After that, no more was said about it. They talked instead about their children and their plans for university, about the coming year’s vacations, about the scent of oleander, the feel of good silk. When they left, Aunt Mary shut herself in her study and was still there when I retired to my room for the night.
Acrylic on Rice Sacks
The small square of my window was still dark when America woke me the next morning. ‘Quit grumbling,’ she said. ‘I left you as long as I could,’ though I hadn’t said a word. I followed her to the kitchen where I was met by rows of cooling bread rolls and sponge cakes already sliced into rectangles in their trays. Aunt Mary was up too, dressed for the day in a blouse and skirt, her hair neatly pinned even at this hour. She smiled at me as I came in and though my entire body ached for sleep I smiled too, for the kitchen, rinsed by a blue-grey light from the yard and filled with the round, dark smell of baking, felt welcoming. Aunt Mary had prepared coffee and she poured out a cup for me, stirring in a spoonful of sugar without my having to ask. She tapped the spoon on the cup’s rim to shake off the drops, frowned as the sound rang out in the thin early-morning light. She looked pale and I wondered if she’d slept at all. She placed the cup carefully, almost noiselessly, on the table in front of me.
America sat down beside me and started to slice tomatoes and cucumber, humming softly to herself as she worked. Aunt Mary moved about in silence, an absorbed look on her face. She fetched a tray of rolls from the counter and placed it on the table. I put down my cup and picked up a roll, split and buttered it, sprinkling sugar inside before closing it up again. Aunt Mary sat down opposite me and started to layer sandwiches. ‘Not quite so much sugar perhaps,’ she said. ‘I doubt many of the Greenhills children bother to clean their teeth properly.’ She emphasised the last word. I hadn’t thought to ask who the food was for. I buttered the next roll more heavily and Aunt Mary, watching my hands, smiled at me again. ‘I thought,’ she continued, her tone almost apologetic, ‘that the symbolism might not escape Eddie Casama and his consortium.’ I liked the way she said symbolism: easily, without pause, as if certain I’d understand her.
Around us, the boarding house lay still and we worked without interruption; Benny had left for Cora’s before even America was up and Dub was still in bed. When, eventually, I heard Dub on the stairs, I pushed myself back from the table and started to assemble his breakfast. I examined my face in the polished surface of his breakfast tray as I placed his food on it. If anything, I looked worse. The swelling had subsided but the bruising had risen and spread and was livid to look at. My arms were no better but I had worn a long-sleeved shirt with my shorts, resisting the urge to roll up the cuffs when they got in the way.
I took the food through to the dining room and arranged it before Dub on the table without raising my eyes. I started to pour out a coffee. Dub smiled up at me but, on seeing my face, looked away again unhappily as he had done several times over the preceding days. He picked listlessly at his plate, and though he opened his mouth as if he might say something, he seemed each time to reconsider. I withdrew to the kitchen to let him eat in peace.
A little later he came through into the kitchen. He looked about at the trays of rolls still on the counters, the skyscrapers of newspaper-wrapped cake on the table. America leaned forward, ready to swat his hand, but Dub thrust his hands into his jeans pockets and bent down to speak to his mother. America nudged me. I got up from the table and walked through to the dining room to retrieve Dub’s breakfast tray. He’d hardly touched his food. I covered his plate before I returned to the kitchen, kept my back to America as I scraped the remains into the waste bin. Her eyes were on me as I turned back.
A strong yellow light washed the kitchen now, accentuating the lines around America’s mouth and cutting shadows under the carton flaps as she packed up the food. As she filled each box I carried it through to the hallway and, when the last of them was done, Dub and I loaded everything into a taxi under Aunt Mary’s direction. His eyes swept over the dark stains on my hands and face as we worked.
The back seat full, Aunt Mary climbed into the front of the cab. The driver waited, his brown arm languid out of the open window, fingers gently drumming the warming metal as Dub moved over to his bike and kicked it off its stand. Together, they pulled out of the drive for the short ride to the jetty where Dub was to help his mother unload, before doubling back to Prosperidad and Earl’s garage.
Back in the kitchen I skulked about, finding small tasks and avoiding America’s gaze. ‘You plan to sneak about here all day?’ she said eventually. I buffed the spoon I’d just washed, studied my upside-down reflection. ‘I might not know all the details,’ she said, ‘but I’ll bet you’re the last person who should be shamed by how you look.’
Esperanza Street teemed under a cloudless sky. People moved in drifts downhill towards the market hall, while overhead banners snapped like sails between lamp posts and balloons tugged against their tethers at door handles and railings. In the distance, the public-address system was being tested: Jonah’s voice. The air smelled different, lighter. It smelled of the ocean and of warm asphalt. Gone was the scent of fried pork and hot oil, for Johnny Five Course had wheeled his cart down to the jetty the evening before to be certain of a pitch, a roll of bedding strapped across his counter. On the other side of the street, Abnor’s tea-stall was still in its usual spot, but it was closed up and padlocked and, behind it, Primo’s windows were shuttered.
Halfway down the hill, the stretch of sidewalk outside the Coffee Shak was empty except for Ignacio Sanesteban, who was working away at something on the Shak’s frontage, his movements uncharacteristically quick and jerky. Behind him, still stacked indoors beside the pastry counter, the white plastic sidewalk chairs formed a bright column. Ignacio straightened up as we approached, placed down the wooden board he had just pulled away from the window frame. He stepped towards us, his hands out like a policeman stopping cars. He crunched as he moved and, in the same instant that I recognised the sound, I made out the mound of broken glass behind him on the doorstep, sunlight scattering from its innumerable edges. From it, a trail of dust and shards tracked back into the interior like the tail of a comet. I gaped at the empty frame of the Coffee Shak window, a few glass teeth still protruding in places from the wood, mouthing its belated protest. Ignacio shrugged. He looked me over, his hands on his hips. ‘You gave the other guy a good hiding too, I hope,’ he said.
‘Looks like a bomb,’ America eyed the broom that leaned up against the doorframe.
I remembered Rico’s voice in the darkness: got another job to get to. ‘You see who did it?’ I said.
‘I got my suspicions. Still, it’s just a window.’ He looked down at my hands. I pushed them into my pockets. ‘Your pop’s been working hard on the rally too, eh? Cowardly way to do it though — get at a man through his kid.’
‘No-names-mentioned wouldn’t be where he is if he did things straight like the rest of us,’ America muttered. Ignacio cast his eyes about the street and, seeing him do it, America added testily, ‘At my age what have I got to be afraid of?’ She threw me a dark look.
‘Want some help?’ I said to Ignacio, hopefully.
‘You don’t need to be near anything sharp right now.’ He turned a piece of glass over with the edge of his sneaker.
‘You better take it easy today, Joseph Santos,’ America glowered at me. She managed to make it sound like a threat. I was disappointed. I’d have liked to stay at the Shak, hear a little Dusty, keep out of sight.