Papa explained that Luneta Park was also called Rizal Park. After we climbed out of the jeepney, I could see why. A monument to Philippine’s national hero, Jose Rizal, stood at its entrance. Visitors and street vendors crowded the sidewalk; young people posed for pictures, while the old ones talked about Rizal’s revolutionary novels to anyone who would listen.
We walked on the grassy lawn, weaving between families sitting on blankets. We stopped for ice cream and headed to a place called the “flower clock.” It was a huge flower bed. The clock face was made of yellow and red flowers, with an actual hour hand and minute hand mounted in the center. I stood on a bench to get a better look. It really looked like a clock!
“Does it work?” I asked.
Papa shook his head. “I’m afraid not. Have you learned to tell time?”
I jumped off the bench and sat next to him. “Yes. Miss Lim gave us worksheets with clocks all over it so we can practice telling the time.”
“Why don’t we practice while we finish our ice cream. We can use my watch.” He shook his wrist so that his watch faced me and pointed to it with his pinky. “Tell me, what time is it?”
I stared at it for a long time, not because I was trying to figure out what time it was, but because it was so pretty. It was silver all over, even the bracelet, but its face was blue. The hands ticking rhythmically were silver. “Can you tell me the story of your watch, Papa?”
“Again?” He laughed.
“Please?” I begged, swinging my legs as they dangled over the bench seat.
“Oh, all right.” He smiled, squinting into the distance as if he could read the story from the sky. “This watch once belonged to your grandfather. When he was in college, he worked as a waiter for a popular restaurant in Manila called the Aristocrat. One day he was taking a break behind the building smoking a cigarette, when he heard someone shouting and witnessed a robbery. A thief had grabbed an old man’s briefcase. The old guy wouldn’t let go, so the thief kicked him. Your grandfather shouted for him to stop, just as the old guy fell to the ground. He chased the thief and wrestled the briefcase away from him. The thief ran away before your grandfather could call the police.”
“And then what happened, Papa?” I had asked, licking the melted ice cream off my fingers.
Papa chuckled and continued, “He helped the old man up and returned his briefcase. The old man trembled and cried. Your grandfather could see that the old man needed to sit and rest to calm himself, so he invited him into the restaurant. The old man said he couldn’t, he didn’t have enough money, but your grandfather insisted. He brought the man inside and sat him at a corner table. The restaurant manager was a kind man and allowed your grandfather to bring the old man a cup of coffee, a small bowl of the restaurant’s famous stew, dinuguan, and some fluffy steamed rice cakes. The old man told your grandfather he had been on his way to visit his wife, who lay dying in a nearby hospital. The briefcase contained love letters they had shared as young lovers and he’d brought them so he could read them to her. He finished his food, thanked your grandfather, and asked him for a glass of water. He went to fetch him the drink, but when he returned, the old man was gone. But on the table was a wristwatch sitting on top of a note written on a paper napkin.”
Papa paused to eat his melted ice cream. “This is good!”
“Papa,” I whined. “What did the note say?”
“Oh, yes,” he continued. “The note said, ‘Thank you for saving my memories. Please accept this small gift.’ Your grandfather ran out of the restaurant to give the watch back to the old man. He looked up and down the street and could not find him. He even ran to the hospital where the old man said his wife lay dying, but the receptionist told him she hadn’t seen an old man with a briefcase come in. While he was telling her the story, he noticed how lovely her eyes were, and how sweetly she smiled at him. That’s how your grandfather met your grandmother. He wore the watch every day from then on to remind him of that special day. If it weren’t for the old man and his watch, he wouldn’t have met the love of his life.”
I had always wondered what happened to the old man, and if his wife had noticed the tan line where his watch used to be. My grandfather had given the watch to Papa when he began going to college. One of his friends told him it was a vintage Seiko 5 Chronograph circa 1975. He’d loved his watch.
I loved it too. It was all Mama and I had left of Papa.
I placed the watch back inside the box and closed it. With the tile back in place, I picked up my basket and sat on my mat. My banig was bright pink with stripes of zigzag yellow and blue. When we moved to the cemetery, Mama had decided we should have a colorful mat to sit on when we ate meals. She told me that we needed some brightness in our lives. I ran my fingers over the design, thinking about that, and realized she was right. It made me a little happy to look at it. I sighed, my thoughts straying to food. I wondered if Mama would bring home a steamed pork bun to share, or some fresh-baked pandesal with pats of butter wrapped in wax paper. Those would taste so much better than plain steamed rice and fried fish.
Ignoring my grumbling stomach, I shook out a bagful of dried gold and pink everlasting daisies. I began to work.
Chapter Two
I woke with a start, still sitting on my working mat, itching with mosquito bites. A pile of garlands lay beside me, dried everlasting daisies strung together with needle and thread. The bright yellow, orange, pink, and red flowers stood out against the dreary colors of the grave house. They would soon decorate altars in homes, or hang from rearview mirrors in jeepneys. I rubbed my aching eyes with sore fingertips. My candles had burned out, and my mat was littered with papery petals.
I tried to stay up and wait for Mama to come home. My neck ached. I rested my head against Papa’s tomb. The cool cement felt good against the pounding in my temples.
It used to feel strange, knowing Papa was lying just inside this cement block. I once asked if his ghost would visit us. The thought of it had frightened me. But Mama had shushed me. She’d said that his spirit had wandered the earth for forty days after he died but now he was in heaven. She also told me that Papa watched over us, and that his spirit would only appear if we wished it, and only in our dreams.
My hand absently pulled at the edge of my shorts as the pain in my head eased into a dull headache. The flattened cardboard box underneath my woven mat slid slightly on the cement floor. It reminded me of one of the things I missed the most. A real bed.
The gray light of morning filtered through the sheet covering the metal bars of my grave house, my cemetery home. All around me, the living slept among the dead. Some of them slept on mats or other makeshift beds. Others slept on top of tombs. They lived inside mausoleums with the few things they needed for daily life, like plastic dishes, basins, discarded furniture, and sometimes electric fans. They were squatters, like my mother and me, living in the Manila North Cemetery because it was better than living in the slums.
Where could Mama be?
I hated being alone in this miserable place. My chest ached for my old home, my old life. It felt like an impossible wish.
“Why didn’t I ask her where she was going?” Papa could not hear me but it made me feel better to talk to him. At least he didn’t talk back. Although sometimes I thought he did. Through my dreams. “I’m a stupid girl, Papa.”
I’d waited all night for her to eat dinner with me. The bowls of rice and fish still sat on the small plastic table I’d salvaged from a trash heap. Both bowls were covered with plastic plates to keep out flies. The salty, pungent aroma of the fish drifted over to me, and my stomach grumbled. Should I eat now or wait for her? My stomach said “now.” It also said to eat both bowls, and it would serve Mama right for making me wait.
My squatter neighbors were already up, either buying bread or fetching water. I could hear their slippers smacking the heels of their feet as they walked. Wooden pushcarts bumped and crunched over the cement outside. Someone stopped in front of my grave house. Relie
f washed over me like cool water over hot, dry skin. It was probably Mama. I shoved the bedsheet that covered the bars aside and called out, “Mama? Is that you?”
But it wasn’t. It was Jojo, shirtless, wearing a loose pair of basketball shorts. His arms were twisted behind him, trying to scratch a spot in the middle of his back.
It had been hard for me to make friends. Many of the other squatter kids who had lived in the cemetery all their lives had stared at me suspiciously and then run away when I tried to talk to them. Not Jojo.
He was tall, and so thin that he reminded me of one those spiders with small bodies and long, skinny legs. His skin was darker than mine from all the time he spent in the sun. When he smiled, his wide nose flattened a little more. He had large black eyes and the longest, straightest eyelashes I’d ever seen on a thirteen-year-old boy.
He stood behind a cart made of pieces of scrap wood that held three large blue containers filled with water. The cart’s wooden wheels were cracked and embedded with small rocks.
“Magandang umaga!” he said, grinning. “Well, you’re up early.”
His constant good humor was infectious. I sometimes forgot my sadness when he was around. “So are you. Are you making a delivery?”
“Siyempre! How do you think I earn my breakfast?” he said, and rubbed his stomach.
“Thanks for filling our water bucket yesterday. Your clothes should be dry by now.” Jojo’s and his grandmother’s clothes were hanging on a line strung between an electrical pole and a nail on the grave house’s wall. Squatters of the Manila North Cemetery helped each other out this way. Jojo filled a large plastic container behind my grave house with water for drinking and washing. Mama and I did laundry for him and his grandmother. It seemed a fair enough exchange to me.
“I’ll pick it up later.” He gave me a quick nod and pushed the heavy cart forward.
“Jo! Sandali lang!” He stopped and raised his eyebrow at me. Heat surged into my cheeks, making them prickle uncomfortably. I wasn’t sure I wanted to tell him that Mama hadn’t come home last night.
“I was just wondering … my mother went to buy bread a little while ago. Have you seen her?”
He must’ve sensed something in my voice. His eyebrow crept up a little higher and disappeared into his choppy bangs.
“Hinde,” he said, shaking his head from side to side. He leaned against the cart and stared at me. “She went to another one of those all-night mahjong games, didn’t she?”
Did everyone know what Mama liked to do at night? “Actually, she…”
“Aha! She did, and she’s probably still there mixing those mahjong tiles with bleary eyes.” He stood there, pretending to mix invisible tiles on an invisible table with his eyes closed and drool dripping down his chin.
I stared at him and tried to smile. He always found a way to make me laugh, but I just didn’t feel like it then.
He stopped and sighed. He stared down at his feet, frowning.
“I really hate it when she leaves you alone, Nora. You know I do! If you lived closer to me and my grandmother, then I wouldn’t worry…”
“Yeah, I know. She’ll be home soon, so you better get going or she’ll accuse you of being a lazy bum.” That wasn’t true, of course. Mama loved him and always insisted that he stay and have breakfast with us.
Jojo shook his head as he turned to push his cart and said, “Sige, I better get going. I’ll see you later.”
“Well, if you see her, tell her I’m waiting for her.” And how much longer will that be? I wondered. Mama and I had a washing job today. If she didn’t show, I’d have to do it all, which meant it would take longer and the clothes wouldn’t have enough time to dry. Then if I did a lousy job, we would get fired, which would mean eating only once a day instead of twice.
Jojo waved without looking back. I watched him go, wondering why I suddenly felt the urge to ask him to stay.
My stomach felt like a rubber band that was wound too tightly. Mama would be home soon. Maybe she’d dozed off at a friend’s house or something. I just had to be patient.
If only she’d get here already.
The landscape of cement and granite tombs glowed in the pale morning light. I still couldn’t believe that I really lived here now. Tombs were everywhere, as far as the eye could see. It looked like a small-scale city with avenues and streets. There were tombs with single walls, decorated with stone crosses and niches where you could place flowers. Some had houses built over them, like the one Mama and I lived in. Amid the tombs were the odds and ends of everyday squatter life. Shanties made of blue tarps, wood, and rusted corrugated metal sheets. Plastic buckets, basins, and rubber slippers positioned neatly in front of their entrances. One grave house had empty NIDO milk cans and RC Cola bottles stacked neatly inside a wooden cart. Rigged wires from electrical poles were spread out like spider webs, giving some squatters power for electric fans and small televisions. The squatters seemed content to call the cemetery home.
But not me and my mother. Not ever.
I kept my eyes on Jojo until he reached the end of the lane and turned onto the main street. The alley slowly came to life as the sun grew brighter in the sky. I watched for Mama while listening to the sounds of my neighbors. There was a mother scolding her child and a baby crying. Sounds of life among the dead.
My stomach finally drove me back inside to eat my share of the rice and fish, carefully wrapping Mama’s bowl with a sheet of newspaper. I poured the leftover water from my glass over my sweet potato plant. The heart-shaped leaves were as big as my hands now. I slid the bucket close to the grave house door to catch as much sunlight as possible. After changing into clean shorts and a tank top, I hid my everlasting-daisy garlands inside a cardboard box. I left for the washing job with one question burning a hole the size of a coconut in my stomach.
Where are you, Mama?
Chapter Three
It was bad enough that Mama wasn’t going to show up, but now I was going to be late. She’d better not have made us lose this job too.
Mama and I worked as labanderas for Aling Lydia Ibarra, where we washed the family’s clothes. This was the last of the laundry jobs we had, and we couldn’t afford to lose it just because Mama had a gambling habit.
The sun was high and bright as I walked down the alley toward the cemetery gate. My neighbors were out and about, either waving a greeting or ignoring me. I was tempted to ask if any of them had seen Mama, but decided that it was pointless. Mama would be home and sleeping when I got back from work today. Maybe she’d win some money and would bring home something good to eat. I was getting tired of fried fish. The oily taste lingered in my mouth. Yuck. But then, it was better than having nothing to eat at all.
Once outside the gates, I wound my way down Bonifacio Avenue, past stands of flowers, candles, and snacks. I looked at the girls and boys who sat by their bouquets and roasted peanuts, calling out to customers as they walked by. Their job seemed easy when you compared it to washing clothes. Their hands were smooth, not dry and cracked like mine. If Mama and I could save enough money doing laundry and selling flowers, it would be nice to open our own stand. But the money went to mahjong, and whatever was left went to food and dried everlasting daisies. One of the vendors pulled out a cell phone and began typing out a text message. It was the kind that flipped open. Mama had one of those once. We only used it if we needed to call Tito Danny, my uncle, who lived on the island of Davao. You had to take a boat or a plane to get there. But now we couldn’t call him anymore because Mama’d had to sell her phone.
A group of girls in school uniforms walked past me, carrying bags bulging with textbooks and notebooks. They were students from St. Anne’s Academy, which was located down the street from the cemetery. It was a private school, which meant you couldn’t go there unless you had money to pay for tuition fees. One of them caught me staring and rolled her eyes at me.
I had gone to a public school, where anyone could attend as long as you purchased your own unifo
rms and school supplies. Evelyn and I used to wear plain white blouses and maroon skirts, which were the standard uniforms at Joseph Luna Elementary. Now and then, I’d catch glimpses of students in the same colored skirts and wonder what Evelyn was doing, and if she remembered me. We used to talk about homework and shows on TV, the same way I heard those St. Anne’s Academy girls do just now. Seeing them always made me long for those days again.
I sighed and crossed the street to Aling Lydia’s home and business, the Ibarra Family Bakery.
The bakery stood on the corner of Andres Bonifacio Avenue and Basa Street. The early-morning crowd was gone but there were still customers buying their pandesal for breakfast. The smell of fresh-baked rolls always made my stomach grumble. I hoped Aling Lydia had set aside a few rolls for me today.
Her daughter, Perla, worked behind the counter alongside another girl. She usually helped out during the busy time in the morning before going to school. Perla, already dressed in her St. Anne’s Academy school uniform, frowned at me as I passed. She was a girl about my age, with fair skin and pinkish cheeks and lips. Her nose was nice, with a high bridge and a small pointy tip. Unlike mine, which was wider, flatter. People in the neighborhood considered her quite a beauty.
“Well, it’s about time!” called Perla as she looked down her nose at me, her arms crossed in front of her. “My PE uniform better be ready for tomorrow.”
Once, I’d asked Mama why she was so bossy, and she’d told me to ignore it—that I had to play nice since Perla was Aling Lydia’s daughter, and it was not my place to question her behavior. Perla had ignored me most of the time until a few weeks ago, when she’d seen me wearing one of her old Hello Kitty shirts. It turned out to be one of her favorites, and she hadn’t known that her mother had given it to me, along with some of her other old things.
Everlasting Nora Page 2
