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Esperanza Street

Page 19

by Niyati Keni


  ‘What’s happening?’ I said, certain now that they were not redecorating.

  ‘I’m out of business,’ she said.

  ‘We, darling. We are out of business,’ Lady Jessica said.

  Jaynie sank into one of the salon chairs and rested her head back. ‘At the rally,’ she said. She turned to look at me. ‘That’s when he served us notice. At the rally.’

  ‘It took all the fun out of protesting,’ Lady Jessica said.

  Jaynie reached out and patted my arm. ‘You gonna tell Mary Morelos about this?’ she said. I nodded. It was news. ‘You make sure you tell her Jaynie knows.’

  ‘Knows what?’ I had to shout over the sudden roar of the engine as Eddie’s driver fired up the sedan.

  ‘I know she tried,’ Jaynie shouted back.

  ‘Tried what?’

  ‘She talked to Eddie. It’s not her fault his balls were in his ears.’ She said the word balls emphatically, glaring in Cesar’s direction. But Cesar was already in the sedan, leaning forward from the back seat to talk to the driver.

  The car pulled slowly away from the kerb. We watched it go, waited for it to return so that Cesar could reassure himself that the dryers and the manicure tables and the mirrors weren’t going to find their way back inside. Lady Jessica saluted Cesar on the car’s second pass. Cesar affected not to notice.

  When he’d gone, Jaynie slid down in the chair and closed her eyes. Lady Jessica stood behind her, her hands on her friend’s shoulders. She plucked out Jaynie’s hair grips, placed them in her lap. Then she gathered Jaynie’s hair together and flipped it over the back of the chair, smoothing it down so that it fell like a curtain. ‘You look like you’re waiting for a shampoo and set,’ she said. ‘I could style you right now, baby, just to cheer you up.’ Her voice sounded high, forced, determined not to succumb. She pulled a hairbrush out of a box. But Jaynie sat forward, looked at the salon equipment all about her. It took up the full breadth of the sidewalk and already passers-by were stepping round it, looking on with curiosity. Jaynie was quiet for a minute. She looked up at the overhead electric cables that ran from the municipal pylons to each shop and house on Esperanza Street. Lady Jessica watched her, her eyes narrowing as she broke slowly into a smile. ‘Wicked girl,’ she said. I left to return to the boarding house as Lady Jessica fell into feverish discussion about circuits and insulators and voltages.

  I went straight to Aunt Mary. I told her about Eddie Casama with his balls in his ears. She smiled mischievously at me. She marched over to the telephone, picked up the receiver. I heard her greet Connie Casama. ‘Is Edgar back yet from Manila? No? An emergency? No, not really, Well, perhaps. Did you know the Beauty Queen salon is in trouble? I see. Yes, he plays basketball. Is there any chance that Edgar might … Yes, and a keen swimmer too. Yes, he still paints. Yes, yes. Well then, I mustn’t keep you.’ When she hung up, her face was dark with anger.

  Almost immediately, Aunt Mary sent me back to the beauty salon. By the time I returned, the municipal cable had already been breached and, soon enough, a compact version of the Beauty Queen parlour offering a select range of its usual services was up and running on the sidewalk. I helped Jaynie push the unused equipment to one side to be wheeled away later a piece at a time. ‘If we’d tapped it after the electric meter,’ said Lady Jessica peevishly, ‘Eddie would’ve had to pay for the juice.’

  The rains were still intermittent and the electrics were a worry. Jaynie and Lady Jessica rigged up a tarpaulin to keep the wiring dry, but after a while Jaynie unplugged the big dryers, clipping a single hand-held dryer onto the waistband of her jeans like a gunslinger.

  Like food vendors they touted for custom, but people stepped past and the salon chairs remained empty. Finally, to demonstrate that the parlour was still in business, Jaynie offered to cut Rosaline’s hair for free. Rosaline, the owner of the noodle joint next door, usually had her hair cut by her sister at home over the sink with dressmaking scissors.

  As I stood watching Jaynie at work, imagining Dub in the seat under her expert hands and wondering what it might feel like to have one’s hair blow-dried, a moped swung into the kerb. The policeman cast his eyes over the scene before dismounting. He beckoned to Jaynie but, her hands still engaged with Rosaline’s hair, she twitched her brow at the empty chair next to her, inviting him to sit. The cop stayed where he was. ‘I didn’t come for a haircut, miss,’ he said, jovially enough. Over the course of the afternoon, Jaynie’s mood had steadily hardened and now she wore a look on her face that made the man hesitate before he moved in closer. ‘You have a permit for street-trading?’ he said, carefully.

  ‘That’s my salon,’ Jaynie pointed with her scissors.

  ‘Not what I heard, ma’am,’ but the cop had caught the coolness in her voice and was aware, no doubt, of how many people were about, while he was there alone. Jaynie and Jessica were popular in the street and the extrusion of the salon onto the sidewalk had displaced to either side the barbecue vendors and lottery and cigarette stalls that usually thronged it and now, in this tight-packed space, the cop’s conversation with Jaynie was the focus of everyone’s attention. The cop looked about him, his eyes narrowing as he caught sight of me, lingering over my bruises.

  ‘How about a free cut, officer?’ Lady Jessica purred the last word. She stepped forward, her broad frame between me and the cop. I saw the forested dome of his head move behind her as he tried to see past her but she shifted her weight from heel to heel and soon enough he gave up. ‘I can see it’s been a while, officer. No ring on your finger. And so trim in that uniform!’ She pulled a chair out for him, patted the seat. The cop appeared to consider, then he sat down. When he did, the tension in the street seemed to abate. The other vendors went back to their business, glancing back at him curiously now and again as he sat, quietly, a salon apron across his breast marked with the words Beauty Queen.

  The cop’s hair had been cut and he was part-way through being manicured when Father Mulrooney arrived. I wasn’t surprised to see him; his walks often took him past the salon. He looked dismayed now, as I had been at the sight of the salon furniture out on the street. He looked at Lady Jessica, at me; he nodded gently at the healing bruises, glanced at the dryers and the chairs, at the boxes of combs and brushes and curlers and then, finally, delicately, at Jaynie. She was watching him, waiting to look him straight in the eye and when she did he flushed deeply and broke his eyes away. ‘Come on, Father,’ she said softly, her hand resting on the back of a chair, ‘be my first paying customer.’ Mulrooney looked at the cop, frowning slightly. The cop raised his free hand in greeting and smiled up at the priest. ‘Afternoon, Father,’ he said cheerfully.

  Mulrooney sat down. He arranged his robes self-consciously as Jaynie floated an apron, a plain one, down over him and fixed it about his neck. She ran her hands through his hair. He closed his eyes for an instant. I wondered if she’d ever touched him before. She watched him in the mirror as she asked what he might want her to do with his hair, all the while her hands playing through the thick sandy curls. She cut his hair slowly, carefully and, unlike Lady Jessica, who besieged the cop with conversation, remained silent as she worked. It seemed there was something private that enveloped the two of them then, surrounded as they were by the noise of the traffic, the calls of hawkers, the gulls circling up from the jetty. It was a public place and yet I felt it was an intrusion to watch them, but I did nonetheless, with everybody else; when she’d finished cutting his hair and run her hands through it for the last time to watch it fall properly into place, I was sorry for both of them that she was done. Jaynie removed the apron, untying the strings of it carefully from behind the priest’s neck. Mulrooney got up to pay, pressed some notes into her hand, refused to take them back, refused any change. She smiled at him – sadly, I thought.

  The cop stood up now too, held out a hand, fingers splayed, nodding in acknowledgement of Lady Jessica’s fine work. He’d had his free haircut and manicure and now, he knew, it was time for hi
m to withdraw. He looked about him at the street vendors, at me leaning against the doorpost of the salon. His eyes remained on me for a while. He looked at Father Mulrooney, whose haircut had accentuated the angles of his cheekbones, his high brow, and brought out the handsomeness still alive in his face. The cop dug into his pocket and dropped a few coins into Lady Jessica’s palm as a tip. ‘Don’t be here tomorrow,’ he said, as he turned to leave. On the way back to his moped, he paused to tap on the lid of the cigarette vendor’s tray. The man held up a cigarette, a Champion, and the cop took it, tucked it behind his ear and mounted his moped without paying for it. He gunned the engine and waited while the exhaust fumes drifted up through the crowd, casting a last look round without catching anyone’s eye. His meaning was clear enough: if he had to return, he wouldn’t come alone.

  Now a steady trickle of customers began and, as if they believed they were back inside the walls of the Beauty Queen, people talked more freely. I was surprised at their candour, though they kept their voices low when they discussed the rally. The day had gone well in the main, but there had been trouble from a few of the marchers, men that no one had recognised. Constabulary men in civilian clothes, or thugs hired to discredit the protesters. I listened, looking around me every now and then, alert for new faces.

  When Eddie’s Mercedes pulled up at the kerb, the conversation stilled and everyone turned to watch him get out of the car. Behind him, I could see Cesar. I slipped through the crowd to return to the boarding house, still too stiff and slow to run properly. Aunt Mary was waiting in the sala, her handbag ready by her feet. She left with me immediately.

  When we arrived, Eddie was sitting in one of the salon chairs, his legs crossed, his hands clasped in his lap. He was smiling. Cesar stood beside him, glaring at Lady Jessica, who leaned in towards the lawyer, her hands on her hips, her breathing harsh and rapid. Jaynie reached forward and touched her friend’s shoulder lightly. Lady Jessica folded her arms and took a step back. ‘We don’t want to move across town,’ Jaynie said calmly. ‘We live here. Our customers live here.’

  ‘Here,’ said Eddie, ‘is going to change.’ His voice was affable, dismissive, as if he were making a humorous observation over dinner. A murmur of displeasure snaked through the crowd. Aunt Mary pushed her way through and slid into the chair next to Eddie. Without a word she opened her purse, pushed some notes into Jaynie’s hand and said, ‘I’ll leave it up to you this time, Jaynie.’ Eddie looked surprised and then amused. He greeted her and though Aunt Mary nodded in his direction, she didn’t turn to meet his eye. Then, as everyone looked on, Mary Morelos’ hair was combed and pinned and measured and cut. Eddie looked around at the sea of faces, becoming aware perhaps of the temperature change that Aunt Mary, in her own small, calculated way, had caused. He got to his feet and, with Cesar a few steps behind him, started back to the car. There was nothing to be done about it; despite not having her family’s money, despite the years of taking paying strangers into her home, round here Aunt Mary was still somebody.

  The new haircut made her look younger and even the boys complimented her when we returned home, after the salon furniture had been carried away piece by piece to the apartments and garages and storage rooms of friends and neighbours, after it had been stacked and dismantled, and the Beauty Queen parlour had finally closed for business.

  ‌Cockroaches

  My father stood in the doorway of Jonah’s office, cap in hand, eyeing the line of outriggers that bobbed in the surf. The boats were light, the boatmen already asleep under their canopies, legs striped with sunlight. Inside the office, Jonah sat with his feet up on a crate, rubbing his hands back and forth across the top of his head. He was red in the face, his eyes and lips pressed tightly shut, his breathing deliberate. In front of him, his ex-wife Margie paced up and down looking in scarcely better humour. In her pale suit – the jacket still on despite the heat, the line of the skirt tapering towards matching shoes – she looked like she belonged in a skyscraper, behind a glass desk. As I approached, my father said gratefully, ‘My boy’s here.’

  But Jonah beckoned me in and said, ‘Joseph! A beautiful day, eh?’

  ‘You never listened to reason, not once in your life,’ Margie said, dismissing me with a glance. Jonah frowned at me; like my father, my presence had proved to be no deterrent at all.

  ‘I keep telling you – it’s not just about me. What about my boys?’ he said.

  ‘I didn’t marry your boys.’

  ‘You didn’t marry me for very long,’ said Jonah. He looked away, avoided looking back, aware immediately of his mistake. Margie turned round to glare at me and my father. My father took my arm and, darting an apologetic look at Jonah, pulled me away. He kept hold of my arm until we reached the sea wall.

  The jetty was quieter than usual and beyond it an empty blue sea fell away. Two of the jetty boys were shifting the last sacks from the sand up to the road; the rest were smoking and playing cards or shooting hoops, but they seemed more listless than usual, even Subong. From the sea wall I could still make out the sound of Margie and Jonah arguing in between the rush of waves against sand and stone. I felt bad about abandoning Jonah when everyone knew there was little that upset him more than Margie. My father must have been thinking the same thing, for he said softly, ‘Got no business coming between a man and his wife.’ In any case, Jonah didn’t have to face her for long. Shortly, we heard the door of his office fly open and Margie’s voice say, ‘Fine!’ We turned to see her snatch her handbag from a chair. The bag was the same colour as her suit and shoes. She stalked to a waiting car, climbed into the back and was driven away.

  Jonah came to the door and watched her go, watched until the car had disappeared entirely. Then he walked over to where we sat. He looked weary. ‘Construction’s started down the road,’ he said. ‘She figures this place won’t be around for much longer. She wants me to go work for her family.’

  ‘A job’s a job,’ my father said. ‘Why not just take it? She’s just trying to look out for you. She’s still your wife.’ He sounded impatient, a tone I hadn’t heard him use with Jonah before.

  Jonah clapped him on the back. ‘I’m not built to sit behind a desk, Dante,’ he said. He patted his pregnancy. My father raised his hands in defeat; Jonah always escaped into humour if a matter got too serious for his liking. ‘Maybe I should ask her to find you a job,’ Jonah added. ‘Now that you’ve taken on the trouble of a second family.’

  My father looked shaken. He evaded my eye. ‘What could I do?’ he said. ‘I never finished high school. You at least started college.’

  ‘Started, never finished,’ Jonah sounded almost proud. I’d never known this about him, that he’d come so close to a different life. I opened my mouth to ask him about it but my father said, ‘As many endings as beginnings,’ and in the time it took me to think about this the moment was lost.

  The sight of another of Margie’s departures seemed to deflate Jonah and he retreated to his office, closing the door behind him. When he was gone, more for want of something to say than because I was interested, I asked my father about Lorna and the baby. Even as I asked, it irked me that this girl and her child had become the main currency of conversation between us. Lately, when I looked at my father, he seemed more tired to me, older, and I was stung by his willingness to take up the fight again for her, when she was little more than a stranger, and at a time in his own life when he might otherwise have rested. ‘She’s doing well,’ he said. ‘Missy visits and the child is gaining weight.’

  ‘Great,’ I said.

  ‘She went through all the names beginning with L and then decided on Marisol.’ He laughed at this and then added, gravely, ‘I think she misses her mother.’

  There had been no word from the House-on-Wheels since the day after the birth, when the broken cart had rolled off along the coast road towards Little Laguna. My father stared now into the distance, southwards – the direction in which the cart had gone – and I saw that he was worried. I t
hought it unlikely he was concerned for their safety; Lottie and Lando were street people, wily, alert to every opportunity for survival. Lando had likened his family to cockroaches, able to survive even a nuclear bomb, he’d said. I suspected, rather, that my father believed their return would stamp some final seal of approval on Lorna’s entry into his household and he was anxious to show that she and the child were thriving, that he hadn’t harmed her in any way.

  We set off for his apartment. Since Lorna’s arrival and the birth of the baby, my father had simply assumed that I’d want to see them, and so every Sunday afternoon instead of heading for the chapel I accompanied him back home. I suppose I should have been grateful that at least now I didn’t have to spend the little time I had with him staring at the carved retablos of a European Jesus or at the gilded altars; everywhere pictures of people kneeling, heads bowed, penitent. Though of course dutiful visits to Lorna and her baby were hardly what I’d hoped for instead. He seemed proud, almost as if he were the father of the child, engaging with it in a way I’d not seen before, a way I didn’t remember from my own childhood. Of course it didn’t occur to me at the time that he might simply have been grateful for the chance to feel necessary again.

  The apartment was tidy and newly scrubbed. A curtain of laundry hung across the main room and I had to duck beneath it to get to a seat. Lorna went to fetch water and cordial and a dish of unshelled peanuts while my father sank down onto the mat next to the baby and removed his cap. The baby wriggled on her back, becoming livelier at the sound of his voice. ‘Are you feeling better, Joseph?’ Lorna said carefully, and I was afraid for a moment that my thoughts were all too transparent, that she’d guessed how I resented her. She was eager to please and watched our glasses to see when they might need refilling, attentive to the baby lest it make too much noise and irritate us. Her solicitousness made me feel ashamed.

 

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