The House Of Mr Christus

Chapter Seven - Priscilla

Samuel had never been further than the park at the end of the road, so when Mrs Christus announced that she was taking him to see Lazario, he asked where that was. "Downtown," she replied. It took him a moment to comprehend that a place existed beyond the park. Mrs Christus tied his shoelaces, took up her umbrella, and, holding his hand, walked him out into the hot sun. Twenty minutes later, they turned off the main road and down a narrow side street where the drains were high with rank-smelling mud and slimy, green water, where the houses leaned forward out of their tiny front yards and where children sat, like alley cats, on front porches. Here, the smell of cooking mingled with decay, overflowing septic tanks and soapy water discharged through broken pipes. Mrs Christus, erect and with the air of a person on a mission, increased her pace and took a firm hold of Samuel's hand. Eventually, the houses gave way to small, shop fronts and a livelier atmosphere generated by a few bars clustered at the very end of the street. Opposite stood a large, wide-fronted building whose lower half was of brick and upper stories of wood. A few windows broke it stern facade and from the outside, at least, it may as well have been a penitentiary. Samuel was directed to a small door, at street level, which opened into a dank, vaulted, brick passage. The passage led to an open yard dazzlingly strung with lines of washing. Two small, wooden houses, newly painted blue and white, stood at the edges of the yard. The main brick and wood building, three stories high, was framed by balconied walkways strung with more washing dripping from each of the three levels. Immediately in front of them, four women were washing clothes at cement tubs, one with her hair in curlers and her eye shadowed by a large, blue bruise. When she caught sight of Mrs Christus, she spat just a few feet from the tub. Samuel, still firmly in Mrs Christus's grasp, felt dizzy from the sheer quantity of life squeezed into this one quadrangle of space. The place throbbed with arguments, the warmth of human bodies, the crying of babies and the drone of radios. He scanned the balconied walkways, seeing the occasional parrot, dove, or songbird swinging in its cage outside open doorways boasting colored lights or a few flowering plants in large tin cans. 

As they ascended the second staircase, Samuel forcibly pulled his hand out of her grasp and ran ahead. His first journey into town was an experience akin to a spiritual awakening and climbing the stairs as fast as possible was all he could do to contain his excitement. From the floor below, Mrs Christus, holding onto the railing and wheezing with the exertion, wanted to shout to him, but she could not find the breath to do so. Earlier, he had crept away from her, and now, just a few hours later, he was running away. She stamped her foot to dislodge her annoyance.

At the top of the third flight of stairs, Samuel was stopped in his tracks by a large, grotesque face held like an egg in a mountain of stiff satin. It took two minutes to recognize, beneath the lurid blue and green eyeshadow and pink lipstick, the face of a girl perhaps four years older than himself. With the help of a fistful of grease, she had managed to tease her hair to one side where it was held by a large, diamante clip. The shoes, bright pink with tall black heels, were several sizes bigger than her feet and hung precariously to her toes, as she flung her legs forwards and backwards under her chair. She stared at him with the eyes of a huge, hungry cat. Samuel did not dare go past her even though he saw Lazario's bicycle just two doors away. Seeing his predicament, noticing his discomfort, she smiled, her face lighting up.

"Yu di luk fi sohnbadi?" she demanded, getting up. Samuel saw then that she was the widest, most rotund girl he had ever seen. "Yu dumb or wat?" she demanded again. With mounting fear, Samuel stepped to her side, hoping that she was perhaps about to descend the stairs. But she wasn't and, cornered against the wall, she asked in a sweeter tone as if to something small and inferior, "Weh yu naym?"

"Samuel," he muttered under his breath.

"Samuel," she mimicked in a tiny voice, her nose in the air, but, seemingly satisfied, she returned to her chair and sat down again.