Niyati Keni - Esperanza Street

Judge Robello looked like he had many favourites. He kept his eye on every tray I brought round and tried everything that America sent out without it seeming to shrink his appetite for dinner. He was a large man, which made him look older than he must have been.

‘Still the same woman?’ he said, through a mouthful.

‘Yes, America is still with me,’ Aunt Mary said.

‘It’s easy enough to find a woman who can cook,’ said Alice Robello, ‘but to find a woman who can follow instructions and keep a clean kitchen, too, is nearly impossible.’

Alice Robello, several years younger than Aunt Mary and years younger again than her husband, had once been a beauty queen: Miss Puerto. She went on to compete in a national pageant but wasn’t placed, becoming instantly one of the group of girls who fell into shadow as the crown was lifted onto another’s head, left to look on, smile graciously. But by then she’d been proposed to by Joey Robello and married quickly into money. She appeared younger than her years and spoke and moved as if an invisible camera were always on her, turning her best side towards the most attractive man in the room — not always, as America noted wryly in the kitchen, towards her husband. Though she was now mother to three children, she was still slim, and when she came in, she flashed a critical eye at Aunt Mary’s figure, hiding her triumph quickly. Wherever she moved, she left behind her a trail of vanilla.

‘We’ve had a succession of cooks and servants,’ the judge said. ‘No one does it quite the way Alice wants. Low fat! Where’s the pleasure in that anyway?’

‘Not easy to find someone who cooks like this ,’ Joni Reyes, wife of Frankie Reyes, cut in.

‘ I found her,’ said Lola Lovely, coming in late. She was wearing a short-sleeved dress the colour of amber and she cradled one arm carefully with the other. I saw that her cast had been removed. Alice Robello and Joni Reyes stood up to greet her. ‘Of course, before that we had a succession of girls,’ Lola Lovely continued, ‘but the pretty ones, you know, they don’t think they need to learn how to keep a house properly. Our America was quite plain.’ Alice Robello exclaimed her pleasure loudly at seeing Lola Lovely again after so long. Lola Lovely smiled beatifically. ‘Yes, I’m still alive. Manila hasn’t killed me yet.’

‘How’s your beautiful house?’ Alice Robello said.

‘Joni,’ Lola Lovely said, ‘I’m sure America would be happy to give her recipes to your cook.’

‘We don’t have one at the moment. The girl got herself pregnant. Frankie had to fire her,’ Joni Reyes said. Lola Lovely’s eyes glittered. ‘Anyway,’ Joni continued, ‘we like eating out.’ She wore a look of mild discontent, perhaps disappointment, which didn’t leave her all evening. According to America, Joni Reyes had met her husband at university, where she’d studied briefly before dropping out to get married. They’d had their only child, a son perhaps Benny’s age, not long afterwards, at a private hospital in Puerto. I’d never seen her husband, Engineer Reyes, before, and when he arrived he already looked drunk.

‘Nice to see the old guy again,’ he said, lifting his glass to the pictures of Uncle Bobby on the piano. ‘We used to have some good games. He was lousy at poker though.’ Joni glanced at Aunt Mary but if Aunt Mary was thinking about the freeholds her dead husband had lost to Frankie Reyes she showed no sign. Lola Lovely tapped her fingers irritably on her glass.

‘Change is inevitable. Isn’t that what our friend Mr Casama always says?’ said Aunt Mary.

‘Please don’t get the men started on that !’ Alice Robello said, fanning her hand in mock exhaustion.

‘Mr Casama came to see me recently,’ Aunt Mary continued, smiling at her. ‘I hadn’t had the opportunity to really meet him properly before. Do you know him well, Judge?’

‘In passing,’ the judge said. ‘You’ve been out of circulation for some time.’ Judge Robello’s eyes wandered over the pictures on the piano, the flowers on the card table. ‘You’ve kept that marvellous cook to yourself for too long.’

‘Joseph, would you see how America is doing please?’ Aunt Mary said.

‘Over some gal?’ Frankie Reyes jerked his glass in my direction, his little finger pointing out my bruises.

‘Joseph’s father is one of the organisers of tomorrow’s rally,’ Aunt Mary said, and she put a hand lightly on my arm to keep me there for a moment. I kept my eyes on the tray I was holding while everyone looked at me. The women turned away quickly. Lola Lovely raised her glass to her daughter.

‘I boxed at university,’ the judge said. ‘It won’t spoil your looks.’ I glanced up at him but he didn’t meet my eye.

‘What do you know of Mr Casama’s plans for Esperanza?’ Aunt Mary said to no one in particular.

‘Oh, come, it’s been far too long since we saw you, Mary, let’s not talk business,’ the judge said.

‘I’ve been out of circulation but not earshot,’ Aunt Mary said.

‘I just love this old, solid furniture,’ Joni Reyes said, running her hand over the coffee table. ‘Frankie likes all the smoked glass and chrome stuff. He’d prefer to live at the office, I think.’ As I turned to leave, I caught the flicker of annoyance in Aunt Mary’s face.

Back in the kitchen, America had laid out the serving dishes on the table and was sprinkling coriander leaves on mounds of hot chicken and stuffed squid, wiping away errant spots of gravy. She talked to herself as she worked. Her eyes glinted happily at me as I walked in. ‘They might know about consortiums , but no one knows about food like I do,’ she said. It smelled so good I had to swallow several times.

When I got back to the sala, their voices seemed faster, more heated, as if a hard truth had been unearthed. I stood in the doorway, waiting for an opportunity to announce dinner. Judge Robello was saying, ‘He was born right in Colon Market. His mother was a balut vendor. And he’s not sentimental about the place.’

‘He’s a real businessman,’ Frankie Reyes said appreciatively. ‘He understands profit.’

‘He said he didn’t even wear shoes till he was a grown man,’ said Alice Robello. ‘They couldn’t afford them. Said if he took his shoes off we’d see the feet of a beggar! Can you imagine?’

‘Pisses higher than anyone now,’ Frankie Reyes said.

‘Frankie!’ His wife feigned embarrassment.

‘Sorry, ma’am,’ Reyes twirled his glass in Lola Lovely’s direction. ‘Seriously though, might be worth thinking about investing in his scheme. You’d get ten-, even twentyfold back on your money.’

‘I’m not really interested in investing. I’m more concerned about the effect on our community.’ Aunt Mary frowned.

‘Of course there’ll be losers,’ Judge Robello said, a little impatiently, I thought. ‘But there’ll always be people who win and people who lose. It’s our duty, for the sake of our families to make sure we stay on top, don’t you think? I mean, people depend on us. And not just our own children. They all come to us — I need money for my son’s wedding, Uncle, for my daughter’s school books, Uncle — for this, for that. Everyone from the gardener to the chauffeur. Hands in their pockets or hands held out for something.’

Frankie Reyes laughed in agreement. ‘Yes, a quiet redistribution of wealth,’ he said.

‘Some of these families have been here as long as our own,’ Aunt Mary said. ‘This is their home and they’ll be made to leave it.’

‘They don’t own the land,’ said Frankie Reyes.

Aunt Mary studied him gravely. ‘Is there no alternative to simply sweeping them aside?’ she said. The men were quiet, amused even.