Niyati Keni - Esperanza Street

America said, ‘Naw. This is Joseph. Dante Santos’ boy.’

‘O-oh,’ said Nening. I didn’t like the way she stretched the word out, as if my identity was quite a revelation.

The service was to be at nine o’clock. The congregation started arriving around half past eight but by nine they were still drifting in through the gate, no more than forty of them in total perhaps, and Nening didn’t call for everyone to be silent until about twenty past the hour.

I stood close by America. A girl, not much older than I, came to the front and sang the national anthem in a thin, high voice, first in Tagalog, then in English. The people were silent; some looked about to see who else was present. I looked about too, but America squeezed my hand and I turned back to the girl. Thy banner, dear to all our hearts, its sun and stars all right, never shall its shining feel be dimmed by tyrant mice. I grinned up at America. She gave me a stern look. From all around us came a murmur of approval, scattered claps. The girl slid back into the crowd.

Nening stepped forward again and led the worshippers into a hymn. There were no song sheets or books. The congregation sang ‘Abide with Me’ and ‘Come Holy Ghost’. I didn’t know all the words and joined in intermittently, worrying the whole while that my efforts might not be enough to draw my mother. After the voices had died away, Nening raised her hands for silence again. The worshippers, whispering to stragglers that had joined the group during the singing or fidgeting against the night insects, became still. A clamour arose from the chickens and a barrio dog, unseen and unheard during the singing, was spotted nosing around the hen-coop. A man — I recognised Uncle Bee — stepped forward and chased the dog away. He addressed the dog as sir while he ran it out the gate, which made me giggle. America clicked her tongue at me but even some of the adults had started laughing softly.

When people had subsided again and the chickens were some way to settling, Nening read from the Bible, a short passage about raising the dead, cleansing lepers, casting out demons. She started reciting a prayer. I tried to listen but it was late and her voice and the night air, sweet with flowers and sweat and putrefaction, conspired to make me sleepy. I yawned loudly, but America didn’t notice. I looked up into the faces of the people around me; some were swaying as they prayed, eyes closed, trembling. After a while the voices of the congregation rose and the trembling for some became shaking. Nening called out for the Spirit Protectors to come and to keep away the evil spirits, those that might for their own reasons mean her flock some harm. She called for the Spirit Protectors to speak. The people pushed forward and one or two started to speak in Tagalog, but words that I didn’t understand. I wanted to move forward myself, hear what was being said, but America, her lips still moving in prayer, gripped my shoulder and held me back. Then Nening, in a shrill and urgent voice, called out a name and someone in the congregation answered. One by one she called out more names and someone came forward and laughed or wept or cried out and I waited for the moment when she would call out my mother’s name or mine. It never came.

We didn’t idle in the yard after the service. America knew many of the congregation and she called to them in passing, pausing only to make me recite my thanks and a good night to Nening. The priestess winked at me cheerfully as she said, ‘Your father came to mass here too. Once or twice only. After your mother died.’ I was young and didn’t know how to ask then if my father had found what he came for, or if he too had left disappointed.

I thought about my father at the Espiritistas all the way back to the boarding house. He’d kept his visits there a secret. After my mother died, he’d carried a vigilant look in his eye, as if he’d misplaced something that he might, without warning, come across again at any moment. It had taken a long time for that look finally to leave him and be replaced by a kind of dullness.

America pulled me home quickly. She’d not told Aunt Mary she was taking me to the Espiritistas. I’d worked hard all afternoon to complete my chores and my schoolwork and had assumed that Aunt Mary would have no objection, but I was wrong. She was even less pleased with America for taking me and I didn’t attend an Espiritista service again, though Nening called out in greeting whenever she saw me.

Dub took to staying at the garage later and later, hanging around even after Earl had packed up and gone. I’d see him there as I passed by on my way back to the boarding house with whatever I’d been sent to fetch: candles or torch batteries, shrimp paste and powdered chilli — objects that demarcated the boundaries of my life. He’d wheel his bike out into the centre of the forecourt and polish it carefully, tinkering with it before revving it hard and cruising slowly onto Esperanza for the short ride home. He started strumming on his guitar during his lunch breaks, on a crate on the forecourt, his cap pulled low over his face to keep off the sun.

Whenever I saw him there, I looked up at the balcony of the second-floor apartment opposite and more often than not I caught the curve of her profile as she watered her plant pots or a flash of colour from her dress as she threw open her doors to the early evening air. To anyone else their presence at such times would have seemed nothing other than coincidence, but to me it was as if there were an invisible thread of electricity that ran between them, animating first his hands on the bike engine, then hers on the petals of her bougainvillea. They were utterly aware of each other at those times. Then, one day, I was sent to enquire of Dub whether he was ever going to sit down to dinner with his family again and, as I approached, BabyLu waved to me from her balcony and I waved back and in that instant Dub looked up and followed my gaze to her and there was no reason for him not to wave at her too. She was down on the forecourt within a few minutes.

‘You’re gonna polish that bike away to nothing, Elvis,’ she said.

‘I like things to look good, my lady,’ Dub replied.

‘Shallow, huh?’ she said, leaving Dub chewing on air for an answer. ‘Hey, Joseph,’ she turned to me. ‘I’ve seen you walking around. Are you well?’ She’d remembered my name and I felt my face grow hot. ‘Eddie sent lots of food today and then rang to say he wasn’t coming. You two want to help me eat it? I hate to waste it. Still the village girl at heart.’

‘I should get back,’ I said, looking at Dub.

‘Girl needs a chaperone, Joseph,’ she said. ‘You look like a gentleman, whereas you … ’ she said to Dub. ‘You look like trouble.’

Her apartment surprised me. I’d expected it to be full of new things but the furniture was old and heavy like the narra wood at Aunt Mary’s. She had a dresser and an armoire and a long, dark dining table with six chairs. Every surface was crammed with things: vases with paper flowers, ornaments, glass decanters, stuffed toys and books. A lot of books. I’d imagined a hotel lobby, of the type I’d seen in some of Aunt Mary’s magazines, but the place was more like a museum or maybe a library, and it was clean, no dust anywhere. I leaned in to study some of the titles, my hands clasped behind my back. ‘They’re real ,’ BabyLu pouted, but she was laughing. ‘You can even touch them!’ I picked one up: Thomas Hardy, an English author. Aunt Mary had a few of his books too. ‘I’ve read quite a lot of them now,’ she said. ‘Eddie likes me to be in if he calls.’ She shrugged. ‘You can borrow it if you want.’

Dub moved around the room looking at things. He smiled at a figurine; it was not dissimilar to something his mother might possess. He moved over to an armchair and, lifting a pile of papers from its seat, flopped into it. He looked around for somewhere to place the papers but every nearby surface was full. He looked at the floor, at BabyLu and then at me, the pile in his outstretched arms. I affected not to notice, my eyes on BabyLu. She smiled at me as she turned away and walked into the kitchen. Dub placed the pile precariously on the chair’s armrest. He sat back, studying the objects around him, his hands folded neatly in his lap like a boy waiting outside the headmaster’s office. I eyed the pile of papers for a second or two and then stepped forward to retrieve it. I placed it on the dining table. Dub shot me an uncertain smile. BabyLu walked back into the room with a jug of water. She set it on the dining table, took glasses and plates out of one of the cabinets. ‘It’ll take a few minutes to heat things up,’ she said. ‘I’ll be in the kitchen but I can hear you if you speak up.’