by Daniel Mason
Suddenly, she was exhausted and very cold. She found a sweater among a stack of clothes and went to lie on her stomach with her head on her arms. The room smelled of bleach and rusty water. The sheets were rough with lint and printed with ranks of identical laughing cartoon mice playing toy drums. She stared at the mice and then pulled the neckline of her dress up over her nose. It smelled of dust and of herself.
She slept through the night and didn’t dream. When she awoke, the room was warm and her head ached. An incision of light rimmed the door. Runs in the curtain cast dashes of sun across her body. Beneath the sweater, her dress was moist with sweat.
In the washroom, she found a large plastic tub of cold water and a floating bowl. She filled the washbasin. Her dress billowed when she plunged it in and the water grew silty with the dust. She scrubbed until the soap made pillows of foam. Thin trickles ran down her belly and suds settled in her hair. The air filled with bubbles, sour on her tongue.
When she wrung out her dress, her forearms trembled. She poured the rest of the water over herself and washed with a cracked piece of soap.
She wrapped herself in a worn towel from the line and went to sit on the edge of the bed. She set the soles of her feet uneasily on the floor. In Saint Michael, everyone talked of wanting a cement floor, but here it seemed cold and hard, not meant for walking. It disoriented her; there were no paths burnished in its surface, no bloom of dust to say how long it had been since a person came through. She thought how the floor at home thumped when she swung out of a hammock, how it breathed, how she could put her face to it and feel the cold coming off, how it stained her feet and made the room smell of earth. She wondered, Why am I thinking so much about the floor when there are important things to be done? She rolled her toes: a dead sound.
She searched her bag for clean clothes. There were two other cotton dresses, a pair of socks, some underpants, hair clips and a worn toothbrush, the laminated Saint George prayer card, the fragment of wood, a lice comb. She had folded a small rosary bracelet from her mother in a scrap of paper. Now the dust left a rubbing on the paper, like the phantom of a tiny worm.
One of the dresses was eggshell blue, with a white frill sewn onto the collar. The second was once red, now cotton-candy pink. She drank all the water from the two cane liquor bottles and ate the manioc flour. Her stomach gurgled. Immediately she was hungry again. She went to the icebox, but it was warm and empty except for a bottle of stale-smelling water. She drank it anyway.
In the bag she found a photo of her family. She sat with it on the bed. It was their most recent one, and her parents didn’t know she had taken it to the south. Before their house in Saint Michael, everyone stared solemnly at the camera, except Isaias, his head turned, his eyes intent on something in the road. He wore a shirt buttoned to the top and loose slacks held by a belt. His feet were bare. Isabel was wearing the pink dress when it was still red. Her face was round; they must have made the photo before the hunger passed through. She held her brother’s hand, and her mother’s arm linked his elbow. Sometimes when she looked at the photo she thought he was smiling, but not now.
She imagined Isaias in the same room the day he arrived. He would have gone out and into the city—he wouldn’t have stayed inside and waited like a child. Why isn’t he here for me? she thought angrily. If he was working, why at least wasn’t there a note, anything? The room was empty of him. He hadn’t been there for a long time. Then she scolded herself: But I don’t know he isn’t here, I don’t know the city, this isn’t like home. In the north, it was easy to look for someone’s presence; dust gathered quickly and smells were everywhere. She knew when a hammock had last been slept in by the stretch in the cotton, the presence of dried insects in its concavity, whether grit had settled on the hammock hook and eyehole. By the moisture in the surface of the cornmeal or the gleam on a mango pit, she knew when someone had last eaten. She could pinch the hanging clothes to see how stiff they were, look for faint changes in the color of the dirt outside to judge when someone had washed, smell the air by the latrine, look on the clothesline for dust that settled in dashes or at the trails for fresh-broken fragments of twigs. Then there was something else she didn’t have words for: like ripples, or an echo, or a shadow that remains, like the lingering presence of someone who has already left, the thin line of smoke rising from a candle that’s just been blown out.
She had none of this now. The position of the chairs was unfamiliar, the scent of bleach too strong. She found long hairs on the pillow, but the sheets smelled only of soap when she pressed her nose into them.
She could see passing shadows in the rim of light around the door. She wanted to go outside, but she was afraid. She didn’t understand the words the boy had used, the real thing. She had never seen anyone as fat as Junior. At home, fat men were landowners or lenders and to be avoided. There is no fat man who didn’t make another man thin, her uncle used to say.
From the window, she could see a group of men drinking outside Junior’s store. She thought of her father, and wondered how her mother would care for him alone. She dragged one of the chairs against the door.
She curled up on the bed. She heard a car roar up the hill, then music. It was unfamiliar, loud and fast. From the house next door, she could hear an argument. ‘You will be the end of me,’ a woman shouted. ‘I work like an animal and you do this to me.’ She heard a door slam.
Later, she could smell cooking. It was so rich that her mouth watered and she felt her stomach contract. She didn’t get up. It was tongue hunger, not body hunger, and she knew she could wait. She stayed curled up and watched the small plastic clock. She found its rhythm comforting, and placed it near her ear. She imagined it counting down until someone came. Later, she rose and searched again for signs of Isaias but found only one of his shirts and a pair of pants folded on the wire shelf. There was no dust to say how long ago they had been left there. In one of the pockets was a scrap of paper that read PATRICIA M / APT 22 / VILA CAPRI TOWER / PRESIDENT KENNEDY. She had never heard the woman’s name before. She folded the piece of paper and put it back in his pants. She watched the door and waited.
Slowly the room went dark. Isabel must have slept, because she opened her eyes to find her cousin sitting next to her in a nightgown, running the back of her finger over the welt on Isabel’s cheek. ‘How did this happen?’ she asked, and Isabel struggled to sit up. Half asleep, she wrapped her arms around Manuela’s waist.
Her cousin stroked her hair and gently laid her back down. ‘Sleep,’ she said, leaning over to kiss her cheek, and Isabel curled toward her and slept again.
It was nearly midday when Isabel awoke with the sense that she was falling. She didn’t remember her dream, only the feeling of being back on the flatbed. Her fists were clenched, her eyes pinched tight, her heart pounding. She had thrown off her sheets. She lay still, breathing deeply until she calmed.
In the distance, she could hear a jingling like bells on a passing cart, barking, shouts. The air was thick with the smell of warm cornmeal.
A fly tickled her arm.
She squinted into the room. She could see her open bag on the floor, an unfamiliar pair of loafers set neatly by the door, the saint icons dust-gilded in the slanting light. Although she had been in the city for more than the full cycle of a day, she felt as if she were waking for the first time.
A few paces away, Manuela was sitting at the table, rocking a small hammock strung between the bed and the wall. She sat with her back to Isabel, her shoulders slouched, her legs set sturdily apart. Isabel wanted to jump up and embrace her. But against the light, her arms seemed heavy, her waist thick, her posture that of someone much older than the young woman Isabel remembered. She was seized with the fear that somewhere an error had been made: it was the wrong neighborhood, the wrong Junior, the wrong Manuela, waiting for another Isabel. She shut her eyes again and the fear passed.
At last, she pushed herself up and scooted uncertainly to the edge of the bed. Hearing her sti
rring, Manuela came to sit with her. ‘How long has it been?’ Manuela asked, touching Isabel’s face. ‘How many years? How many? You were little then.’ Isabel blinked as if to answer. She stared. Her cousin looked the same, she thought, relieved: her worried eyes set deep and close together, the color of a leaf beginning to brown. Her hair, kerchiefed, seemed to have darkened, her skin to have paled. Gone separate ways, Isabel thought.
Manuela stroked her hair. ‘When was the last time we were together?’
‘I was ten. Now I’m fourteen.’
‘I remember,’ said her cousin. ‘Your face was round. A little cherub’s face.’ She brushed Isabel’s hair over her ears, studying her. ‘Isabel,’ she said suddenly, ‘is everyone thin like you? Are my sisters thin like you? You aren’t sick, are you? You didn’t get sick on the way down?’
Isabel looked away. ‘I’m not sick.’
Manuela pressed on. ‘You know I couldn’t meet you, I can’t leave work during the week. But it wasn’t hard to find the bus from the station, right?’
The flatbed didn’t go to the station! Isabel wanted to say. But she shook her head. ‘It was easy.’
Manuela stood and brought the baby from the hammock. He was soft and pale, with a serious old man’s face like the Jesus babies in the religious icons. For the first time in days, Isabel smiled without trying. ‘He’s beautiful!’ she said. ‘Strong,’ said Manuela. ‘Maybe he isn’t as big as some of the others, but he has such a strong grip. Look!’ Isabel laughed. She brushed at his hair with her fingers. Manuela passed him to her and she rocked him and nuzzled her nose into the softness of his neck. The weight comforted her. She kissed his arms and smelled his hair. ‘His name is Hugo,’ said Manuela. ‘His father, Leo, chose it. He’s six months old. Feel his grip! Can you believe it? You should tell everyone at home, because they think I am lying. They’ve never seen such a strong baby.’ When he grasped at Isabel’s mouth, she bit his hand lightly. She put her lips to his belly and hummed.
At last, he began to cry. Manuela took him to the table, where he drank greedily from his bottle.
Isabel watched her. She remembered her cousin as a quiet, serious young woman who joined the men in the cane fields. From a distance, wrapped in thick clothes, she looked like one of them, but she took her lunches in the fields alone. She was never one of the women who the younger girls aspired to be. At the festivals, she preferred long skirts even as the coastal fashions began to make their way into the interior. Only sometimes at the dances did Isabel see her sway, slightly, before catching herself and looking about with an embarrassed smile. She wasn’t beautiful. Cane takes everything delicate out of you, they used to say. They said her ears had been pierced when she was a child, but she never wore jewelry. She had been married once, to a mechanic from Prince Leopold, who had left her.
Sometimes during the harvest she worked in one of the smaller mills, turning the warm cane as it boiled down. In Isabel’s earliest memories, she smelled sweetly of the paste. It got in her hair and dried to brown crisps, which she sucked on instead of washing out. It seemed, then, to Isabel, her cousin’s only acquiescence to pleasure.
‘So,’ said Manuela suddenly, but for a long time it was all she said. When she began again, her voice had hardened. ‘Isa, what’s it like?’
‘What’s what like?’
‘The drought. I don’t know what to believe over the phone. But I’ve heard stories and I’ve seen the papers. Is it as bad as they say?’
As bad as they say? Isabel paused, confused by the question. She looked away. How long has it been since you went hungry?
‘Isabel?’
What can I answer? she thought. That someone in our own village stole our chicken? That we mixed earth into the beans? That I had dreams of eating melon?
‘They are digging up the trees,’ she said at last.
Then, strangely, she laughed a little.
The creases in Manuela’s forehead deepened. ‘I’ve been sending money,’ she said. ‘Every time I know of someone going back I send a package. You get them, right? People think it’s easy here, but it isn’t.’ She stopped. ‘I’ve been sending what I can.’
They both grew quiet. The sound of the baby drinking seemed very loud. Where is Isaias? Isabel wanted to ask, but her cousin stood and placed Hugo in the hammock. ‘You must be hungry,’ she said. She left the table and returned with a warm pot of cornmeal. ‘Usually I have better food, a stew, even meat,’ she said. ‘But not now. Not for a little while, anyway.’
Hunching over her bowl, Isabel ate quickly and silently. She took heaping spoonfuls. Grains of meal flecked her lips, and she didn’t bother to wipe them until the bowl was empty. Her cousin served her again, the spoon clanging as it scraped the inside of the pot.
‘Look at you. When did you last have a real meal?’
‘On the flatbed,’ Isabel lied. They both were quiet. Isabel ate a third bowl. When she finished, she asked, ‘Where is Isaias?’
Manuela shrugged. ‘Off playing somewhere. He’ll be here soon. He’s always away.’
In the afternoon, she took Isabel outside. They climbed the road past Junior’s store. ‘Here’s my girl,’ he said. Manuela smiled but didn’t stop. The road rose sharply. It was rutted and narrow, and smaller streets dove off between brick walls. A little boy bounded past, dragging a kite of a torn plastic bag on a cross of sticks. Isabel felt a prickle of memory. She had been in these streets before, in the same heavy light, in the smell of people and crowding. I am like a baby again, back in the camps, she thought, but the memory was uncertain.
At her side, Manuela said, ‘There is no reason for you to go into any of these alleys. The phone is outside Junior’s store. Some things you can buy from Junior, and there’s a market down the road.’ A pair of men stopped talking and watched her pass. ‘Don’t stare,’ said Manuela, pulling her on. ‘I’m not staring,’ Isabel protested, but Manuela didn’t release her arm. ‘Why would you lie when I can see you? You’re not a little kid in the square anymore. It means something different, here.’
Sloping steps were cut into the road, and on the steeper climbs, clapboard houses clung to cupped hollows in the mountain. A jacaranda tilted incongruously at the edge of the shanties. The sky was crossed with laundry strings, and above the doorways birds cried from little wooden cages. At the edge of the road, flies gathered around something gray, twisted, bristled. Isabel couldn’t recognize what it was. Around her, she smelled the sweetness of rotting earth and other people.
As they walked, Manuela began again: ‘This is how it will be. On Monday, I get up at four, so I get the bus at five. It takes two and a half hours for me to get to my boss’s house. I come home on Friday, usually around midnight. If they have a dinner party Friday, I come home on Saturday morning. On Saturday, I spend the day with the baby, unless they have a dinner party Saturday. On Sunday we go to church. I go to Our Lady of the Rosary in the Center. You will come. At least for now, before I find you a job for the weekends.’
At the top, Isabel watched the shanties continue over the hills to the edge of a green forest. A group of boys chased a deflated ball over a clearing. Manuela said, ‘This used to be woods. When I arrived, none of this was here.’ She took Isabel’s arm and turned her. Isabel could see Junior’s store, the distant road she had arrived on, a passing bus. Beyond the road, houses rose up another slope like haphazardly stacked boxes. Beyond them, a crest of towers shimmered in the far distance. ‘It keeps going,’ said her cousin. ‘On the other side of those towers, too. I work on the other side of those towers. Even then it doesn’t stop.’
They walked down to the main road. Manuela showed her a river, a water pump, the power lines where the settlement pulled its electricity. The river came from the mountains, she said, ‘So it’s clean. Not to drink—don’t even think of drinking—but you can use it for washing clothes.’ At the well, water spurted from the faucet in uncertain hiccups, but it was clear. The power lines were a tangle of wires. On some nights, she s
aid, the power companies came and cut them down.
At an empty lot filled with garbage, she said, ‘Look at this filth. Some people want to be poor forever. Go to the rich neighborhoods and you won’t see them throw their garbage where they live.’
‘Yes,’ said Isabel, her eyes drifting along the scattered mounds of trash, no longer listening.
‘Of course, yes,’ said Manuela. ‘Except your brother—who thinks he’s smart—said, “No, the rich only throw their garbage where we live.” That kind of thinking isn’t smart at all. That kind of thinking will get you nowhere.’
‘Yes,’ said Isabel again, now overwhelmed by the abundance of the place, by the fragments of colored glass, the sprigs of mint growing up between the weeds, the tires, the discarded metal. There was a car door, stripped of most of its paint but otherwise untouched. Her thoughts crystallized around the door. At home, she thought, they would have fashioned it into knives and toys, nails, grave markers, oil lamps, wind chimes, costumes, saints.
At her foot glittered a doll’s wand. She bent to take it, but Manuela grabbed her shoulder. ‘That’s filth. You are not a scavenger.’
She waved to an old woman dressed in mourning. ‘God bless you, Luisa,’ she said, and the old woman nodded. She had a morning glory in her hair and stopped every few feet to catch her breath.
Later, they called Saint Michael from the phone outside Junior’s store. It took four tries for the line to connect. Manuela spoke until they needed a second token. She asked Isabel’s mother to call back. Isabel answered. Loud music was playing on the hill, and she pressed her palm to her ear. ‘It’s me, it’s Isabel!’ ‘What is it like?’ asked her mother. ‘Manuela has a house. The baby is beautiful. His eyes are so bright, his hair is soft. He eats all the time. He has such a strong cry. He is so strong.’
There was a break in the music. She thought she could hear wind whistling over the receiver in Saint Michael. Isabel wanted to say Isaias isn’t here yet, but she knew that her mother understood this already in her silence. She imagined her standing in the square in her dark dress, holding the phone with both of her hands. She turned away from Manuela. ‘How long will I stay here?’ she whispered.