Between

by Angie Abdou

  decisions now. I make the decisions. You just say ‘thank you.’”

  Bernie pressed her lips together until she had none and dropped

  her head back to sigh at the ceiling, as if it were the only other rational

  presence in the room. “Have you heard what they say about getting

  a puppy as a present?” asked Bernie. Vero expected her to waggle her

  finger at Shane. “A nanny? For a present? Even worse.” She tapped

  her fingers on the counter. “Not cool at all.” Her gaze fell on Vero, and

  she very nearly rolled her eyes.

  Shane back-pedalled then. Of course, he wouldn’t think of giving

  someone a nanny as a present. Of course, the hiring of a nanny would

  be a Serious Family Decision. Of course, Vero needed to have the big-

  gest share of the input. Clearly. “That being said,” he smiled in a way

  he knew accentuated the deep dimple in his left cheek, “it wouldn’t

  hurt to set things in motion, get the wheels spinning, while Vero Baby

  makes up her mind.”

  Vero waited for him to launch into his spiel about growing up in

  South Africa, where everyone had servants. His family had four: a

  driver, a nanny, a maid, and a gardener. When he was eight, a black

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  man came to the house, and Shane famously yelled over his shoulder

  to his family, “A boy is at the door to see you.” It was Bishop Desmond

  Tutu coming to discuss church policy with Shane’s grandfather, an

  Anglican minister. A “boy”—that’s what they called all their black

  servants. How would young Shane know this black man was different

  from the rest of their black men? He didn’t.

  The incident turned into one of those embarrassing moments

  that he couldn’t stop re-telling, as if reliving it through story was his

  self-inflicted penance. Vero could see Shane biting down hard on the

  story this time, though.

  Good thing, too. Bernie softened to him by the end, walked them

  through the application process, and gave them a stack of nanny pro-

  files to browse. Afterward, Shane pulled Vero into his back office at

  the pharmacy and spread all of the pictures out on his desk like a pack

  of tarot cards, each one pointing to a different, less difficult future, a

  future in which his wife had more time for backrubs and blow jobs,

  and less cause to list his (seemingly infinite) shortcomings.

  “Life is short, ” he said, lifting Vero’s small body onto his desk and

  drawing her legs around his waist, lowering his mouth into the crook

  of her neck. “We can have everything. Let’s take it.”

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  CHAPTER TWO

  The small apartment is quiet and dark. No feet pound above

  Ligaya, no bossy women yell orders next door, no newlyweds squawk

  like strangled roosters in the apartment below. Finally, the world is

  still, and Ligaya can unfold her mattress in the closet and get some

  rest. If she falls asleep quickly, she will get five hours before she must

  wake to prepare Madam Poon’s breakfast.

  Madam likes her congee on the table by the time she comes out

  of her room at seven. When she eats, Ligaya must not look at her,

  even though there is nowhere else in the small apartment to look.

  Ligaya has become skilled at looking nowhere. When Madam Poon

  finishes her breakfast congee, the dishes must disappear at once, and

  still Ligaya must not look at her. When Ligaya has washed every

  dish and bathed and fed baby Hui, she will take him on the bus to

  the market. They will buy white fish and fresh vegetables to steam for

  dinner. Maybe Mister Poon will be home from his business trip by

  then, and Ligaya will spread a little extra butter on the fish and use

  one pinch of salt, just the way he likes.

  Madam never says when to expect the Mister. Ligaya hopes he

  comes today. Madam always treats Ligaya with more kindness when

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  he is home. Jiao is Mister Poon’s first name. Ligaya has heard Madam

  Poon call him that in their bedroom; the apartment is so small that

  Ligaya hears everything. She can tell from the volume of the rustling

  sheets through the thin walls which of them fidgets in the night.

  Hui does not call his father anything. Sadly, the boy’s mind is not

  right. “There is delayed development,” Mister Poon told Ligaya just

  after she arrived in Hong Kong, and that is all the explanation Ligaya

  ever gets. For this delay in development, Ligaya has grown to be

  grateful. It makes Hui pliant, one blessing in a job far more demand-

  ing than Ligaya imagined when she flew out of Manila.

  Even though Ligaya looks forward to Mister Poon’s time at home,

  she knows she must be careful not to encourage his interest in her.

  If he speaks to Ligaya often, Ligaya pays for it when he leaves. Last

  week, the night after he left, Ligaya had only a small, cold piece of

  leftover milkfish to eat, and only after Madam Poon had finished her

  dinner, after Ligaya had washed every dish and scrubbed every pan,

  after she had teased every crumb out of every corner.

  “You eat what I tell you to eat,” Madam Poon screamed, waving

  her scrawny arms in the air like a scarecrow in a tornado. “We cannot

  afford you filling your face on every luxury. We bring you here to

  work, not to eat!”

  Ligaya nodded. “Yes, Madam. Sorry, Madam.” She shaped her face

  to express docility and subservience, but her thoughts were her own:

  Panget ka. Mukha bruha. You, Madam Poon, are an ugly little witch

  with no bum. Who could ever love you? Nobody.

  But Ligaya tries not to think of last week or next week or even of

  tomorrow. Ligaya tries not to think at all. Now is the time for sleep-

  ing, not thinking. She digs for her phone, hidden far under the shelves

  in her sleeping closet. Madam has forbidden Ligaya to have a phone.

  But Ligaya cannot use the Poon phone either.

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  Madam says no to many things: no phones, no Tagalog, no days off.

  But the fish-brained woman has less control than she thinks. Ligaya

  tries to silence the weak but rising in her mind. But Madam Poon’s

  husband is always away, and she too is lonely. She too is unhappy. Even as

  lonely and as unhappy as me.

  A home does not have space for two adult women. How could this

  sad, lonely woman care for Ligaya? Ligaya, who cooks Mister Poon’s

  favourite dishes. Ligaya, who sleeps with Hui cradled close to her

  breast.

  Ligaya does the job of a wife.

  She is younger than Madam Poon.

  She is prettier than Madam Poon. Nobody would say otherwise.

  These things matter. Ligaya knows they do.

  And then Mister Poon goes away, and Madam Poon sleeps alone.

  She is meanest when she sleeps alone.

  Yes, Ligaya could pity Madam Poon, if she allowed that single

  “but” to take hold. T
hat kind of pity will not help anyone here. When

  the blanket is short, we must learn to bend. Ligaya’s mother said that,

  just before Ligaya left. Mother cupped her hands around the back of

  Ligaya’s head and pulled her close, until their foreheads touched. “My

  daughter.” She stroked her hair with one hand. “When the blanket is

  short, we learn to bend. We must.”

  Hating Madam Poon, making her a fish-brained, scrawny witch,

  is only one of the many ways Ligaya tries to make this shrunken

  blanket fit.

  Ligaya taps the calendar application on her forbidden phone and

  checks off one more day in Hong Kong. Already she has checked

  seven months and twenty-three days since she arrived from Manila.

  Even then, eighteen hours had passed since she said goodbye to her

  family in her hillside village before walking into Taal. Ligaya did not

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  cry then, and she did not cry during the four-hour bus trip to the

  airport. She rested her forehead against the dusty glass of the window

  and counted the reasons she must go. There were many.

  Ligaya packed no photographs when she left. She wishes now for

  one of Nene. She brings an image to mind. Just before Ligaya left,

  she cut Nene’s hair, inadvertently leaving the girl’s short bangs slanted

  and the hair at her shoulders jagged. In Ligaya’s mind, Nene runs

  through long grass, her too-short bangs crooked and her six-year-

  old arms outstretched as she chases chickens around the yard. Ligaya

  always let Nene “help” with the chase, but then shooed her inside

  when it came time to butcher.

  Ligaya wishes for a picture of Pedro too. Her whole body wishes

  for that. But she blocks his image. She will see him again, when the

  right time comes. For that, she must trust in God.

  Ligaya did not cry on the bus, she did not cry on the plane, and she

  will not cry here. She sets her face hard against the possibility of tears

  and powers off her phone. She slides it back into a dark corner where

  Madam will never have occasion to look. Ligaya smiles into the dark

  at the thought of Madam down on her knees in this dusty corner, her

  cheek next to the floor, and her bony rump in the air.

  Ligaya first heard about the work available in Hong Kong during

  a summer heat wave, while up to her elbows in cold washing water.

  She’d known about Hong Kong always, it seemed, but not with any

  awareness that it could mean something to her, could impact—abso-

  lutely alter—her life. But there, out in the yard, bent over a barrel of

  washing, forearms cold and chafed in water straight from the well,

  the message penetrated. She dipped her mother’s dress, stained with

  a spot of menstrual blood, and scrubbed hard, barely registering the

  noise blaring from the radio propped in the dust by the back door.

  Instead, she listened to Totoy and Nene playing. She couldn’t see

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  them, but she imagined them engaged in a match of luksong tinik,

  Nene raising her hands for Totoy to jump over, up and up until he

  missed, tripping into the dust and running back to Ligaya with a

  bloody nose, a skinned knee. If more kids came, they would play luk-

  song baboy, all bent over in a line taking turns leaping over each other’s

  backs. As she scrubbed, the radio volume seemed to increase by itself.

  “HONG KONG! STEPPING STONE TO CANADA!”

  Ligaya, we mean you! That’s what she heard.

  Her mother and her father were in the house, hiding from the hot

  sun. It was still dry then, but monsoon season was fast approaching.

  “Fish for dinner again,” her father would joke when the rains came,

  flooding their house, the riverbanks overflowing with fish that swam

  right in the front door of their little home. “The Lord provides.” In

  monsoon season, the slippery tilapia were plentiful and easy to catch,

  swimming through the living room, their silver scales shimmering

  gold as the evening sun caught them at the right angle through the

  open windows.

  From this high rise towering above Hong Kong, such a thing

  seems impossible, as if Ligaya is remembering a dream. But they were

  real, those fish in her house. Disoriented by furniture and splashing

  feet, the tilapia darted into corners, quivering but otherwise still, as if

  waiting to be caught.

  Ligaya and her family never went hungry in monsoon season.

  “Hong Kong! Follow your dream—”

  Ligaya looked quickly toward the house and turned off the radio.

  But after that, she saw the ads everywhere, no longer irrelevant back-

  ground noise. On the radio, in the newspapers, popping up online:

  “Hong Kong, the gateway to happy life in Canada!”

  Well, she is here now, in the gateway, but memories of the

  Philippines come to her at night in her closet, not so much floating

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  across her mind as bashing down the door. Lying under the stars with

  Pedro, warm earth beneath them, her head rested in the firm crook

  of his arm. He smelled of fish oil and Marlboro cigarettes. A plane

  flew overhead, and her eyes followed the thin trail of white in its wake

  until it disappeared.

  “I don’t want to go.”

  Pedro rolled toward her, rested a calloused hand against the skin

  of her belly.

  Because he didn’t tense at her objection, she continued. “I under-

  stand the reasons. I will be paid in dollars. I will bring the family later.

  But why do I have to be the one forced to go?” Ligaya had heard other

  women ask these same questions, raking leaves behind the houses in

  the morning, complaining of the sacrifice.

  “Ligaya.” Pedro whispered the word, as if it were a song, a wish.

  “Women shouldn’t talk politics.” He put his mouth to hers and held

  it there, stopping her words.

  No tears, Ligaya reminds herself now as she hugs her knees into

  her chest on her bed, a cushion so thin she feels the floorboards. The

  mattress smells of dying people’s urine. Of course, Madam would not

  have wasted money on a brand-new mattress for Ligaya.

  Ligaya knows exactly what she’s worth here, but she will tolerate

  this place and these people for the good of her family, to create a life

  of opportunity. Her beautiful Philippines has become the land of no

  opportunity. She pulls her only sweater over her shoulders, rests her

  face against this old mattress that is temporarily hers, and closes her

  eyes.

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  CHAPTER THREE

  Shane’s brother Vince sports a pineapple across his

  crotch, Shane a Mexican flag. A bushy line of hair runs up toward

  Shane’s belly button, and hair grows down the inside of his legs to

  mid-thigh. Vince appears to have shaven for the occasion, smooth

  as river rock. Even his tree trunk legs shine, lit golden as the eve-

  ning sun slides into the Pacific.

 
The angle of the sun suggests that the whole family should be

  leaving the beach to prepare Christmas dinner, but Vince has chris-

  tened Christmas Day “Speedo Navidad.” He has declared, in the

  way that Vince does, that he and his brother will spend the day

  wearing bikini briefs and downing girly drinks at the swim-up bar.

  “Feel free to call it Bikini Christmas, if you’re more comfy with

  Inglés,” he assures them. “It’s a multi-lingual celebration.”

  Mexico Christmas with the Schoemans is an annual tradi-

  tion. While Shane clicked away on Expedia booking this year’s

  flights, Vero envisioned her father-in-law, Gregory, waving his fat

  privileged fingers at the harried waiters who ran from one beach

  umbrella to the next, balancing trays of coconut shells filled with

  rum. “Una mas! Por favor! Una mas! ” Before Vero had even stepped

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  off the plane, she felt the weight of Heather Schoeman’s perpetual

  judgment.

  “You’re giving Jamal Advil? Again? ”

  “Television can be very detrimental to the developing brain.”

  “Never sleep with your babies. Adults have to have…some…pri-

  vacy. The husband needs his wife too. Sharing a bedroom with your

  kids is—I’m not the first to say it—a recipe for a doomed marriage.”

  Listen here, Heather Schoeman, Vero wanted to scream, get the fuck

  out of my bedroom!

  As Vero and Shane prepared and packed the mountain of equip-

  ment required to leave home with two young children, Vero avoided

  thinking about her brother-in-law, his biceps the size and shape of

  softballs, a knife tattoo running from his elbow to his wrist, the bloody

  tip pointed at his pulse point, where he’d tattooed his college foot-

  ball number, 72, in thick black lines. Vince, she knew, would bellow

  his beer-sodden way into the condo in the middle of Jamal’s nap.

  If she dared to ask him to turn it down a notch, he’d tiptoe around

  like a cartoon character, raising his knees to his chest, and delivering

  a stage-whisper soliloquy about King Jamal’s royal sleep. Vero also

  knew that Vince would monopolize Shane’s time in Mexico, acting

  like the two of them still wore the same high-school football jersey.

  When the three of them were together, Shane belonged to Vince.

  But that’s what Shane’s family did: they spent Christmases in