Esperanza Street

by Niyati Keni

  There was nothing more to do now and my father walked back to the boarding house with me. The night air was cool. The ground had all but given up the last of the day’s warmth. ‘I didn’t want to ask in front of her,’ he said as we turned onto Esperanza. I knew what was coming. ‘Was it anything to do with what you asked Missy? About this girl and her trouble?’ His eyes scanned the street as he spoke, his last word a murmur. His delicacy infuriated me suddenly. I didn’t reply and he didn’t ask again. I wondered if he might tell Aunt Mary but he would be concerned about how it might look to her, I thought scornfully, how it might reflect on him. We walked on in silence, my father slowing his step frequently for me to catch up.

  When we arrived at the boarding house, I wanted to go in through the kitchen door, slip straight to my room, but my father strode right up to the front door and hammered on it. America must have been waiting for me because she opened it almost immediately, her mouth pinched with the effort of holding in whatever lecture she’d prepared for my return. But as soon as she saw me, the words deserted her. I still hadn’t seen myself in a mirror and didn’t know how dreadful I looked. I stared back at her miserably.

  She ushered us into the kitchen and left us there. I rose from the table hissing at her to come back. I didn’t want her to tell Aunt Mary what state I’d returned in. America, if she heard me, didn’t even slow down and when she returned it was with Aunt Mary in tow. The two women looked over my injuries, America with a look of dread, Aunt Mary with the same kind of contained anger that Elisa had worn earlier, that showed only in the precise line of her lips. Her voice when she spoke was business-like. She asked my father what had happened before she asked me. ‘He won’t tell me,’ my father said.

  I stayed silent and closed my eyes. All I wanted now was to sleep but Aunt Mary and America examined in turn my arms, my hands, my face and chest. Finally, satisfied that nothing was broken, America moved to the Frigidaire and took out some milk to heat for me. ‘No,’ I said softly. She replaced the milk and poured out a glass of chilled water instead and I sat turning it in my hands as they talked.

  ‘The rally is just days away,’ Aunt Mary said, and I knew what she was thinking, how obvious a target that made me when both she and my father were involved.

  Lola Lovely came down the stairs and into the kitchen, her pañuelo wrapped tightly about her, over her nightgown. ‘I heard the door,’ she said. Then, on seeing me: ‘Oh!’ She crossed herself. I stood up but Aunt Mary pressed me gently back into my seat. Lola Lovely said, ‘Has he been fighting?’

  ‘Ma’am,’ my father started to explain.

  But Aunt Mary said, ‘This isn’t Joseph’s fault. He was set upon.’

  Lola Lovely glared at her daughter, ignoring my father. ‘This is what your politics bring into the house!’ she said. ‘Look at the boy!’ I folded my arms on the table and sank my head onto them. I didn’t want to hear any more. The shock and anger that had propelled me home had by now quite evaporated and I was spent. America shook me gently. She pulled me to my feet and, picking up my glass, started towards the passageway that led to my room. I followed her mutely.

  The room was just as I’d left it. Its familiarity, like the sound of my own voice in the darkness earlier, was almost absurd. I lay down on my mat, pulled my blanket over me and listened to my father’s voice for what seemed like a long time but may only have been minutes, for his words blended into my dreams, and when I woke again it was morning.

  ‌Filipino Delicacies

  When Uncle Bobby was still alive, Aunt Mary’s house was rarely empty. Back then, of course, it wasn’t a boarding house taking in strangers. The guests were friends from the rich families of Puerto or weekending from Manila: the women, perfumed, wore dresses from Paris; the men came in suits made by their family tailors. I imagined sometimes how it might have been and, in my head, the men all looked like the model in the cigarette ad on my wall, beautiful and silent, and the women like Vilma Santos, their laughter breaking out in the dark rooms like sunlight through cloud. There were photographs from that time, taken on Uncle Bobby’s camera, the guests posing stiffly around the settee, glasses raised, or captured without warning, heads thrown back, teeth and throats exposed, arms blurred by movement. It was hard to imagine Aunt Mary in such a gathering, besieged by glamour and chatter. It seemed to me that she and her house were meant for stillness. But she was unfailingly hospitable and I imagined her watching for empty glasses or foundering conversation while Uncle Bobby shone at the centre of things, his voice slowing, his gestures becoming more expansive as he drank, blind to anyone’s needs but his own.

  America’s cooking even then was the talk of dining rooms across the island, or so she said, and the guests tried to poach her for their own households many times over, each wage offered bigger than the last. But she stayed, loyal to Aunt Mary, and when I asked her why, she said that Aunt Mary had a way of talking to her that made her not mind being a servant. I knew exactly what she meant.

  When Uncle Bobby died, the house fell into silence, though whether this was because of grief or Aunt Mary’s innate need for solitude, I never knew.

  Before that week, in all the time I’d been at the Bougainvillea, Aunt Mary had never thrown a dinner party. Though close friends and relatives came to stay on occasion and America cooked for them, these were informal evenings, without display. It was unexpected, then, when she announced, in the run up to the rally, that we would be entertaining for a second time. ‘Well, good,’ said Lola Lovely. ‘This place can get like a morgue sometimes.’

  ‘Do you remember the Robellos, Mom? Joey and Alice?’

  ‘Alice!’ Lola Lovely pinched her brow as if she was thinking hard before she added, ‘Well a man will make one or two bad choices in his life. It can’t be helped.’

  Aunt Mary continued without a flicker. ‘I’ll invite Frankie Reyes and his wife too. It’s been a long time since they’ll have seen you; they won’t refuse.’

  ‘Perhaps America could serve. We could give Joseph the evening off,’ Lola Lovely looked anxiously at my bruises.

  ‘Do you not feel up to it, Joseph?’ Aunt Mary said.

  ‘I’m ok, ma’am.’

  ‘But how will it look,’ cried Lola Lovely. ‘As if our houseboy indulges in street brawls.’

  ‘He has nothing to hide, Mother. If they ask, I shall tell them.’

  ‘If they have any breeding, they’ll be too polite to ask. So there goes your plan.’ Aunt Mary seemed not to hear this.

  It was painful to move around and I knew there would be a lot of extra work involved but I was grateful for the distraction and found myself looking forward to it. I leafed through the recipe books in the sala and wondered what Aunt Mary might suggest America cook. Something French, I thought, the food arranged on the plate like a portrait. And so I was surprised yet again when Aunt Mary asked America to fetch a pork leg in time to prepare crispy pata, which she said was one of Judge Robello’s favourites.

  Judge Robello looked like he had many favourites. He kept his eye on every tray I brought round and tried everything that America sent out without it seeming to shrink his appetite for dinner. He was a large man, which made him look older than he must have been.

  ‘Still the same woman?’ he said, through a mouthful.

  ‘Yes, America is still with me,’ Aunt Mary said.

  ‘It’s easy enough to find a woman who can cook,’ said Alice Robello, ‘but to find a woman who can follow instructions and keep a clean kitchen, too, is nearly impossible.’

  Alice Robello, several years younger than Aunt Mary and years younger again than her husband, had once been a beauty queen: Miss Puerto. She went on to compete in a national pageant but wasn’t placed, becoming instantly one of the group of girls who fell into shadow as the crown was lifted onto another’s head, left to look on, smile graciously. But by then she’d been proposed to by Joey Robello and married quickly into money. She appeared younger than her years and spoke and moved as if an invisib
le camera were always on her, turning her best side towards the most attractive man in the room – not always, as America noted wryly in the kitchen, towards her husband. Though she was now mother to three children, she was still slim, and when she came in, she flashed a critical eye at Aunt Mary’s figure, hiding her triumph quickly. Wherever she moved, she left behind her a trail of vanilla.

  ‘We’ve had a succession of cooks and servants,’ the judge said. ‘No one does it quite the way Alice wants. Low fat! Where’s the pleasure in that anyway?’

  ‘Not easy to find someone who cooks like this,’ Joni Reyes, wife of Frankie Reyes, cut in.

  ‘I found her,’ said Lola Lovely, coming in late. She was wearing a short-sleeved dress the colour of amber and she cradled one arm carefully with the other. I saw that her cast had been removed. Alice Robello and Joni Reyes stood up to greet her. ‘Of course, before that we had a succession of girls,’ Lola Lovely continued, ‘but the pretty ones, you know, they don’t think they need to learn how to keep a house properly. Our America was quite plain.’ Alice Robello exclaimed her pleasure loudly at seeing Lola Lovely again after so long. Lola Lovely smiled beatifically. ‘Yes, I’m still alive. Manila hasn’t killed me yet.’

  ‘How’s your beautiful house?’ Alice Robello said.

  ‘Joni,’ Lola Lovely said, ‘I’m sure America would be happy to give her recipes to your cook.’

  ‘We don’t have one at the moment. The girl got herself pregnant. Frankie had to fire her,’ Joni Reyes said. Lola Lovely’s eyes glittered. ‘Anyway,’ Joni continued, ‘we like eating out.’ She wore a look of mild discontent, perhaps disappointment, which didn’t leave her all evening. According to America, Joni Reyes had met her husband at university, where she’d studied briefly before dropping out to get married. They’d had their only child, a son perhaps Benny’s age, not long afterwards, at a private hospital in Puerto. I’d never seen her husband, Engineer Reyes, before, and when he arrived he already looked drunk.

  ‘Nice to see the old guy again,’ he said, lifting his glass to the pictures of Uncle Bobby on the piano. ‘We used to have some good games. He was lousy at poker though.’ Joni glanced at Aunt Mary but if Aunt Mary was thinking about the freeholds her dead husband had lost to Frankie Reyes she showed no sign. Lola Lovely tapped her fingers irritably on her glass.

  ‘Change is inevitable. Isn’t that what our friend Mr Casama always says?’ said Aunt Mary.

  ‘Please don’t get the men started on that!’ Alice Robello said, fanning her hand in mock exhaustion.

  ‘Mr Casama came to see me recently,’ Aunt Mary continued, smiling at her. ‘I hadn’t had the opportunity to really meet him properly before. Do you know him well, Judge?’

  ‘In passing,’ the judge said. ‘You’ve been out of circulation for some time.’ Judge Robello’s eyes wandered over the pictures on the piano, the flowers on the card table. ‘You’ve kept that marvellous cook to yourself for too long.’

  ‘Joseph, would you see how America is doing please?’ Aunt Mary said.

  ‘Over some gal?’ Frankie Reyes jerked his glass in my direction, his little finger pointing out my bruises.

  ‘Joseph’s father is one of the organisers of tomorrow’s rally,’ Aunt Mary said, and she put a hand lightly on my arm to keep me there for a moment. I kept my eyes on the tray I was holding while everyone looked at me. The women turned away quickly. Lola Lovely raised her glass to her daughter.

  ‘I boxed at university,’ the judge said. ‘It won’t spoil your looks.’ I glanced up at him but he didn’t meet my eye.

  ‘What do you know of Mr Casama’s plans for Esperanza?’ Aunt Mary said to no one in particular.

  ‘Oh, come, it’s been far too long since we saw you, Mary, let’s not talk business,’ the judge said.

  ‘I’ve been out of circulation but not earshot,’ Aunt Mary said.

  ‘I just love this old, solid furniture,’ Joni Reyes said, running her hand over the coffee table. ‘Frankie likes all the smoked glass and chrome stuff. He’d prefer to live at the office, I think.’ As I turned to leave, I caught the flicker of annoyance in Aunt Mary’s face.

  Back in the kitchen, America had laid out the serving dishes on the table and was sprinkling coriander leaves on mounds of hot chicken and stuffed squid, wiping away errant spots of gravy. She talked to herself as she worked. Her eyes glinted happily at me as I walked in. ‘They might know about consortiums, but no one knows about food like I do,’ she said. It smelled so good I had to swallow several times.

  When I got back to the sala, their voices seemed faster, more heated, as if a hard truth had been unearthed. I stood in the doorway, waiting for an opportunity to announce dinner. Judge Robello was saying, ‘He was born right in Colon Market. His mother was a balut vendor. And he’s not sentimental about the place.’

  ‘He’s a real businessman,’ Frankie Reyes said appreciatively. ‘He understands profit.’

  ‘He said he didn’t even wear shoes till he was a grown man,’ said Alice Robello. ‘They couldn’t afford them. Said if he took his shoes off we’d see the feet of a beggar! Can you imagine?’

  ‘Pisses higher than anyone now,’ Frankie Reyes said.

  ‘Frankie!’ His wife feigned embarrassment.

  ‘Sorry, ma’am,’ Reyes twirled his glass in Lola Lovely’s direction. ‘Seriously though, might be worth thinking about investing in his scheme. You’d get ten-, even twentyfold back on your money.’

  ‘I’m not really interested in investing. I’m more concerned about the effect on our community.’ Aunt Mary frowned.

  ‘Of course there’ll be losers,’ Judge Robello said, a little impatiently, I thought. ‘But there’ll always be people who win and people who lose. It’s our duty, for the sake of our families to make sure we stay on top, don’t you think? I mean, people depend on us. And not just our own children. They all come to us – I need money for my son’s wedding, Uncle, for my daughter’s school books, Uncle – for this, for that. Everyone from the gardener to the chauffeur. Hands in their pockets or hands held out for something.’

  Frankie Reyes laughed in agreement. ‘Yes, a quiet redistribution of wealth,’ he said.

  ‘Some of these families have been here as long as our own,’ Aunt Mary said. ‘This is their home and they’ll be made to leave it.’

  ‘They don’t own the land,’ said Frankie Reyes.

  Aunt Mary studied him gravely. ‘Is there no alternative to simply sweeping them aside?’ she said. The men were quiet, amused even.

  ‘Looks Italian,’ Lola Lovely said, leaning forward to finger the lapel of Alice Robello’s suit.

  ‘Milan. Joey and I were there last year on vacation.’

  Aunt Mary sat back in her chair. ‘America is ready,’ I said from the door. They looked up at me, surprised. They hadn’t noticed my return.

  ‘Perfect timing, eh?’ said Frankie Reyes. Then, apologetically to Aunt Mary, ‘I’d just been wondering what your Monica had made for dinner.’

  As they settled themselves at the dining table, Alice Robello said, ‘Rome, Florence, Bologna, Milan, Venice, Rome.’

  ‘So much art,’ said Joni Reyes.

  ‘Did you get to the Brera gallery in Milan?’ said Aunt Mary. ‘There’s a very moving painting there of a march by agricultural workers. Fiumana. It puts me in mind of tomorrow.’

  ‘We saw a lot of paintings.’

  ‘Everyone does the gallery thing,’ said Joni Reyes, ‘but after a while, the paintings all start to look the same, don’t you find?’

  ‘This particular one— ’ Aunt Mary said.

  ‘And Leonardo Da Vinci!’ said Alice Robello. ‘I said to Joey, wouldn’t that David look great in our lobby?’ Everyone laughed. Even Aunt Mary smiled.

  ‘Will you be at the rally, Mrs Lopez?’ Judge Robello asked.

  ‘Oh, I’m not one for crowds, Joey,’ Lola Lovely said.

  I stood in the corner of the room, watching for cues from Aunt Mary. I’d learned so mu
ch from her about generosity. Her eyes flickered over the serving dishes, noting what was left, what might need refilling. I knew she took in her guests’ plates too, noticed who had eyed an out-of-reach dish more than once. When she looked up at me, I stepped forward quickly, trying to anticipate each request. I knew the painting Aunt Mary had mentioned. I’d seen it in one of her books and would have liked to tell her that I’d been moved by it too, by the way the figures emerged from the canvas like ghosts, like stories waiting to be told. Of course I didn’t, though later I decided that she’d have liked to hear it, even if it was only from me.

  After dinner, the guests returned to the sala and I brought the coffee through. I thought I’d tell Cora who her coffee had been served to the next time I saw her. I imagined her eyes full of mischief and fury.

  Aunt Mary tried again as everyone settled back in their seats, Frankie Reyes leaning against the piano. ‘We really must talk about what is going to happen to these people if we don’t do something.’

  ‘Why?’ said Judge Robello. ‘You’re not even one of them, Mary.’

  ‘Exactly!’ said Lola Lovely, her voice triumphant. I looked at Aunt Mary, her dismay, and I thought that, after all, the judge was right. She, like the rest of them, would endure the storm to come; it would be the likes of America and I that would be washed away.

  After that, no more was said about it. They talked instead about their children and their plans for university, about the coming year’s vacations, about the scent of oleander, the feel of good silk. When they left, Aunt Mary shut herself in her study and was still there when I retired to my room for the night.

  ‌Acrylic on Rice Sacks