Niyati Keni - Esperanza Street

‘Elisa.’

‘I’ll take you to Bukaykay.’ I shook my head. ‘You need a doctor ?’ he looked worried as he said it. I shook my head again.

Lorna brought out a plate for him but he pushed it away. It was me that pushed it back towards him but it wasn’t until I bent once again to my own plate that he started to eat, slowly and without relish. He finished before I did and waited. When I’d had as much as I could manage, he took my plate and we moved to the sink together to wash our hands. Lorna took his place at the table and started to eat a little now. ‘I tell her we should eat together, or she should eat first if I’m late, but she waits on me anyway,’ he said.

There was nothing more to do now and my father walked back to the boarding house with me. The night air was cool. The ground had all but given up the last of the day’s warmth. ‘I didn’t want to ask in front of her,’ he said as we turned onto Esperanza. I knew what was coming. ‘Was it anything to do with what you asked Missy? About this girl and her trouble?’ His eyes scanned the street as he spoke, his last word a murmur. His delicacy infuriated me suddenly. I didn’t reply and he didn’t ask again. I wondered if he might tell Aunt Mary but he would be concerned about how it might look to her, I thought scornfully, how it might reflect on him. We walked on in silence, my father slowing his step frequently for me to catch up.

When we arrived at the boarding house, I wanted to go in through the kitchen door, slip straight to my room, but my father strode right up to the front door and hammered on it. America must have been waiting for me because she opened it almost immediately, her mouth pinched with the effort of holding in whatever lecture she’d prepared for my return. But as soon as she saw me, the words deserted her. I still hadn’t seen myself in a mirror and didn’t know how dreadful I looked. I stared back at her miserably.

She ushered us into the kitchen and left us there. I rose from the table hissing at her to come back. I didn’t want her to tell Aunt Mary what state I’d returned in. America, if she heard me, didn’t even slow down and when she returned it was with Aunt Mary in tow. The two women looked over my injuries, America with a look of dread, Aunt Mary with the same kind of contained anger that Elisa had worn earlier, that showed only in the precise line of her lips. Her voice when she spoke was business-like. She asked my father what had happened before she asked me. ‘He won’t tell me,’ my father said.

I stayed silent and closed my eyes. All I wanted now was to sleep but Aunt Mary and America examined in turn my arms, my hands, my face and chest. Finally, satisfied that nothing was broken, America moved to the Frigidaire and took out some milk to heat for me. ‘No,’ I said softly. She replaced the milk and poured out a glass of chilled water instead and I sat turning it in my hands as they talked.

‘The rally is just days away,’ Aunt Mary said, and I knew what she was thinking, how obvious a target that made me when both she and my father were involved.

Lola Lovely came down the stairs and into the kitchen, her pañuelo wrapped tightly about her, over her nightgown. ‘I heard the door,’ she said. Then, on seeing me: ‘Oh!’ She crossed herself. I stood up but Aunt Mary pressed me gently back into my seat. Lola Lovely said, ‘Has he been fighting?’

‘Ma’am,’ my father started to explain.

But Aunt Mary said, ‘This isn’t Joseph’s fault. He was set upon.’

Lola Lovely glared at her daughter, ignoring my father. ‘This is what your politics bring into the house!’ she said. ‘Look at the boy!’ I folded my arms on the table and sank my head onto them. I didn’t want to hear any more. The shock and anger that had propelled me home had by now quite evaporated and I was spent. America shook me gently. She pulled me to my feet and, picking up my glass, started towards the passageway that led to my room. I followed her mutely.

The room was just as I’d left it. Its familiarity, like the sound of my own voice in the darkness earlier, was almost absurd. I lay down on my mat, pulled my blanket over me and listened to my father’s voice for what seemed like a long time but may only have been minutes, for his words blended into my dreams, and when I woke again it was morning.

When Uncle Bobby was still alive, Aunt Mary’s house was rarely empty. Back then, of course, it wasn’t a boarding house taking in strangers. The guests were friends from the rich families of Puerto or weekending from Manila: the women, perfumed, wore dresses from Paris; the men came in suits made by their family tailors. I imagined sometimes how it might have been and, in my head, the men all looked like the model in the cigarette ad on my wall, beautiful and silent, and the women like Vilma Santos, their laughter breaking out in the dark rooms like sunlight through cloud. There were photographs from that time, taken on Uncle Bobby’s camera, the guests posing stiffly around the settee, glasses raised, or captured without warning, heads thrown back, teeth and throats exposed, arms blurred by movement. It was hard to imagine Aunt Mary in such a gathering, besieged by glamour and chatter. It seemed to me that she and her house were meant for stillness. But she was unfailingly hospitable and I imagined her watching for empty glasses or foundering conversation while Uncle Bobby shone at the centre of things, his voice slowing, his gestures becoming more expansive as he drank, blind to anyone’s needs but his own.

America’s cooking even then was the talk of dining rooms across the island, or so she said, and the guests tried to poach her for their own households many times over, each wage offered bigger than the last. But she stayed, loyal to Aunt Mary, and when I asked her why, she said that Aunt Mary had a way of talking to her that made her not mind being a servant. I knew exactly what she meant.

When Uncle Bobby died, the house fell into silence, though whether this was because of grief or Aunt Mary’s innate need for solitude, I never knew.

Before that week, in all the time I’d been at the Bougainvillea, Aunt Mary had never thrown a dinner party. Though close friends and relatives came to stay on occasion and America cooked for them, these were informal evenings, without display. It was unexpected, then, when she announced, in the run up to the rally, that we would be entertaining for a second time. ‘Well, good,’ said Lola Lovely. ‘This place can get like a morgue sometimes.’

‘Do you remember the Robellos, Mom? Joey and Alice?’

‘ Alice! ’ Lola Lovely pinched her brow as if she was thinking hard before she added, ‘Well a man will make one or two bad choices in his life. It can’t be helped.’

Aunt Mary continued without a flicker. ‘I’ll invite Frankie Reyes and his wife too. It’s been a long time since they’ll have seen you; they won’t refuse.’

‘Perhaps America could serve. We could give Joseph the evening off,’ Lola Lovely looked anxiously at my bruises.

‘Do you not feel up to it, Joseph?’ Aunt Mary said.

‘I’m ok, ma’am.’

‘But how will it look ,’ cried Lola Lovely. ‘As if our houseboy indulges in street brawls.’

‘He has nothing to hide, Mother. If they ask, I shall tell them.’

‘If they have any breeding, they’ll be too polite to ask. So there goes your plan.’ Aunt Mary seemed not to hear this.

It was painful to move around and I knew there would be a lot of extra work involved but I was grateful for the distraction and found myself looking forward to it. I leafed through the recipe books in the sala and wondered what Aunt Mary might suggest America cook. Something French, I thought, the food arranged on the plate like a portrait. And so I was surprised yet again when Aunt Mary asked America to fetch a pork leg in time to prepare crispy pata , which she said was one of Judge Robello’s favourites.