The House Of Mr Christus

Chapter Two - Angelita

Angelita was the first to awaken. She took a glass of water and a pad of softened coconut fiber and headed down the passage. Finding the door, she opened it and stepped onto a gray, peeling porch. Part of the banister had become spongy and rotted with age, and a line of ants was filling through the open door. She rubbed her teeth with the fiber pad, rinsed with water, and spat to the yard below; her eyes intent on the wall of broken sticks and rusted sheets of corrugated iron. It was thick, showing strata created from years of continuous addition. Decades of hammering and beating had created a thing too brutal to look at, and yet she could not avert her eyes, for it had been made beautiful by lines of shining tin shapes in the form of stars and tears, binding it together like a string of prayer beads. Angelita went down and touched the stars and tears already hot from a morning of sun. They were the size of her hand, attached by a single nail in the middle, and where old ones had rusted, new ones were staked over. Angelita followed the rosary of beaded stars and tears. Sensing that perhaps this was a place for prayers, she whispered, "Bless my feet where they stand, upon this, thine hallowed land".

Mrs Christus had seen the girl walk the length of the wall, seen her stop and finger the pointed ray of a star, but the sight of the girl with her palms clasped together in prayer was too much. Mrs Christus was outraged. The girl had trespassed yet again.

"Get away from there!" Mrs Christus waived her arms, swooshing the girl from the wall. She wished she had something to hand to throw at her. Angelita turned and saw Mrs Christus in her nightgown, her formidable curves now loose and soft beneath the nightdress. There was a cruel moment of recognition when the two women faced each other. Angelita saw that there was pain in her mistress and knowing this gave her courage. Unlike the other homes in which she had worked, here, there were no ties of love. Her place had always been on the outside, belonging nowhere and to no one. But here was different, she couldn't be excluded because there was nothing to be excluded from. There was space for her, but she would first have to claim it, perhaps fight for it. She scrutinized her mistress, weighed her up, questioning the nature of her pain.

Mrs Christus was furious that the girl had seen her in this state. She was aware too of the girl's clear, dark eyes prying into the creases of her nightdress, uncovering her nakedness. Searching. She felt threatened. Angelita walked up the rickety stairs and confronting Mrs Christus with gentle acquiescence said softly, "Sorry ma'am, I was just looking for a place to hang the washing."

Surprised by the bowed and gentle stance, Mrs Christus forgot her anger. Perhaps she had interpreted too much into the girl's actions. She was innocent. And that day Mrs Christus followed Angelita's every step, but she saw nothing to irk her. Finally, seeing that it was getting late and that Angelita was busy with cooking, she went out onto the veranda and sat next to her husband. He was cutting thin wire into lengths and winding them around sticks. In the silence, she felt the lack of something. She touched her stomach and felt a terrible yearning there. Pressing hard to still the emotions welling up, she encountered the comforting resistance of her corset. It covered, like a lid, the opening, the hole, the emptiness within her abdomen. She sighed and was engulfed by the past, by memories. Moments that, in their living, had passed unnoticed but which with time had crystallized into a series of unforgettable visions. Amidst a myriad of lived experiences, these few moments returned to her with the clarity of reflections in still water. In them were condensed the entirety of her life. At times, she felt dislocated from the memories, as if she had not lived them. They existed on the high ground of religious symbols and because the symbols were unfathomable, so was her life. She discovered in the arrangement of chairs or the twist of her husband's belt, emotions that altered her and it was then she remembered.

On the floor, now, the roll of wire, scuttling around like crabs claws, was creating a sound. It sifted through her, encouraging a procession of thoughts that pulled with them another vision. She heard it before she could see it. It was the sound of the wind and the shift of branches. Her first night in the house with her husband. Him asleep and warm beside her, and as she lay with her cheek against his shoulder, she had heard a secret whispered through the open window. A secret bound thickly in the scent of pine. Naked, she had gone to the window and listened to the sighing notes calling to her. She knew it was only the wind tugging at the pine trees and yet the sound was reminiscent of something disconsolate, inconsolable. In the morning, wrapped only in a sheet, she had approached the pine trees. Cautiously, she had touched the rough stems, brushed the fine needles across her palm and face. She had listened, smelt the air, in an effort to remember the night, but the rising sun had silenced the trees. She remembered returning to the house, and just as she had neared the back stairs her husband intercepted her path, a frown creasing his brow. She had felt guilty like someone caught poking around another person's belongings. But he said nothing, and she had dressed and sat with him at the breakfast table.