Niyati Keni - Esperanza Street

‘For a ride.’

‘I know that. Why?’

I looked blankly at her. Her eyes were lined and red. ‘Just for a ride.’

‘Just nothing. What trouble have you found now?’ I fought the urge to pull my blanket over my head and shut out the sight of her. She sat down at the table, looked around distastefully at the walls, the tiny, shaded window. She shifted round in the chair to keep the passageway in view. ‘Anyone else brings you trouble and it’ll be you that has to carry it. You understand what I mean?’ I closed my eyes again. ‘I’m just saying,’ she carried on. ‘Course you think you’re a man now.’

I slid down the wall till I was flat on my bed, studied the ceiling. I waited. America sniffed forcefully. She got up, making more noise, I thought, than seemed necessary. I watched from under my lashes as she pushed hard against the chair to stand, her other hand already reaching for the doorframe. She hesitated at the threshold and I thought she might have more to say but she cast a weary, ill-tempered eye over me and walked out.

I got to my feet. Usually my door remained open, my room being too small and claustrophobic a space to be shut inside. But now I closed it and as I did so, I heard America’s footsteps pause in the passageway at the sound before continuing into the kitchen.

The hatch of the sari-sari store framed Missy Bukaykay’s face. A face which bore echoes of her daughter in the lines and angles that she’d handed down to her, but none of the beauty. Missy’s face had long since lost its plumpness, lost any trace of softness, if indeed it had ever possessed it. Her teeth were stained red with betel and in generally poor shape. Because she didn’t see me often and because she’d been so fond of my mother, she always smiled when we met and I, unable to pull my eyes away, bewitched by the inevitability of it, always looked straight at her mouth. She looked up now as I approached and grinned. I smiled back at her but I was disappointed that it should be her in the store hatch; I’d hoped for Uncle Bee, whose eyes were certainly less astute than his wife’s. ‘Shouldn’t you be in school?’ Missy’s gaze levelled with mine.

‘Had to run an errand.’ My voice came out husky, thick.

‘Mary Morelos asks you to skip school for errands?’

It was disconcerting to hear Aunt Mary’s name just then. ‘You won’t tell her?’ I said.

‘Sure I will. Next time I’m at the country club.’

I thrust my hands into my pockets and looked up and down the alley.

‘Ah!’ Missy leaned forward over the counter. ‘You can talk in the street or you want to come inside, Meester Bond?’ She rocked back on her stool, twitching a finger in the direction of the stoop.

I went round to the front of the shack. The door was open and the partitioning curtain had been drawn back to let the listless afternoon air circulate and provide Missy with a clear view of the front door. She watched me as I came in, raising an eyebrow as I closed the door behind me. Under her shrewd eyes, I moved awkwardly across the room to the stool she’d pulled out for me. I sat down heavily. Missy looked amused. She waited, her eyes on me as I gazed about at the shelves of jars, the vine-like strips of detergent sachets, the polished scales and brass weights. I studied her framed midwifery certificate, her delivery bag by the door. ‘You’ve come to borrow it for a movie premiere?’ she said.

Now that I was actually inside, the opportunities for backing out seemed to evaporate in an instant and the necessity to speak, to act, grew suddenly pressing. I took a deep breath. ‘I know a girl,’ I said.

Missy’s smile vanished. ‘ You’ve got a girl in trouble?’

I looked up, startled. ‘Not me.’

She nodded. ‘I wouldn’t have figured you’d get into a mess like that.’

I wasn’t sure how to take this. Sure, I wasn’t exactly handsome. I sat up straighter, tried to meet her gaze squarely, looked away again too fast. ‘What if she can’t keep it?’ I said. My voice sounded weak, childish.

‘Wait a minute! Is this about one of the Morelos boys?’ she cried suddenly.

I felt the heat shoot up to my face. I looked down at Missy’s feet. She wriggled her toes, like someone might drum their fingers on a table. ‘No,’ I said. I heard her snort.

‘What are you lying to me for? You think I can’t tell?’ she said peevishly. ‘Well, I can guess which one. Anyway, what does the girl want?’

I spoke quickly. ‘I was just asking. You know, I thought, if it’s early and if there are some herbs. I mean, they’re just herbs, they wouldn’t make her really sick, right?’

‘They put you up to this?’

‘I’m not a kid.’

Missy glared at me. The room felt hot, closed in, and I fought the urge to dash to the door and wrench it open. The sound of a coin rapping on the counter of the sari-sari store broke into the room. Missy got up. She jabbed a finger at my stool, anchoring me to it. She slipped behind the partitioning curtain, pulling it closed behind her. I heard her greet someone loudly, cheerfully, and shortly the sound of boxes scraping, things being shoved aside. I looked around at the shelves again, at the herbs and pastes in relabelled jam and coffee jars. Uncle Bee had catalogued their contents for me once. I tried to replay his voice. He had intoned as if he were reciting a poem, or perhaps that was just how I remembered it. Kataka-taka, angelica, for toothache, boils and burns; Niyog-niyogan, Burmese creeper, for intestinal worms. Nuts and seeds and roots, for body odour, dandruff, hair loss; for pains in the head, teeth, eyes and joints; for piles and for snake-bite. Remedies for a broken heart or to make a person fall in love with you. Or for girls in trouble to get rid of their trouble before anyone could ever guess, before the trajectory of their lives changed forever. But though I could almost feel again the grain of that morning, the details remained hazy, unreliable. I reached out and ran my fingers along a line of jars, up and down, my fingertips marking out the level of their contents. How easy it would have been to take what I needed had I even known what it was. My hand dropped to my side again.

Missy swept back through the curtain and sighed throatily at the sight of me, as if my presence brought to mind some tedious chore momentarily forgotten. She stared at me, her eyes unexpectedly soft, ignoring the jars behind me. It wouldn’t even have occurred to her that I might have tried to steal what I’d come for and, at the thought, a feeling of gratitude almost like a physical weakness washed over me. Missy walked through into the kitchen, returning quickly with a glass of water. She held it out to me. ‘Drink,’ she said. ‘It’s a hot day. You don’t look so good.’ The glass was beaded with condensation, the water chilled from the Frigidaire. It felt good in my hand. I took a sip. My mouth was dry and the water had a pleasant sourness to it. ‘All of it,’ Missy said. ‘Or you’re waiting for a little umbrella and a straw?’ I gulped some down. ‘You want to help anyone, you help yourself,’ she continued. ‘You don’t have to fix other people’s troubles for them. I said the same to your father.’ I reddened at the mention of my father. I looked up at Missy but her face had an obstinate set to it.

The sound of another customer came from the store hatch but Missy, calling out to them, stood over me as I finished drinking, her arms crossed, brows stitched into a frown. I made a show of draining the last drops noisily, holding the glass up for her to inspect. She smiled, her mouth closed.

‘You have any more errands or it’s back to class now.’ She said it flatly, a statement not a question. I started to get up, then sat down again lightly, perched on the edge of the stool. I’d been too easily dissuaded, I thought. I looked up at her. ‘No,’ she said firmly, as she turned away. ‘You care about that girl at all, you tell her to come talk to me. Now, you get straight back to school and I might forget I saw you.’