Niyati Keni - Esperanza Street

The barkada boys ebbed away again, leaving me on the ground. Rico knelt down, put his hand on my shoulder, watched me. I was still smiling. ‘Joseph?’ He sounded puzzled. I looked up at him, wondering what might come next. ‘You’ll be all right getting home?’

I laughed, wincing as I did so for my chest hurt with even the smallest movement. He laughed quietly too then. And, his hand resting on my shoulder, he patted me once or twice, before leaning into me to push himself up to standing. I closed my mouth hard to stop myself making a sound. ‘Got another job to get to,’ he said, but he stayed where he was, looking down at me. I kept quiet and still, my eyes open, staring straight ahead at the dark tussocks of grass, the forest of legs. After a moment Rico turned away. ‘See you, Joe,’ he said as he moved off, his boys falling in behind him.

I listened as their footsteps receded. I let a few more minutes pass, absorbing distant noises: the hum of a truck, a cockerel whose call, raised in pitch at the end, sounded like a question. I took a slow, ragged breath. The smell of earth and leaves filled me, became suddenly nauseating. I rose stiffly, carefully, to my feet.

I sat down on the oil drum from which Rico had directed his boys and stared at the spot where I’d lain, but in the darkness it divulged nothing. I ran a hand slowly over my face and body. My other hand ached. My left eye was starting to swell and from above it a sticky crust of blood or dirt came away under my fingers.

I cleared my throat and said out loud, ‘Where to?’ The sound of my voice surprised me; it sounded as it always did. I thought about the Bougainvillea. The boarding house was full for the weekend and the guests would still be awake at this hour. The Bukaykays would likely still be down at the jetty with my father, Jonah and the boys, and even if they were not, I didn’t want Suelita to see me like this. There was only one other place to go and so I set off for my father’s apartment, knowing that Lorna at least would be in, and if not, then perhaps Elisa and Aunt Bina next door. It seemed to take a long time to get there; Rico and his boys had spared my legs but, even so, every step jarred.

The courtyard of my father’s building seemed to gather around me as I entered it. It was quiet for that time of evening. A few of the windows were dark and the light from the others settled in mid air in a milky haze, leaving the ground in shadow. I lowered myself onto the bottom step of the stairwell and leaned back gratefully for a moment against the cool concrete wall. Overhead, my father’s windows were open and through them the sound of Elvis Presley curled out into the evening. Elvis sounded far too cheerful.

I got to my feet again and climbed the stairs. At the top, I glanced at Bina and Elisa’s door, but even if Elisa was in, her mother might have answered first and Aunt Bina would certainly have pressed me for details.

I knocked softly on my father’s door. Elvis quietened and I knocked again. After a moment, the door opened. Lorna must have been expecting my father, for she opened the door smiling but when she saw me she screamed. I hadn’t anticipated that and said rather stupidly, my hands protesting in the air in front of me, ‘It’s only me. It’s Joseph.’ My hands were filthy, bloodstained, puffy. She stared at them, appalled, and then up at my face. Behind me, Bina’s door flew open and Elisa peered out, her eyes bright with alarm. When she saw me she clapped a hand over her mouth, but she quickly regained herself, for she called inside to her mother, ‘It’s ok, Mom. Lorna just saw a rat.’ She shrugged at me, apologetically.

I heard Bina say, ‘That good-for-nothing landlord. I tell him we have rats and what does he do about it? Nothing.’

Elisa closed the door quietly behind her and came out into the passageway. The two girls half pulled, half pushed me inside my father’s apartment and into a chair. Elisa took charge. She peered at me closely, at my face, my eye — which had almost completely closed up — at my hands and chest. She had a mournful expression, one that seemed suddenly adult, and I considered dully where I’d seen it before. I felt shaken when I remembered; Aunt Bina had worn the same look at my mother’s vigil. ‘What happened, Joseph?’ Elisa said, and pursed her lips at me when I shook my head, another of her mother’s expressions. I kept quiet and was grateful when she didn’t persist. ‘Does Dante keep iodine and bandages?’ she said to Lorna. I was startled to hear her utter my father’s name without the prefix Uncle . Lorna shrugged helplessly. She went into the kitchen to look but came back empty-handed. My arrival had disturbed the baby and now it started to whimper and then to cry. Lorna picked it up, rocked it. After a minute the baby hushed but she continued to rock it, staying at the other end of the room.

Elisa stood up. ‘We have iodine,’ she said. She walked to the door, her movements brisk, officious, though her slightness gave the impression of a child playing at adulthood. She left the door ajar. Lorna came closer and sat down on one of the dining chairs and watched me. She held the baby tightly, its head facing her breast, away from the sight of me, and rocked it rhythmically, rapidly. I wondered if she was trying to comfort herself or the child.

Elisa returned, a small bottle pressed to her lips like a finger. She closed the door carefully, making barely a sound. Shaking the bottle gently, she knelt down in front of me. Her face grew stern. She worked without speaking, only hissing occasionally if a crust of blood came away and started to bleed afresh, or a cut looked deeper than expected. I was aware of the smell of her scalp and of the jasmine the girls had braided through their hair. She bathed the flesh around my eye and dabbed it with iodine, moved on to my hand and to every other cut and scrape. She glared at me now and then as she worked. All the while, Lorna rocked in the chair with the baby.

When Elisa was done, we sat quietly for a while. My eye had completely closed over now and my face ached. Lorna kept the baby turned away from me until it was asleep and then took it back to its crib. She went into the kitchen and started to prepare rice and boil some water for a drink. My father would be home soon.

Elisa sat back on her haunches, her arms crossed over her knees, and studied me. The hardened jut of her mouth reminded me of Missy Bukaykay. ‘Want me to stay till he comes?’ she said. I’d have liked to say yes but I didn’t. Elisa repeated her question. I shrugged. I was exhausted. ‘I’d better go then,’ she said reluctantly, ‘or Mom will come knocking and then you’d have some explaining to do.’

After she left, Lorna, uncertain what else to do but feed me, put a plate of rice and beans in front of me. She stayed in the kitchen doorway, hugging herself like a child, her eyes still fearful. ‘You heard from your family?’ I said thickly, for my lip was swollen and my jaw stiff. I had to say it several times before she understood me.

She shook her head. ‘Eat.’ Her voice was scarcely more than a whisper.

I turned my attention to the food, more for her sake than my own; I wasn’t hungry and eating was slow going, every mouthful painful and laborious. I’d hardly made any progress when we heard my father at the door. Lorna stepped forward, her body blocking his view of me. She was silent as he came through the door, yet he said, straight away, ‘What is it?’ He looked past her to me, taking a few seconds to understand. He threw his cap onto the table and rubbed his hand over his hair. ‘Who?’ he said. I stared at him. He sat down next to me and surveyed my injuries. He nodded at the iodine stains. ‘Bina?’ he said.