“And we’ll be oh-okay?”
“Yes, of course, sweetie…” He puts an arm around her.
Bobby sits up, anticipating another lethal hug.
“You don’t like Uncle Rodney, do you, kid?” Aunt Emilia leans towards him. The fishes seem to blink, eager for a reply.
“Stop teasing, Emmy.” Edna sighs again. She has been given to sighing ever since her sister arrived. “We’ll leave you two alone…”
“To sort it out.” Aunt Emilia’s giggle gets caught in her throat.
When Bobby creeps back to the dining room and under the table, all is hushed, the edgy atmosphere now softened and a bit warm, no, moist. He’s damp around the collar and he is frantic. He cannot see the turtles. They seem to have run away. A big hand slides up and down the frock. In the darkness, it’s almost black, a muddied blue-green. The hand disappears under it, perhaps searching for the turtles like him.
Aunt Emilia is breathing strangely, as if she were dying.
She’s not having her nightly bath. She’s just locked in her room. He’s in there, too. Bobby hears them, her soft weeping, his sighing, then their sighing.
Bobby can’t sleep. He imagines that, in the next room, a big hand is catching a fish by the tail or crushing a turtle’s shell. And all the creatures are trying to swim out of the frock, because the big hand is all over it. But there’s nowhere to go. They’re all confused. They even swim towards the big hand.
A soft laugh between a sigh and—they’re tickling him, they’re making friends, so he won’t hurt them.
Suddenly, it’s very moist in Bobby’s room. His pyjamas feel clammy. She knows he likes her fishes—and her turtles, too, he should have said.
When they went into her room, his mother said he shouldn’t disturb them. They’re making up. And don’t you get naughty now, she added. She didn’t like the fish-talk at dinner.
It’s a cool spring night, but Bobby feels warm, too warm. It’s late, but he wants to have a bath, even if she didn’t have one, even if the tub won’t smell of lavender.
He tiptoes to the bathroom, stopping awhile outside her door. So quiet—
The bath is dry, very dry, but she’s wet on the face. She’s hugging the creatures to her, lest they stray where there is no water. Under the overbright fluorescent, her sea-dress is only blue and crumpled.
“Auntie…?”
“You’re a strange kid,” she says without looking at him. She just sits in the bath, rocking the creatures as if sending them to sleep.
“You okay, Auntie…?”
“Auntie’s good now, you know. She’ll get rid of what gets in the way, so it could be okay again, you understand?”
“The fishes and turtles…”
She half-laughs. “All creatures nice and small, yes… away with them…”
He kneels beside the bath. He wants to tell her not to cry so, to ask why she doesn’t turn on the tap.
“You almost understand…don’t you, Bobby?” She hugs him tightly, her tears hot on his shoulders.
He’s drowning in her sea-dress. His throat is dry. Between his legs, there is a strange tightening. He needs to run to the toilet, he doesn’t know why, but can’t find the strength to leave this big embrace. He wants her to hug him tighter against her fishes and turtles, so they could swim to him, too, and trail this tickle up and down his inner thighs.
Jar
Tomorrow, I get sacked. The jar and I understand what this means, and what then needs to be done. And done quickly. I remove my coat. I glance at the clock. Eleven. I take a good look at the jar. It is my favourite in this antique shop. I polish it every day.
My boss is at the counter sales-talking an old man. As I amble past them, my boss glares at me. Late again! Bet you, his Adam’s apple will strain to escape from his neck after that customer leaves.
But I will explain to him calmly. I have taken up belly-dancing, so I’ve been late for work for three consecutive days now. He will curse and spit, of course, but I will lead him close to this cupboard where the jar is kept. Here, I will tell him my story.
My belly-dancing went beyond its usual time, I’ll say and heave the jar down, then place it between us like a testimony of my admission. I will begin polishing it.
It is made of red earth. An unusually rich red. My boss once said that I have a jar fixation. But what does he know? He’s busy gesticulating now, mesmerising the customer with the play of his short arms. Their encounter will take a long time yet. The boss loves a captured audience, especially one who pays after the show. But I can wait. I must not take the jar down from its cupboard, not yet, though it’s raring to be rubbed, polished. Later, when he’s here.
I can almost hear him though. “You’re at your stupid task again!”
But I will only rub the redness more. “This is my first job of the day. The best piece in your collection must look perfect.”
“What’s the point in giving excuses, when tomorrow is your last day?”
“It is not an excuse. I’ve taken up belly-dancing—and I thought it might interest you.”
I will alternately rub the jar and my stomach while I tell him about the rudiments of belly-dancing. After a while, his cursing will simmer down to heavy breathing.
“One last time?” he will ask while following my movements with his eyes, then with his hand. I will have to peel off his fingers from my belly.
“It is growing.” I can make my voice sound tragic or distraught or elated.
His hand will drop. Panic will leap out of his eyes to smother the part of my anatomy in question.
“You were not careful?” He will shred the room with gestures.
But look at him now, gathering his waving arms back to himself, now that the client has decided on an item. How almost sedate a composure. Later though, I will pity him in his need to piss in his pants. He is a respectable man extremely afraid of his wife. He was in fact shaking the first time he tackled me in the back-room, all along hinting about a raise, and, in the same breath, reminding me about how difficult it is to find a steady job in this time of recession. He knew that, when I came to work for him two months ago, I was a casualty of the nearby restaurant that just went broke.
“How could you be so stupid? I told you to be careful.”
He will take the jar from me and return it to its cupboard. He will rearrange the displays. It is his habit to order things in the shop when he contemplates the difficulties of his world. But now he is busy contemplating profit instead as he wards off all bargaining at the counter. They’re taking a long time. Suits me though. I can rehearse my answers when he starts with his queries.
“What do we do now?”
“I’m sure you have nothing against my belly-dancing.”
“You’re punishing me? If it’s because of tomorrow, I tell you, there’s nothing much that you or I can do. The wife…oh, God, help us.”
The other day, two weeks after he met the new girl in the fish and chips shop next door, I figured he had offered her my salary with a bonus to boot. He had a long heart-to-heart with her across the counter. He commiserated with her low wages, all along rubbing her arm. Then he took me aside to say that his wife was getting suspicious, so, much to his disappointment, I really must go. After that customer leaves, he will reiterate his fears.
“She can make it very difficult for you. For us. You should have been careful. You should have—you must do something. You must.”
“I’m doing something. I’m telling a story.”
“Stop mocking me.”
“My dancing caused it to grow.”
“Will you stop—?”
“Even my navel is growing.”
“All your idiotic—”
“It’s growing a mouth, a black mouth—you don’t understand my story, do you?”
“This is a trick.”
I will try to hold back the laughter in my belly.
“You’re not—you’re only pulling my leg?”
But it will spi
ll through my skin, through my fingers.
“Tell me you’re only joking.”
My laughter will spill all over the floor, and rise up, up—
“I’m only joking?”
To the cupboard where the jar is kept.
“You don’t really mean it.”
It will fill the jar.
“Of course, I don’t really mean it.”
“So what was all that? A last try for the back-room?”
I see he’s relieved now. The old man has stopped haggling. But he’s not about to let him go. He wants to schmooze him up some more, in case a second sale could be arranged. I figure he is the first and only customer this morning. No, I cannot wait. I will start with the jar now. It has a part in my story. I must not forget to explain this to him.
“Wait. Don’t you want to know why my belly’s growing a black mouth?”
“You can be funny sometimes—and I love it. Oh, will I miss you.”
“This jar did it. You know I polish it everyday. Well, last week, while I was giving it a final rub, it just spoke —imagine, it spoke, and recommended belly-dancing. So I signed up for a class. That was the time when my navel began to grow a mouth.”
“Naughty belly button.”
“And it promised to grow teeth.”
“You can always come and visit, y’know.”
The cooing sounds in his throat will make me want to pat his little bulge with the impatient understanding one reserves for a fickle child.
“But, maybe, we can postpone your leaving, hey?”
In the back-room he will lay me on the usual antique table with the exotic carvings on its surface. For many afternoons, I had left work with flowers on my back.
There is some hearty backslapping going on at the counter now. Another sale, it seems. The old man is beaming while the clever salesman hands him his card, just in case—but where was I? Oh, yes. As I said, I will be on the table and under heavy breathing in the back-room.
“Now let’s see you demonstrate what you’ve learned in that belly-dancing class of yours.”
He will probe my navel with his little finger in his version of foreplay. I forgot to say he goes crazy over belly buttons. He cannot proceed without measuring their depth with his little finger.
“Ouch! So it bites.” He will play the game from where he cannot withdraw.
His little finger will get stuck. My navel-teeth shall see to that. Then the finger beside his little finger will also get stuck, sucked in like the third finger. Then the hand, the arm, the shoulder, the screaming head, the struggling upper torso, then the pelvis that will have lost what little bulge it had, down to the kicking bony legs and feet, all will be swallowed up. He will disappear.
In the evening his frantic wife will phone me. I will say he must have gone to the bar as I flush the last remnants of what, I suppose, will upset my stomach.
I’m rubbing it now, by the way, as I polish this jar. Good jar. Good belly.
From the counter, the little man is yelling. “Pick up your feet and attend to the phone!”
Thank God, finally, he let his captive go. I give the jar, then my belly, another good rub. He hurls an expletive in my direction. It bounces on me, bounces on the jar and disintegrates in mid-air. He answers the phone himself. I walk towards him with my hand still on my stomach rehearsing its dance story. My navel-teeth graze my fingers to remind me this is not fiction.
Flores de Mayo
When the one and only bus that comes to our village announces itself like the song of crickets and the house is too heavy with siesta, my feet begin to itch for the much-delayed flower hunt. I take out my white paper basket and watch my toes wiggle impatiently. In her half-sleep, Grandmother mumbles that I should not forget my slippers. But how do I climb the kanda in slippers? Or wade the marsh for the fragrant kamya? Or when I get really desperate, scour the rice paddies for the occasional white bandera española? You see, Grandmother, if Mother were here, she would have understood that white flowers become impossibly rare in May. I have to be on my bare toes all the time, I want to remonstrate. But I hear the musical drone of her dream-breath again, so I tiptoe through the door instead, still in my bare feet.
Outside, the bus has lost its magic. My friend Pilar, who is just now painfully squeezing out of its cramped belly, laughs at me every time I tell her about its cricketsong. The rusty tin can groans, she says, adding, but how would you know when you rarely go to town? So I retort, and how would you know when you’re hardly ever out of its belly and listening, aber? The bus is one of our pet arguments. We have a good many of them, perhaps because I’m a village girl and she, a town girl. Unlike her, I hate wearing slippers or shoes. How can anyone be so stupid as to race or catch dragonflies in them anyway? I tell Pilar to stop acting like a grandmother, or her hair will grow white and her teeth will fall out one by one. She’s a funny girl, this Pilar. She scares easily, so she heeds my advice, then we become friends again. But we’re never real enemies, you know. She’s Grandmother’s ejada or goddaughter, which makes her my god-someone-or-other. Grandmother explains this web of affinity every now and then, especially when I fight Pilar, but it’s too complicated to repeat. Besides, I sense another fight brewing, so I can forget it. She was supposed to come this morning.
To think that she must stay in our house for the night! It’s the last day of the Flores de Mayo and there will be a big celebration at church late this afternoon, so she must miss the last bus back to town. In case you don’t know, the Flores is a church thing for us young girls. It runs for the whole month of May. Now imagine all of us hunting for white flowers, and I mean really white, to offer to the Blessed Virgin. I don’t mind the hunt. I actually enjoy it, except when there’s too much competition, and especially when I can’t start on time. The roses and the gardenias go either to those with gardens at home or to the early and best beggars from those with gardens at home. But persuasion is a waste of time with stingy neighbours. It’s easier to wait till their backs are turned. But, oh, how can you steal for the Virgin? Pilar is always horrified. Precisely. I can steal if it is for the Virgin, I say. Oh, then you must confess, the silly girl insists. Why should I, when she knows it already—it’s my turn to laugh at her.
Here in Iraya, we laugh a lot, especially in May when the ricefields have become more gold than green, and everywhere flowers are bursting into all colours, except white. You find the white in church at four o’clock in the afternoon, when we line up in our white smocks, shoes and socks, with our frilled white paper baskets which hold our all-white booty for the Virgin. Sometimes I wonder if she ever gets bored at our lack of imagination as we litter her aisle with petals and petals of only white. We do not really throw them on the floor, mind you. I’m still trying to master how to cast them down with just the right flick of the wrist as we march towards the altar in pairs, singing the “Dulcissima Virgen”. Sometimes, it bothers me that her ears might hurt when our high notes lurch off their peak. So when I see my music teacher squirm from the front pew, I swallow my voice and mouth the words instead, as I prop up the stray notes in my head. They’re always in place in here, and almost beautiful. Maybe, if we all stayed quiet, we might hear them from their precarious height. As always, Pilar finds my theory silly. But look who’s sillier now? The Flores won’t be till later, but she’s all dressed up already.
“You took a long time.” I notice the beautiful silk ribbon around her waist.
“Look, Connie. Look what the driver did to my hem. He burned it with his cigarette.”
“You’re very late.” She has a new pair of shoes as well.
“Can’t you see how bad it is?”
“I don’t care. I’ve been waiting for you since this morning.”
“You think Mother will spank me when she sees this?”
“I don’t care. I don’t live with a mother.” Her socks have lace on them, too.
“Oh, what an awful man, that driver.”
“I don’t care.” And she has r
oses in her basket?
“Is that all you can say?”
“I don’t care.” How dare she have roses in her basket!
“You’re just jealous, because my dress is new. I’ll go and ask Ninang to fix it.” She rushes to the house, calling for Grandmother.
“I don’t care!” I shout at her, then stare at my empty basket. I don’t mind her new dress or her new shoes, or her socks with lace on them, but she has roses. Imagine, roses! And yesterday, she promised she would come early to hunt flowers with me. Of all things, roses! She’s showing off.
“Consuelo, come up here! What have you done to Pilar again, ha?”
“I can’t, Grandmother. I’m off to find flowers.”
“Consueloooo!”
Grandmother says I was not rightfully named. That I am not her consuelo—not her joy or consolation, but her despair. Like my mother. But I’m not a bad girl, believe me. And I don’t think Mother is all that bad either. She’s just too busy to visit. Besides, there are many reasons for goodness other than Grandmother’s reasons or Pilar’s or the neighbours’. Right now, mine is more than good. I can’t waste my time with Pilar’s hem, because I can’t do anything about it anyway. Grandmother’s voice grows fainter and fainter as I rush off to my holy mission.
I pass the bald kanda tree of Tiya Bising, our next-door and only generous neighbour. Someone has been there before me. My empty basket suddenly feels heavy. I dig my toes into the earth, and make believe they’re bugs burrowing, or roots. I pretend I’m becoming a tree and I don’t have to go to the Flores. I can’t walk. I can’t hunt flowers. Look, I stretch my limbs into branches, and my hair turns green. My best friend and god-someone-or-other has cheated on me, and comes with roses. And my grandmother loves her more. And I have a mother, but she rarely visits. I am a tree.
“Hoy, Connie, have you turned into stone?” Tiya Bising is laughing from her window. I sometimes feel there’s too much laughter in May.
“I am a tree.”
“So the spirits are up to their tricks again with you, ha?”
White Turtle Page 13
