We planned the revolution in a cheap Southampton bistro; I don't remember details but there were English boys with banjos
I knew Prufork before he got famous
She sat leaning against the porch pillar, sucking alternatively on her teeth and a drop of a clear, boiled sweet. Overhead the clouds were racing against a canvas of brilliant, almost shimmering blue. The sun might be hot now, but later on it would rain; after the storm would come the heat, a humid collection of warm, leftover rain.
Esperanza was undoubtedly, indisputably, the best mechanic on this side of town. Better than all her brothers, better than her father even—the old man would never admit it but he was proud, very proud, even if the sign above the rickety shop still only said "Valdez and Sons".
The girl sat ruminating over this as she continued to suck at the last traces of flavour, trying to get the grime out of her palms with the help of a blade of plucked grass. At this moment a man was walking up the dirt path, head bowed against the beating of the sun. He wore thick, corduroy overalls and had a slight limp. The village idiot-who was actually the smartest one of them all but very insistent at not showing it at school—Don, was running behind him, mimicking the limp with a look of false, droll concern. The gathered group of children behind were tittering.
Esperanza picked up a small, smooth pebble and hefted it at the boy, swerving her aim so that it missed him on purpose. "Get away, stupid!"
Don poked his tongue out of her but ran off, the children accompanying him like rats after the piper. Esperanza hoisted herself up and smoothed the faded denim that gripped her thighs and ripped at the knees. The man was walking up towards the shop and no one else was at home.
"Anything you need doing, sir?" She called out, pushing the sweet to a side of her mouth. "We do cars, we do your motorbikes, and we do everything, whatever, here at Valdez and Sons. And daughter." She added, as an afterthought. The man grinned. His face was scarred—and not in that handsome, rugged, Zorro-the-last way—but when he smiled, he looked nice, comfortable.
It was odd that he didn't have anything with him except a small, leather pack at his waist, but Esperanza was not deterred.
"To order, sir?" She asked.
"No, actually," his voice was reassuring. Peering closer at his face, she deducted that underneath the scarring he was young, not more than two or three years older than her, where she stood at nineteen. "I was looking for a job."
"Oh," she faltered, "well, sir, I'm sorry but my pa—he don't hire anyone except family. I mean… you could try, I guess, but… he's very strict about that, my pa. Family business, he's very strict." The sweet had turned the inside of her cheek sticky, almost stale—she swallowed it hurriedly.
To her surprise, the man didn't look depressed—and judging from his clothes, neat but thin and fading with wear, he did need a job. His stomach rumbled and he winced, embarrassed.
"Um, you hungry sir?" Esperanza asked. "I could get you something to eat, if you want—I don't mind."
"No, thank you. Just point me down to the nearest sandwich shop, I'll be fine."
How to tell him that they didn't have a sandwich shop? That the only food house in this tiny town was closed for the week because Old Anita had to go to the Yucatan to visit her dying mother? I've got to have my papers in order, I can't have the border police arrest me when I get back. This is my home.
"It's closed," she said apologetically. "Really, my ma makes a huge dinner; we've still got loads of leftovers from last night."
"I don't like to trouble you," he concedes but she shakes her head.
"No trouble, none at all…just wait here…" a moment of kindness does not equate stupidity after all, as it would if she did let a strange man into the house. With a half-leap, a sudden fit of exhilaration borne by movement, she moves into the kitchen. Just as predicted, a container of rice sits in the humming fridge, mixed with chicken strips and bright green veggies that still smell of the fields. She scoops three spoons of red sauce onto the mix and carries it out.
The man—the boy? What are we really, at eighteen, at nineteen—was waiting on the porch steps, twisting his cap in his hands. A dollar bill, faded, was clutched between his fingers. Embarrassment was etched into his hesitant smile as he offered it to her but she pushed it away, protesting heartily—both the tray of food and the dollar back towards him.
"I'm very sorry."
"S'nothing… least I could do."
Through the gum trees she could see Don, brazen and bold, leading the pack of children; peering at her and the stranger with curious, hard faces. Dom made a kissy face at her and she replied with a quick motion that her mother would have cuffed her on the shoulder for had she still been a young girl.
"So," he asked, after a spell, "I would still like to discuss with your father, if that's alright. When will he be home?"
X
They are all seated in the tiny, cosy living room. The promised rain-shower still leaves traces in the air an hour after its sudden departure. She drinks it in like a blessing. The man—Howard, she found out—has put himself up in the bed bug ridden inn in the town centre. Don is very pleased by this. You see, Howard is a Mechanic. He's not just a mechanic, he's a god-send, and he's a son of the best, the top of the class. He did Mike T. Halos's car brilliantly, the engine running smooth as hell and cooler too.
"But he's not family!" Her father protests and her brother Hibram nods seriously.
"He's the best you've ever seen, pa!" Esperanza protest. "Better than me, even!"
Hibram scoffs and she knows exactly what he's thinking, exactly what he has been thinking ever since he was sixteen and she was fourteen but her father saved the special smile for her; called her his grease monkey in a gruff, pleased tone—ever only nodded at Hibram. What makes you think you're so special, little girl?
"Do we have the money?" Her mother asked patiently, ever the peace-maker, ever the cool-headed.
"The point is that, money or no, this business is family. This business is Hibram, is Marcos and Esperanza. It was mine; it belongs to the name of Valdez. Just like my father said. You never saw a prouder man when the gringas let him open up. When he made them let him open up."
X
"My pa is a good man." Her voice is steely, though she does regret that Howard has to go.
He nods politely, not having said anything to the contrary. "I'll just keep looking." A tight smile, tired eyes and raised white lines on his cheeks—what happened?
"Two hours from here," she finds herself saying, "take the bus 78—it'll take you the Angel's Broken Heart. There are always jobs to be found there."
"Thank you," he smiled huge, generous. "I'll be sure to go there."
"Bus 78." She smiles as well, bigger than the sun, "Good luck."
She is gold to him. That is the only way he knows how to put it: the afternoon sun in her hair, the flecks in her eyes. God, if you are listening, please bless the children. They don't know how lovely they are.
Hazel looks up at Winona, a nice and pretty girl. She has hair like a river of flowers, slight curls and smelling of jasmine; it ripples slightly down her back. The girl raises a self-conscious hand to her own hair; it feels bristly in her hand and she bites her lip.
"I hate it," she murmurs, watching as Winona leans back and her hair dangles behind her like a fisherman's net sparkling with salt-water. "I hate my hair."
"You've got great hair," he blurts, unable to stop himself. "Defying gravity hair: bold hair. Strong, good hair, matches you."
She laughs and that is gold to him. Gold, gold, gold.
The motorbike kicks up dry dust so that it looks ghostly, suspended. Don is fifteen now and is watching from his own porch, lizards skittering underneath his feet. It's miraculous, this bike. Hibram with his dark hair and gleaming skin, helmet tucked under a filled-out arm, looks good by it.
"Sister—my darling sister, so sweet, so lovely…"
Esperanza glares at him through narrowed eyes. To hell with him and his white shirt. To the devil with him and his leather jacket, bought half-price from the Angel's Broken Heart. He had had his chance and he squandered it. Through the window she could see Marcos staring out, interested.
"Bed-time, mijo!" At eleven there is no way she will allow him to idolise her bastard of a brother. The window swings shut but he might be watching through the slats.
"What are you doing here?" She hisses. She knows, with an ache in her heart, that her mother is crying in the living room and her father is staring at the Virgin Mary and the candles with steel in his pupils.
"My baby sister! I've come to see ma and pa of course. How's Marcos doing, eh? And yourself? Getting married anytime soon? Surely not," his voice adopts a mocking, dry tone, "not when you're so hard fixing…"
"How much do you want?"
He smiles the fucker's half smile that has all the girls up in Angel's halfway in love with him. It used to work with all the aunties doing their shopping.
"You know me so well."
"I know you well enough to know I would rather not have you here."
He gives a bitter laugh and leans easily against his bike. She glares at its glimmering rims, the spray-painted body. "So, for real, how are the parents?"
"Not that you care," she spits, folding her arms across her chest. The t-shirt she has on is grubby and worn to the bone; she has used it very often in the work-shop and all the detergent in the world can't get the stains out.
"They don't need me anyway," he says, his mouth very twisted. His good looks are gone and she can see the surly child beneath. "Not when they've got their precious, their god's gift…"
She peels off a twenty dollar note from her pocket and bangs her fist into his chest to make him shut up.
"Dry."
"I don't have anymore. Where's your shame, eh? What kind of a man crawls back home to get money from his younger sister…"
He reaches forward and grips her wrist. She stares him down; gone are the days where he could terrify her with a glance, could make her feel like shit with just a quirk of his lips. She does not even bother to move.
"You watch it eh, darling? Think you're a big shot, up here with the business, think you're the fucking light of God-"
"Esperanza!" Her father is standing at the doorway. The light leaking from behind him makes him look skeletal almost and she realises how old she is getting. Hibram lets go of her wrist but she stays in her spot. The two men exchange brief pretending-not-to-look glances and Hibram gets on his bike.
She watches him spin off like a myth, Don howling in appreciation of how strong the bike looks whistling away through the empty, barren roads, sandwiched between the mountains. He is a glowing pinprick of exhaust and light in the looming darkness, and then he is gone.
"Get inside." There is a trace of sadness in her father's voice and she would much rather have anger. Anger is good, anger she can take.
X
Day of the dead. Painted skulls glittering in crystal coves and a procession of candles in the dark. Gleaming, gleaming: gold and moon. Amidst rusting bicycles and potted plants Don is kissing a girl with a glitter in her hair and a smear of pale pink shell paint underneath her chin. Sweet, sugary smells hang in the air, twined with flowery perfume and sweat. She hears the beating of the drums; not the quick, hard slaps, but the bounce and snap of the stretched deer hide.
The shrine erected for one Hibram Valdez has a number of things on it, one of which is a wooden figurine of a bicycle. Marcos—who is getting to be the strong, silent, dependable type—carved it with a shrug. Across the street her mother is talking with some other ladies, laughing and crying at the same time, all of them. Her father and the men are swigging drink and this is the distribution of their grief. A flash of silver sequins and pink voluminous fabric shows Esperanza that Don and his girlfriend are enjoying themselves.
The road is crowded with activity and when the man shows up beside her she is shocked, jolted.
"Howard?" There is disbelief in her voice. She pins her hair back, trying to tuck it behind her ear, but it cascades forwards nevertheless. "Where did you come from?"
He laughs that comfortable, reassuring laugh. In the no-pattern pattern of dreams, she has heard that laugh once or twice.
"I was in town," he looks better than last time; in terms of a spiritual well-being, if it fits the day. His clothes are thick and pressed; he looks to be in good health. "And I thought, I would come and see the festivities…"
She smiles; celebrating life has always been for fitting than mourning death. She is determined that when she herself passes on, no one will be allowed to wear black. They had all worn black to Hibram's funeral; thinking about this makes ice spread in her chest. They had never been on good terms, but he was her brother—she hated him, but he was family—and her parents had broken hearts. It is not a good thing for the parents to bury their children. It hurts in the worse way possible, to see your child dead. You brought him into this world, after all. You should not be here to see him leave it.
"How is your father's company?" Howard asks, sitting on the stoop beside her. Colours flicker on their faces from the shimmering lights. Flashes and snatches of pinks, reds and blues.
"Let's get a drink," she says, standing up—the motion vividly recollects the one she made years ago, when she had hastened to fix him a meal of leftovers, "and I'll tell you."
"That such acts of inhumanity can be performed by our fellow men against our fellow man is unfathomable, perhaps—but the barbarity of Hitler's Third Reich knows no bounds, it is apparent… News from the Orient tells us that while the resistance in formerly British occupied Southeast Asia is still going strong, the Japanese are merciless and respond in kind; as for us, we will return to the Philippines and we will bring victory… On the home front, we are pleased to report that all is going well…"
"It doesn't sound very good."
Sammy leans forward to switch the radio off. Static warbles through the room like hardening plastic and the sunlight gleaming through the dusty window is piping.
"Its war, isn't it!" He's an adolescent boy; he wants to be out there fighting the Nazis… he wants to be in Tunisia giving the Italians hell. Mussolini, Mussolini, late for dinner, his spaghetti. He doesn't know how it feels to see once-human-things in concentration camps, bodies twisted in piles. He doesn't know about blood like a river in Malayan jungles, or soldiers without limbs freezing their lives out of their injuries in Russia. But these are the things that we are must do.
Hazel stares out of the window, thinking, and he is struck anew by how much he likes her. He tries quickly to think of a stupid joke, what does Hitler eat for breakfast? But he comes up short. Maybe this is enough, for now, sitting here like this. They will collect scraps later: old tires and tins that once held the imitation coffee they drink for the Duration. It's a funny thought: someone's dinner tin as part of a fighter plane. Someone's dinner tin winning the war. He misses his father. He hopes he comes back.
But for now he will mow down Nazis in his mind. He'll stand in the German mountains and lead a troop down the ravines and he'll sit her with a girl he likes very, very much.
"You are a beautiful boy. Mijo. My beautiful boy."
You can see still traces of the girl she once was: the light in her eyes, the easy way she walks. You grow up, but not really. What are we, at eighteen, at nineteen? The child in her arms is small and he looks nothing at all like his father. All he is is scrappy, eyes and limbs and soft-smelling baby hair.
"Mama loves you very much."
X
Hibram Valdez is not a bad person. He has done some very bad things. He has broken his mother's heart and stolen some of the light from his father's eyes. He's not a good person, either.
He rides around the Angel's Broken Heart, spending his sister's money and getting lipstick on his collar and cheeks. He feels unfulfilled. He is a disappointment. The night is late and the stars are falling; he recalls the priest at church, arms raised in prayer, golden threads woven into his white tunic. He raises his arms like that, lifting them off the bike handles. Wind rips through his hair and he is seven years old, on a bike, his father pushing him from behind.
Go forth, my son, and sin no more. Deliver us from evil. Give us this day our daily bread.
The priest puts his arms down and takes a breath. The truck comes in from behind.
X
The house is empty and he is standing there, helpless and confused. Where could she have gone? His fingers trace the scratches in the window. Tucked around a jutting nail in the doorway is a piece of purple fabric with tiny stars strewn into it. A piece from her mother's jacket; the elaborate costume she used as a part of her act. The mosquitoes in the trees, sucking blood: fat, glistening bodies; black legs with white stripes. Through a haze of wispy darkness, the gloomy ribbon that is the river lurks.
In his pocket there is a diamond and it gleams. And jazz spilling out of blackened windows and firefly lights on the bayou. He traces a finger on the biggest scratch and closes his hand around the scrap of fabric. Morose, he taps out something on the window; knuckles falling on old glass: dots and dashes, like what the soldiers use.
The house is empty now, go home.
X
It's been a few months since Esperanza has visited Sammy. Her father has passed on, her mother is fading in the peaceful way of those accustomed to death; they will make tea and sit on the porch. Death will stretch out his hand, very much the gentleman. But Sammy is still alive.
At the shop she is worked to the bone, exhausted in the collected way of people who are doing something they love very much. These are the dying years: fiscal calamities will ensure the closure of Valdez and Sons. And daughter.
There is a set of wind-chimes, carved wood and tinkling metal, hanging from the front door; the dry, hot wind sets it singing.
Later on the old man will say something she doesn't quite understand.
"The diamond—I shouldn't have sold the diamond…"
A series of taps on wood. These are the things we leave behind. This is the mother telling her son she loves him. They used to practice it at school, thinking they would all be put on the same troop.
"So who you think we gonna fight? I want… I want the Germans!"
"My uncle was at Pearl Harbour. I want to be sent to Japan."
"They don't send no Asians to Japan, stupid. You'll be sent to Europe, or Africa or something."
"I'm not even Japanese, man. I'm Filipino!"
"You're still Asian aren't you, stupid? I'm telling you—they not gonna send any Asians to Japan. They're worried you'll join sides."
"Join sides my ass! They killed my uncle!"
"Not my fault. I'm just telling you the truth. You don't like it? Not my problem. I don't like it either, but it's the truth."
"What about the Italians?"
"Them? They're dead anyway, they're finished."
There used to be a girl once, with gravity-defying hair, bold hair. The sunlight in his eyes is nothing but gold and the baby in front of me makes him so incredibly sad, the old turn the world over the young; it makes him ache in the most glorious of ways. My darling children, it is your fight now. Godspeed.
X
She thinks of her father calling her his grease monkey, of the quiet calm of her mother. She thinks of Marcos, who is the bone opposite of Hibram. Will he be the first to meet her when she goes? Day of the dead. She thinks of Don, whooping at a motorbike, kissing a girl in pink and sequins. Hot, collected rain creating humidity in the sky. Lizards skittering on the front porch with beady eyes. Her calloused fingers on raised white scars. Colours flickering on their faces.
"Mama loves you."
Her voice can't be heard over the snap and crackle of the fire, but her knuckles on the submarine window will speak for her. Soldiers in a far off land, static on the radio. This is what she will leave behind: goodbye to her mijo, her beautiful boy, her blood.
The priest puts his arms down and takes a breath.
Go forth, my son, and sin no more.