Niyati Keni - Esperanza Street

I looked at her painted face, the make-up heavier over her jaw-line and cheeks. ‘No thanks,’ I said.

Jaynie emerged from the salon holding a box full of creams and lotions. ‘That’s the last of it,’ she said. Her face was greyish, dull; she hadn’t slept. She looked for somewhere to put the box down but the tables were already full. Cesar lurched forward as if to help but she turned her back to him. I started to clear a space and, on seeing me, she tried a smile. ‘How are you today, Joseph?’ she said softly. Jaynie’s voice always softened when she addressed me. I thought I would always feel like a child in her presence. I knew little about her in return; just that she’d married young to an American seaman but the marriage hadn’t lasted. She had a kindness about her, of the sort that in a certain kind of person might grow, instead of bitterness, out of pain.

‘What’s happening?’ I said, certain now that they were not redecorating.

‘I’m out of business,’ she said.

‘We, darling. We are out of business,’ Lady Jessica said.

Jaynie sank into one of the salon chairs and rested her head back. ‘At the rally,’ she said. She turned to look at me. ‘That’s when he served us notice. At the rally.’

‘It took all the fun out of protesting,’ Lady Jessica said.

Jaynie reached out and patted my arm. ‘You gonna tell Mary Morelos about this?’ she said. I nodded. It was news. ‘You make sure you tell her Jaynie knows .’

‘Knows what?’ I had to shout over the sudden roar of the engine as Eddie’s driver fired up the sedan.

‘I know she tried,’ Jaynie shouted back.

‘Tried what?’

‘She talked to Eddie. It’s not her fault his balls were in his ears.’ She said the word balls emphatically, glaring in Cesar’s direction. But Cesar was already in the sedan, leaning forward from the back seat to talk to the driver.

The car pulled slowly away from the kerb. We watched it go, waited for it to return so that Cesar could reassure himself that the dryers and the manicure tables and the mirrors weren’t going to find their way back inside. Lady Jessica saluted Cesar on the car’s second pass. Cesar affected not to notice.

When he’d gone, Jaynie slid down in the chair and closed her eyes. Lady Jessica stood behind her, her hands on her friend’s shoulders. She plucked out Jaynie’s hair grips, placed them in her lap. Then she gathered Jaynie’s hair together and flipped it over the back of the chair, smoothing it down so that it fell like a curtain. ‘You look like you’re waiting for a shampoo and set,’ she said. ‘I could style you right now, baby, just to cheer you up.’ Her voice sounded high, forced, determined not to succumb. She pulled a hairbrush out of a box. But Jaynie sat forward, looked at the salon equipment all about her. It took up the full breadth of the sidewalk and already passers-by were stepping round it, looking on with curiosity. Jaynie was quiet for a minute. She looked up at the overhead electric cables that ran from the municipal pylons to each shop and house on Esperanza Street. Lady Jessica watched her, her eyes narrowing as she broke slowly into a smile. ‘Wicked girl,’ she said. I left to return to the boarding house as Lady Jessica fell into feverish discussion about circuits and insulators and voltages.

I went straight to Aunt Mary. I told her about Eddie Casama with his balls in his ears. She smiled mischievously at me. She marched over to the telephone, picked up the receiver. I heard her greet Connie Casama. ‘Is Edgar back yet from Manila? No? An emergency? No, not really, Well, perhaps. Did you know the Beauty Queen salon is in trouble? I see. Yes, he plays basketball. Is there any chance that Edgar might … Yes, and a keen swimmer too. Yes, he still paints. Yes, yes. Well then, I mustn’t keep you.’ When she hung up, her face was dark with anger.

Almost immediately, Aunt Mary sent me back to the beauty salon. By the time I returned, the municipal cable had already been breached and, soon enough, a compact version of the Beauty Queen parlour offering a select range of its usual services was up and running on the sidewalk. I helped Jaynie push the unused equipment to one side to be wheeled away later a piece at a time. ‘If we’d tapped it after the electric meter,’ said Lady Jessica peevishly, ‘Eddie would’ve had to pay for the juice.’

The rains were still intermittent and the electrics were a worry. Jaynie and Lady Jessica rigged up a tarpaulin to keep the wiring dry, but after a while Jaynie unplugged the big dryers, clipping a single hand-held dryer onto the waistband of her jeans like a gunslinger.

Like food vendors they touted for custom, but people stepped past and the salon chairs remained empty. Finally, to demonstrate that the parlour was still in business, Jaynie offered to cut Rosaline’s hair for free. Rosaline, the owner of the noodle joint next door, usually had her hair cut by her sister at home over the sink with dressmaking scissors.

As I stood watching Jaynie at work, imagining Dub in the seat under her expert hands and wondering what it might feel like to have one’s hair blow-dried, a moped swung into the kerb. The policeman cast his eyes over the scene before dismounting. He beckoned to Jaynie but, her hands still engaged with Rosaline’s hair, she twitched her brow at the empty chair next to her, inviting him to sit. The cop stayed where he was. ‘I didn’t come for a haircut, miss,’ he said, jovially enough. Over the course of the afternoon, Jaynie’s mood had steadily hardened and now she wore a look on her face that made the man hesitate before he moved in closer. ‘You have a permit for street-trading?’ he said, carefully.

‘That’s my salon,’ Jaynie pointed with her scissors.

‘Not what I heard, ma’am,’ but the cop had caught the coolness in her voice and was aware, no doubt, of how many people were about, while he was there alone. Jaynie and Jessica were popular in the street and the extrusion of the salon onto the sidewalk had displaced to either side the barbecue vendors and lottery and cigarette stalls that usually thronged it and now, in this tight-packed space, the cop’s conversation with Jaynie was the focus of everyone’s attention. The cop looked about him, his eyes narrowing as he caught sight of me, lingering over my bruises.

‘How about a free cut, officer?’ Lady Jessica purred the last word. She stepped forward, her broad frame between me and the cop. I saw the forested dome of his head move behind her as he tried to see past her but she shifted her weight from heel to heel and soon enough he gave up. ‘I can see it’s been a while, officer. No ring on your finger. And so trim in that uniform!’ She pulled a chair out for him, patted the seat. The cop appeared to consider, then he sat down. When he did, the tension in the street seemed to abate. The other vendors went back to their business, glancing back at him curiously now and again as he sat, quietly, a salon apron across his breast marked with the words Beauty Queen .

The cop’s hair had been cut and he was part-way through being manicured when Father Mulrooney arrived. I wasn’t surprised to see him; his walks often took him past the salon. He looked dismayed now, as I had been at the sight of the salon furniture out on the street. He looked at Lady Jessica, at me; he nodded gently at the healing bruises, glanced at the dryers and the chairs, at the boxes of combs and brushes and curlers and then, finally, delicately, at Jaynie. She was watching him, waiting to look him straight in the eye and when she did he flushed deeply and broke his eyes away. ‘Come on, Father,’ she said softly, her hand resting on the back of a chair, ‘be my first paying customer.’ Mulrooney looked at the cop, frowning slightly. The cop raised his free hand in greeting and smiled up at the priest. ‘Afternoon, Father,’ he said cheerfully.