A Far Country (18 page)

She threw herself into her chores.

Her day became the baby. She thickened formula and boiled him rice, crushed him bananas with a bent fork. She dusted him with talcum, scrubbed stains from his clothes until her fingers ached. A health poster appeared on Junior’s store—
RAIN COMES SOON AND DENGUE TOO
—with a drawing of a giant mosquito hovering over a sleeping child. She found a discarded mosquito net and repaired the tiny holes. She combed lice from his hair with the lice comb she had brought from the north, and when they had a plague of ants, she put cotton in his ears. She played with him, lying on her stomach and biting his hands as he reached for her eyes, or pushed her nose into the softness of his belly, hummed and listened to him laugh. She wished there were two babies, a hundred babies. She would scrub and wash and hum until Isaias came home.

One evening, at dusk, she was cleaning her nails with a knife, listening to the radio, when she sensed someone pass the side of the house and stop by the door. Hugo was babbling
and banging the plastic doll against the floor. She clicked off the radio. ‘Shhh,’ she said, and rested her hand on the baby’s head. The room was silent. In the distance she could hear the faint sound of music.

She waited for knocking or a clap, but there was nothing.

She lay back down, but the feeling persisted.
Isaias?
She stared at the lock. No, she told herself, There’s no one there. It’s the sound of the street, it’s the wind or my imagination. She pivoted her knees over the side of the bed and walked swiftly toward the door.

In the street outside, two little boys were playing. She ran to them. ‘Was there someone outside my house?’ she asked. The children shook their heads. ‘Yes,’ said one, pointing, ‘That lady.’ She followed his finger to the corner, where an old woman struggled up the hill. ‘Just her?’ ‘And a man.’ ‘Which man? What did he look like?’ The boy shrugged. Isabel begged, ‘Please, you have to remember what he looked like. Did he look like me?’

‘Yes.’

Then the second boy swung at the first, laughing. ‘Liar!’

‘Wait …’ she began, but the boys fell over each other, wrestling. She made her way back, not letting her eyes drop from where the road banked away. A pair of older boys were walking up the road. It’s nothing, she thought. Of course there was a man—I live in a city. Isaias wouldn’t come and leave.

Still she sensed something, farther now. At the door of her house she stopped. You don’t know, she told herself, but she could feel it moving, flashes sinking away. She peeked into the room. Hugo hadn’t moved. It will only be a second, she told herself. She closed the door and turned down the street.

She walked quickly. She entered an alley that dove through a cluster of shacks and dropped along a trickling stream reeking of sewage. She passed a group of men clustered at a corner. She felt the words on her lips,
Have you seen a boy who looks like me?
But as she drew closer she saw that they were drinking. She turned down another alleyway, down worn steps cut into the hillside, slipping briefly before she plunged deeper into the maze. The alley narrowed; at times she had to turn sideways to slip through spaces between buildings. She seemed to be following a path: even when the alleys split and re-formed, there seemed to be only a single way to go. Around her, the houses were lit by dim bulbs. Light glinted through the chinks in the brick and the slivers beneath the doors. She heard fragments of words, whistling, a moan, she saw shapes shifting, smelled rot and dogs, cooking oil, plastic burning, perfume. Birds stirred in their cages. In the shadow of the doorways, silent figures rocked slowly in hammocks or came to barred windows to watch her pass.

She entered a cleared lot. There she stopped on an old broken concrete floor with a single cinder-block wall. She saw the darkness of a half-dozen paths that ran off into a mass of shanties. It’s that one, she thought, staring at a narrow alley that fell off to her right, but then she paused, filled with doubt. The light was gray. There was barking. Inside the alleyway, a shadow stirred.

She stared at the alley. She could feel him, it—the light, the shape, the sound, the warmth, the warp in the street—she could feel it moving away, winding down the hill and into darkness. You will lose him, she told herself. But her feet wouldn’t move. The shadows stirred again, and three young men appeared, walking quickly toward her. She turned and
stared up at the looming hill, tried to remember her path through the houses and went back in.

And if it was him? she wondered later. If it wasn’t just my imagination? Why wouldn’t he stay? She waited for an answer, but no answer came. She told herself that next time she would be faster, she would trust her instincts, she wouldn’t wait.

When Hugo cried, she went to the door, but there was never anyone there. In Saint Michael, they believed that babies could sense what most adults couldn’t, that their bodies closed off slowly, the way a skull closed. She sat with her lips against his fontanel. Sense
what?
she asked herself, searching for the words. Her mother knew, her grandfather knew; she had never needed to explain. Now, alone in the little room in the city, those moments in the cane fields seemed impossibly far and strange.

I am like the girl on the flatbed, she thought, the black-haired girl who spoke a language no one knew.

She thought of the rhabdomancer. Now she wished she could ask him how he divined for water in the city, how he saw the tunnels and underground rivers. What good is anything I know? she wondered. What does it matter that I can survive nights out in the forest? Who cares about enduring hunger when there are markets to buy food? Who needs to hear snakes in the cane if there are no snakes and no cane fields?

She had the vertiginous sensation that she was back in Prince Leopold, on the days the men of her village met the foremen from the road companies, the construction firms or
the big coastal plantations.
What can you do?
the foremen would ask, and the men tallied off on heavy callused fingers: I can hunt, I can track, I can walk through the night without stopping. Then the foremen shook their heads and said,
Why would I need a hunter when I have cattle plantations? What else can you do?
I can turn a grindstone in a sugar mill, I can cut, I can carry pounds of cane.
But the sugar mills are going, it’s all factories now, What’s worth a couple oxen and a millstone in the new age?
I always was a farmer, I can farm even the worst, I can dig and find fertile soil where others see only stone, nowhere is there land I cannot grow.
That means little on the coast where the great fields give two crops every year, We need men who know fertile land, not that worthless land of yours, Tell me, man, what else can you do?
I can gather stones, make walls, homes.
Stones?
I know which cactus to eat, and the leaves from which trees, I know how to collect ants and cook them, I know where starch roots are found.
Those are skills for scavengers
. I can grow corn, manioc, yams.
On your little farm, you mean, you can grow those on your little farm, But no one has need for little farms anymore, Tell me, man, what else can you do?

She cooed to Hugo until he slept.

In the middle of the week, Manuela called from work. Leo was coming this weekend, she said. ‘It’s sooner than I thought. Clean the house. The sheets, the dishes. And take your underwear off the line. Dust the saints and the top of the shelves.’

On Saturday morning they walked up the hill to a beauty salon, with a hand-painted shingle and a lone chair. The beautician, a middle-aged woman with heavy hips and a waddling
gait, left lipstick stains on the baby’s cheeks. Isabel held Hugo as her cousin had her hair straightened. The beautician talked incessantly about the soap opera at eight and her daughter who was
nothing-but-trouble
. A third woman sat on the steps with her hair in curlers and echoed with heavy, aspirated
humph
s. The walls were covered with photos of the newest styles, torn from magazines.

An old man with a bowl haircut appeared in the doorway and bowed. The women shooed him off. ‘He loves you,’ said the beautician, kissing Manuela, who covered her teeth as she giggled.

Isabel could smell the perfume on her cousin as they came down the hill. They bought beer from Junior’s store and prepared a stew with beans and onions, tripe and slabs of fat. As it simmered, Manuela sat at the edge of the bed and thumbed absently through a magazine. She made herself up with lipstick and blush, powdered Hugo with talcum. She sat him on her lap and brushed her fingers over his forehead. ‘Daddy is coming,’ she whispered. She sang it softly. Isabel watched as if from a great distance. I should be happy for her, she thought, I should not feel lonely. Soon Manuela said, ‘Leo’s late.’ She began to pace. When night fell, they heard clapping outside the door. Manuela jumped to her feet and tucked her hair behind her ears.

Leo was a small man who reminded Isabel immediately of an uncle, a serious man who worked in the fields. When Manuela embraced him, his hand rose slowly to caress her back. He said, ‘They made us work this morning, otherwise I would have come sooner.’ He broke into a smile when he saw the baby. He lifted him and spun him around the room. ‘My prince! My cowboy!’ The baby made sputtering sounds with
his lips, and Manuela laughed as Isabel had never heard her laugh before.

He kissed Isabel politely. His cheeks were shaven and he smelled strongly of cologne. She could feel the ridges of his rib cage. A little comb in his shirt pocket brushed against her shoulder.

He didn’t set Hugo down even as they ate. He talked about a storm. ‘You can’t imagine the waves,’ he said. ‘You feel them even after you come to land. They follow you. In bed you think you are still at sea.’

She waited for him to say something about Isaias, but he grew silent as he ate. The only sounds were chewing, the clatter of the spoons, the clink of cups against the table. The food was warm and rich. Isabel devoured it, lifting heaping spoonfuls that dripped beans, crushing the fat against the roof of her mouth, feeling it dissolve over her tongue, stopping only to lick the grease from her lips. She felt drunk, heavy. A sweetness seemed to hang from her eyelids, and she didn’t know if it was from the drink or the food. I haven’t eaten like this in years, she thought. For a moment, she forgot the others and chuckled, humming a Carnival tune, until Manuela said ‘Isabel?’ and eyed her crossly. She ate until her belly hurt, and then collapsed beside Leo and Manuela on the bed, where they huddled around the baby. She felt as if her heart was very big, and rose to finish the beer from their cups and lick the bowls. ‘Do we have more?’ she asked, but they were absorbed in the baby and didn’t respond.

Isabel lay on her back next to them. She moved closer so her body pressed against her cousin. Manuela’s hair smelled sweet with perfume. Isabel buried her face into it, but her cousin didn’t seem to notice. She decided she wanted to hold the
baby, but Manuela pushed her gently away. ‘No. Let Leo hold him, Isabel. You are with him all the time.’ Twice she tried to stand, but the walls spun.

That night, as she slept on the floor, Isabel could hear them making love in the bed above her. Manuela whispered,
Hush
, and later, Isabel heard her moan, a soft cry she didn’t think could come from her cousin. She lay perfectly still, her arms pressed to her sides. She felt her face grow warm.

In the morning, she awoke with a blinding headache and almost fell asleep again on the floor of the washroom. They dressed. Manuela let her wear lipstick. In church, she tried to see if any of the men were looking at her. She slid her shoes against the floor. On the steps, she asked Leo, ‘Have you seen Isaias?’

‘Not for months,’ he said. ‘I was going to ask you.’

They spent the day together in the Center. Leo bought Isabel an ice cream, and she ate it outside the Municipal Theater, swinging her legs from a plinth beneath a tall caryatid, watching the theater crowds. Drops of cream fell on her dress, and when Manuela wasn’t looking she leaned forward and licked them from the cotton.

Before he left, Leo gave Manuela a small roll of bills. ‘This is it?’ she asked. ‘Do you know how much last night’s meal cost?’ He protested, ‘The price of the bus ride went up.’ Manuela looked away, and Isabel imagined her calculating. She tucked the money into her bra. In the evening they took him to the station where buses left for the coast. Manuela went to the ticket window and asked about the prices. ‘Why don’t you trust me?’ asked Leo.

They waited outside the bus. Leo held the baby until the driver said, ‘Get on, brother!’

As they rode back to New Eden, Manuela cried. ‘He’ll be back soon,’ offered Isabel. ‘Two months!’ said Manuela. ‘My baby won’t see his father for two months.’ For a long time, she turned from Isabel and wept softly, her head pressed against the glass. She is crying too much, thought Isabel, She should be stronger.

Outside the window, mother-of-pearl clouds haloed the hill. She held her cousin’s hand until they reached home.

That night, Isabel dreamed Isaias came to see her. He entered the room through the door and sat on the side of the bed.

He was wearing his Carnival jacket, with tinsel and colored ribbons. His hair was combed. He drummed his fingers on the side of the bed and whistled happily. Where are you? she asked. He laughed and said, It’s easy, and leaned over to whisper. She awoke with the feeling of his breath on her ear.

She tried to remember what he said, chasing the dream back until her memory failed her. Still, she was comforted. She closed her eyes and thought, Does it count, to be comforted in a dream? Does he know he is talking to me? If I remembered what he said, would I follow his advice, the dream-advice of a dream-brother?

She slept again, and Isaias was there. He left sometime in the early hours of dawn.