by Daniel Mason
‘Isabel, I can’t hear you.’
‘I’m all right,’ she said. ‘I am happy. It will be a good year.’
She returned with Hugo to the park. This time she sat on the corner of a bench and watched the pond. The water rippled with feeding catfish, and then a light rain. The air was humid and heavy. The trees bloomed with tiny flowers that looked as if they had been painted with a brush that was running out of paint.
She bought a sweet cake of cornmeal and crumbled the softest pieces for Hugo. She mixed formula with water from a drinking fountain. They played together. She held his ankles and swung him upside down so his head brushed very lightly against the grass, and then put his feet on hers and held his hands, walking him in big, awkward steps. On a palm, a single frond began shimmering in the wind. It danced and swiveled on its stem. The other leaves were still.
She lay in the grass and watched a wasps’ nest on the trunk of a bare tree. In Saint Michael, when it rained and the white forest bloomed, they were visited by plagues of thin black wasps. They appeared as if from nowhere, gathering in a single spot, first one fly, then others, growing swiftly into a violet-black ball of wings and oily abdomens, swelling to the size of a head, trembling, humming, dripping insects. From a distance, it looked like a decoration for a festival, or a stain.
The mass of wasps would grow like this until they flew away, or until the weight of their bodies became too much for the single wasp that held them. Then the ball would break from its mooring and crash in a soft thump that strewed the insects over the ground in confusion, wandering in stunned circles until they beat their wings at the air and buzzed away.
Once, she was playing with Isaias in the sun-washed yard behind her aunt’s house. She was chasing him in circles when suddenly he turned and swept her up. She hadn’t seen the ball of wasps break loose and fall, the insects scattering like stirring pebbles. His feet were bare, so they waited. She began to laugh. ‘Stop,’ he said. ‘Stop, you will make them angry.’ She buried her face into his shoulder, waiting until he tiptoed her away.
When she thought of him now, she realized she couldn’t remember his entire face, only fragments of it. He is ceasing to be, she thought, but then later she wondered: Maybe I am getting closer, to that place where a person breaks into pieces—a walk, a laugh, a smell, the strength in an arm. Isaias used to say this when they told stories of grandparents or aunts who were gone. Think, he said, of people you know, You don’t know their faces, You know bits of them, their movement, their voice, The closer you are, the more broken they become.
She slept on the lawn, still moist from the light rain. She rested the baby on her chest, and awoke to find that he had slipped out of her arms and was pulling at a clump of grass and murmuring. In the late afternoon, she stopped by a crowd that had gathered around a magician. He had a boa constrictor and a corduroy sack, and bragged about the power of his spells. He said he was from the north, where such magic was common, and claimed the snake was a feared snake from the backlands. He talked about his hard life cutting cane, but he knew nothing about cane, or snakes, and she left.
She thought, October and there is already rain. The soil would be moist and warm, the green plants spilling their perfume into the air. Without her, her mother and father and aunts and uncles would be moving back into the hills in defiance, watching the road for approaching cars. They would stay away from the open slopes. They would find spaces to plant between the rocks, in the crevices that no one knew. If there was rain, all they needed was a tiny piece of earth, and they could grow anything: gourds, yams, heavy pieces of manioc. They were masters of the cracks between the lifeless places.
When dusk fell, Isabel followed the crowds to a bus stop, where passengers milled impatiently. Hugo twisted uneasily on her, beginning to whimper. She tried to stroke his hair and he pushed her hand away. ‘It’s okay,’ she whispered, ‘we’re going home.
‘Has the 47 come yet?’ she asked an old man, remembering the walk with Alin. ‘The 47?’ said the man. ‘Where are you going?’ ‘New Eden—it’s in the Settlements.’ ‘Take the 35 to Cathedral Square and go from there,’ said the man.
They waited. The shadows on the ground lengthened, and more people gathered. The air was thick with the promise of more rain. She listened to a conversation behind her about Saint Jude. ‘You don’t know how many miracles he has performed,’ said a woman. ‘That’s why he is saint of impossible causes. Cured my aunt of tuberculosis, found my son a job at the supermarkets, guided the surgeon’s hand when he took out the tumor from my cousin and gave her twins the next year.’
It was Saint Jude’s Day, Isabel remembered; he was revered in New Eden. She found DON’T GIVE UP HOPE! prayer cards of him taped to the walls or curled in the street. She heard neighbors planning visits for months. Even her parents and Isaias prayed to him in Saint Michael, but Isaias never told her why.
Still the bus didn’t come. Isabel shifted Hugo on her hip, which had grown moist where she held him. He looked pale, and he sniffled. When she brushed the back of her fingers to his forehead, he arched away.
In the street, a little boy stood on the shoulders of two other boys and juggled before the rank of idling cars. The cement vibrated with the engines’ rumbling. A motorcycle pulled up between the cars and then roared past the children. At last the boy dropped to the pavement with a light slap of his feet and took a bow. Isabel found herself clapping. The boys were joined by a little girl. They walked between the cars with their palms out. The traffic light changed and the children dashed onto the sidewalk.
The light turned red again. Cars pulled up at the crosswalk. Isabel could see the drivers’ eyes shifting as they rolled up their windows and locked their doors.
Again the little boy climbed onto the others’ shoulders. Before the grille of a massive truck, he wobbled, the movement of his juggling mesmeric. His hands seemed to brush the balls into their slow arc and fall. The girl stood between them. She wore a dirty, threadbare dress with an unraveling hem. She reminded Isabel of herself when she was young.
The two boys crouched and transferred the third to the little girl’s shoulders. She staggered and then began to turn slowly, the boy still juggling. She put out her arms.
In the car next to the truck, a teenager in the passenger seat reached over and honked the horn. The little juggler startled. The ball fell, bouncing at the girl’s feet and rolling under the front wheel of the truck. The boy jumped down from her shoulders, the four took bows. They ran swiftly between the cars, begging. No windows came down. Ahead, Isabel could see the facing light turn to yellow. She wanted to shout to get the children out of the street. She saw the girl run and crouch beneath the wheel as the light turned green.
The truck lurched into gear. The girl leaped gracefully to the shadeless dry earth of the traffic island, the ball in her hand, triumphant.
The 35 didn’t come. It grew darker. Her arm began to ache, and she repositioned Hugo on her waist. She asked a woman beside her about the 35. The woman frowned. ‘I don’t know. I think you actually have to take the microbus.’ A man corrected her, ‘You take two microbuses, one to Cathedral Square, and then another to the Settlements.’ ‘Two microbuses?’ ‘Actually, you take a normal bus from here, and then at Cathedral Square you get a microbus.’ ‘But I didn’t think there are night micros.’ ‘There are,’ said the man. Isabel said, ‘I’m confused—is there anything direct from here?’ ‘No, go to the Center first. Maybe there is something that goes direct, but I don’t know it.’
When they left, a boy took her elbow. ‘None of them know what they are talking about. I used to live in the Settlements. You were right the first time. It’s the 35. It comes every hour.’
She waited. As the buses approached, she stared at the placards with their litanies of destinations, the terminals she was always moving toward but never reaching, the mythological places at the distant ends of bus lines. At last a bus came, with the 3 painted on one window and 5 on the other. Isabel hoisted
Hugo and pushed through the crowd. She asked the toll collector if it went to the Settlements, and he waved her through. A man gave her his seat at the back of the bus. She jigsawed around a pair of knees and sat. The bus joined a roundabout and followed an on-ramp to a highway. The traffic was heavy but moved swiftly. They were heading south. She shrugged; maybe they went south and then north, but her suspicion persisted. The traffic lightened and the bus picked up speed. She looked about. She wondered if anyone else was confused by the route. Hanging from the handrails, the passengers knocked and jostled against one another like bones on a wind chime.
The air grew heavier, sweet with rotting smells, the dusk blurry and saturated with a light that distinguished little between the city and sky. It was neither hot nor cold, just wet, and when she breathed she felt she was breathing in the street itself. Large raindrops splattered against the window. They gave a sudden, momentary warning, pat-pat, the sound so clear that they seemed like words themselves. She found herself mouthing them, pa-pa, and then the air exploded, the drops shattering against the glass. Outside, the rain shook the pebbles in the road, turned up mud in the barren spaces at the intersections, clipped leaves from the trees, tinged against the skeletons of abandoned market stands and whipped the telephone lines. The brown puddles frothed and stained the walls. She held Hugo closer.
The bus sped up, sweeping around a taxi, and briefly—or so it felt—losing traction on the wet road. It dashed into the turned-up spray between two rigs. One of the rigs lurched sideways, and Isabel gripped Hugo as it swung away. The driver must have seen them in the cloud, although she didn’t know how—the cab was distant and vague.
They came off the highway; the traffic slowed at a light. The air stank of rot, of wet plaster and mold, dark and gray, like something sweet at the edge of turning.
She heard the slapping of sandals. A young man ran in the narrow passageway between the cars. He held a newspaper over his head, its wet pages cleaving to his neck. He wore shorts torn from blue jeans. Mud streaked his calves. His back was thin and muscular and his shirt was so worn that she could see the texture of a raised scar on his shoulder blade. Not Isaias, she thought: the reflex was still there, it still surfaced with every thin boy with a hidden face. She saw him disappear behind a truck. She searched for him as it passed and saw a girl pulling a child by the hand join the young man on the muddy divide. He swept the child up without stopping. The three leaped the barrier and crossed the street as the traffic bore down and the rain fell harder.
Again they picked up speed. Hugo grimaced. ‘I know,’ said Isabel. ‘Be good. We’ll be home soon.’ She looked outside. They were riding a concrete tongue that wrapped through buildings she had never seen. Through the rain, Isabel could see the reflection of the bus in skyscrapers that rose on its flank. She turned to a woman sitting beside her, an older woman with tan-gray curls and a shopping bag on her lap. ‘Excuse me, madam. Does the bus go to the Settlements?’ ‘I don’t think so,’ said the woman, turning to the man beside her. ‘Does this bus go to the Settlements?’ The man shook his head. ‘The Settlements, no, that’s in the other direction. Who told you this went to the Settlements?’ ‘Someone at the bus stop. I better get off, then. I thought this was the 35. The window …’ ‘Oh, that’s old. You have to read the side,’ said the man.
The bus swayed. Isabel closed her eyes and opened them again. ‘You okay?’ asked the woman. ‘Yes—no, I need to get home—the baby …’ She looked down at Hugo, who had begun to squirm. He would start crying now, she knew. ‘Why don’t you go ask the toll collector?’ said the man. ‘Up at the front?’ ‘Yes, good idea,’ said the lady. ‘I’ll watch the baby.’ ‘I don’t know. I asked him already …’ but she had convinced herself he was listening. ‘You don’t mind?’ ‘No, I have kids. I miss them. I’ll watch him.’ The woman smiled kindly. Isabel nodded. ‘Hugo, love, I have to go ask the man a question. You stay with this lady.’ The baby clung to her, and she peeled him off, gently at first, but when he resisted, roughly. He started to scream. ‘Stop it,’ she said. ‘Behave. I’ll be right back. He’s just hungry,’ she said to the woman. She fumbled with his bottle. ‘Just give him this and he’ll be quiet.’ ‘You better hurry,’ said the man. ‘He stops up there, it may be where you want to change.’
Outside, through the rain, she could see tall apartments. The sidewalks were full of people. The toll collector had left his seat and was talking to the driver. Isabel slipped sideways through the grate. ‘I need to get to the Settlements,’ she said.
The boy wore a black T-shirt with cutoff sleeves. ‘You will have to change at least three times,’ he answered. ‘There isn’t anything that goes direct?’ ‘Direct? No. Take the 23 back to the park, go from there and vote for a new mayor, this bus is going south. But you need to move. Look how many people need to get on. It’s Saint Jude’s Day, and everyone wants to make a promise.’
He pointed toward a large crowd outside a church. The bus had slowed to a stop. She tried to push her way back, but the toll collector took her arm. ‘Let those people off.’ She protested, ‘I need to get the baby.’ ‘I know, but you can’t do it like this—these people need to get off. Do you think the whole city should wait for you? Let them out. I’ll let you back on and you can get him.’ She was pushed down the stairs. She tried to stay by the entrance, but the crowd shoved her back. Panicking, she ran toward the rear exit of the bus, where other passengers were descending. She fought her way through and pulled herself onto the bus. ‘Hugo,’ she said. The bus was half empty, filling with new passengers. She saw immediately that the woman’s seat was empty. ‘My God.’ She spun. She dropped to her knees and searched under the seats. She elbowed her way back to the toll collector. ‘The baby—did you see my baby?’ He shook his head. ‘I told you to wait by the entrance.’ ‘He’s missing.’ ‘He’s not missing. A baby doesn’t just vanish.’ ‘He is, he—’ ‘We have to go. Is he on the bus?’ She stared at the seats again. ‘No.’ ‘Then you better get off.’ She raced down into the street, turned, shouting. The bus was full, the doors started to close. She circled it, dragging her hand on its wet siding as it swung forward, beating her fists against its side as it pulled away. She ran up the street. Through the rain, she saw a woman carrying a baby beneath an umbrella. She tugged the umbrella to the side, but it wasn’t Hugo. Another woman with a baby, another umbrella. She grabbed for it with both hands. The woman moved away, her eyes wide with horror. Suddenly it seemed as if the street was filled with women and babies and umbrellas marching toward her like a nightmarish parade. She ran into the street. Cars honked, tires screeching. She stumbled again, ran her hands through her wet hair. She sensed the crowd make a cautious space around her. Hugo, she whispered, her voice failing. Her dress clung to her thighs but she did nothing to straighten it. She clenched her fists and pushed them against her forehead. She spun again, watching the umbrellas bloom and break around her.
She saw a street fair, a church, a crowd gathered and spilling into the road. She cursed at them. She wanted them to disappear, she wanted a great flood or wind to sweep the street clean of all the people. She ran along the sidewalk, frantically looking under the umbrellas, but she knew it was too late. ‘No,’ she said aloud. More umbrellas, more bundles of blankets streaming toward her. She stumbled and heard a voice behind her.
‘We thought we lost you,’ said the woman from the bus, handing her Hugo, smiling and disappearing into the crowd.
Isabel sought shelter beneath an awning, where for a long time she held the baby against her chest and didn’t move. Then impulsively she lifted him, pressed her nose into his hair, his cheeks, his belly. She opened his blanket and smelled him and squeezed him against her again. He seemed, impossibly, to be sleeping, and he sighed and settled into his old place against her shoulder.
Gradually, the sounds of the street returned. The rain had relented. She looked out at the church. I must thank Saint Jude, she told herself.
She moved slowly, shaking, afraid
she would fall.
It took her a long time to make it through the crowd. The church was massive, a complex of dozens of buildings without order. She found her way to the brightly lit blessing room, where she lifted Hugo to catch the sprinkling of holy water. She put out her tongue when the drops touched her face. The room was packed. Behind her was a wide table where people left broken icons they couldn’t bear to throw away. For a long time, she watched them: an armless Christ; an Our Lady of the Good Birth with a cape of torn crepe; a legless Saint Anthony like a ghost flying away in his robe; a Saint Lucy with a single marble eye on her plate; a Saint Rafael without wings; a Saint John the Baptist with a chipped coat of hairs.
‘You can take one.’ A woman in a worn wool sweater stroked Isabel’s arm. Her skin was gray; her glasses magnified eyes filled with milky cataracts. She had a limp rose pinned to her sweater. She wrapped her fingers in Isabel’s. Around her, other women cradled the saints gently in their hands. They were murmuring, ‘Look at you, my little saint, you are beautiful. You aren’t broken, my saint—how can someone be giving you away? I will help you stand, my little saint. I can take care of you, you are only missing a hand, a foot, a staff—the world is cruel, my love, to throw away a saint that’s broken.’
Isabel turned from the table and closed her eyes. She untangled her fingers from the woman’s and pushed her way outside. In the street, a line wrapped the city block before disappearing inside the church. She walked its length, past young girls with babies, old men and women supported by their children. Reeling, she accosted a woman with a palsied child in a plywood wheelchair, strapped with a pair of seat belts across his chest and legs. She grabbed her arm and said, ‘Please, tell me: How many years have you been praying to Saint Jude?’ ‘Why, since the boy was born, seven years ago,’ the woman answered. ‘But this year I came to pay a promise, because Saint Jude cured him.’ The boy was the size of an infant, his mouth was open, his hands were twisted over a blanket. ‘No!’ shouted Isabel. ‘He isn’t cured! He is still sick!’ Stumbling, she turned and pushed her way into the chapel, where she crouched at the feet of the saints in their naves. She ran her hands through the piles of invocation cards and scattered notes with handwritten prayers and promises. She pulled out a note with a stapled photograph of a woman and words in a child’s pen. She put it down and reached in again, again she pulled out a folded note, opened it and read, Please, Our Lady, Please watch over my son, and then another, Please make my mother better, and then in pencil on a little card, Watch over me, I am alone, and then Find him for me, Please find him for me—a young girl’s handwriting, with a photograph stapled to a lined piece of notebook paper: Please find him for me Saint Jude Thaddeus, he’s lost and he can’t be found. She rose and cut the line to pray to Saint Jude, pressing Hugo against the wall beneath his icon, where a soft depression was worn into the marble. She wondered, How many babies will it take before we break through the wall? and a guard said, ‘Young lady, you need to move on.’
