Esperanza Street

by Niyati Keni

  ‘Dante’s regained his old humour then.’ He stopped next to me, and we watched my father and Subong deposit the cane on a waiting cart and head back for another load. When they were done unloading the cane, they came over and greeted the priest. My father clapped me on the shoulder twice but didn’t say anything to me. ‘You boys ready for the big day?’ Mulrooney said.

  ‘Sorcerers don’t scare me.’ Subong clicked his tongue disdainfully.

  My father smiled at him slyly. ‘Can’t be sure till the day what kind of turn-out we’ll get,’ he said to Mulrooney. ‘People are saying Casama sent him. It’s a clever move if he did.’ The rest of the jetty boys, always keen to discuss the supernatural, drifted over to join us. In front of Mulrooney they were dismissive of the neighbourhood’s reaction. Later, with Pastor Levi, their voices would be softer, less certain, as if they might confess a secret fear to him that he, being a local man, would understand.

  ‘You sure it’ll be all right?’ Subong said to Mulrooney. ‘I mean, you being a man of God and all.’

  ‘It’ll be fine, son,’ Mulrooney said, but he sounded cross. ‘He was just sent to frighten people. It’s a trick.’

  I listened to their talk. The atmosphere of excitement, of defiance, had been subdued somewhat by the sorcerer’s visit but was now starting to resurface. Preparations had resumed. There was to be music and street food to accompany the speeches and already Esperanza was blossoming as it did during a fiesta. Bunting was being hung on the beams of the market hall and soon enough every railing, pole and handle along Esperanza and throughout Greenhills would bob with yellow balloons. The door of Jonah’s office stood open, the room beyond a jungle of placards and banners. In the market hall, lengths of bamboo scaffolding were being hoisted into place ready to house a set of public-address speakers that had been borrowed from a nearby school. There was a flavour of anticipation in the air. The street kids, only dimly aware of the purpose of the rally, were excitable and, gathering to watch the preparations, dared each other into harmless stunts.

  I too felt hypnotised by the atmosphere and stayed longer than I meant to, unwilling to return just yet to preparing the Bougainvillea for dinner.

  I left my father and wandered over to the market hall where earlier I’d glimpsed Suelita clinging to the top of a ladder. She was there now, one end of a strip of bunting held up to the eaves of the hall, the other end trailing in knotted loops to the ground. I wished she hadn’t been wearing a skirt. ‘Need any help?’ I said, keeping my eyes on the length of bunting between her hands.

  She let a few seconds pass before she answered. ‘Sure, if you want to grab the other end and help me untangle it.’ Her tone was cool. She slipped down to stand next to me and we worked for a while in silence. ‘How’s the baby?’ she said after a while, her voice a little warmer, her eyes flickering in the direction of the sea wall where my father worked with the other jetty boys. The way she said it made it sound almost like she thought it was my baby.

  I shrugged. ‘Fine, I guess.’ I watched her coil the unknotted bunting slowly between elbow and thumb. She seemed almost relaxed as she worked. I imagined asking her if she wanted to go for a walk sometime. Or maybe for a movie, not at the proper movie house in town, which I couldn’t afford, but a video played on the TV that Caylo ran off a car battery in his front yard. If guys were trains, I thought. I waited for her to speak again but she didn’t. Her silence made me talkative. ‘You know, in America they’re going to build a telescope to launch into space. We’ll be able to see further into the universe than ever before.’

  She laughed then. ‘We?’ she said.

  I flushed, misunderstanding, and said tersely, ‘Can you imagine this place gone?’ I suppose I’d hoped to upset her, but she watched me impassively as she smoothed out the bunting, her closed smile settling back on her face.

  ‘All the time,’ she said.

  I wasn’t surprised. ‘You think of escaping a lot?’

  ‘Sure. Don’t you?’

  ‘Don’t know where I’d go.’ She looked at me with what I suspected was pity and I said, ‘You think you’ll actually make it out of here, then?’ I was sorry straight away that I’d said it. She jerked the last length of bunting out of my hand and turned away.

  ‘Joseph!’ I looked in the direction of my father’s voice. Ever mindful of my responsibilities, he was pointing at his watch. I turned back to Suelita but she’d moved away and I saw, from the other side of the market hall, through the lengthening shadows, her mother approaching. I waved at Missy and moved off quickly in the direction of Esperanza Street while she was still out of earshot.

  ‌Barkada

  The shadows were long and deep as I walked up Esperanza Street. I was brooding over what had passed between me and Suelita, replaying everything I’d said, imagining any number of ways I might have said things differently and, preoccupied in this way, I paid little attention to what was going on around me. I was almost past the mouth of the Espiritista alley when the sound of my name being called interrupted my thoughts. I stopped, perplexed for just an instant before I heard it again. I looked back into the alley.

  Rico sat on the bench outside the Bukaykay’s store. Behind him the hatch was closed, the windows dark. ‘Psst,’ he beckoned me over, his palm downwards, fingers scurrying in the air like he was scratching an invisible dog. I hadn’t seen him for a few days. It didn’t surprise me to see him on the store bench now, even though the house was empty. I so rarely saw him anywhere else that it almost seemed the bench was where he belonged. I wondered anxiously for a moment whether he’d seen me alone with Suelita and even as I did so I chastised myself; Rico could hardly claim her as his property. He’s a jerk, I thought.

  I walked over to him. ‘You take your head out of your books only to put it straight in the clouds? I was calling and calling,’ he reproached me, but his tone was genial, over-familiar. I heard noises behind me and saw that the rest of the Barracudas were there too, in the shadows, one on the corner of Esperanza as if he’d been behind me the whole time.

  Rico rose, slipped his arm around my shoulders and said softly, ‘Let’s walk, Joe,’ as if he didn’t want to wake anyone, though there were still people about and noise and light leaching out into the evening from behind shutters and doors.

  I became conscious now of how late it was. ‘I should be back already,’ I said, ‘but I can come tomorrow.’

  He laughed. ‘You act so serious all the time, Joe, but actually you’re quite funny.’ I hesitated, but he pulled me forward with him, his arm heavy across my shoulders. ‘It won’t take long,’ he said.

  We walked together through the back alleys into the depths of Greenhills, until the shacks dwindled into coarse grass and litter-strewn streams and long shadowy stretches in which little could be made out. Here, there were few people about. It seemed just the sort of place for the kind of shady business I imagined Rico to be involved in. We stopped under a tree and he turned to me, his eyes meeting mine then looking away again. He laughed again, softly. Somewhere in the darkness I could hear a pig straining at its tether and underneath that, the sound of a radio or perhaps a TV. ‘Your pop,’ Rico said, ‘he’s been hard at work on this rally, eh?’

  ‘It affects everyone,’ I said. ‘You too.’

  ‘I know my place.’ If I hadn’t known him better I might have thought he sounded sad. ‘And your boy. He thinks he’s a real rock star, huh?’

  Who? I thought. I heard the barkada boys move in closer.

  ‘Can you carry a message for us, Joe?’

  ‘Sure.’ I wondered at the theatricality of bringing me through the back of the shanties to this place, if all he wanted of me was that I carried a message.

  Rico lowered himself slowly onto an empty oil drum that lay on its side under a tree. Someone had beaten a hollow into the top of the drum to make it into a seat. It would be a good, cool spot even at the height of day. He leaned back against the trunk. ‘Sorry, Joe,’ he said. He started to hum, a tune I
didn’t recognise at first, and then, softly, to sing. I heard the words kung-fu fighting. I was surprised. His voice was good: melodic and smooth. He might have been a choirboy. The barkada boys closed in. They started to beat me, carefully, neatly, with a restraint that I didn’t understand at the time. I found myself wondering if Rico only knew the same two lines of the song, for now they seemed to repeat over and over. After what might have been seconds or minutes, the blows stopped and the boys stepped back. Rico’s face frowned down at me. ‘You’ll make sure the message gets through, won’t you, Joe?’ he said. ‘I don’t want to do this again.’ In the darkness, his eyes looked wounded. His face retreated again and the boys moved back in. I focused on a point somewhere deep inside my body, away from the surface, away from my skin, from every sensation and, after a while, through the gauze, behind the dull tumult, I became aware of thoughts arising and breaking up, distantly, like surf. Down at the jetty, under the market-hall roof, everyone was still working to prepare Esperanza for the rally. None of them even knew I was here. I’d have liked to be with them. I thought about Aunt Mary and almost immediately I pictured Dub. The rock star. I pictured a guitar, the exact model: a second-hand Stratocaster, a real beauty. A motorbike bought with his dead father’s money. Either object worth far more than a few stolen herbs. I felt a thin, sharp line of rage that brightened and dissipated. And then another thought, clear and unperturbed, about how practised Rico and his boys were, how professional. I smiled.

  ‌Girls with Jasmine Braids

  The barkada boys ebbed away again, leaving me on the ground. Rico knelt down, put his hand on my shoulder, watched me. I was still smiling. ‘Joseph?’ He sounded puzzled. I looked up at him, wondering what might come next. ‘You’ll be all right getting home?’

  I laughed, wincing as I did so for my chest hurt with even the smallest movement. He laughed quietly too then. And, his hand resting on my shoulder, he patted me once or twice, before leaning into me to push himself up to standing. I closed my mouth hard to stop myself making a sound. ‘Got another job to get to,’ he said, but he stayed where he was, looking down at me. I kept quiet and still, my eyes open, staring straight ahead at the dark tussocks of grass, the forest of legs. After a moment Rico turned away. ‘See you, Joe,’ he said as he moved off, his boys falling in behind him.

  I listened as their footsteps receded. I let a few more minutes pass, absorbing distant noises: the hum of a truck, a cockerel whose call, raised in pitch at the end, sounded like a question. I took a slow, ragged breath. The smell of earth and leaves filled me, became suddenly nauseating. I rose stiffly, carefully, to my feet.

  I sat down on the oil drum from which Rico had directed his boys and stared at the spot where I’d lain, but in the darkness it divulged nothing. I ran a hand slowly over my face and body. My other hand ached. My left eye was starting to swell and from above it a sticky crust of blood or dirt came away under my fingers.

  I cleared my throat and said out loud, ‘Where to?’ The sound of my voice surprised me; it sounded as it always did. I thought about the Bougainvillea. The boarding house was full for the weekend and the guests would still be awake at this hour. The Bukaykays would likely still be down at the jetty with my father, Jonah and the boys, and even if they were not, I didn’t want Suelita to see me like this. There was only one other place to go and so I set off for my father’s apartment, knowing that Lorna at least would be in, and if not, then perhaps Elisa and Aunt Bina next door. It seemed to take a long time to get there; Rico and his boys had spared my legs but, even so, every step jarred.

  The courtyard of my father’s building seemed to gather around me as I entered it. It was quiet for that time of evening. A few of the windows were dark and the light from the others settled in mid air in a milky haze, leaving the ground in shadow. I lowered myself onto the bottom step of the stairwell and leaned back gratefully for a moment against the cool concrete wall. Overhead, my father’s windows were open and through them the sound of Elvis Presley curled out into the evening. Elvis sounded far too cheerful.

  I got to my feet again and climbed the stairs. At the top, I glanced at Bina and Elisa’s door, but even if Elisa was in, her mother might have answered first and Aunt Bina would certainly have pressed me for details.

  I knocked softly on my father’s door. Elvis quietened and I knocked again. After a moment, the door opened. Lorna must have been expecting my father, for she opened the door smiling but when she saw me she screamed. I hadn’t anticipated that and said rather stupidly, my hands protesting in the air in front of me, ‘It’s only me. It’s Joseph.’ My hands were filthy, bloodstained, puffy. She stared at them, appalled, and then up at my face. Behind me, Bina’s door flew open and Elisa peered out, her eyes bright with alarm. When she saw me she clapped a hand over her mouth, but she quickly regained herself, for she called inside to her mother, ‘It’s ok, Mom. Lorna just saw a rat.’ She shrugged at me, apologetically.

  I heard Bina say, ‘That good-for-nothing landlord. I tell him we have rats and what does he do about it? Nothing.’

  Elisa closed the door quietly behind her and came out into the passageway. The two girls half pulled, half pushed me inside my father’s apartment and into a chair. Elisa took charge. She peered at me closely, at my face, my eye – which had almost completely closed up – at my hands and chest. She had a mournful expression, one that seemed suddenly adult, and I considered dully where I’d seen it before. I felt shaken when I remembered; Aunt Bina had worn the same look at my mother’s vigil. ‘What happened, Joseph?’ Elisa said, and pursed her lips at me when I shook my head, another of her mother’s expressions. I kept quiet and was grateful when she didn’t persist. ‘Does Dante keep iodine and bandages?’ she said to Lorna. I was startled to hear her utter my father’s name without the prefix Uncle. Lorna shrugged helplessly. She went into the kitchen to look but came back empty-handed. My arrival had disturbed the baby and now it started to whimper and then to cry. Lorna picked it up, rocked it. After a minute the baby hushed but she continued to rock it, staying at the other end of the room.

  Elisa stood up. ‘We have iodine,’ she said. She walked to the door, her movements brisk, officious, though her slightness gave the impression of a child playing at adulthood. She left the door ajar. Lorna came closer and sat down on one of the dining chairs and watched me. She held the baby tightly, its head facing her breast, away from the sight of me, and rocked it rhythmically, rapidly. I wondered if she was trying to comfort herself or the child.

  Elisa returned, a small bottle pressed to her lips like a finger. She closed the door carefully, making barely a sound. Shaking the bottle gently, she knelt down in front of me. Her face grew stern. She worked without speaking, only hissing occasionally if a crust of blood came away and started to bleed afresh, or a cut looked deeper than expected. I was aware of the smell of her scalp and of the jasmine the girls had braided through their hair. She bathed the flesh around my eye and dabbed it with iodine, moved on to my hand and to every other cut and scrape. She glared at me now and then as she worked. All the while, Lorna rocked in the chair with the baby.

  When Elisa was done, we sat quietly for a while. My eye had completely closed over now and my face ached. Lorna kept the baby turned away from me until it was asleep and then took it back to its crib. She went into the kitchen and started to prepare rice and boil some water for a drink. My father would be home soon.

  Elisa sat back on her haunches, her arms crossed over her knees, and studied me. The hardened jut of her mouth reminded me of Missy Bukaykay. ‘Want me to stay till he comes?’ she said. I’d have liked to say yes but I didn’t. Elisa repeated her question. I shrugged. I was exhausted. ‘I’d better go then,’ she said reluctantly, ‘or Mom will come knocking and then you’d have some explaining to do.’

  After she left, Lorna, uncertain what else to do but feed me, put a plate of rice and beans in front of me. She stayed in the kitchen doorway, hugging herself like a child, her eyes still fearful. �
�You heard from your family?’ I said thickly, for my lip was swollen and my jaw stiff. I had to say it several times before she understood me.

  She shook her head. ‘Eat.’ Her voice was scarcely more than a whisper.

  I turned my attention to the food, more for her sake than my own; I wasn’t hungry and eating was slow going, every mouthful painful and laborious. I’d hardly made any progress when we heard my father at the door. Lorna stepped forward, her body blocking his view of me. She was silent as he came through the door, yet he said, straight away, ‘What is it?’ He looked past her to me, taking a few seconds to understand. He threw his cap onto the table and rubbed his hand over his hair. ‘Who?’ he said. I stared at him. He sat down next to me and surveyed my injuries. He nodded at the iodine stains. ‘Bina?’ he said.

  ‘Elisa.’

  ‘I’ll take you to Bukaykay.’ I shook my head. ‘You need a doctor?’ he looked worried as he said it. I shook my head again.

  Lorna brought out a plate for him but he pushed it away. It was me that pushed it back towards him but it wasn’t until I bent once again to my own plate that he started to eat, slowly and without relish. He finished before I did and waited. When I’d had as much as I could manage, he took my plate and we moved to the sink together to wash our hands. Lorna took his place at the table and started to eat a little now. ‘I tell her we should eat together, or she should eat first if I’m late, but she waits on me anyway,’ he said.