Niyati Keni - Esperanza Street

We cruised down Esperanza and took the coast road out towards Little Laguna. Out here, the street lights fell away and the night swamped in towards us, submerging us. The road became coy, revealing itself only by degrees in the headlight. The wind tugged at us and I clung to Dub as BabyLu must have done. He slowed down. I took a long, deep breath. The smell of the sea was sharp and clean. I felt fully awake, exhilarated.

Ahead of us a signboard floated in the darkness, marking the way to Little Laguna Beach, but Dub sped up as we neared it. I wasn’t disappointed; I didn’t want to stop at all. A minute later he slowed again and turned onto a short track that pointed towards the headland. The track was uneven and the bike crawled along, the wheels crunching over sand and shingle. Soon enough we stopped and Dub turned off the engine. He looked over his shoulder at me, waited as I dismounted first. I was still in my shorts, my legs stiff with cold, and I moved slowly, clumsily, back from the bike. Around us the blackness seemed almost solid, as if I might reach out and at any instant encounter its surface. I could barely make out my feet.

Dub left the bike’s headlight on and we followed the path it cut, our shadows sliding ahead of us over the rocks. We climbed a short way over the boulders and, as the light thinned, we stopped, settling ourselves side by side to look out over the sweep of the bay. Down below, the lights of Little Laguna were strung like beads in the darkness and overhead the sky was crammed with stars. It was nothing like the stretch of coast at Esperanza, punctuated by the jetty and lined with shacks.

The wind was playful, capricious. It smoothed Dub’s hair down over his face, gusted it away again. He started talking, raising his voice to be heard over the sounds of wind and sea. He talked about Little Laguna, about the bars, the sunsets, about women in bikinis or in diving suits, about fights he’d seen, about freshly caught fish still struggling in buckets sold to foreigners on the beach at sundown. As he talked, I watched the lights down below. Little Laguna Beach was no more than five kilometres out of town along the coast road, a fifteen-minute ride in a jeepney from the jetty. I’d never been.

He fell silent and stared into the distance, and I knew that he’d brought her here too. ‘She sat right there,’ he said, ‘where you are now. The night I took her for a ride. We were gone maybe three hours. He was supposed to be away on business but when we came back his car was in the street. You know, when she saw it she wanted me to ride on but I wasn’t afraid of him so I pulled up. The car was empty. He was already upstairs. Well, he owns the place, I guess. His driver was on the sidewalk, leaning against the bonnet like John Wayne, rolling his sleeves up like he was getting ready to get his hands dirty. I wanted to go up with her but she wouldn’t let me. When she handed back the helmet, she pushed it into me so hard I almost fell off the sidewalk.’ His hand came to his chest, rubbing it lightly at the remembered sensation. He sat up a little straighter. ‘His driver looked me up and down but he didn’t come over.’

I studied Dub’s profile and I wondered if there was anyone in the neighbourhood who wouldn’t have recognised Aunt Mary’s eldest boy.

‘She didn’t even kiss me goodnight,’ he said.

He had stayed for a while in the street, his bike engine idling. After a few minutes, he heard the sound of arguing from upstairs, but he couldn’t make out what was being said. It must have been loud to filter down into the street, to be audible over the sounds of Prosperidad even at that hour. He turned off the engine and made to get off the bike but the chauffeur pushed himself up slowly from the bonnet and took a step forward. They stayed like that only briefly, for soon enough the raised voices stopped and soft music started up. The chauffeur looked down at his watch and then pointedly at Dub, who started his engine and rode away into the night.

Dub fell quiet. Eventually he said, ‘I need your help, Jo-Jo.’ Jo-Jo . It sounded wrong when he said it. My eyes ran along the line of lights in the distance to where the last of them was swallowed up by blackness. I waited. I hadn’t been so enthralled by the ride to forget that he must have had a reason for bringing me here. ‘She won’t say if it’s mine or his.’ He picked up a pebble and flung it into the darkness. I listened to it clatter away over the boulders. When the sound of it had been lost altogether, Dub said, ‘You know the curandero? He’s a friend of yours, right?’ And I thought, Uncle Bee? What does he have to do with anything?

‘Sure I know him.’

‘If it’s his, she’ll never leave him. And if it’s mine … Joseph, I’m only nineteen.’ I leaned forward to pick at my sandals. I didn’t want him to say another word. When eventually he spoke again, his voice was uncharacteristically shrill, the timbre taut and unpleasant, like a blade ringing against a stone. ‘You could get me some herbs or something, right?’

I felt a knot form in my chest. I sat up straight and the abruptness of the movement made him turn to look at me. When I didn’t return his gaze he looked away again. He picked up another pebble and lobbed it into the night. I waited for the first strike, the second, the third, and as I listened, I thought how the sound of each impact lessened in strength even as it remained unchanged in character. The thought seemed so perfectly fitting at that moment that I smiled into the darkness and consequently sounded almost cheerful when I said, ‘But your mom …’

‘What about my Mom?’ he said testily.

‘I don’t know. What I meant was—’

‘I’ve thought a lot about it. I’ve thought about nothing else.’

‘What does she want?’

‘My mom ?’

‘BabyLu.’ The wind pulled her name away from me as I spoke it.

‘I don’t know. She doesn’t know, I guess. It’s not like I get a lot of chances to talk to her.’ I shut my mouth hard at this and waited, relieved when he spoke again. ‘It’s such a mess, Joe.’ His voice in the darkness was desolate.

Your mess, I wanted to say.

‘You’ll help me won’t you?’ I felt the knot in my chest tighten. I didn’t answer, and after a moment he turned to look at me. ‘You have to help me.’

Still I hesitated, aware of his gaze. ‘Sure,’ I said at last.

He gripped my forearm gently, squeezed it before letting go. ‘I knew you would.’

Dub pushed his hands into his pockets, withdrew them again. He lit a cigarette, cupping his hands round the end of it for a long while until it caught. He smoked silently and when he’d finished it, he pushed the stub into a crevice in the rocks and lit another one straight away. His hands were trembling and, seeing it, I felt sorry for him. The knot in my chest felt heavy, like a stone. ‘Dub … ’ I started to say.

‘Sorry, Joe. I didn’t think.’ He held his cigarette packet out to me. I shook my head. He looked puzzled and put it away again, pushing himself up from the ground in the same movement. He was walking towards the bike before I’d even got to my feet. He started the engine as I reached him and waited, staring into the distance while I climbed on. My head was loud with thoughts and, later, I scarcely recalled the ride home, though I remember that we looped down to the beach and he pointed out a floating bar, its lights bobbing in the blackness.

America was asleep as I slipped across the kitchen. She stirred and turned over and I quickened my step till I was safe in my room. I sat on my bed, my back against the wall, and closed my eyes.

‘ JeenPaulSarter . Aren’t you clever?’ I opened my eyes to find America leaning in the doorway, her finger poised at the centre of Guernica . ‘You want to tell me where you’ve just been?’