by Angie Abdou
The silence that follows is palatable, the air heavy with it. Vero
imagines scooping it into her mouth, eating it like ice cream. The
three of them in this room have become a broken family, just like
any other. They can’t mend the fracture, but they will have to figure
a way to duct-tape it together and hobble on. Vero feels the tickle of
laughter at her lips, then it floods her body in a rushing tidal wave.
Only the most inappropriate laughter can take hold of her like this.
She puts a hand to her mouth. Tries to hold it in.
“What’s so funny?”
Shane has the wet cloth in his throat again, and Vero fights to
claw back the response that flies into her mind. She will not allow
herself to drown in the tidal wave of her own hysteria. Sex is just
a metaphor, Shane. That’s what she wants to yell. But sex is not a
metaphor. Vero chews on her lips. “Nothing. Sorry.” She will be like
LiLi. Vero will retreat into silence. What else is there for her to do?
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She balls her hands into fists, sits on them, fingernails pressing into
her palms.
This would never happen, thinks Vero, even as it’s happening. Or, this
is the kind of thing that only happens behind closed doors, the kind of
thing that people never talk about. Shame and propriety have rendered
this situation absurd, impossible.
Vero wants her mother. She cannot remember wanting her mother
since childhood. Not like this. Perhaps she thought she wanted her
mother during Jamal’s birth—the excruciating pain, the impossibil-
ity of it. I want my mom, Vero thought then, but it wasn’t Cheryl she
wanted. God, no. Not Cheryl. It was some abstract concept of mom
that Vero was after. Comfort. Solace. Love. But now, Cheryl is who
Vero wants. Cheryl would have an idea. Something about the sister-
hood, about first-world women building their careers on the backs of
third-world women, about needing a revolution. But whether an idea
birthed in Cheryl’s world could stand up in Vero and Ligaya’s world—
that was another matter. Still, an idea would be something. An idea
would be a start. Vero could work with an idea.
“Really.” Vero puts energy into the words now, draws on Cheryl’s
strength. She wants to be sure she sounds like she truly means what she
is about to say. “I am—so sorry.” The apology floats high above them,
attaching itself to no one.
“People from my country do worse. They sell sex to survive. And
they survive that too.” Again, Ligaya is patience and calm personified.
This is the Ligaya of their first phone interview. She has practiced what
she needs to say, and she will say it clearly, independent of Shane and
Vero’s words and actions. She looks right through them. Vero has never
felt so irrelevant. “What happen here: it not as bad as that.” Ligaya does
not focus her gaze on them, but there is authority in her voice. “We
make some house rules, please. Like the nanny manual say. We go on.”
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Vero’s skin pulls tight with fear. She remembers their talk about
the sex trade on the porch last night. Was it really only last night?
What has happened between then and now has rendered them all
barely recognizable. What had Ligaya said? You can make money and
enjoy it too. With a punch to the gut, Vero knows that Ligaya has
misunderstood—their conversation, their union, all of it. Ligaya is
going to ask to be paid. For what happened. For what Vero did to
Ligaya in Ligaya’s bed. Hot shame grips Vero’s intestines, claws its
way up her neck. The prickle of sweat itches at her hairline.
But Ligaya presses her lips tight, eyes resting on the window
behind Shane. She says nothing.
Shane clears his throat. Vero tries to measure how high he is. His
eyes don’t droop shut, but they are a subtle pink. “There’s an issue
with power imbalance that makes this especially awkward.” He’s
trying hard to sound sober. He continues slowly, as if weighing each
word on his tongue before adding it to the sentence. “A domestic
worker from the developing world whose fate rests in an emp—”
“We cannot talk about all that,” Ligaya interrupts, though her
posture is meek. She speaks softly into her hands folded across her
lap. “I am just me. You, just you.”
Vero wants to applaud. Ligaya has staged a coup. Us women—we
won’t let Shane take charge. You show him, Ligaya!
But Ligaya continues talking without casting a glance in Vero’s
direction. She’s not looking for an allegiance. “People in your coun-
try are good at remembering. Always they want talk, talk, talk.”
Ligaya’s voice is so quiet that Vero must lean forward to hear her.
She sounds tired, but her tone is firm. Ligaya wipes her forearm in
the air in front of her face as if cleaning a window with her sleeve.
“Sometimes, the best way is wipe clean. Begin again. Sometimes, the
only way.”
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Let’s start over. Her statement amounts to no more than that. Vero
wants more. This much Eliot could give her. Let’s just start over.
But then there’s that energy in Ligaya’s eyes. Ligaya has something
important to say, but she will hold off speaking until she gets the
words just perfect. This time Vero will wait. She watches Ligaya’s
fingers fidget at the dip in her throat, but the golden cross is gone.
People never change. That is the common saying. But the opposite is
true. People are ever-changing. Before Vero figures out who they are,
before she can really focus in on their essence, they’ve already become
someone else.
“I get my open-work visa in one more year. Less, maybe. I don’t
go back without it to my Philippines. I scared to lose job. I cannot
go back to my family with the empty hands.” Ligaya’s fingers float
away from her neck and land firmly on her lap again. She meets their
eyes for just a moment. “To my children.” Her gaze flits back to the
window, her face so still that even her lips do not seem to move when
she speaks again. “I cannot go back to my children with nothing.
After all the sacrifice.”
The word rushes through Vero, pure adrenaline. Children. She sits
with it for a moment— my children, Ligaya’s children— and realizes that
she knew. Of course she knew. In Vero’s body, where it counts, she has
known since Ligaya first entered her basement bedroom and saw the
framed photos of her own family. Those photos took the last bit of life
out of Ligaya’s face. Only a mother’s remorse could explain the extent
of the impact. That wasn’t a sister missing her younger siblings. That
was an amputee looking at a photo of her bleeding, severed limb.
Vero looks to Shane’s face for confusion. There is none. They’ve
both pretended to believe what was easiest. For them.
“Their father?” Shane clears hi
s throat again. “The children. Their
father…”
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“Pedro.” Ligaya has no patience for Shane’s search for the right
question. “He not wait for me. I am gone a long time. Too long for
a man to wait.” There’s no wetness in her eyes, no tremble in her lip.
Who’s the strong one? Who’s the one who can cope in this world, as it is?
“Maybe Pedro take me back when I have put in my years to bring
our whole family to North America. Then.” Ligaya shrugs. “But
maybe I not take him back. Then it will be my choice.”
Vero tries to absorb the strength in that my, in that choice.
While Ligaya talks, Shane puts his hand on Vero’s knee. It can’t
mean shh because she’s been quiet. It’s warm and heavy. She sneaks
a look at his profile, wondering what she will see—apology, resigna-
tion, despair, goodbye—but he looks straight ahead, eyes not waver-
ing from Ligaya’s face. Vero cannot look there. Instead, she watches
Shane’s hand. After a while, she lets hers rest gently on top of it.
“We both need something.” Ligaya’s eyes do not plead. They’re as
hard as they are when she tells Eliot and Jamal: It is the house rule.
Mommy and Daddy’s rule. “Maybe we give what each need to one
other.”
“Because that’s the way the world works.” Shane lets out the words
in a cynical huff of judgment.
“I not talk about the way world works. I talk about us. Here.” Ligaya
takes a deep breath and tries again. She’s scared. Vero can see that
now. “I think I come here and it be easy. I think a big house like this
be mine. I think like child.” She lifts her hand to her mouth, pinches
her lower lip. When her hand falls, she looks straight to their faces
and holds their eyes, though doing so is clearly an effort. “My family
led me to this thinking. My government too. The advertisements. But
I do it. I. The child’s think. Now we all be adults. We must.”
This outpouring of words brings Ligaya into focus. She’s more than
a mole, a golden cross, a pair of tiny hands. Vero can almost see the
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whole. Before now, Ligaya has let her words go grudgingly, each sen-
tence a reluctant gift. Now, she thrusts them upon Shane and Vero.
“Ligaya—”
“No, Vero. Don’t call me that. In the Philippines, we take many
nicknames. Here, in your home, I am LiLi.”
Vero studies the set of Ligaya’s features for some resemblance to
the timid girl she met at the Sprucedale airport only a year ago. Has
Ligaya found this strength here? Perhaps it was there all along, but
Vero saw only what she expected to see.
“This is not my home, and you, not my family. But I can make
something for my family. Maybe.”
I’m sorry, Vero thinks again. But this time she does not say it. It’s
not enough. She feels the remorse in Shane too—in his heavy hand
on her knee, in his heavier silence—but Vero understands now that
remorse will not suffice. They will have to build something of their
remorse. It is Vero’s turn to be silent, for a time. She will hold her
words and make room for Ligaya—for LiLi. For whomever this
woman decides to be here, in this new place.
Vero opens herself to LiLi’s words and does not try to decode her.
She does not try to make the words her own. Maybe we give what each
need to one other. Vero simply breathes the words in and releases them.
You have to make yourself strong, Vero once told Shane, cupping his
shoulders in her palms, squaring his body to her own. Nobody can do
it for you. Vero must taste this advice for herself. She squeezes Shane’s
hands in her own. She does not reach for LiLi’s hand. It is not hers
to hold.
Vero turns to the window, pushing her knees against Shane, and
lets her gaze follow LiLi’s to that glimmering water in the distance.
All three of them sit quietly, eyes resting on that far-off spot of lake.
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CHAPTER TWENTY-ONE
Finally, Sprucedale is ready for LiLi to start her driving
practice. She has waited all winter. Even Bernie insisted that the
winter is no time to learn to drive. Not in Sprucedale. LiLi watched
the snow fall for months. She remembered the feeling of Pedro’s red
bike, the strength in her legs as she pedalled her way from one village
to the next. She would like to feel that strength and freedom here.
Over the winter, she imagined that driving a car would be like
biking, but better. She imagined, and she watched the snow fall
and fall, until city workers had to come and dig out the stop signs.
Children threw themselves from second-storey windows into the
deep white banks below.
LiLi takes off her sweater as she waits on the front steps for Bernie.
She sighs into the heat on her skin, lifts her face to it. The change
of seasons in this country still surprises LiLi. In the frozen days of
February, when the very inside of her own nose turns to ice, it is
impossible to imagine a day like today, a day with dry roads and the
sun high in an azure sky.
The tulips filling the flower bed along LiLi’s bedroom window
have burst into bloom overnight, a wealth of colour after the winter
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of white. In the late fall, Cheryl—the grandmother whom LiLi heard
about but never saw—finally came to visit, and she and Vero dug in
bulbs, shoulder to shoulder, in the already-frozen ground. With her
short hair, ball cap, and baggy overalls, Pedro would have called her a
Man-Woman, contempt in his voice.
“These tulips,” Cheryl smiled at LiLi. “Enjoy them at first bloom.
The deer will have them all eaten by nightfall of day one.”
LiLi enjoys them now. Already she is running out of time.
Bernie pulls up to the sidewalk in Shauna’s compact Toyota Tercel.
It is red like Pedro’s bicycle. LiLi expected the big blue van, the one
Bernie uses to shuttle all the Sprucedale nannies to English lessons
at the office.
Bernie waves and jumps from the car, though she could have
waited there in the front seat. LiLi has already risen from the stairs
and pulled her sweater back over her bare shoulders.
She is funny, this Bernie. Her hair has grown over the winter and
springs out of the sides of her head in two small but spirited pigtails.
“Driving! Are we ready for this?” She stands on the car’s door frame
and pounds her flat palms against the red roof, shining in the spring
sun. LiLi loves Bernie for these grand gestures.
Even though the sun is only warm enough to briefly tempt LiLi
out of her heavy sweater, Bernie is already in a T-shirt and shorts. She
will make the most out of this sunny occasion.
Bernie’s driving instructions are minimal. She points at the gas and
then at the brake. “You’ve studied. You know
what to do. Just take her
easy to start. Soft touch. If you lurch a bit, slow down, breathe, start
over. It’s easier than it seems at first. You’ll get the hang of it.”
In the heat of a Sprucedale summer, LiLi will stick to these black
leather seats, but now they are comfortably warm against her back.
She wishes Nene and Totoy could see this: their mama driving a car!
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It’s not her car. She’s not in her country. She doesn’t even have a
true license. But she puts her foot on the gas, places her hands at ten
and two, and then grips the wheel so tightly that her fingers ache as
she eases her way into the deserted street.
Ligaya drives.
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ACKNOWLEDGMENTS
For enthusiastic support of the project, thank you to my agent
Chris Bucci of Anne McDermid and Associates. For being a delight
to work with, thank you to the Arsenal Pulp Press team. My initial
impression of Brian Lam (publisher) and Susan Safyan (associate
editor) was so positive that I figured I could only be disappointed.
Nope. At each stage of the publishing process, my admiration and
fondness for both of them have grown. Thank you also to Cynara
Geissler (marketing) and Gerilee McBride (book design).
My gratitude also goes out to: Ruth Nina Pangan and her family;
Robert Majzels for his work on women in the Philippines; Isabel
Craig for translation/discussion of Majzel’s work; Jaclyn Qua
Hiansen for geographical/cultural insight; Susan McLelland for her
March 2005 article about foreign nannies in The Walrus; Geraldine
Sherman for “A Nanny’s Life” ( Toronto Life, September 2006); and
the sharp-witted Jay Fraser for “Garage-Mahal.”
For reading all the chapters long before they were ready, thanks to
Andy Sinclair. For reading a full draft before I felt confident enough
to send it anywhere else, thanks to Gyllian Phillips. For reading it
when I dared let you, thanks to Marty Hafke. For reading it when
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I’d given up hope and needed a cheering section, thanks to Robin
Spano. For helping me out of various (metaphorical) pantries, thanks
