Niyati Keni - Esperanza Street

Esperanza Street teemed under a cloudless sky. People moved in drifts downhill towards the market hall, while overhead banners snapped like sails between lamp posts and balloons tugged against their tethers at door handles and railings. In the distance, the public-address system was being tested: Jonah’s voice. The air smelled different, lighter. It smelled of the ocean and of warm asphalt. Gone was the scent of fried pork and hot oil, for Johnny Five Course had wheeled his cart down to the jetty the evening before to be certain of a pitch, a roll of bedding strapped across his counter. On the other side of the street, Abnor’s tea-stall was still in its usual spot, but it was closed up and padlocked and, behind it, Primo’s windows were shuttered.

Halfway down the hill, the stretch of sidewalk outside the Coffee Shak was empty except for Ignacio Sanesteban, who was working away at something on the Shak’s frontage, his movements uncharacteristically quick and jerky. Behind him, still stacked indoors beside the pastry counter, the white plastic sidewalk chairs formed a bright column. Ignacio straightened up as we approached, placed down the wooden board he had just pulled away from the window frame. He stepped towards us, his hands out like a policeman stopping cars. He crunched as he moved and, in the same instant that I recognised the sound, I made out the mound of broken glass behind him on the doorstep, sunlight scattering from its innumerable edges. From it, a trail of dust and shards tracked back into the interior like the tail of a comet. I gaped at the empty frame of the Coffee Shak window, a few glass teeth still protruding in places from the wood, mouthing its belated protest. Ignacio shrugged. He looked me over, his hands on his hips. ‘You gave the other guy a good hiding too, I hope,’ he said.

‘Looks like a bomb,’ America eyed the broom that leaned up against the doorframe.

I remembered Rico’s voice in the darkness: got another job to get to. ‘You see who did it?’ I said.

‘I got my suspicions. Still, it’s just a window.’ He looked down at my hands. I pushed them into my pockets. ‘Your pop’s been working hard on the rally too, eh? Cowardly way to do it though — get at a man through his kid.’

‘No-names-mentioned wouldn’t be where he is if he did things straight like the rest of us,’ America muttered. Ignacio cast his eyes about the street and, seeing him do it, America added testily, ‘At my age what have I got to be afraid of?’ She threw me a dark look.

‘Want some help?’ I said to Ignacio, hopefully.

‘ You don’t need to be near anything sharp right now.’ He turned a piece of glass over with the edge of his sneaker.

‘You better take it easy today, Joseph Santos,’ America glowered at me. She managed to make it sound like a threat. I was disappointed. I’d have liked to stay at the Shak, hear a little Dusty, keep out of sight.

Ignacio moved back to the window. He pulled a cloth out of his back pocket and bent down to study one of the remaining fragments that clung to the frame. It was peaked like the fin of a milkfish. He wrapped the cloth around its point and, gripping it gingerly between forefingers and thumbs, started tugging it back and forth, loosening it. ‘I’m ready to believe,’ he said softly, drawing out the word like an evangelist, as he got to his feet and held the freed shard up to the light, ‘that it doesn’t pay to be honest in this world.’

‘Amen,’ said America loudly.

At the seaward end of Esperanza Street, where it broadened to run alongside the market hall before merging with the coast road to become the jetty, a sizeable crowd had gathered. The air was rich with the smell of food. Stalls lined every alleyway, the vendors talkative behind mounds of fruit or meat, pyramids of cans and bottles.

The market hall had been cleared out and under its canopy, on the Greenhills side, a stage had been built with speakers on either side of it. Towards the back of the stage, a row of red plastic garden chairs waited. A microphone lay in the well of the centre chair, its lead coiled under the seat like a snake.

In front of the stage, Cora and Benny were busy with something on the ground. The Greenhills children, clustered about the nearby pillars, watched them at work. Every now and then Cora looked up overhead and around her, as if considering some invisible structure, and when she did, the kids looked up too, scanning the roof for clues.

I stopped when I saw Benny and made as if to go to him but America had spotted my father standing with Jonah near the sea wall. She started towards them and, after a moment’s hesitation, I trailed after her. When the men saw me, they came to meet us. ‘Looks bad,’ Jonah said as they drew close. ‘Dante says you won’t tell him who did it.’

‘Only one candidate,’ America said.

‘I remember him when he was starting out,’ Jonah said. ‘Not so obvious then what kind of a man he’d turn out to be.’

‘You sleeping any better?’ my father asked me. I was still aching too much to sleep through a whole night.

‘Like the dead,’ I lied, without thinking, and I saw how it startled him.

Subong came over and looked me up and down. He whistled through his teeth. ‘They spared your legs, huh?’ he said. He looked at my father. My father ignored him.

The men eyed me curiously for a minute or two. I looked away, back towards the stage. ‘What’s left to do?’ I said.

‘Sit for a minute. One of the boys can fetch you a drink,’ Jonah said.

‘There are enough hands about today.’ My father placed his hand on my shoulder, carefully.

Jonah looked over to where a group of jetty boys loitered near his office. He put his fingers in his mouth and whistled. One of the boys broke away from the group and jogged over to us. It was Dil, one of Rico’s Barracudas. For a moment, I couldn’t remember whether Dil had been there that night, but then I saw him again in the shadows under the tree, near the oil drum, the distant sounds without origin in the darkness, the smell of earth and sweat and blood. My stomach lurched and I felt a chill break over my skin and subside again. My father’s hand tightened momentarily on my shoulder. Dil raised an enquiring eyebrow at Jonah, then turned to regard me blankly. I glared back but he held my eyes. I looked away first. ‘You look rough, Joe,’ he said easily.

‘Get him a Pepsi,’ Jonah said. ‘Cold. On my tab.’

‘Sure, Boss.’ Dil smiled at me and walked to the sari-sari store near the corner. I watched him move away, his step casual, blameless. He returned just as leisurely, winked as he held the bottle out to me. I didn’t want it but I took it and as I did so my finger brushed his. Involuntarily, I flinched. It was scarcely perceptible, but I was sure he noticed. He smiled at me again. ‘See you around, Joe,’ he said, and walked back to Jonah’s office. I felt a surge of fury, as much at my own response as at him.

I held the Pepsi, forgotten for a moment until Jonah said, ‘Better cold, eh?’ Still feeling sick, I sipped slowly, barely tasting it. My father studied me as I drank. America’s eyes remained on Dil for several minutes and quickly enough the Barracuda busied himself, keeping his back to her.

There was plenty still to be done but no one would accept my help, their eyes first asking my father’s permission only to be refused. I felt fraudulent standing idle while around me everyone worked and at last I excused myself to go in search of something to do.

The chatter in the market hall formed a steady low note pierced every now and then by the bright, clear counterpoint of Cora’s voice. I followed the sound to its source, to where she stood with Benny, her hands moulding the air between them as she talked. Benny, bending to hear, hefted a hand drill from one palm to the other and back again. On the ground in front of them nine large panels lay face down on plastic sheets. Cora stopped talking and started to circle the panels, swooping now and again to chalk red marks onto each frame. She looked up as I approached, staring at me for several seconds before she uttered a cry of comprehension and then, throwing down her chalk, she marched over to me. She lifted my chin, her fingers red with chalk dust, moved my head this way and that, inspecting my face. ‘Benny told me,’ she said. ‘Your father said you won’t say who.’ I looked past her to Benny. He glanced guiltily down at the panels, his hands still, the empty palm open, waiting. Cora brushed red dust from my chin with the heel of her hand. I tilted my face like a child to let her finish. ‘Any part of you still a normal colour?’ She looked me over. I wriggled my toes. She smiled down at them.