Niyati Keni - Esperanza Street

Dub turned to his mother but before he’d even opened his mouth, she said, ‘Don’t forget Joseph.’ I was disappointed again; I’d hoped to walk back with her and Benny, listening in to their conversation. Benny pushed his hands into his pockets and said sullenly, ‘Joseph rode out with him,’ but Aunt Mary slipped her arm firmly through his. America, tired and impatient now, pursed her lips at the bikes before turning away.

Earl was the first onto his bike. In ones and twos the group pulled out of the school gates, crawling through the traffic and the mass of people spilling out from the sidewalks. We rode in a line to Salinas and then, as we cut through town, one after another the bikes peeled away again until only Earl and Dub rode on together past the edges of Greenhills to rejoin the coast road several kilometres to the south.

Earlier it had taken only minutes to get from the boarding house to the school. And, despite not having wanted to ride with Dub in the first place, as we’d slowed down to turn in at the school gates, I’d suddenly wanted to pick up speed and keep going, leaving the gates, the crowd, the noise and mess of Esperanza behind. Now, as we rode back, the black sea invisible to my right, the wind smoothing my hair away from my face, I felt an overwhelming sense of freedom, and suddenly I understood something so clearly that it surprised me. I understood that for these brief times of being on the road, Dub was not the son of Mary and Captain Bobby Morelos, the product of generations of breeding , in the same way that I too harboured the illusion of leaving my real self behind, far back amid the eddies of road dust, and flying forward to meet a future that was still ripe with possibility.

We rode on through the darkness and, after a while, it seemed as if an uncertain light shifted in the distance ahead. When we drew closer to Esperanza we discovered why: under a thick pall of smoke, the jetty was on fire.

When I was much younger, the jetty was the furthermost boundary of my world. It was busier then; the ferry terminal along the coast hadn’t been built and the jetty was always full — of people, livestock, engine noise — a chaos that made it seem far bigger than itself. Along the coast road, small eateries and variety stores flourished, many of which closed down altogether or moved away when the new terminal opened. Then, my father was a giant, or so I thought, and Jonah was a young man, unmarried and flat-bellied.

My mother took me there sometimes after the market and, though my father took his work more seriously than the other jetty boys and disliked distractions, he always looked pleased when he saw us approaching. We’d sit for a while on the sea wall, waiting for him to finish. I have scattered memories from that time: the rush of air as my father swung me up over his head, before frowning at me when the suddenness of it made me cry and my mother scolded him; my sister kicking her dry heels against the stone; my brother running along the top of the wall, jumping down to holler at chickens crammed into cages or bunched by their feet against the front wheels of a bicycle.

For me, the jetty contained these events just as my father’s apartment contained other pieces of my life. And now I could see flames bursting out from along its length and stealing from the roof of Jonah’s office onto the canopy of the market.

Dub slowed the motorbike down, and as we came nearer, I saw people running with buckets and pans, even jugs, back and forth from the sea. The air was thick with heat and smoke and beneath the smell of burning, another smell, acrid and familiar. Dub stopped the bike in the middle of the road and we dismounted. From up ahead, Earl turned round and cruised back to join us. ‘Feel like being a hero?’ he said. His garage was on the other side of Esperanza, but the wind coming from over the sea was restive and it hadn’t rained today.

‘We’ve got to do something,’ said Dub, but he sounded doubtful. A crowd had gathered but, as the heat built, the onlookers edged back slowly along the coast road while the fire, brilliant against the night sky, crept forward in a thin line along the beams that anchored the corrugated iron plates of the market-hall roof. Within the encircling darkness, the first shops and dwellings of Greenhills wavered like ghosts in the uneven firelight. I thought of the curandero’s wooden-frame house, the Espiritista chapel, the countless shacks made out of fruit crates and sacking. Even at this distance, hard, dry waves of heat broke over our skin.

‘We’ve got to do something ,’ Dub said again and climbed back onto his bike. We rode up around the back of the market, through the rough, unpaved alleys and across Esperanza Street to leave the bikes on the garage forecourt. Earl knelt to chain the bikes to the garage doors and then he and Dub started running back towards the jetty. I followed after them.

Earl began to force his way through the crowd and we followed in a line behind him, Dub first, then me. Later, this moment was one that came back to me over and over, the sight of Earl’s big frame cutting through the crowd and, when it did, I wondered if Dub, like myself, was relieved that all that was required of him in that moment was to follow or whether, in the end, he really was made of different stuff than I. Like most people, I had, in the safety of my bed or daydreaming as I hung sheets in the yard, imagined myself in acts of heroism: pulling Benny from a burning Bougainvillea, even going back for Aunt Mary’s most precious figurines, or dragging Suelita from the sea. But now, faltering amid the smoke, the dense, hot air clamouring around me, I was struck by a kind of paralysis. Like a child, I wanted to be told what to do.

The crowd grew. Handkerchiefs and t-shirts tied across mouths and noses divulged only intermittently the familiar contours of a cheekbone, a jaw. Here and there I thought I heard the timbre of a familiar voice. People brought more containers, anything that might hold water, and cleared empty crates from the far end of the market. But the fire had climbed higher now, out of reach of the men and women who passed vessels back and forth along a line. I heard someone shout nearby, a voice I knew well: Jonah. He sounded shrill. ‘We have to bring the beams down or it’ll catch the wind.’ I looked up at the market roof, the lines of fire snaking further towards its peak. A man pushed out from the crowd and moved towards the market hall. He carried an axe and when I saw him I cried out, the sound lost straight away, even to my own ears. It was my father.

I watched him as he strode forward, his gait resolute, a man who had decided not to wait for others to act. He paused for a moment and looked up, studying the roof, the struts that supported it. And then he ran under the canopy, deep into the market hall, and took up position at one of the beams nearest the centre, under the peak of the roof. Shaking my head, I started after him. I felt Dub’s hand on my shoulder pulling me back. Jonah stepped forward now after my father, the long, curved blade of the bolo he held orange in the firelight. The lines of people carrying water slowed now and moved away from the market to concentrate their efforts on Jonah’s office and the single line of shacks that ran along the coast road and abutted the market hall.

Dub pulled me forward now and we joined the lines and passed buckets and tins back and forth. Dub pulled his t-shirt up over his nose but it kept slipping. My mouth was bitter with the taste of burning. I looked in the direction of the market hall and imagined I heard over the din the rhythmic sound of iron chopping at wood. I knew that my father and Jonah would be working together, each striking the beam as the other swung back. I craned my head to see what was happening and saw that more men had joined them under the canopy to work at the neighbouring beams. I imagined now the roof giving way and the men running out from under it. Esperanza Street itself had cleared as people moved away from where the roof plates might fall. Some of them moved towards the neighbouring shacks, still untouched by the fire, and took with them more containers of water with which to wet the buildings. It seemed a pitiful effort, the pails and basins of water inadequate to the size of the task, the sheer number of homes.