Niyati Keni - Esperanza Street

I’d never been inside the Pastor’s house before, though I’d passed by it enough times. It smelled familiar, of oil lamps and fried fish. It was dark inside, the windows small and cluttered with things. Those that didn’t have the family’s belongings heaped against them had stickers of Jesus or the Virgin Mary further obscuring the little light that came through. They were stickers like one might find on a car: God Is My Co-Pilot; Are You Following Jesus This Closely? Each room seemed to encroach upon the next: the chairs and television were in the hallway, so close to the front door that it didn’t open fully; the refrigerator stood just inside the doorway of the bedroom nearest the kitchen. When we entered, Gregorio, Levi’s eldest son, got up from one of the chairs, nodded at me, switched the television off and retreated wordlessly to another room.

Pastor Levi sat us down and offered us both a drink. I shook my head. Elisa took a glass of cold water and sipped at it steadily. Levi looked at me gravely and asked how I was. ‘Fine,’ I said. ‘Luisa wondered if the church wanted some of his things.’

‘Will you not keep them, Joseph? Dante might have preferred it.’ I felt like telling him that I knew better than he did what my father might have preferred but I didn’t.

Elisa spoke up now. ‘I also need to discuss something with you, Pastor,’ she said. ‘About Lorna and her baby.’ Pastor Levi looked at me, and I pretended not to notice. Instead I stared straight ahead. On the wall above the television was a calendar with his name and his wife’s name on it and a small photograph of the two of them holding hands and smiling. The picture must have been taken some time ago because they both looked younger in it and Eveline more slender than I’d ever seen her. Underneath the photograph were the words: Jesus is the head of this household. He is the unseen host at every meal, the silent listener to every conversation . I thought about Gregorio’s apparent obedience at home, though he had as foul a mouth as any of the older boys at school. I wondered whether he felt that at least at school he didn’t have to worry about Jesus eavesdropping on him.

‘She wanted me to ask you about adoption,’ Elisa said and I could tell from her voice that she knew she had my attention as well as the Pastor’s, though she didn’t turn to include me. I guess Pastor Levi had already given this some thought because he didn’t seem at all surprised and was quick to answer. The church had connections, he said, with agencies that might be able to place the baby with a couple or a family, perhaps even overseas. He talked plainly, looking at each of us in turn, but I couldn’t hold his eye. Eventually he said, ‘I’ll come by later, talk to her and look over your father’s things,’ and he put a hand on my shoulder, turning away again before I had to acknowledge him. He insisted on saying a prayer for us before we left and when he closed his eyes Elisa began drumming her fingers on the arm of the chair, before stopping and balling her hand when she realised I’d noticed. If Pastor Levi heard it, he didn’t falter.

Elisa was quiet when we left. She didn’t speak until we were back on Esperanza and then she said, ‘It wouldn’t be fair on you either, Joseph. She knows that.’

I didn’t want to go back to the apartment so we cut through Prosperidad and out onto the coast road and walked along the sea wall away from the ruined market hall and jetty. The charred timbers of the jetty had been knocked away and replaced by makeshift ramps to keep the boatmen and jetty boys in business for a while. I didn’t want to speak to anyone there, didn’t want to have to behave in whatever way was expected of me by my father’s friends and co-workers. Elisa didn’t push me to say anything and we sat on the sea wall for some time in silence. After a while I said, ‘When we were young, I thought that one day you and I would get married.’

‘I’d only marry you if you were rich,’ she said, kicking her legs against the stone.

‘If Marisol went to a good family that would be the best thing,’ I said. ‘She’d get sent to school, maybe even college.’

‘You talk like it’s a choice ,’ Elisa said, her legs suddenly still. She put a finger to her cheek, inclined her head girlishly. ‘Shall I wear the red one or the yellow one? Put my hair up or leave it down? Give up my baby or keep her?’ Her tone fooled me for a second and, on reflex, I made as if I was going to push her off the wall, like we were kidding around. Then, all at once, her words surrendered their meaning. I looked down at the water, the surface of it skimmed with rubbish and oil from the boats, the water beneath clear. I opened my mouth to defend myself but she wasn’t done yet. ‘You think poor girls miss their babies less than rich ones?’ she said. She didn’t want an answer and I didn’t want to give her one; anything I said now would infuriate her. Her words anchored us to where we sat. I couldn’t get up to leave; it would have ended the conversation and she’d have been doubly mad with me for, even though she said nothing more, I knew from her face that the subject was far from closed. So we stayed put, some distance from the broken jetty but close enough to make out the boats coming in and the figures of the jetty boys, their identities indistinguishable apart from Jonah. My throat felt thick. So what? I wanted to say. What’s it got to do with me anyway? High above us the sun reached its peak, blazing off the water.

Back at the Bougainvillea I followed America round the kitchen. ‘She’s a hard worker,’ I said. ‘She kept Pop’s apartment real clean.’

‘Nothing doing,’ America said. ‘You can ask her yourself. You’re old enough and pretty soon I’ll be gone anyway and then you’ll have to handle everything without running to me to bail you out.’

Aunt Mary was in the sala, seated at the piano. By her feet were piles of sheet music but on top of the piano was a stack of photograph albums and there was another on her lap. It looked as if she’d started one task only to be distracted by another. She smiled at me as I walked in. ‘How are you feeling, Joseph?’ She asked me this almost every time she saw me now.

‘We’re almost done at the apartment. Luisa will be gone soon.’

Aunt Mary’s smile deepened. ‘We don’t choose our family, Joseph.’

I asked if she needed any help with whatever she was doing and she laughed then. I looked down at the album on her lap. The page was half empty. In front of her on the closed piano lid sat a small, neatly squared pile of photographs. On the otherwise empty music stand above it, a solitary picture: the girl under the yellow bell tree. Aunt Mary was making a space for her. I sat down on the mat near her feet and told her then about Lorna and Marisol and our visit to Pastor Levi, about whether there might be a way out that meant she didn’t have to lose her baby. ‘I could show her how to do everything the way you like it,’ I said.

Aunt Mary listened to me patiently, frowning slightly the whole while. When I’d finished, she said, ‘I have to think about the boys. Dub will be gone soon, but Benny is only fifteen.’ She didn’t have to say any more. I understood what she meant. Lorna was only a year younger than Benny and me, but already a mother. I couldn’t press her; I knew my place. Aunt Mary was a woman who considered everything carefully, who rarely if ever spoke in haste. Perhaps she’d even considered it already and decided against bringing the unknown, the unknowable, into her house. I didn’t blame her for it. It wasn’t her problem. It wasn’t anybody’s.

I didn’t return to the apartment that evening as I’d planned. Instead I worked and read at home. I didn’t want to be there when Pastor Levi came to pick through my father’s things or see Luisa flattering him and offering him refreshments while ordering Elisa or Lorna to fetch them. When I did return it was late the following morning and, as I turned the corner past the general store, I saw that the courtyard was empty. The House-on-Wheels had gone.