I got to my feet again and climbed the stairs. At the top, I glanced at Bina and Elisa’s door, but even if Elisa was in, her mother might have answered first and Aunt Bina would certainly have pressed me for details.
I knocked softly on my father’s door. Elvis quietened and I knocked again. After a moment, the door opened. Lorna must have been expecting my father, for she opened the door smiling but when she saw me she screamed. I hadn’t anticipated that and said rather stupidly, my hands protesting in the air in front of me, ‘It’s only me. It’s Joseph.’ My hands were filthy, bloodstained, puffy. She stared at them, appalled, and then up at my face. Behind me, Bina’s door flew open and Elisa peered out, her eyes bright with alarm. When she saw me she clapped a hand over her mouth, but she quickly regained herself, for she called inside to her mother, ‘It’s ok, Mom. Lorna just saw a rat.’ She shrugged at me, apologetically.
I heard Bina say, ‘That good-for-nothing landlord. I tell him we have rats and what does he do about it? Nothing.’
Elisa closed the door quietly behind her and came out into the passageway. The two girls half pulled, half pushed me inside my father’s apartment and into a chair. Elisa took charge. She peered at me closely, at my face, my eye — which had almost completely closed up — at my hands and chest. She had a mournful expression, one that seemed suddenly adult, and I considered dully where I’d seen it before. I felt shaken when I remembered; Aunt Bina had worn the same look at my mother’s vigil. ‘What happened, Joseph?’ Elisa said, and pursed her lips at me when I shook my head, another of her mother’s expressions. I kept quiet and was grateful when she didn’t persist. ‘Does Dante keep iodine and bandages?’ she said to Lorna. I was startled to hear her utter my father’s name without the prefix Uncle. Lorna shrugged helplessly. She went into the kitchen to look but came back empty-handed. My arrival had disturbed the baby and now it started to whimper and then to cry. Lorna picked it up, rocked it. After a minute the baby hushed but she continued to rock it, staying at the other end of the room.
Elisa stood up. ‘We have iodine,’ she said. She walked to the door, her movements brisk, officious, though her slightness gave the impression of a child playing at adulthood. She left the door ajar. Lorna came closer and sat down on one of the dining chairs and watched me. She held the baby tightly, its head facing her breast, away from the sight of me, and rocked it rhythmically, rapidly. I wondered if she was trying to comfort herself or the child.
Elisa returned, a small bottle pressed to her lips like a finger. She closed the door carefully, making barely a sound. Shaking the bottle gently, she knelt down in front of me. Her face grew stern. She worked without speaking, only hissing occasionally if a crust of blood came away and started to bleed afresh, or a cut looked deeper than expected. I was aware of the smell of her scalp and of the jasmine the girls had braided through their hair. She bathed the flesh around my eye and dabbed it with iodine, moved on to my hand and to every other cut and scrape. She glared at me now and then as she worked. All the while, Lorna rocked in the chair with the baby.
When Elisa was done, we sat quietly for a while. My eye had completely closed over now and my face ached. Lorna kept the baby turned away from me until it was asleep and then took it back to its crib. She went into the kitchen and started to prepare rice and boil some water for a drink. My father would be home soon.
Elisa sat back on her haunches, her arms crossed over her knees, and studied me. The hardened jut of her mouth reminded me of Missy Bukaykay. ‘Want me to stay till he comes?’ she said. I’d have liked to say yes but I didn’t. Elisa repeated her question. I shrugged. I was exhausted. ‘I’d better go then,’ she said reluctantly, ‘or Mom will come knocking and then you’d have some explaining to do.’
After she left, Lorna, uncertain what else to do but feed me, put a plate of rice and beans in front of me. She stayed in the kitchen doorway, hugging herself like a child, her eyes still fearful. ‘You heard from your family?’ I said thickly, for my lip was swollen and my jaw stiff. I had to say it several times before she understood me.
She shook her head. ‘Eat.’ Her voice was scarcely more than a whisper.
I turned my attention to the food, more for her sake than my own; I wasn’t hungry and eating was slow going, every mouthful painful and laborious. I’d hardly made any progress when we heard my father at the door. Lorna stepped forward, her body blocking his view of me. She was silent as he came through the door, yet he said, straight away, ‘What is it?’ He looked past her to me, taking a few seconds to understand. He threw his cap onto the table and rubbed his hand over his hair. ‘Who?’ he said. I stared at him. He sat down next to me and surveyed my injuries. He nodded at the iodine stains. ‘Bina?’ he said.
‘Elisa.’
‘I’ll take you to Bukaykay.’ I shook my head. ‘You need a doctor?’ he looked worried as he said it. I shook my head again.
Lorna brought out a plate for him but he pushed it away. It was me that pushed it back towards him but it wasn’t until I bent once again to my own plate that he started to eat, slowly and without relish. He finished before I did and waited. When I’d had as much as I could manage, he took my plate and we moved to the sink together to wash our hands. Lorna took his place at the table and started to eat a little now. ‘I tell her we should eat together, or she should eat first if I’m late, but she waits on me anyway,’ he said.
There was nothing more to do now and my father walked back to the boarding house with me. The night air was cool. The ground had all but given up the last of the day’s warmth. ‘I didn’t want to ask in front of her,’ he said as we turned onto Esperanza. I knew what was coming. ‘Was it anything to do with what you asked Missy? About this girl and her trouble?’ His eyes scanned the street as he spoke, his last word a murmur. His delicacy infuriated me suddenly. I didn’t reply and he didn’t ask again. I wondered if he might tell Aunt Mary but he would be concerned about how it might look to her, I thought scornfully, how it might reflect on him. We walked on in silence, my father slowing his step frequently for me to catch up.
When we arrived at the boarding house, I wanted to go in through the kitchen door, slip straight to my room, but my father strode right up to the front door and hammered on it. America must have been waiting for me because she opened it almost immediately, her mouth pinched with the effort of holding in whatever lecture she’d prepared for my return. But as soon as she saw me, the words deserted her. I still hadn’t seen myself in a mirror and didn’t know how dreadful I looked. I stared back at her miserably.
She ushered us into the kitchen and left us there. I rose from the table hissing at her to come back. I didn’t want her to tell Aunt Mary what state I’d returned in. America, if she heard me, didn’t even slow down and when she returned it was with Aunt Mary in tow. The two women looked over my injuries, America with a look of dread, Aunt Mary with the same kind of contained anger that Elisa had worn earlier, that showed only in the precise line of her lips. Her voice when she spoke was business-like. She asked my father what had happened before she asked me. ‘He won’t tell me,’ my father said.
I stayed silent and closed my eyes. All I wanted now was to sleep but Aunt Mary and America examined in turn my arms, my hands, my face and chest. Finally, satisfied that nothing was broken, America moved to the Frigidaire and took out some milk to heat for me. ‘No,’ I said softly. She replaced the milk and poured out a glass of chilled water instead and I sat turning it in my hands as they talked.
‘The rally is just days away,’ Aunt Mary said, and I knew what she was thinking, how obvious a target that made me when both she and my father were involved.