Half the Day Is Night

by Maureen F. Mchugh

  Paranoia. Or just plain fear.

  She was back in her old room. The bed was still pink, the walls the palest rose. In the drawers were old things she hadn’t bothered to take with her when she moved out: clothes ten years out of date, a bracelet with a little wirework horsecharm dangling off of it that was supposed to be a voudoun sign—they had been big when she was in school—and a box of hair solution to streak her hair metallic silver because Terez, who was her best friend, had streaked hers gold. She threw them out.

  “What are you doing?” Jude asked her in the hall.

  “Cleaning up my room,” she said. Strange behavior, she thought. Here she was, reduced to almost nothing but the clothes on her back, and she was throwing out whatever else she could find. She threw out everything in all the drawers. There were a couple of dresses in the closet that she could still wear to the bank. Her gray dress, the cliché of the banker gray dress, without style or taste but perfectly functional, she could wear that. Her oyster-colored dress. It had the funny Egyptian linen collar that made it look dated, but she would only wear it until she could get some more things.

  In the top of the closet she found a shoe box with a rubber band around it. She slid it off the shelf thinking it was full of letters or something, but when she opened it up, it was full of picture cards. On top was a card of a conical volcano, perfect as a film set, not real.

  She turned it over.

  Hi Princess,

  Things are beautiful in Bali! It’s hot hot hot! I’m going to be here awhile, maybe in a few months I can bring you here for a visit.

  Love, Dad.

  She looked at the date, she would have been eleven years old. When she was eleven her parents had been gone for five years. They had left when she was six.

  When she was six. She closed her eyes and thought of being six. What was six? Her parents gone to see her grandfather’s family in Hawaii. Cousins. Caribe had still been part of the U.S. First Hawaiian of Caribe was still connected to First Hawaiian of Honolulu and the Lings of Hawaii.

  When she was six, Enzalo Estaves y Otoya launched a violent independence movement. She could see her gram filling the bathtubs with water in case it was shut off—although she pictured her gram as an old thin-legged lady in tights and a cardigan. When she was six her grandmother was, what, in her fifties? Her hair wasn’t gray, she kept it blonde. With effort the blonde gram from ims could be superimposed. They grew algae in buckets and plastic tubs and they had an old-fashioned air recycler sitting in the kitchen, all in case the air was cut off. All of the house staff left except Jude, who cooked for them and ate with them. If the air went bad they planned to shut off most of the big house and live in the kitchen, bathroom and dining room, all four of them including Jude—but in their part of the city the air stayed good.

  Her grandfather was home all of the time. President Enzalo Estaves y Otoya nationalized the bank. He sat around dressed like it was Sunday afternoon, in tights and shirts and alpargatas, sandals like slippers with cotton soles. He was angry all the time.

  “Be quiet,” her gram would say, “your grandfather is worried about a lot of things.”

  Her mother and father sent cards, first from Hawaii, then from Spain. The cards came in bunches wrapped in string, some of them sent three or four months before and some only two weeks old. Then nothing for a few months. The mail was “interrupted.” Like someone speaking.

  Her mother wrote that they had tried to call but couldn’t get through, or that she had gotten a card or letter. When the calls did get through, her mother’s voice was a foreign voice now, deep and rumbling, deeper than her father’s voice had been at home. A stranger’s voice like voices on the vid.

  Her father sent picture cards with little notes on the back addressed to “Princess” or “Mayla Lee.” The underwater mall complex financed by First Hawaiian U.S. at Waikiki. Mauna Loa. The Kamehameha Island Causeway. Then Moorish architecture of Grenada, a woman in a black lace mantilla, great expanses of golden field and narrow streets. Mayla kept the cards in her shoe box, rubberbanded together in packets the way they came. She sat on her bedroom floor and laid them out all around, some propped up against her pink bed, some on the floor, making up a vast, sun-drenched landscape. All the cards were full of such space, such light.

  She stayed in her bedroom a lot. She remembered pieces of things. Her grandfather shouted at Gram that she was a weak, hysterical woman and Gram cried. She and Gram had packed cases with underwear and a change of clothes and Gram had sewn her engagement ring and her pavé cockatoo pin with the clock and the big ruby into the hem of Mayla’s poncho. She connected her grandfather’s shouting with the packing although she wasn’t really sure they happened at the same time. She didn’t remember ever actually leaving, where would they have gone? What was her Gram planning they should do, try to get to America? There were no subs running. Maybe her Gram meant to go to friends—but she couldn’t think of who that might have been.

  Her mind went back to playing on the floor of her bedroom, laying out cards, making landscapes of the woman in the lace mantilla dancing in front of Mauna Loa. The woman in the black lace mantilla was the only real person in any of the cards her father sent her. There were little people, far away—bent over in the fields, strolling through the streets of Grenada—but they were too small to be someone. The woman in the black lace mantilla had shiny black hair, and Mayla had black hair. The woman danced through the sunny bright places all by herself. She hoped her father would send her a postcard with a picture of another person, a friend for the Spanish lady.

  She tried to remember more, but what came was later, when she was older. A memory of the yellow kitchen full of young men in black jackets, laughing and talking in Spanish. Waiters, sent by the caterer for big parties. She was older then, her grandfather was back at the bank. President Enzalo Estaves y Otoya had been arrested by Colonel Bustamante, who everyone called the Argentine. The Argentine became President-for-Life Bustamante. He declared the Revolution a failure, denationalized the bank, and her grandfather put on his suit and went back to work. Her grandfather became una persona de influencia, good friends with people from the government. Old men like De Silva and Chavez.

  The parking was full of government cars again. That must have been when she went back to school. (She knew that Gram taught her at home, but what could the lessons have possibly been? Vague memories of workbooks.) She was enrolled in La Escuela de las Órdenes de Los Desaparecidos, a Catholic girl’s school where despite the name, no Spanish was spoken. She got letters (from her mother) and picture cards (from her father) one at a time, not in bundles. From Tenerife, from Hawaii again, from Los Angeles, from Spain, and then the letters came from Madrid from her mother, and the picture cards came from her father in Barcelona. The letters finally started coming from Barcelona, but by then the picture cards were coming from Majorca, from Morocco, from Corsica, from Crete, then from Bermuda. The letters never moved from Barcelona, but the picture cards ranged farther and farther. And every time a letter came from Barcelona, her Gram frowned.

  Her father called. She got to talk to him for a moment. She was accustomed to the way his voice sounded, so deep and foreign. Jimmy Ling was very tan, not very handsome. He didn’t look Chinese like her grandfather, or American like her gram. He didn’t really look like anyone she knew. “How are you, Mayla Lee?” he asked. “Are you studying? Did you get my card from Bermuda?”

  She said she had.

  “What did you think of that, pink beaches? They really are pink, isn’t that amazing? Would you like to come and see a pink beach? Your Dad is going to make money, a big real estate deal, and then maybe you can come to Bermuda.”

  The picture card from Bermuda had shown green hills, a big white building with tiny figures in red coats in front of it. No beach.

  Her Gram said, “Jimmy, don’t promise the child things you might not be able to do.”

  “Marceline is still in Barcelona,” he said to Gram. “She’s staying i
n Barcelona, I’m getting a divorce. I don’t know why you get that look, mom, you always bitched about Marceline. I can’t please you, I can’t please dad. I’m damned if I do and damned if I don’t.”

  “When are you coming home?” Gram asked tightly.

  “I have a business,” he said, his voice climbing although not high enough to sound like a Caribbean voice. “Things are busy right now. As soon as I get this thing wrapped up in Bermuda. You’ll see, it’s really going well, not like Majorca. I didn’t know enough about the market in Majorca, and besides, that was all that European old-boy network. I’m working with some local people here, it’s going very well, mom. Tell dad I’m doing very well, I’ll call you.”

  The second picture card from Bermuda arrived two days later. The beach was pink, but so was the sky. Skies were supposed to be blue, which made the whole picture suspect anyway. She put it in the shoe box with the other picture cards.

  The card on top of the Bermuda beach was dated four or five months later and came from Tenerife, a picture of yellow birds. She had never gone to Bermuda or Bali.

  She sat on the pink bed in her grandfather’s house and looked at the picture card from Bali. Had it been the last one? Or had he continued to send them for awhile and she just hadn’t bothered to put them in the shoe box?

  She put the rubber band back around the shoe box and put it back in the closet. She didn’t throw anything else out.

  7

  Dedale

  David sat down on the bed. Yesterday when he’d taken the room he’d declined to rent the vid, but today he’d gone back and paid for a week. 2cr a week, that brought his rent to 37cr a week. He didn’t have any chips to play on it so he was forced to watch Caribbean broadcasts or American imports—sometimes dubbed in Spanish or Creole. He didn’t like soap operas or news, but at least it was noise.

  He and Meph were living in one room, with a tiny flash unit, a cooler about a meter high and a sink. The walls were painted bluish-green, the color made it feel colder. The walls were visible all the time because he couldn’t sleep without the light on. The bed didn’t heat properly either.

  “In a couple of weeks, we’ll go home,” he told Meph. Meph, who was sitting by the door gazing off into space, mewed to be let out. “To a place where there is sun and we can get warm. It is summer there, you know?” He added hours, ticking on his fingers. “It is late in the morning, in a little bit it will be lunchtime.”

  It was 6:30 p.m. here, he’d have known even without the vid because his neighbor in number three was just home. He heard him come in and then he heard crowd noises and the voice of the sports announcer. He couldn’t hear clearly through the walls but he could tell that the sports announcer was speaking Spanish. A soccer game. David flicked through the offerings. Nicaragua and San Salvador. On the other side the neighbor in number five did not get back until midnight. Not that time mattered in Caribe, there wasn’t any daylight, day shift, night shift, it was all the same. When number five got in at midnight he apparently started dragging plastic chairs all over his room. At least that was what it sounded like.

  The dehumidifier clicked on. It was noisy, but outside the air was more humid than it had been on the upper levels where Mayla lived and worked.

  David watched Nicaragua beat San Salvador.

  Sometimes the cat would come crawl in his lap. He clucked his tongue but Meph was ignoring him, crouched by the door, staring at the wall as if he could see through it and watch number three’s soccer game. Abruptly Meph flicked his ears back, then looked at the back wall, listening. David listened, too. After a few seconds he heard the rumbling. A freight line ran in back of them, tunneled through rock. He didn’t hear it so much as feel it, but he was getting accustomed to it.

  This morning the Sunday paper had a little story about the bombing. Terrorists. Political elements. Linked with the bombing of the minister’s dome. It said Ms. Ling’s driver had left the scene and was currently sought for questioning. He did not think he should be any part of “wanted for questioning.”

  Hide. And wait. Eventually maybe it would get quiet and he could leave. Maybe a month, two months. He did not have a passport anymore. He had money. When he got on the bus the morning the bomb went off it had taken him to the central terminal and when he got off he saw the row of bank machines. He tried the bank machine there and his funds had not been frozen so he took out everything. It had taken almost ten minutes; the system had done a retinal scan and then asked him to wait and he had waited and waited, wondering if a blue and white was going to show up. But finally it had given him the money. At home the machines would not do that, they would only give a certain amount.

  Then he had tried to decide where to go. The buses were all different. Good buses were clean and had company names on the side; L’Exprimier and Garrara Transportation Company. The worst buses were the taptaps. Psychedelically colored rattle traps. People waited patiently in line for the good buses and most got seats. When a taptap pulled in the disembarking passengers had to force their way though crowds of middle-aged women with shopping bags and young women with too much makeup and metallic colored hair. They forced their way on, shoving, while young men in jackets the shimmering blue and green of dragonflies waited leaning against the wall.

  So he got on a taptap marked “Dedale” because he knew he couldn’t hide in a neighborhood like Mayla’s. What would he do, knock on garage doors until someone like Mrs. Magritte called the blue and whites? Besides, dedale meant “labyrinth” in French. It had seemed like a good place to hide.

  And here he was.

  He fixed dinner and he and Meph ate. Meph seemed to get a great deal more out of the tile fish than he did. Maybe if he had mustard he could hide some of the fish taste; it wasn’t that he hated fish, he just got so tired of it. Then they watched the vid. Then he got up and did some exercises, calisthenics and isometrics using the door frame and stretching exercises. And then he flopped back on the bed, listless. Doing nothing all day was oddly tiring, but he didn’t feel ready to sleep. Meph was curled up on the pillow. He watched more vid, a movie from Brazil dubbed in English about a man whose wife and lover poisoned him with fugu fish toxin, but the man only went into a coma and his friend the doctor realized and substituted the corpse of an indigent. Most of the movie was about the husband’s revenge. He was supposed to sympathize with the husband but he found everybody in the movie unlikable.

  Eventually the neighbor in number five got home and started dragging the plastic chairs around.

  After that stopped, nothing to do but try to go to sleep.

  The walls bounced the light back at him. They were bluish-green, low-rent lacquer glossy, chill. Maybe if he turned off the light it wouldn’t seem so cold. It was ridiculous for a grown man to sleep with a light on. He settled Meph and turned off the light.

  He lay on his back. The bed was underneath him, he could feel it firm and steady. There was no light except a faint line around the curtains in the window because the corridor lights were on all the time. Like the lights around Mayla’s dome. It was so dark he couldn’t see the white of the sheets. He concentrated on the bed. He would build the room in his mind, then he would not feel as if he were drifting. A frame, a mattress that would only get warm on the left side and in one patch in the upper right corner. The cat asleep under the blanket against his waist. On his right. Very important to be oriented. He wondered which direction he was lying in, he knew north from south when he was driving on the belt. The belt was a circle around the first level of the city, the only level of Julia aboveground, and Julia was mostly inscribed within it except for a couple of arms thrown out like the part that Mayla’s house had been in. He tried to orient this street within that circle but he didn’t know how it was. He should be able to remember the bus route, orient that way. In his head he could construct the route of the first bus he’d taken, from Mayla’s house to the city. Then he’d cleaned out his account and taken another bus, a 1 Center St. to 6 Sphinx Rd., a bus from
the first level to the sixth level. But he couldn’t remember the whole trip, couldn’t get all the turns. Lying in bed he didn’t know if his head was pointed north or east, south or west. He could feel his heart pounding. Why should it matter that he didn’t know if his head was pointed north or south or east or west? People went their whole lives not knowing which direction they were lying when they slept. (His heart was pounding anyway. Foolish heart, there was nothing to be afraid of here. He felt so disoriented.)

  Forget it. The bed was parallel to the road. The road was to the right. He was lying in bed on his back. The cat was on his right side. Even though he couldn’t see it, the vid was at his feet. His feet were pointing at twelve o’clock. The door was about two meters away at about two o’clock. The sink, etc., was at his left, at nine o’clock, the bureau with the blue metal lamp on it was at eleven o’clock. And the other blue metal lamp was on his right, on the bedside table.

  At ten o’clock was the door to the bath. Hold it in his head, hold the room. Cup it there. Even if it was not visible it was looming, solid, surrounding him. Now he knew where he was, relative to the room. Relative position was the best anyone could ever do anyway. He had studied science, he knew that. Absolute position was a myth. Heisenberg. The Uncertainty Principle. What was his spin?

  He took a deep breath to try and calm himself. It was the dark. Stupid for a grown man to be afraid of the dark. Orient himself. The ceiling above him was dark. Above that, the fifth level and the fourth, and so on, all the way up to the ocean. And then two hundred meters of saltwater, then warm air, and stars, and he imagined a big silver moon. Closing his eyes he found it easier to imagine that than the room. His bed floating on a warm ocean. Ursa Minor, Ursa Major, Cassiopeia, Orion, Draco, the Pleiades.…

  Could they see Draco this far south? Ursa Minor? They weren’t far enough south for the Southern Cross, they were north of the equator.