Niyati Keni - Esperanza Street

Suelita came forward to pay her respects. As she turned from the coffin she embraced me without warning, her eyes unguarded and uncertain. Taken by surprise, I barely embraced her back. Still, she held me for a while, her hand cupping the back of my head. She didn’t stay for the entire vigil, leaving perhaps to man the sari-sari store or cook the evening meal. Anyway, there was simply not the room. She was still there though when Benny arrived with America and Aunt Mary and she returned later to join in the prayers at the chapel.

Benny, when he came, stood just inside the door and looked at the coffin and around the room, taking it all in. He’d never been inside my father’s apartment before, for he hadn’t been one of the visitors when Lorna gave birth to Marisol, nor when my mother died, which wasn’t long after the loss of his own father. Then Aunt Mary had thought him too young to attend another funeral so soon and he was dispatched, against his will, to a school friend’s house and on his return sulked for several days. He seemed plain now somehow, unadorned, and I realised of course that he hadn’t brought his sketchbook or his bag full of charcoal and pencils and I was disappointed. After all, what other record would my father’s death leave? I looked round the room at all the people and thought, bitterly, that it could have been, should have been, any one of them that died under the market-hall roof.

Benny wedged himself against the wall and sat with his feet drawn in towards him. Suelita glanced in his direction and he smiled at her, looking away again without lingering. They caught each other’s eyes a few times after that. I was distantly aware of each look. But they didn’t speak, and when Benny left it was my eyes that he searched out last.

Mulrooney and Pastor Levi came, with Levi’s wife Eveline. I noticed absently that Father Mulrooney’s hair still looked good, though it had grown out a little. When he greeted me I found myself saying, ‘She did a really good job, Father,’ nodding at his hair. He blushed and touched it lightly with one hand. He read aloud from the Bible and Pastor Levi said a prayer over the coffin. The heat blended with the sound of their voices in a dense vibration. I felt as if I was watching everything from a distance, as if it wasn’t my father who lay on the table, nor I watching his coffin. I didn’t care about God or heaven or the spirits now. All I knew was the hollowness in me, the sense of having been cut adrift.

After a while it was decided that my father would be moved to the chapel. More and more people were arriving and the crowds filled the courtyard, pressing out into the alleyway. He was carried by my brother and myself and Jonah and the jetty boys. I wouldn’t let Dil take a place under the coffin and shoved him aside when he tried to help. He moved away without protest. Jonah eyed me silently for a moment and appraised Dil.

Uncle Bee went before us down the stairs, coaxing people to move aside, and slowly, fearful of touching the walls, doorframe, railings with the coffin, lest my father’s soul be anchored to the building forever, we manoeuvred him down to the street. The visitors formed a long line behind us. I couldn’t recollect seeing such a large gathering for a funeral before. We made our way to the chapel, Mulrooney and Levi walking in front. I moved automatically, stepping in time with the other pall-bearers. My arms and shoulders ached. From behind the coffin I heard Lorna cry out but I couldn’t turn my head to look. And so I didn’t notice when, in the midst of all this, the House-On-Wheels returned to Esperanza Street and fell in alongside our procession.

We entered the chapel where the vigil continued. People took turns sitting next to me — America, Jonah, Missy and Uncle Bee, even Benny — but I was only dimly aware of them in the soft night, or at least no more aware of them than I was of the shadows and candle flame, of the silence and the chanting, of the muted sounds of grief. Subong never came and I decided, grimly, that he would not return, that no trace of him would be found. I didn’t notice that Lorna wasn’t in the pew next to me and, truthfully, I didn’t really care where she was. I resented her grief; she’d known my father for so short a time anyway.

Dub came late in the night and stayed for a couple of hours. As he stood up to leave he hesitated and, following his gaze into the shadows, I saw that BabyLu was there too, in a corner by herself. I hadn’t expected her to come and she didn’t look at me but stared straight ahead. She wore a scarf that covered much of her face but it was unmistakeably her. Dub walked out quickly but I knew he would wait for her in the dark outside the chapel. Seeing that my attention wasn’t on my father’s coffin, a few people glanced curiously at BabyLu. She crossed herself and bent her head so that her face was almost entirely hidden. When I looked again a little while later she’d gone.

When I came out into the bright morning sun, I saw at last Lorna and her baby and, with her, Lottie, Lando, Luis, Lenora, Luke and Buan and the ramshackle contraption that was the House-On-Wheels. The gaming tables still hung awry. The children looked hungry. Lando came over and put a hand on my shoulder. ‘We didn’t expect to come back and find Dante gone,’ he said.

‘Didn’t expect to find the street half burned down either,’ Lottie said. I was annoyed with her for exaggerating. It felt like she was making light of things, like they weren’t important enough to be accurate about.

‘I don’t really care about the street.’ I knew as I said it how rude it sounded.

‘Everyone’s been talking about how he died. He was a hero,’ she said carefully.

‘How long are you staying?’ I asked.

Lottie shrugged. ‘Depends on the girl.’ I hadn’t thought about Lorna, about what she might do now that my father was dead. Now that I considered it, I assumed she’d leave the same way she’d come, in the House-on-Wheels.

But Lorna, her eyes on Marisol, who lay wriggling on a pile of bedding in the House, said sullenly, ‘I don’t want to come.’

‘Where else can you go?’ Lottie said. ‘Your rich husband gonna take care of you and your bastard child? Buy you a coupé?’

Lorna didn’t reply but looked at me, her eyes red, the skin of her cheeks blotched.

‘Your father paid up his rent for a few days?’ Lottie said. ‘Or she has to leave straight away?’

I looked away so that she might not see how her question offended me. ‘I don’t know,’ I said.

‘You know?’ she said to her daughter.

Lorna stole a look in my direction before replying. ‘He always paid to the end of the month.’

‘So you want us to wait around till you’ve considered all your offers?’ Lottie said.

Irritably, I cast my eyes about the gathering. I hadn’t thought about any of this, about Lorna, about sorting through my father’s things, emptying his apartment so that it might be rented again to a stranger. Even his vigil and the burial to come had been organised by someone else. I spotted my brother with Jonah and watched him till I caught his eye. He waved me over and, gratefully, I excused myself and went to join him.

Miguel was smoking a cigarette. He looked pale. ‘What’s your plan now?’ he said. I didn’t have one. I told him that we had to think about clearing the apartment, making sure our father’s things were in order. ‘Not me, man,’ he said. ‘I can’t stay long.’

‘Your father lived like a saint,’ Jonah said. ‘A lot less stuff than most people.’

‘Sure,’ my brother laughed, ‘a saint. That his baby?’ He nodded towards the House-on-Wheels.

‘No,’ I said.

He finished his cigarette and, straight away, lit another. ‘Come with me to Saudi,’ he said. ‘We could lie about your age.’ I hadn’t considered the possibility of escaping, not just Esperanza and Puerto, but the country.