Niyati Keni - Esperanza Street

She seated herself again at her store hatch, looking out over the alley. In the slanting yellow light that filtered into the dark interior, the back of her head had a stubborn solidity.

I hurried away along the alley, eager now to be out of sight. On reaching the corner I glanced back and caught the slightest movement within the lean ellipse of Missy’s face. She’d stuck out her tongue at me. She leaned forward over the counter and waved before settling back to be obscured at last by a fan of Mr Chips packets.

I made as if to walk uphill in the direction of the school. But a few steps on from the corner, hidden by Primo’s store, I stopped and turned again seawards to where, in the distance, the afternoon sun picked out the whitewashed planes and roof thatch of Jonah’s office. Idly I imagined chancing upon Uncle Bee as he stepped out of a jeepney or browsed for herbs under the eaves of the market hall. Beyond the jetty, the fine blue cloth of the sea was studded with boats, white lines of surf trailing from them like pulled threads. Dotted about in the shallows, the jetty boys were at work. Involuntarily, I found my eyes searching for my father and, though from this distance I couldn’t have been certain that the dot I recognised was really him, just the knowledge that he was among them disheartened me, as if he might, even from so far away, fathom what I was up to and disapprove. I turned once again to face uphill but I was far from resolute.

I cast a final look into the mouth of the Espiritista alley and at that moment I saw the figure of Missy Bukaykay step off her stoop and manoeuvre around a deep rut in the track before heading off briskly in the direction of Colon, midwife’s bag in hand. I stood and watched till she was out of sight. I almost wished I hadn’t seen her leave. When she was gone I walked back to the Bukaykay shack, uncertain, even as I neared it, of what I was going to do.

The store hatch was closed and the front door shut. I sat down on the stoop. There were people about as always but I kept my eyes down, inspected the blistered turquoise rectangle of the step framed by the dry brown skin of my feet. The sun was hard and the texture of my skin was as clear as wood grain. In contrast, my thoughts were like fragments of conversation heard through water. I stood up and tried the door. It was locked, and the relief that coursed through me left the crown of my head prickling. The act of standing and the warm metal of the door handle seemed to bring me back to the surface of things. The noise of Esperanza boomed again. I felt sick. My hands were sweating. I rubbed them on the legs of my shorts and sat back down. I looked up at the door. It was hardly sturdy enough to withstand me for long if I was determined, I thought. The shack, like most of the neighbourhood, depended as much on the proximity of other dwellings, on being overlooked, on the renown of its inhabitants, as it did on locks and bolts for its security and I suppose it was so rarely left empty. I’d have time enough to look through the shelves, read labels, find something, anything, that might trigger a memory — or take a handful from each jar, work out what I needed later on. I tried to imagine doing it, but the Joseph in the image seemed flimsy, like a sketch or a cartoon. I wondered why, when I had no trouble imagining a more substantial Joseph driving Suelita around in a red American convertible of the kind I’d seen in one of Aunt Mary’s photographs. Niagara! I stayed on the stoop. People passed in front of my eyes first one way and then the other, a few glancing incuriously at me and, though there was probably no suspicion in those glances, their eyes made me feel ashamed. Yet I was also a little excited. I’d never stolen anything in my life and for now I indulged myself with the possibility of it as I sat, cradling my head in my hands, palms over my eyes as if preparing for the moment I might act without hesitation.

‘Jeez- us . Are you praying?’ Suelita’s voice was disdainful. I looked up to see her in front of me in her school uniform, her weight thrown onto one leg, school bag propped on her opposite hip, like a woman might carry a child. I hadn’t even heard her approach. She regarded me coolly, the same eyes as her mother’s. ‘You want to wait inside, or you’d prefer to sit out here like a badly placed urn?’ Her arm swept a glamorous curve through the air like a movie actress flaunting a cigarette holder, and she fluttered her eyelids, smiling as if she’d said something smart. I stared at her. The gesture was ill-suited to her. If she’d been BabyLu, I thought, or even Lola Lovely, it would have been convincing.

For a few seconds she held her posture, her hand poised in its arc like a hovering gull, awaiting a response which was slow in coming. Until, discomfited by my silence, her smile grew stiff. Seeing it, I snatched at something to say. ‘Where exactly would a well-placed urn sit?’ I cast my eyes about the stoop for show. I’d intended to put her at ease, perhaps by providing her with another clear shot at me, but I’d miscalculated, for when I looked up again, her expression was combative. She rearranged herself, throwing her weight onto the other leg. The action snagged her skirt and drew it up by a fraction on one side. It took some effort not to look at the extra centimetre of skin. She smiled again, and the icy bow of her mouth suddenly made me want to grip her wrist and pull her roughly to me. I’d never allowed myself such a thought in her presence before. What might she have said, I wondered, if she’d known that only a moment ago I’d been thinking about breaking into her home and stealing from her parents? I stood up, a feeling like electricity in my fingertips. Her smile widened. She had dimples. I’d forgotten how good they looked. My hands dropped to my sides. She stepped forward to climb the stairs of the stoop, brushing past me, the cloth of her sleeve rasping against my shoulder as she passed.

She waited in the open doorway, her eyes shadowed now by the eaves. ‘Why are you here, anyway?’ she said. For the shortest instant I imagined asking for her help. She waited. ‘Did an owl peck your tongue out?’ she said at last.

‘Everyone knows you’re smart. So what?’

Neither of us had expected my response. Suelita’s cheeks pinked and she pursed her mouth. She considered for a moment before she said, ‘I skipped history. I waited on the other side of Esperanza till I saw her leave.’ Her eyes were on me as I took this in. ‘If you’d been Rico, you wouldn’t have waited before you tried the door and then you wouldn’t have sat down again.’

I felt hot suddenly, the sun ruthless on my head. ‘He’s a hero,’ I muttered.

‘He’s a jerk.’ But she looked about as she said it. I felt a brief flare of pleasure.

Suelita shook her head and the movement seemed to leave a void that I spoke quickly to fill. ‘First time in a long while I haven’t seen him here. He’s almost worn the bench thin.’

‘So?’

‘I guess he hasn’t got what he’s hoping for yet.’

She pouted at me. ‘If guys were trains, he’d be the one heading for the broken bridge.’ She leaned back against the doorframe and looked out across the alley. I turned to follow the line of her gaze, took in the dismal alley with the traffic of Esperanza flowing across its mouth. She’d have been greeted by this same vista every day of her life. ‘You’re all the same.’ She sounded bored again. ‘I listen out for long enough and eventually I hear the dud note. With him at least it was straight away.’ She looked directly at me as she said this. I had a sense of things dropping away from me.

We stood for a long moment without speaking. We might only have been a couple of inches apart. ‘Why is it,’ she said at last, softly, ‘that Fidel never had to learn to cook but I did?’ The question felt almost too prosaic for the moment, though of course she was right to ask it.