by Niyati Keni
Benny, when he came, stood just inside the door and looked at the coffin and around the room, taking it all in. He’d never been inside my father’s apartment before, for he hadn’t been one of the visitors when Lorna gave birth to Marisol, nor when my mother died, which wasn’t long after the loss of his own father. Then Aunt Mary had thought him too young to attend another funeral so soon and he was dispatched, against his will, to a school friend’s house and on his return sulked for several days. He seemed plain now somehow, unadorned, and I realised of course that he hadn’t brought his sketchbook or his bag full of charcoal and pencils and I was disappointed. After all, what other record would my father’s death leave? I looked round the room at all the people and thought, bitterly, that it could have been, should have been, any one of them that died under the market-hall roof.
Benny wedged himself against the wall and sat with his feet drawn in towards him. Suelita glanced in his direction and he smiled at her, looking away again without lingering. They caught each other’s eyes a few times after that. I was distantly aware of each look. But they didn’t speak, and when Benny left it was my eyes that he searched out last.
Mulrooney and Pastor Levi came, with Levi’s wife Eveline. I noticed absently that Father Mulrooney’s hair still looked good, though it had grown out a little. When he greeted me I found myself saying, ‘She did a really good job, Father,’ nodding at his hair. He blushed and touched it lightly with one hand. He read aloud from the Bible and Pastor Levi said a prayer over the coffin. The heat blended with the sound of their voices in a dense vibration. I felt as if I was watching everything from a distance, as if it wasn’t my father who lay on the table, nor I watching his coffin. I didn’t care about God or heaven or the spirits now. All I knew was the hollowness in me, the sense of having been cut adrift.
After a while it was decided that my father would be moved to the chapel. More and more people were arriving and the crowds filled the courtyard, pressing out into the alleyway. He was carried by my brother and myself and Jonah and the jetty boys. I wouldn’t let Dil take a place under the coffin and shoved him aside when he tried to help. He moved away without protest. Jonah eyed me silently for a moment and appraised Dil.
Uncle Bee went before us down the stairs, coaxing people to move aside, and slowly, fearful of touching the walls, doorframe, railings with the coffin, lest my father’s soul be anchored to the building forever, we manoeuvred him down to the street. The visitors formed a long line behind us. I couldn’t recollect seeing such a large gathering for a funeral before. We made our way to the chapel, Mulrooney and Levi walking in front. I moved automatically, stepping in time with the other pall-bearers. My arms and shoulders ached. From behind the coffin I heard Lorna cry out but I couldn’t turn my head to look. And so I didn’t notice when, in the midst of all this, the House-On-Wheels returned to Esperanza Street and fell in alongside our procession.
We entered the chapel where the vigil continued. People took turns sitting next to me – America, Jonah, Missy and Uncle Bee, even Benny – but I was only dimly aware of them in the soft night, or at least no more aware of them than I was of the shadows and candle flame, of the silence and the chanting, of the muted sounds of grief. Subong never came and I decided, grimly, that he would not return, that no trace of him would be found. I didn’t notice that Lorna wasn’t in the pew next to me and, truthfully, I didn’t really care where she was. I resented her grief; she’d known my father for so short a time anyway.
Dub came late in the night and stayed for a couple of hours. As he stood up to leave he hesitated and, following his gaze into the shadows, I saw that BabyLu was there too, in a corner by herself. I hadn’t expected her to come and she didn’t look at me but stared straight ahead. She wore a scarf that covered much of her face but it was unmistakeably her. Dub walked out quickly but I knew he would wait for her in the dark outside the chapel. Seeing that my attention wasn’t on my father’s coffin, a few people glanced curiously at BabyLu. She crossed herself and bent her head so that her face was almost entirely hidden. When I looked again a little while later she’d gone.
When I came out into the bright morning sun, I saw at last Lorna and her baby and, with her, Lottie, Lando, Luis, Lenora, Luke and Buan and the ramshackle contraption that was the House-On-Wheels. The gaming tables still hung awry. The children looked hungry. Lando came over and put a hand on my shoulder. ‘We didn’t expect to come back and find Dante gone,’ he said.
‘Didn’t expect to find the street half burned down either,’ Lottie said. I was annoyed with her for exaggerating. It felt like she was making light of things, like they weren’t important enough to be accurate about.
‘I don’t really care about the street.’ I knew as I said it how rude it sounded.
‘Everyone’s been talking about how he died. He was a hero,’ she said carefully.
‘How long are you staying?’ I asked.
Lottie shrugged. ‘Depends on the girl.’ I hadn’t thought about Lorna, about what she might do now that my father was dead. Now that I considered it, I assumed she’d leave the same way she’d come, in the House-on-Wheels.
But Lorna, her eyes on Marisol, who lay wriggling on a pile of bedding in the House, said sullenly, ‘I don’t want to come.’
‘Where else can you go?’ Lottie said. ‘Your rich husband gonna take care of you and your bastard child? Buy you a coupé?’
Lorna didn’t reply but looked at me, her eyes red, the skin of her cheeks blotched.
‘Your father paid up his rent for a few days?’ Lottie said. ‘Or she has to leave straight away?’
I looked away so that she might not see how her question offended me. ‘I don’t know,’ I said.
‘You know?’ she said to her daughter.
Lorna stole a look in my direction before replying. ‘He always paid to the end of the month.’
‘So you want us to wait around till you’ve considered all your offers?’ Lottie said.
Irritably, I cast my eyes about the gathering. I hadn’t thought about any of this, about Lorna, about sorting through my father’s things, emptying his apartment so that it might be rented again to a stranger. Even his vigil and the burial to come had been organised by someone else. I spotted my brother with Jonah and watched him till I caught his eye. He waved me over and, gratefully, I excused myself and went to join him.
Miguel was smoking a cigarette. He looked pale. ‘What’s your plan now?’ he said. I didn’t have one. I told him that we had to think about clearing the apartment, making sure our father’s things were in order. ‘Not me, man,’ he said. ‘I can’t stay long.’
‘Your father lived like a saint,’ Jonah said. ‘A lot less stuff than most people.’
‘Sure,’ my brother laughed, ‘a saint. That his baby?’ He nodded towards the House-on-Wheels.
‘No,’ I said.
He finished his cigarette and, straight away, lit another. ‘Come with me to Saudi,’ he said. ‘We could lie about your age.’ I hadn’t considered the possibility of escaping, not just Esperanza and Puerto, but the country.
‘Your father would’ve wanted you to finish your studies,’ said Jonah. ‘Plenty of time for gallivanting later.’
‘Gallivanting!’ my brother laughed again. ‘Joseph never had that in him. Always serious about life, from the very beginning.’
‘No sign of Subong?’ I asked Jonah.
‘His mother went to the police. They filed a report.’
My brother snorted. ‘This country’s going to hell. He’ll be washed ashore in a week.’
‘It’s a hard enough time, Miguel.’ Jonah clapped him on the shoulder gently enough but his words were abrupt and there was iron in his voice.
My brother ground his cigarette out without finishing it. I studied him cautiously. ‘You ever think about getting married?’ I said.
‘Sure, I’m gonna marry an actress,’ he said without looking at me.
‘Seriously, Miguel. Find someone to look aft
er you.’
‘You know any rich women?’
‘Just any decent girl.’
‘I’m not cleaning up Pop’s mess if that’s what you’re hoping.’
I looked over at Lorna. She was crying now, quietly, her face in profile, lower lip jutting out sulkily. She really wasn’t pretty, I thought, yet the baby was cute. ‘I didn’t mean her in particular,’ I said.
‘What plan are you boys hatching?’ said my sister coming towards us. My nephews trailed after her, squabbling at her heels, but she ignored them.
‘Poor girl,’ said Jonah, looking at Lorna. ‘I guess your father taking her in gave her hope for a while.’
‘Who is she anyway?’ Luisa said. ‘He wasn’t her father or her husband.’
‘Is that four now, Luisa?’ Jonah said.
My sister looked down at her children. ‘Yeah,’ she said.
‘Keep you out of trouble,’ Jonah said.
‘Married young. Never had a chance to get in trouble,’ she glanced at Lorna.
‘You didn’t have a lot but you had more than her,’ Jonah said. Luisa’s eyes blazed at him.
Soon it was time to take my father to the cemetery, where arrangements had been made for him to lie beside my mother. Luisa and Miguel were quiet through the mass. Lorna cried openly and once or twice I saw Luisa cast a scornful look at her. The Bukaykays all came to see my father interred, as well as Aunt Mary and the boys and America. I didn’t look about to see who else came and who didn’t, though I was conscious of a crowd. I stared instead at the wall of tombs as my father’s coffin was pushed in and the opening sealed with concrete, the cemetery boys balanced barefoot on planks and bamboo scaffolding. The fate of the cemetery was still uncertain but there was nowhere else for him to go. I pushed the thought away for now and started thinking about the reality of going through his things, of understanding more fully, from the minutiae of his life, what kind of a man he’d been. I wasn’t looking forward to it, and when I overheard Luisa complaining to Missy that it would take her days to sort through Pop’s stuff, I kept quiet.
On the way back we returned home by a different route, snaking in a long line through the alleys of Greenhills, just as we’d done for my mother.
Man with Bolo
After the funeral Aunt Mary urged me to rest a few days but I was afraid to sit idle and be alone with my thoughts. So after a while she and America conspired to keep me busy instead, sending me out on easy errands so that I wouldn’t work away in silence in the subdued rooms of the Bougainvillea. America, quieter in my presence now, shifted her attentions briefly to Dub, specifically to his state of nutrition. And so I found myself once again on the forecourt of Earl’s garage holding another of Dub’s forgotten lunch packets, having promised America I’d watch him finish it.
It was the first time in a long while that we’d been alone together. I’d intended to leave quickly but he started talking as he took the parcel from me. He looked me in the eye as he said, ‘I’m sorry, Joe. For everything.’ He told me he’d spoken to her the night of the vigil as I knew he would. ‘She was pleased the vigil was moved to the church,’ he said. ‘She wouldn’t have felt she could come to your pop’s apartment.’ I could see that talking about her lifted him.
‘I’m glad she came,’ I said, and I meant it.
He looked away, staring along the street into the distance. ‘She’s leaving,’ he said and he tried to sound indifferent. ‘She’s moving out of Prosperidad. She won’t tell me where she’s going, but she’s going with him.’ And his voice betrayed him as he said, ‘She’s keeping it. She still won’t say if it’s mine or his. Either way it’ll grow up calling him Pop.’ I imagined then how he must have begged her, in the shadow of the stone church, until eventually she would have grown anxious, looking about her to see who might be watching. He hadn’t seen her since, he said, and though he’d stared up at her balcony every day from the garage forecourt, the windows of her apartment had remained closed. Each time he’d gone to knock at her door there was no answer, though once or twice he thought he’d heard movement inside. He looked at me as if I might have an explanation. ‘She doesn’t love him,’ he said bitterly. ‘Just his money.’
I didn’t know what might console him. I said, without thinking, ‘She has to think of the child.’ His face coloured.
‘She sent something for you. Didn’t even ask me to fetch them, paid some kid instead. Told him to make it clear they were for you.’ I felt a flicker of pleasure. He didn’t mention whether she’d left him anything too.
I followed him into the garage. Under the workbenches, against the wall, was a line of cardboard boxes that had once contained coconut oil, sour-sop juice, soap. Each one had already been torn open. Dub knelt down and pulled one out. It was full of books. When I saw them I knew for certain that she wasn’t planning to return and I was sorry; I’d have liked to say goodbye, to tell her myself that it had meant something that she’d come to my father’s vigil even when everyone knew she was Eddie Casama’s mistress.
But there was more to the story, an event that gave shape to her leaving, and Dub told me only a part of it. The rest I constructed later from fragments that by themselves might have been nothing at all: the way he started to cradle one hand with the other, the way he touched his guitar but wouldn’t play it, the way he touched his hair, his jeans in the laundry basket wet at the seat from having been rinsed, the t-shirt he never wore again – Eat My Dust. No one else mentioned it either, though their eyes carried its reflections for some time. Of course they may not have known much more than I did. When I recount my version now, no doubt I’ll have embellished some parts and diminished others, but I hope that in the end I will have told, as far as is possible, the truth, and that I will have given both Dub and BabyLu their fair due.
I didn’t pay much mind to Dub’s absence during the rally, distracted as I was by so many other things: Dil at my father’s side, Suelita’s sudden vivacity in Benny’s company, the bruises that proclaimed my weakness. I’d assumed that Dub would be at the garage and didn’t think otherwise, even when I glimpsed Earl standing alone in the crowd. It was only later when his mother asked me to look for him that it occurred to me he might have gone to see BabyLu, for she would have been alone at home while Eddie was at the rally. I imagined that Eddie, happy enough to be seen with his mistress from time to time in the back of his car, at a local noodle joint, or even on the balcony of one of his apartments, would never have brought her to a protest rally, particularly one where he might have preferred to present a blameless exterior. Dub would have expected to have BabyLu to himself for the rest of the evening too, for Eddie’s time even after the rally was over would surely have been taken up by Judge Robello and others of his kind and then, later, with Connie, his wife, to prolong the appearance of propriety.
The morning of the rally, then, Dub helped carry baskets of food down to the jetty office but his mind wasn’t on the rally, it was on her; on the memory of her leaning in a corner of her balcony the evening before, the light from inside her apartment glowing on her hair and back, leaving her face in shadow. He’d looked up at her from the garage forecourt and, though she’d barely moved in response, it was enough to tell him that she’d seen him and that perhaps she was ready to talk. Before he could respond he saw a movement behind her and Eddie came out onto the balcony, slipped an arm around her waist, his fingers spread over her belly. Eddie looked down over Prosperidad, at Dub who automatically bent to his bike as if inspecting it. Dub hadn’t meant to look away at that moment, to relinquish her to Eddie so easily, and he was never sure later why he did. He looked up again immediately, a challenge in his stance, but they were already turning away, already moving back inside the apartment, the doors swinging partly shut behind them. Dub kicked his bike lightly, gazed up at the empty balcony, then rode slowly home.
By the next morning he’d slept little and thought a lot. His night had been consumed with analysing her slight movement on the balcony, the
incline of her head, her glance in his direction though her eyes, like her face, were indistinct in the half-light. He’d decided that if she was on the balcony when he got to work he would go to her the first chance he got. And of course she was there, watering her bougainvillea.
When Earl left for the market hall, Dub bolted the garage door and walked across the street. She was watching him from just inside the balcony doors and counted out the seconds, opening her apartment door to him as he raised his hand to knock.
The sun was low in the sky and Dub and BabyLu were asleep when Eddie’s men came. Cesar was not with them of course, for he was with Eddie, and would never have embroiled himself too deeply in his employer’s personal matters. Nor was Eddie’s chauffeur there, the man who had warned Dub off in the street without a word passing between them. Rico’s barkada may have sufficed for me but Eddie would surely never have sent them to BabyLu’s apartment to deal with Aunt Mary’s boy: they were too coarse and of course they were local. The men who came to the apartment were probably not even from Esperanza.
The men, three of them – a fourth waited in the car – knocked at the door, politely, then more firmly, for it took BabyLu some time to answer. When she did, they didn’t stop to speak to her, though they nodded respectfully enough and held their hands behind them or out to their sides so that they wouldn’t touch her as they pushed past. They walked straight to the bedroom where Dub was already dressed, and even as they pulled him out of the flat, as BabyLu flung her books at them one after another, they still did not say a word.
I imagined at first that he was taken to a place similar to where I was taken by Rico: a patch of waste ground at the edge of Greenhills strewn with piles of trash that nobody would ever clear away, or perhaps a dead-end alley behind Colon Market, the stench of which would bring back the memory of this day in all its clarity; a place where a boy like him would be lost, out of context. But because I didn’t like to imagine him there surrounded by Eddie’s men – thugs – even if they did wear suits – I pictured him instead being driven around Esperanza, around Puerto, in silence for some time. Then at last the man next to the driver, clean shaven, a few years older than Dub, with the appearance of a clerk or the manager of a small but respectable store, said, ‘She’s pretty, huh?’ as he twisted round in the seat to look at him. Maybe it was the first time this man had ever seen her.