, some distance from the well, to discuss what these things might mean.
By now the sorcerer was long gone, although, as everyone knew, he had the power to change his shape at will and so, for the next few days, any strange dogs or cats were chased away, a relentless task in a market that sold meat and poultry. It was decided the proper solution was to bring in the help of another sorcerer to negate the spells of the first. And so a woman who lived some distance away, on the very edge of Greenhills, was cautiously approached and came to assess the situation. She was, Jonah reported, quite perturbed by what she saw but was persuaded, at some risk to herself, to attempt to offset whatever forces of ill had been called into play. Her task accomplished, she too was given a wide berth on her way home and, for some time afterwards, received a kind of wary gratitude from the barrio. However, only the following morning a beetle was found in a bed in a household opposite the market
hall and, that same afternoon, a child passed a worm in a neighbouring alley and once again, panic set in.
Uncle Bee did his best to allay his neighbours’ fears. Kids, he insisted, passed worms all the time, and who hadn’t found a bug in their bed at some point? But these otherwise simple events acquired a magnitude in the light of the sorcerer’s visit that they would not have possessed on their own, and the neighbourhood’s anxiety grew. Father Mulrooney was approached and eventually, reluctantly, agreed to bless the well and the market hall publicly, an event which, he wryly noted, had a better turn-out than his twice-weekly mass.
The timing of all this was unfortunate, for only the day before the sorcerer’s visit a date had been fixed for a rally to protest the impending redevelopment of the area. The rally was to start with public speeches in the market hall, followed by a march through Greenhills and along Esperanza to the town hall on the other side of Salinas. As I’d have expected, Cora, Father Mulrooney and Pastor Levi had been central in organising the event, but so, I learned, had Jonah and – most surprisingly of all – Dante Santos, my father. The group hadn’t been secretive about it; Cora’s windows were filled with posters, and more decorated the jetty office and the noticeboards of every church in the barrio. The pictures were striking, a vibrant red and black, catching my eye every time I passed by the Coffee Shak. I saw, as well as Cora’s style, Benny’s hand in them. I determined to ask Cora if she’d save one for me after the rally was over.
With the date fast approaching, Aunt Mary sent me to the jetty as often as she could spare me. And so, a couple of days too late to see him, I stood by the sea wall, glancing along the road now and again in the direction the sorcerer might have walked. A line of boats was in and I watched my father in action; he and Subong carried long bundles of sugar cane between them, like they were carrying a bier. He saw me and smiled. Although I supposed that even my father might sometimes be pleased to see me, seeing him smile was still something of a rarity. I guessed I had Lorna and her baby to thank for his rejuvenation. As they came closer, I heard that he was singing: ‘Everybody loves to cha-cha-cha.’ But he’d scarcely come into earshot when he cleared his throat and started singing, ‘God of mercy, God of grace, show the brightness of thy face,’ but only a few lines of it and in the style of Elvis and to the tune of ‘Love Me Tender’. I heard a chuckle behind me and turned to see Father Mulrooney.