Cordella Lewis

I parked the sturdy RAV4 on a sheltered street redolent of past glories. Most of the trees were overgrown; once ornate gates had lost much of their form and the paint was peeling; others were dented and out of line so that their latches strained to connect. More than half of the houses were shuttered. This lifeless street seemed eerily anchored between the busy thoroughfare from which I had turned off and the sea at the bottom of it.

I left home that morning with some misgiving. My mission was to seek and find, for the second time in a year, a mislaid aunt. The part of town I was to visit was off-limit to some, and there were those who would dissuade me from venturing there alone.

I paused at the gatepost to verify the number before stepping into this new experience. Faded and blurred lettering was part of the reason why I had already passed the place twice before lighting on the designated number, 13. I looked up and down at it, pushing superstitious thoughts away. Once beautiful blossoms had fallen from a trellis which not only ran above the arched gate but seemed to cling to it with veiny fingers. Aged leaves obviously pruned from its vines had not been raked from the walkway for several days.

Through this gate I stepped gingerly, expecting sound or movement. But, there were no sweet old voices wavering round sweet old songs, no ring-a-roses. Instead, I found myself in the secret garden of a child's imagination.

This garden seemed peaceful enough. There were shady nooks, sheltering nothing much. Piles of fern roots edging the lawn displayed brittle fronds which had lost their green lace, and white blooms of the shy impatiens wilted nearby in the open. There were no rain clouds in the sky, glimpsed through a canopy of leaves. A little bird hopped this way and that near a small dried-out cistern, perhaps hoping to find even one worm on its roughly ploughed periphery. A hammock slung from a truncated bole on the side nearer the building was full to overflowing with dry almond leaves

I was there to visit my Aunt Ines, 83, who was really my mother's aunt. (Thankfully, my sister and I grew up without the bother of making such distinctions in family lineage). Aunt Ines (we whispered that her name rhymed with peas) left home, they said, before she was 13, to escape carrying loads from the field. When our time came to make the expected pilgrimage from country to town, it was for a different reason. We were spirited from elementary to high by one Mr. Powell, whose name had preceded him to rural parts. Aunt Ines had by then established herself as a vibrant, attractive savant of life in the big city, with one son, and her own food stall. Unselfishly, she embraced and fed us, and we soon noticed that everything came from her not-so-abundant stores. Back there, all things were reaped, here, all things were purchased, and to us that made the city a strange world.

Years later, after some detective work, we found Aunt Ines languishing in one of the older suburbs, in an older-type house with steps she could no longer manage. Her vocals and memory far outstripped any elasticity remaining in her joints. On service days, the church sent a taxi to fetch her; on doctor days, the tenant in the adjoining room helped out by sending her in her son-in-law's 'robot'. We sat on her lumpy settee realising that, no matter how we tried, we were already a thousand years late. We listened while she praised the 'nice likkle girl' from a back room on the premises who came after school, willingly, to cane-row her hair and fetch her water from the cistern in a plastic container.

Today, the world-weary 'townie' leaned back with the others dozing in low chairs. I was not surprised to see her knees swathed in old clothing more adaptable to pungent rubs. She would have rejected elastoplasts as being too sticky. A woman with greying hair sat beside her, dressed to the nines. Another wore a vacant stare, yet an exercise book in which she had been painstakingly revising the letters of the alphabet lay open on her lap. A pencil which had lost its sharp point was at her feet.

Aunt Ines was as oblivious of the passing hours as the seven other occupants of the re-appointed villa. It was a house-turned-home in a once recognised residential district. The nurse, who had promptly relocked the grilles, winked at me knowingly. Her stiff blue cap reminded me of a bishop's mitre, rearing its seal of authority over her charges. She motioned me to a spare chair squeezed between my aunt and another woman of high brown complexion, about 60, wearing a lace mantilla. Lying neglected on her lap was a hymnal with a bookmark protruding from it.

The woman soon proved that she was only pretending to be asleep. She batted her eyelids like a schoolgirl and leant toward me, speaking in a whisper.

"You know any of the DaSilvas?" she asked; but before I could frame a response she continued: "I am Mrs. DaSilva. I was married off to Reverend Eustace DaSilva of the DaSilva family as soon as I stepped out of boarding school. You ever married any of the geese from Portugal?" Obviously she had practised her own joke over time, and now she giggled, holding it in with one hand.

"Where's the family now?" I whispered back, trying to sound conspiratorial.

"I don't know," she shrugged.

She opened the book, turned it upside down, shook an index finger reprimandingly at it, and carefully replaced it on her lap.

I looked away towards the garden. The place had once been obviously well tended by loving hands that knew the difference between a hardy gladiola, with its seasonal bulbs hidden under ground, and the more delicate begonia, which needed not much coaxing to bloom all year long. Skill at the nuances of horticulture was clearly not one of the strong points of the new dispensation.

"You know any of the DaSilvas?" Her voice brought me back. She was looking at me now as if seeing me for the first time.

"Well", I said, hoping for calmer sailing this time around, "there are the DaSilvas at the Flower shop, and there are the hardware giants ..."

"I am Mrs. DaSilva," she cut in. "I was married off to the Reverend Eustace DaSilva of the DaSilva family as soon as I stepped out of boarding school. You ever married any of the geese from Portugal?" And she rattled off the same chorus, the same hapless joke.

I knew the answer to my next question before posing it, now at the half-hour mark since I'd arrived: "And which of the, ahm, family brought you here?"

"I don't know." She shrugged, giggling as before, under a cupped hand.

Aunt Ines opened her eyes suddenly and smiled broadly at seeing me. I knew she was getting ready to say in her repetitive way what she had said last February when we found her, about family, forgetting and forgiveness. World-weary but still spirited, she tried to rise but couldn't, so she settled back, holding fast to her walker. The gaze she turned to me dared me to even suggest that she was asleep.

"I dozed off there for a minute," she allowed; and she continued to size me up. "So you find this place! That nice. Me dear, my son come out from foreign and bring me here. Him wanted was to bring me before but him rude, him never discuss it with me first. Just come and want to pack me off. Not because I'm over 80. Tan!"

She looked around and let that sink in. "But the time just come. I getting a leetle shaky." (She made sure to stress the 'little'). "The house I live in for sixteen years turn into printery overnight; you see my crosses!"

"So how things here?" I was trying to bring her from past trials to present alternatives.

For answer she pushed her lips out as far as they would go, in the direction of the nurse who was busy setting up trays and arranging bibs, and lowered her voice. "I could show them a thing or two here. She and all these old people, they know anything?"

"So what happen to your things?"

"The church put my things in they own storage, so it more safer when I ready for it."

"What you mean, when you're ready for them?"

She spoke even lower.

"I only staying here till I get a place to rent."

Driving home, I realised I was really on my way to and from new realisations.

I parked the Rav4 by the pine near the front steps and sat for a long time facing the house. The tree itself was perfectly trimmed, its orderly, conical shape only awaiting the seasonal lights and decorations to bring it to the perfection for which it had been groomed. I looked over the expanse of the freshly cut lawn - at the ixoras, planted in red, gold and white uniformity, at the flirty white euphorbias selected to complement the positive reds of the poinsettia on the other side. My gardener had done well. He would be rewarded for his labour.

The engine was still running. I caught myself in the mirror when my hand eventually began to extricate the keys from the ignition. Those were eyes imbued with a different perspective. I hoped it was not too late, for redemption.