The Shape of Bones

by Daniel Galera

  Isabela’s Fifteenth Birthday Party

  A few minutes to four that Saturday morning, Hermano and Bonobo were walking quickly down the pavement of Shade Street towards Serraria Road, side by side. Hermano, dressed in baggy dark-blue jeans, his dad’s brown leather shoes and a salmon-coloured polo shirt, had four fingers of each hand wedged in his pockets with his thumbs hanging out. Bonobo was wearing a tragicomic combination of M2000 Propulsion trainers with pyramidal shock absorption, black Tactel trousers, a beaten-up tweed sports jacket over a white Suicidal Tendencies T-shirt, and a grubby orange cap on his shaved head. They made no noise except for the soles of their shoes on the wet, sandy pavement. A light rain had been falling until about half an hour earlier. Block after block, the street transformed, with gentle curves this way and that and a slope that grew progressively steeper. An abundance of weeds pushed up through cracks in the cobblestones. The street seemed to be slowly winding its way into the depths of a forest perfumed by imposing cedars, which stood, some sixty feet tall, on both sides. Water slid down their viscous black trunks, which were covered in parasitic tufts of mistletoe, and the treetops grew higher and denser, knitting together until they formed a dome of branches and leaves overhead.

  Bonobo took a packet of cigarettes out of his pocket, pulled one out and accidentally dropped it. Hermano stopped as Bonobo stooped to pick it up. It was a little wet, but he put it in his mouth and lit it anyway. For an instant they looked at each other as if trying to remember something they wanted to say, but said nothing. Bonobo held out the packet to Hermano.

  ‘No, thanks.’

  At each new intersection there was at least one Umbanda offering. There were dead black chickens, bottles of cachaça, bowls of popcorn, snuffed-out candles, flowers and red ribbons, all strewn about and made soggy by the rain. At the last intersection before Serraria Road, Bonobo went over to an offering, took a bottle of 7 Campos de Piracicaba cachaça, and checked to see if the lid was still sealed. He returned to the pavement with the bottle and kept walking beside Hermano. Bonobo’s lips were split and swollen, the top one resembling a disgusting chunk of roast sausage. The filter of the cigarette dangling from his mouth became tinged with red. He opened the bottle, took the cigarette out of his mouth and had a swig. He pointed the bottle at Hermano, who refused again, not only because he was tenaciously abstinent, but also because he felt that drinking stolen booze from a black-magic offering wasn’t something you should do without batting an eyelid, no matter how much of an unbeliever you were. He waited for Bonobo to call him a faggot or the like, but the silence continued. They kept walking with their heads down and eyes glued to the pavement, Hermano with his enormous hands in his pockets, Bonobo puffing on his cigarette between swigs of the cachaça he’d stolen from the orixás. The dome of organic matter began to thin out as they approached the corner of Serraria Road, once again exposing the black sky devoid of clouds and stars. A few cars sped along the shiny tarmac – drunk drivers trying to get home as quickly as possible to avoid falling asleep at the wheel. To Hermano, just walking home at that hour, that damp, dismal night, made him feel vaguely in the wrong. Bonobo didn’t seem to have any recollection of the incident in the football match during the summer break. Hermano didn’t mention it and the corners of his mouth curved into a sad smile when he thought about how differently it had affected each of them. He was alert to every sound and movement made by Bonobo, who was slowly ceasing to be a threat, an adversary. They were just walking along in the middle of the night and that was it. Hermano was secretly elated by his improbable companion. The night was ending well.

  ‘What a shit party,’ said Bonobo, breaking the silence.

  ‘Tell me ’bout it.’

  Isabela’s fifteenth birthday party had mobilized Esplanada’s youth. It had been held at the Recanto Espanhol Restaurant, in Guarujá, the next neighbourhood over. The words SMART CASUAL ATTIRE on the invitation had given rise to considerable debate and many jokes among the male guests in the week leading up to it, but threats to show up in flip-flops and tank tops hadn’t been acted on, and most had managed to rustle up at least a blazer and tie so as not to offend the hosts.

  From 9 p.m., presents and flowers began piling up on a table by the door while the soundtrack of the soap opera Vamp played over the sound system. Half of the tables had been removed, dividing the restaurant into two, an area for dining and another for dancing. The cream used in the chicken fricassée had clearly been watered down, the potato straws were gone in about three minutes, the onion in the salad had had all the flavour scalded out of it, and the white rice was, well, white rice. The potato salad, at least, was abundant and tasty, and the grape sagu for dessert wasn’t half bad, with just the right hint of wine. The girls strutted around in lipstick and tight dresses, gyrating and waving their arms to the sound of Lenny Kravitz, retreating to the edge of the dance floor during a Chris Isaak ballad, chewing their nails without a worry about their nail polish and gossiping in whispers. After dinner a video montage of scenes from Isabela’s childhood was projected on to a wall. The photos and small clips of home videos were captioned: ‘Fourth birthday party – 1980’ (a children’s party with aunties in ‘mum’ shorts, uncles in moustaches and very short nylon shorts, and a party entertainer dressed as a clown hugging a smiling mini-Isabela), ‘Summer in Passo de Torres – 1982’ (little Isabela in a bathing suit standing between tents on a campsite holding a supposedly freshly caught kingfish), ‘Silver Medal in Swimming at the Professor Gaúcho Club – 1988’ (in a bathing suit on the podium, goggle-marks around her eyes, unsure what to do with the arms and legs that had grown too quickly), ‘Elementary School Graduation – 1990’ (scroll, black gown, among friends), etc. After each section of the video, there was applause, whistling and wisecracks. Afterwards, Isabela danced a waltz with her father. Her heavy foundation ran down her face as she perspired, her light-blue satin dress clung to her plump body, and Uruguay nudged the others at his table and whispered, ‘I got it on with her.’ Modest amounts of beer were served in plastic cups by three waiters. Hermano drank one soft drink after another and started making disgusting spit bubbles every time the guy in black with the ponytail and VHS camera on his shoulder passed their table. This on-camera rebellion was part of a pact between him, Bricky, Pellet, Uruguay, the Joker and others, designed to sabotage the family video of the party with a kind of poetic terrorism. Uruguay and the Joker were pretending to be a couple, holding hands and stroking each other’s faces whenever the video-maker’s lens came near them, while Bricky did his famous imitation of Dr Strangelove, his left hand trying to stop his right arm from making the Nazi salute, shouting ‘Heil Hitler!’, ‘Lufthansa!’, ‘Volkswagen!’ and other senseless things that sounded German. Behind their mocking behaviour and references to the tackiness of the ceremony, however, they were trying to hide the fact that they were a little moved, secretly enjoying an authentic rite of passage, which surfaced in brief collective silences. Between one joke and another, Bricky drifted off into a reverie. Sitting beside him, Hermano saw in his friend’s eyes the strange recognition that time was already passing.

  By eleven o’clock, most of the half-drunk adults and extended family had gone home or retired to quieter parts of the restaurant. Only Isabela’s mother, a woman with indigenous features and long, straight black hair like her daughter’s, dressed in a pink skirt suit with purl edges, was still circulating among the birthday girl’s friends, who were proving to be rather precocious and insatiable drinkers – inhabitants of a reality that was increasingly unfathomable to her. She finally plonked herself down at a table in the part of the restaurant where dinner had been served, now a dark cemetery of empty tables on which cream-streaked plates, plastic cups with nibbled edges, dying candles capsizing in bowls of water, and messy tablecloths lay like dead flowers on graves. She lit a cigarette, crossed her legs, folded her arms with the cigarette-holding hand just beneath her face and sat there in the most feminine of poses, exhaling smoke and staring
with a vaguely perplexed expression at the other half of the room, where some thirty teenagers including her daughter were dancing to absurdly aggressive-sounding music, not in pairs, but alone, transformed into robotic silhouettes by the strobe lights.

  Amidst the jumping crowd, one head projected itself above the others, shaking and turning around on an impossible axis. With his eyes closed, banging into shoulders, elbows, chests and hips, stepping on feet and being stepped on in turn, Hermano could taste the lack of oxygen in his throat. The pleasure of wasting energy was the redemption, his reward for enduring a series of conversations and rituals with a spirit of tolerance. Between one song and the next, a brief pause to let sweat drip, relieve dizziness, apologize for a violent elbowing that wasn’t intended to hurt, exchange animal-like cries and goofy smiles. Then more walls of distortion over spectres of melody, kick drums pummelled at the speed of light by double pedals, knees and necks waltzing with the magnificent brutality of the music. He was dancing, and loved everyone who was dancing with him. The climax of all that staged aggressiveness was an extreme kind of tenderness. All he had to do was jump higher and higher, and shake his head and arms ever more explosively, until he completely lost his senses, the abolition of all thought, bodies united by exhaustion, sheer happiness, heart failure.

  Until ‘Patience’ began to play. Hermano backed away, disgusted. The girls who had kept their distance until now flocked to the dance floor. Pairs formed, a few people staggered about alone, yet others gave up dancing and went for a drink outside, where the gusts of cold wind would soon give way to light rain. Hermano sat on a chair beside a nearby table. Instead of the peace of endorphins, the only residue of his effort was sweat and tiredness. His neck insisted on drooping forward. Isabela had her arms wrapped around Uruguay, who looked like he was stooped over her, hands attached to her backside, trying to keep as much of their bodies in direct contact as possible. They turned on the dance floor with excruciating slowness. When Uruguay’s face became visible, Hermano saw his friend’s solid jaw resting on Isabela’s trapezius muscle, eyes closed, long hair clinging to the side of his face. At first sight he looked like a man in love, but this impression soon gave way to another, of clumsy, exaggerated effort, as if he were holding Isabela forcefully, so she couldn’t get away, a subtle form of coercion. There was something sinister about it. Between Pellet and Lara, on the other hand, there was a giant space, like a crevasse in a glacier. You couldn’t have said that his right hand was holding her left hand, exactly, as they were barely touching. Pellet was talking non-stop and chubby-cheeked Lara, with her curly blonde hair and green eyes, in a bold little black dress that made her look older and emphasized the contour of her spine, uninterested in the irreversible effects of datura tea on the human psyche, gazed over his shoulder with the stare of a very old person receiving an intramuscular injection in the arm at a public health clinic, the ultimate empty stare. The Joker and Chrome Black were standing in the middle of the dance floor, whispering. The topic of their conversation was obviously Naiara and Corina, who were making their way around the dance floor in a discreet search for male company. Corina was one of the neighbourhood girls who was already sexually active. The Joker was staring at the two of them with a serious expression, lips pressed together in deep thought, then suddenly he turned to his companion, flashed his trademark grin and mumbled something that made Chrome Black nod in agreement. Nevertheless, they showed no sign of leaving the dance floor to talk to the girls or do anything else. Bricky was dancing with a girl from another neighbourhood, perhaps one of Isabela’s school friends. Suddenly she said something in his ear and left brusquely, forcing him to join Chrome Black and the Joker. For a few minutes, Hermano tried to fathom why they were over there and he was here, sitting on a chair. He couldn’t. Then he tried to decide whether he was satisfied or unsatisfied with the fact that he was sitting on the chair, far from the dance floor. He couldn’t make up his mind. Maybe he wanted to get up and go over to the others. Maybe that was what he should do, even if he didn’t want to. Maybe both things were false. Maybe he should have been at home. Maybe he should go home right now, change out of his jeans and into a pair of shorts, grab his Walkman and earphones, get his bike out of the garage and pedal through the night like a madman while listening to Motörhead full blast, until his legs grew weak and his calves cramped up. As he considered the possibility, he wasn’t sure if it was what he really wanted to do, if it was just what he thought he should do, or if it was what he would have liked everyone else to know he had done. Or was it what he would have liked, somehow, to be seen doing? He thought that somewhere in this questioning, or in the actual act of a senseless ride through the night, lay a decisive clue to his identity, the merging point of the person he was, the person he thought he was and the person everyone else saw.