by Daniel Mason
On the way, she turned to the window and practiced speaking. Say all the letters! she told herself. Don’t call her Patricia, call her madam and don’t stare. They don’t understand silence, they think it’s simplicity, they think the natural state of a person is to talk. It is what Isaias would have told her. Isaias … she felt a surge of joy pronouncing his name. I am really going to see him, she thought. Even if he isn’t there, Patricia will know. She will know the next step. When she descended, she asked a taxi driver for the name of the building. He pointed to a nearby tower. ‘Tall one there.’ He spoke with a heavy northern accent. She paused, fighting an impulse to confide everything in him. ‘Visiting someone?’ he asked curiously. ‘Yes,’ she said, and saw the doubt on his face.
She found the building, its name in brass curlicues on a white wall. It was very tall, set back behind a fence topped with razor wire. Bougainvillea garlanded the glass eye of a security camera. She hesitated by the buzzer until the intercom crackled. ‘Hello?’ came a man’s voice. Startled, she looked up toward the camera. ‘I am here to see Mrs. Patricia, in apartment twenty-two,’ she enunciated carefully. ‘Are you the applicant for the maid’s job?’ asked the voice. She paused. She had invented a story, partially true, about her brother, the drought, a turned-over flatbed.
‘Yes,’ she said slowly, ‘I’m the maid.’
There was a mechanical click and the door opened. She found herself in a barren walkway, before another set of doors. There was a guard-booth with blackened glass. Suddenly, she wished she hadn’t lied. The door clanged shut behind her. The booth opened and a man came out, swinging a key chain. ‘I need to search you,’ he said. He patted her down with the back of his hand and peeked inside the sling, where Hugo was sleeping. He opened the second door for her and led her across a long driveway and into a lobby with gleaming floors and real flowers. Classical music played from a hidden speaker. A second, stocky guard motioned her into the elevator and pressed the top button. He had light blue eyes like her brother. He crossed his arms and stared at her without looking away.
The same music from the lobby played as the lift rose. It was plated with a gold-tinted mirror and the lights were low. She studied herself. Now, she was ashamed by how old her dress looked. On the hill, she had combed back her hair, but it had begun to spring from its clasp. Hugo’s sling suddenly seemed dirty; she had washed it only yesterday. She realized she had no idea what she would say: the words she rehearsed on the bus seemed ridiculous, and now she’d lied. She wanted to stop the elevator but didn’t know how. Her stomach was tight; she was glad she hadn’t eaten.
Hugo stirred. Don’t wake up, she thought. Please, be quiet. Please don’t make trouble.
The door opened. There was a small vestibule with a vase of violet irises. A maid waited by a second door. She glanced at the baby in Isabel’s arms and smiled politely but distantly. She reminded Isabel of the girls at home, but she wore a stiff apron and her hair was tied tightly back. She led Isabel into a room with a wooden floor, where a cream leather couch stretched before a long glass table. In a painting on the wall, a man with smooth gray hair stood by a seated woman in a strapless white dress and pearls. His hand rested on the arm of her chair. Her hand rested on his, but didn’t hold it. Her thin lips were scarlet. A gray dog with the face of a rat stared contemptuously from her side. An identical woman sat at the far end of the room by a glass door that opened onto a patio. In the distance, Isabel could see the skyline of the city. The woman wore a white dress that ended at her knees. It was cut low over her breasts, which were tan and sun-mottled. On the table beside her was a plate of wet grapes.
She held an unlit cigarette and slouched. Her bare arms looked unnaturally smooth.
‘Sit,’ she said. ‘You don’t expect to bring that baby here when you start working?’
Isabel’s eyes were still taking in the room: a basket of gigantic lemons, a liquor cabinet, three vases of pink, naked lilies and a brass statue of a woman. There was a television larger than any she had ever seen. A low credenza sat against the far wall, set with crystal that glinted in the incoming light.
She didn’t know where to sit. To get to the couch required walking across a rug that was blindingly white. She found herself staring at the woman’s arms.
‘There,’ said the woman, pointing with the cigarette. Isabel walked along the edge of the carpet and perched at the rim of the couch, careful to keep her back straight. She rested Hugo on her lap. The baby stirred and then settled. The woman flicked her wrist. ‘Remind me: Which of my friends recommended you?’
‘Recommended?’ said Isabel, awkwardly. ‘No one did, I …’
‘No one,’ said the woman, imitating her singsong. ‘You haven’t been here for long, have you?’ She laughed. ‘You have pretty eyes, you know. Who was it that sent you?’
‘No one. I’m not here for that.’ Isabel looked down. ‘I’m looking for my brother,’ she added, but her voice was so soft that she wondered if the woman could hear. She prepared herself to say it again.
‘The guard said you want to be the new maid. So you’re not here for the job?’
‘No.’
‘Speak up, I can’t hear you. No you’re not saying that, or No you’re not here for the job?’
‘No I’m not here for the job.’
The woman let the cigarette drift slowly down. ‘Then how did you get into the building?’
‘The guard let me in.’
‘The guard let me in? What kind of game is this?’ She turned to the maid. ‘Get me my phone,’ she said. The girl handed her a handset and backed away.
She stared at Isabel as she dialed. ‘Hey, genius,’ she said when the line engaged. ‘What do you think this is, the municipal market? You let every girl in off the street? Yeah? Yeah, I don’t care what she said. Why don’t you just give the whole world the keys? You read the papers? You hear about the robbery up the road? They killed her, slit her throat. We are living in a war, okay? Oh, you searched her. Now, I feel real safe.’
She hung up. ‘You can go.’
Isabel watched the woman return the handset to the side table. She didn’t move. Her whole body seemed suddenly extremely heavy, her tongue numb. She looked past the woman to the city. The buildings stretched for as far as she could see. I can’t go, she thought. She is my only link to him.
‘You hear me?’
She stared as the woman leaned forward.
‘Hey,’ said the woman. ‘You dumb?’
‘I’m here for the job,’ she blurted.
‘I thought you weren’t here for the job.’
‘I’m here for my brother.’
‘What?’
Now her words were clearer. ‘I’ll go. I promise. Just tell me. Did you see my brother?’
‘Your brother? How would I know your brother?’
‘He had a piece of paper with your name.’
‘A piece of paper? That’s helpful. Come on. Am I your brother’s keeper?’ She forced a laugh.
‘He—’
The woman interrupted. ‘Look, he probably applied for a job … Months back I had to interview some wait staff. For a week, this place was full of people like you. But he isn’t here now. I hired two girls.’
‘But he was here?’
‘You think I pay attention to people I don’t hire?’
‘He’s Isaias. He—’
‘Listen, even if he was the prophet Isaias, I wouldn’t remember. I had about eight guys here, and every one of them looked the same …’ She paused, and then staring Isabel in the eyes, added, ‘Short, with the same flat head and voice as you.’
Isabel’s face burned. She fought to keep her words steady. ‘But you must remember—’
‘You must remember. You must remember, little girl, that you are breaking into my apartment, and if you don’t get that filthy baby out of here, I’m going to call the police. I’ve been nice enough. This is not a place for you. What you want isn’t here.’
Without settin
g her cigarette down, the woman reached over to the table. Isabel thought she would call for the guard, but instead she broke a grape from the bunch and lifted it to her mouth. ‘Go,’ she said as she chewed.
Isabel didn’t move. Something inside her seemed to have shattered. This is the anger, she thought, and now the memory that came to her was not her conversation with Josiane, but her uncle back home. Tears brimmed on her eyes. She wanted to scream. I am back with the cricket men, she thought.
‘That’s enough. Go. Get out.’
Isabel’s heart pounded. For a moment she forgot Isaias. She felt as if someone else had possessed her. She wanted to hurt the woman. She was exhilarated by the anger, drunk and dizzy with it. She felt her legs shaking.
Now the woman grabbed the phone. ‘Listen, it’s bad enough you people have taken over this city. But not my apartment, understand?’
Isabel didn’t hear. She sat back against the cushions and clenched her jaw. The rage was hypnotic, searing. She was aware suddenly of the strength in her hands. I’ll kick her, I’ll break her arm, she thought. I’ll smash the phone into her face. She knew, with certainty, that hurting the woman was the solution to everything that had happened to her since she left the north. The logic was impeccable, crystal. She felt her hands clench, until Hugo began to twist.
‘Hey,’ said the woman, lifting the receiver. ‘Go.’
In her mind, Isabel stood and shifted the baby to her hip. She spat, she overturned the table, with swift strides she crossed the room and screamed, picked up the phone and slammed it through the glass door of the patio, swept the vase off the table and swung it into the air.
She sat for a few moments longer. She imagined the vase shattering, the glass raining over the woman. Then she stared at her knees, trying to think of something to say, but the words didn’t come. She stood and walked over the carpet and out of the room, as the baby began to wail.
On the way home, on a sudden steep downhill, the window open, the bus mostly empty, Isabel had a view of the city and the vivid sensation that she was falling from the sky. She put her head out and felt the cold air on her lips. Wind-tears coursed across her cheeks. At first, it seemed like she was falling over a great stone outcrop of the backlands, streaked with carpets of moss and rusty brown soil. Then she recognized it: the stiletto towers like hyphae, the canyons of the streets, the waves of brick and cement that crested over the hills for as far as she could see.
The baby curled into his sling. She lifted her arms. I’m really falling, she thought, and she somersaulted, spun once and then again, felt her hair break from its clasp. She laughed, a funny sound that seemed to bubble out and vanish somewhere in the air above. Her tears lost themselves in her hair. The wind whipped her dress against her calves and spun off from her fingertips. She wondered if they could see her from below, a tiny fluttering speck in the sky.
Again she looked out over the city. It seemed impossibly distant; she didn’t expect it to be so beautiful or so still. Where was the stink, the crash of light and sound and shadow? The roaring of the cars? The rumblings of the factories and footsteps? When would she feel the warmth of it, the heat of the city rising up against the cold passages of her descent? Would it be like this all the way down? Or would it come suddenly, in a great rush of brick and noise? Where, in it all, would she land?
Finding him should be easy now, she thought, with her speed and her beautiful view. Let me fall, she thought, and the bus shuddered. Let the wind or his gravity shift me, spin me, tumble me down, into the shadowed corridors where he’s waiting.
July passed and soon August.
On the weekends, she returned to the Center to wave flags. To fill the other days, she carried Hugo through the Settlements, wandering for hours, wondering if she should descend into the city. Once, the washerwomen asked what she was looking for, but she didn’t tell them. She realized that her walks were revealing too much about herself, but she could no longer bear waiting. When she walked, she rarely stopped. The coral trees dropped all their blooms, and the arbors where she once waited had been cut away.
There was still no word from her brother.
Since her arrival, it hadn’t rained. The day sky grew dark over New Eden, and, in the evenings, she could taste the bitter powder of the haze. The drought followed me here, she thought, superstitious, searching her dreams for premonitions of rain. She began to recite invocations for clouds, and invocations for the clouds to break.
A dry, barbed cough began to wake her at night, and in the early dawn, Hugo woke wheezing and wouldn’t stop until she held him upright against her chest. Outside the door, gray dishwater slithered over the thin mucosa that lined the sewers.
One afternoon, she heard a commotion in the street. At Junior’s store, a little boy propped his arms on his knees and thrust his chin forward. He breathed with strained gasps. A woman crouched beside him. ‘Where’s the ambulance?’ she shouted, and a man punched frantically at the phone.
At night, Junior’s TV replayed images of the city taken from a distant hill. It looked as if it were under the siege of a sandstorm. Standing in the stalls of a produce market, a reporter showed vegetables covered with soot. Not a single neighborhood of the city has been spared, he said. In a hospital on the periphery, rows of mothers held oxygen masks to wan children laboring with each breath of air. The doctor said they were overwhelmed with cases of asthma, bronchitis, pneumonia. ‘We are creating a generation that can’t breathe,’ he said. ‘And when you run out of masks?’ the reporter asked, gesturing to the room. ‘God save us,’ said the doctor.
Dust settled on the cars and windowsills and left an oily film on the tabletops. Isabel cleaned it from Hugo’s bottle, turned over the cups and draped Manuela’s saints. At night, she wiped a black grime from her ears.
She stopped going outside. In the little room, she lay on the bed, spending the days remembering the rare rains that broke the backlands droughts. She would climb the hill with Isaias to watch the clouds slide over the mountains, gray-bellied, pawing the earth in streaking downpours. Down in the village, the rain turned the dust slippery and warm. It left brown stains at the base of the walls, so that the white houses looked like teeth pushed out of gums of earth. It unleashed on the banana groves, shredding the wide fronds into ribbons, tearing petals from the purple bulbs. The mango trees surged and swayed, their leaves shimmering like tossed wet hair, their heavy green fruit slingshotting off, ringing the zinc roofs, exploding the mud like shells and cracking on the cobbles in gleaming yellow scraps. Beneath the awnings, their pants cuffs growing wet and heavy, the old men watched the children streaking through the blur. The goats brayed. In the shelter of the trees, the zebu cows endured the falling fruit with snorts and whisks of their wet tails.
In the backlands, they had prayed to Saint Joseph for the rain. She moved his icon to the windowsill.
The first rains in the Settlements came after ashen clouds hung over the city for days. She was at home when she heard a rumbling she thought was a truck passing, and then one two three drops on her window, before the sky opened. The rain fell swiftly. Heavy drops shattered on the sill, drummed the zinc and rose back as steam from the hot roofs. Her window was open and fine spray floated in, carrying the ripe smell of the street.
With the first drops, she laughed convulsively, as if by reflex. She stayed at the window until she began to shiver.
Inside, she ran her hands through her hair. Her fingers caught her curls, and she pushed them back. She went to the mirror. Her face was wet and she turned from side to side, catching the glints of light on her bare neck. She forgot the rain and stared. Her cheeks had begun to fill out. I will be fat, she thought, incredulous. When Isaias comes he won’t recognize me. Her reflection in the low light made her feel glamorous.
That afternoon, it rained for two hours. Outside, the rainwater ran in streaming sheets down the road. The sewers swelled with water and overflowed into pools hemmed with white cigarette butts and foam. In the street, pe
ople swept pillows of water off the thresholds of their houses. They dug narrow trenches, funneling the run-off into frothing, coffee-colored streams.
When the rain stopped, Isabel went out, barefoot. A crowd had gathered in the cool air to watch a television report. There was flooding in the Center; the flickering screen showed a bus stuck in the middle of the road and passengers worming their way out the windows. A band of boys danced on the roof, waving their soccer T-shirts like flags. There were power outages throughout the whole city. An official warned of the risk of rat sickness. The television showed men in hazard suits leading a woman with a wool cap and swollen eyes into a white van.
In the afternoon, it hailed. Thumb-size balls of ice pounded on the windows so hard, Isabel thought the glass would shatter. They drummed off the roofs, splintered on the sidewalk and rolled into the gutters, where they glistened like piles of wet marbles.
Isabel went to the door, put her hand out and withdrew it when a hailstone stung the tip of her finger. It seemed impossible, balls of ice falling in such heat. She turned her palm up to catch them and stare as they melted away. They left numb pink welts. At her feet, the baby reached for the hailstones. She scooped him up, caught more in her hand and slipped them into his mouth.
It rained again that night. The sheets were damp. She watched the rain in the distant static of a single street lamp.
The following morning, the rotted beams of a shack up the road gave way, and a sagging roof of tar shingles collapsed on a room of sixteen people. Leaving the baby with Junior’s cousin, Isabel joined a crowd that helped pull out muddied sheets and ruined photographs. Families began to abandon their clapboard shacks and crouch beneath tarps. The rain dissolved a wattle hut down the road, leaving only a soaked, tangled hammock and a pan. Then more rain came, a southern squall that they could see thundering over the city before it struck, the air salty like the sea. Men rolled their trousers to their knees, women tried awkwardly to hike their skirts with fingers twisted around plastic bags full of belongings. Below, the little river swelled into the road. The air turned foul. Word came around not to use the water pump. By noon, the water in the street overflowed the narrow trenches and ran across the floors of the houses. Isabel tried to sweep it back, but it was useless. She took everything off the floor and set it on the table and bed. In the washroom, roaches swarmed from the drain, and the toilet flooded. Her clothes wouldn’t dry; Hugo wailed when she wrapped him in wet diapers that she had tried to clean in the stream that ran outside the door. Later, a man parked a truck at the bottom of the hill and sold water from a plastic tank. It smelled strange to Isabel, so she didn’t give it to the baby. The next day, many people were sick. The man didn’t return.
