by Daniel Mason
Isabel’s eyes drifted to the word kiss. She read slowly, moving her lips. Marina was panting like a mare, she learned.
Josiane interrupted, ‘Do you always read like that?’
‘Like what?’
‘With your mouth. You don’t have to say the words, you know. You look like my mother when she tries to read.’
Isabel felt herself blushing. ‘Sorry.’
‘Sorry? Sorry for what? Just some people might think you’re simple.’
She applied lipstick with the smell of watermelon, and pursed her lips.
In the afternoon, Isabel began to cough and couldn’t stop. She left the island to wet the top of her shirt in a fountain by the ficus and lifted it over her mouth. Back in the street her breath was moist and cold. She hummed through the wet fabric and tried to dance like Josiane. She gave up. She forced herself not to watch the clock. Her gaze flitted moth-like over the crowds. She occupied herself by trying to imagine the city people in the north: the men in the suits trying to make their way through the thickets, the women getting their pumps stuck in heavy mud at the creek.
Late in the afternoon, she saw a young man with her brother’s gait. It can’t be Isaias, she scolded herself. He’s not here, he’s on the coast. She ran along the island until she saw his face.
She stopped waving and then let the flag hang over her so that it shaded her from the sun. She made it flap gently back and forth over her forehead.
At the end of the day, the man in the van shouted at them from across the street. They retraced the long path through the city. The seats filled with the other flag wavers, their shirts stained and crumpled.
At the office, the man made them wait outside while he spoke on the telephone. He came out only when one of the boys banged on the window. He read their names from a notebook and thumbed bills off a roll. When he read Isabel’s name, he said, ‘I’m docking you half.’
‘Why?’
‘For wearing a mask.’
She stared dumbly. Behind her, Josiane protested, ‘Mask? It was her shirt. It wasn’t a mask!’
‘Same thing. It was a shirt serving as a mask. It’s against the rules.’
Josiane shook her hands at the ceiling. ‘Since when was there a rule against wearing a mask?’
‘It’s part of the rule about shaming the Candidate.’
‘How does a mask shame the Candidate?’
‘He’s the incumbent—it doesn’t reflect well on the cleanliness of the city.’
‘Man! The air doesn’t reflect well on the cleanliness of the city!’
‘Rules are rules, don’t worry, there’s always tomorrow.’ He turned to Isabel. ‘Do you always let your friend speak for you? You shouldn’t hide your pretty mouth.’
The girls took the bus to the New Settlements. On the way, Josiane cursed the foreman. Isabel bit her lip and stared around the bus with horror. ‘Come on,’ said Josiane. ‘Get it out of your system.’ Laughing, Isabel repeated the words. She cursed the Candidate, too. Josiane cursed even louder. Isabel cursed so loud that she almost shouted it. An elderly woman turned with a stare that reminded her of her mother, and she was quiet the rest of the trip home.
The next morning, she wore her good shoes and arrived early to work, hoping to meet her friend, but Josiane arrived just as they were boarding the van. This time, she held Isabel’s hand. They sat at the back and again were the last to descend.
At lunch, Josiane spoke without stopping. ‘You wouldn’t believe it,’ she said, ‘but I just had a baby four months ago.’ She lifted her arms. ‘Not bad, huh? She’s at home with my mother. I had to spend two weeks in the hospital before she was born. I should have spent more time, but the private hospitals wouldn’t take me. Thank God things came out all right, because the baby pitched her tent a bit too close to the door.’
‘What?’
‘Well, that’s my explanation. Something about the sac not setting down in the right place—you’re from the country, so you probably know.’ She put her hand on Isabel’s knee. ‘Of course, I spent a lot of time wondering: How did that happen? Then I figured it out: it’s because I had sex in a hammock. Don’t look so embarrassed! I know what you’re thinking. You’re thinking: in the north everyone has sex in a hammock. Of course! But there the body gets used to putting the baby in the right place, like a sailor learns to walk on a boat. But here, we sleep in beds, and we aren’t used to it, and if you get impulsive like me and insist on doing it in a hammock’—she tapped her fingers against the ground—‘if you haven’t thought through the consequences like I have now, the body doesn’t know where to put the baby.’
‘That sounds complicated,’ said Isabel.
This generated a long series of stories from the hospital, about a girl who gave birth to a clump of grapes, two babies attached at the nose, a baby with a single eye, another who entered the world with skin like a Carnival jester. She stopped talking only to catch her breath.
For lunch, Josiane mixed powdered formula with drops of water until it became a sweet paste. She gave Isabel a taste from a spoon. ‘It’s from an aid center for the poor,’ she said. ‘I told them I had twins.’
A man in a suit came and unfolded a little piece of paper by a pay phone. When Josiane began to talk again about her baby’s birth, he put his hand over the mouthpiece and said, ‘Hey, can you keep it down? Not everyone needs to hear your disgusting story.’
‘Not everyone needs to use the phone next to me,’ she snapped. Isabel flinched, but the man left.
Josiane described a fair in her neighborhood. There was a Ferris wheel and a ride called the White Tornado. ‘I bet you’ve never seen anything like the White Tornado,’ she began, and then she looked up at the clock. ‘No! Just like yesterday. I talk and talk and now we’re late. To be honest, I hate this. Yesterday I made it sound like I didn’t mind because you looked desperate, but now that we’re close friends, I’ll be honest: I’m not very good at this. I’m better at impatience.’
Back on the island she twirled the flag above her head. Once again the cars swarmed. ‘Hey, sweetheart! I like it just like that!’ shouted a man as his car idled at the light, and Josiane stopped and, smiling, flashed him her middle finger.
At the end of the day they collected their pay. Isabel tucked it deep into her pocket, and Josiane took her arm. ‘You don’t have to go home yet, do you? Can you stay with me? I don’t want to go home now.’ She led Isabel to a plaza where a day market was being dismantled. Heavy ropes of tobacco scented the air. ‘Is this what it’s like?’ Josiane asked. ‘What?’ ‘The north. I was so little when I left. But everything they sell in this neighborhood is from the north. They even used to have musicians on the weekends.’
‘Not anymore?’
Josiane shook her head. ‘No, the police chased them away.’
‘All of them?’
‘All of them. Why are you so excited? It’s just music. I have a radio if you want to listen sometime.’
Josiane went to flirt with a clerk in a grocery store and returned with a bag of hard candy. She gave a piece to Isabel. They sat on a bench and watched the store shutters rattle shut. Josiane broke piece after piece of candy in her teeth. She told a story about her aunt from the north, a laughing old woman with bead-wrapped wrists that clattered as she moved. She had moved to the coast, where she had grown fat. She owned a little black mutt who curled into the folds of her skirts. For two years she hadn’t eaten breakfast because a doctor said she suffered from the Sugar and the Blood. She had great pillowed breasts and seemed weightless when she danced. ‘They said she was my favorite aunt. That I would be like her, if I stayed.’
Josiane paused. ‘It doesn’t matter, though. It doesn’t make me sad. One day everyone will have to come. People weren’t meant to live in such a place, my uncle says. It’s not natural.’
‘We’ve always lived there,’ said Isabel.
‘Not always,’ said her friend. ‘You had to come from somewhere. Your people were from somewhe
re before your village. Do you think you just appeared out of nowhere, grew up out of the ground? You think you’re made of dust?’ ‘I didn’t say that.’ ‘Then where did you come from?’ ‘I told you.’ Josiane shook her head. ‘You’re not listening. Think, where did your grandfather come from?’ ‘Same village as me.’ ‘And his father?’ ‘Him, too, I think.’ ‘And his father, what about him?’ Isabel frowned. ‘I don’t know. I think he was born there, too.’ ‘You don’t know anything about him?’ Isabel paused. ‘No. Only that he was the grandfather of my grandfather. And he must have had a grandfather, too.’ Josiane waved her hands in frustration. ‘But if you go back far enough, there was a place without people. That’s the point. That’s what I’m saying. That’s why it’s not natural. It’s well-known.’
She grew quiet. A cat rooted in a pile of husk left by a cane-juice vendor. A paper scavenger ran past, pulling a cart stacked with cardboard. A little boy was perched on top. The man swerved through the traffic, took bounding steps and let the cart glide.
Across the street, a girl in a bright pink shirt called.
‘Hey!’ Josiane’s smile returned. She ran and embraced her. When Isabel approached, she said, ‘This is Isabel. I told you about her. My newest friend, from way back in the middle of nowhere.’
The girl’s stare made Isabel feel small again. ‘Hey, Miss Nowhere,’ she said, and laughed.
Isabel sat next to them and listened as they talked. The girl said that she’d found a toad with its eyelids sewn shut with green silk thread. ‘It’s a spell to cuckold a man, of course,’ said Josiane. ‘My sister knows it.’
The girl nodded thoughtfully. ‘Do you know spells for men?’ she asked Isabel.
‘Look at her,’ Josiane interrupted. ‘She’s a kid. She just got here.’
Isabel shrugged. ‘I’ve heard of people doing that, but they didn’t in my village. We only have bull toads, and I would never touch them. Only really hungry people would touch them.’ She added, ‘They belong to the devil.’
‘We’re talking about spells for men,’ said Josiane. She turned to the girl. ‘She doesn’t know. She’s very innocent.’
‘Why are you protecting her?’ asked the girl. ‘I knew all about men when I got here.’
They stayed with the girl until dark. Sometimes Isabel listened. Other times she watched the street, staring at the faces in the crowds that passed. After a while, the girls began to talk about the soap operas. Isabel found herself transfixed by a description of a beautiful maid called Cindy. ‘She’s really a maid?’ she asked. ‘Yes,’ said the girl. ‘She’s from the interior like you. But she’s tall, and her skin is fair. She combs her hair in the curly way. She is so lovely.’ Isabel didn’t know what to say. She stretched her legs so the girl could see her shoes, but the girl said nothing. The girl left.
On the bus to the Settlements, Josiane asked, ‘Who do you live with?’
‘My cousin,’ Isabel said. Then she added, carefully, ‘And my brother, but he hasn’t come home.’
‘Hasn’t come home?’ Josiane frowned. ‘What’s that mean, hasn’t come home?’
‘He was here, but when I arrived he was gone. Almost two months now.’
‘Just disappeared? Have you been to the police?’
Isabel shook her head. ‘We don’t go to the police where I’m from.’
‘Neither do we. But the police for disappeared people are a different story. Some of them, at least. I went once, so I know. When my boyfriend, my ex-boyfriend, the father of my baby, didn’t come around, I went to the station in the New Settlements and they told me to go to the Center, where they specialize in missing people.’ She paused. ‘That’s where I learned that most people who disappear want to be disappeared, if you know what I’m saying. That’s the worst part, almost worse than hearing something bad.’
Isabel didn’t know how to answer. Suddenly, she closed her eyes and pressed her face against the cold of the handrail. ‘Hey, hey, didn’t mean to upset you,’ said Josiane. She leaned forward and whispered, ‘There’s a happy ending. I revenged myself. I got his sister to dip a strip of my nightgown into his coffee. So he came back, but I didn’t take him.’ Isabel didn’t look up. ‘Hey, I’m just trying to cheer you up,’ said Josiane. ‘Just trying to make you laugh. You’ll find him, I promise. Does he have any friends? Do you know anyone he worked for? Did he leave anything?’
Isabel wiped her eyes with her palm. ‘I looked. When I came I looked in the house. Maybe not everywhere. But I didn’t think he was gone.’ She felt suddenly the need to tell about the flatbed ride to the south, about her first days in the room, waiting. The bus slowed. ‘This is my stop,’ said Josiane, and descended with a kiss on her cheek.
Later that night, Isabel remembered the little scrap of paper she had found on the first day she arrived. She was ashamed she had forgotten it until now, but at the time it had seemed unimportant. She took it from the pants. PATRICIA M / APT 22 / VILA CAPRI TOWER / PRESIDENT KENNEDY.
She showed the paper to her cousin. ‘Well, well,’ said her cousin.
Isabel didn’t understand. ‘What’s wrong?’
‘Nothing’s wrong. But this neighborhood is …’ She shook her head. ‘Maybe he was looking for work.’
‘We could go,’ said Isabel. ‘And ask.’
‘Are you kidding? You can’t just visit a person like that because you have her name on a piece of paper.’
‘Maybe the lady you work for knows her.’
‘My boss? Maybe my boss knows her? You think they are friends because they both have money? Do you know every poor person in the world?’
‘I didn’t say that—’ Isabel began, and in his hammock Hugo began to cry. They both went to him, but Isabel reached him first. Her cousin watched as she rocked him. ‘And what would she know?’ Manuela said. ‘If Isaias was working for her, he would have told us, right?’
Later, Isabel asked, ‘What is she like?’
‘Who?’
‘Your boss. You never say what she’s like. You never say what the people you work for are like.’
‘You are still thinking about going.’
‘No.’
‘Then why are you bothering me with questions like that?’
‘I just wanted to know.’
‘You don’t need to know. She pays me and you eat. That’s enough. Why do you want to know about something that has nothing to do with you?’
The next weekend, when she returned to wave, Isabel showed the note to Josiane. Her friend whistled. ‘What was he doing there?’ It was lunchtime, and they were sitting on the sidewalk, beneath the ficus.
Isabel shrugged. ‘I just found it.’
‘See? I told you to look.’ Josiane bit her lip and peered at the piece of paper again. ‘Did you go and ask?’
Isabel turned away.
‘What is it?’ asked Josiane. ‘I don’t understand you. You won’t go to the police, and now you’re scared.’
‘I’m not scared,’ Isabel protested. ‘I can’t just go to someone’s house because I have their name on a piece of paper.’
‘No? There’s a law about that?’ Josiane tugged angrily at a weed that sprouted through the sidewalk. ‘I know what you’re thinking. You’re thinking that because she lives in a neighborhood like that, she’s above you. She’s nothing. She’s like this—’ She held up her little finger. ‘If it was me, I’d be shaking her gates. I’d stand outside and scream until they took me away. Your problem is that you’re too meek. My relatives in the north are like you. Waiting people. You probably think the answer will come to you in a dream. You think waiting will solve everything. You think praying will solve everything. Maybe it would if you were rich. If you were rich, your brother would be in the papers. Isabel’s brother missing! they would say. Top news! But you’re not. You’re nothing to them. You could die and they’d walk right over your body.’
Isabel dug her fingers around a pavement stone.
Josiane said, ‘You don’t have enough
hate in you. When you hate them, you won’t say such stupid things.’
‘I never met anyone like that,’ said Isabel, weakly. ‘I wouldn’t know which one to hate.’
‘Not which one. All. They don’t care. Don’t you understand? You can get skinny watching others eat. You’ll see. Being hungry and watching someone else eat is a lot worse than just being hungry.’
‘I don’t know,’ said Isabel. ‘I’ve seen people eat when I was hungry.’
‘She’s nothing.’
‘I don’t know,’ said Isabel again, and they returned to wave.
Back in New Eden, Isabel listened to the washerwomen’s gossip. She remembered that the daughter of one of the women was a maid in a wealthy district. ‘What is her boss like?’ she asked. ‘Her boss?’ the woman answered. ‘She paid for my grandson to go to school. She paid our hospital bills. She buys us bus tickets when we need to go home.’ She swirled a shirt through the water. ‘Why do you want to know? You want to be a maid? Because you have to remember, they’re not all like that. Long ago, my boss burned me because her husband liked to put his hand up my skirt. She knocked over a pot of boiling water.’ She lifted her hand to show a scar. ‘She said it was an accident, but I knew.’
In the quiet of her room, Isabel sat and stared at the letters of Isaias’s note. The ink ran dry at the c of Patricia, and the n’s in Kennedy reminded her of distant birds. She waited for a dream to tell her what to do. She listened to the radio. They played old country songs and ran advertisements for bus tickets to the north, sold in installments. One afternoon, they played a song by a famous music star, a fiddler whose photo her brother carried in his pocket. She watched Hugo bob his head with the music.
When the song stopped, Isabel wiped tears away with the neckline of her shirt. She could hear her father scolding: You do not come from crying people. She took the baby outside. What is it, she asked herself, that is making me so afraid?
The next morning, she took a bus to the Center, where she changed for another. She wore her yellow dress and carried Hugo in his sling, in a clean blanket of napped, printed felt.