Everlasting Nora

by Marie Miranda Cruz

  I didn’t understand why she would be angry with me instead of her mother. I wanted to say something mean back to her but I needed to keep this job. All I could do was roll my eyes. I walked around the corner to their house. It was located right behind the bakery, separated by a paved courtyard that extended all the way to the back of the house. It was a two-story home with white cement walls, and windows covered with black iron bars that curled on the bottom like upside-down question marks. It had a raised front porch that faced the back door of the bakery, directly across the courtyard.

  Aling Lydia sat on the front porch of her house holding a cigarette between manicured fingers, while counting out the clothes to be washed. She was a small woman, with a round face and a round body. Her short black hair formed a fuzzy halo around her heavily powdered face. She wore a duster with pink and yellow flowers, a loose cotton housedress that women wore at home.

  Looking at her always gave me a little shock. Her face looked so pale against her black eyebrows and pink lips. My own skin was so brown in comparison. Women like her, who remained at home with their maids or worked in nice jobs inside offices, were always careful about their complexions. They used umbrellas every day to protect themselves from the sun. When you were that fair-skinned, people tended to think you were someone special.

  “Good morning, po.”

  Aling Lydia looked up, her brow arched high on her forehead. Then she smiled and gave me a nod. When she realized I was alone, she frowned, watching the street behind me to see if Mama would appear.

  “Just you, Nora? Where is your mother?” She stood and pushed her cigarette into a flowerpot on the porch. It already had so many cigarette butts sticking out of the soil that they looked like mushrooms without their caps.

  “She’s sick today,” I lied. In a way, Mama was sick. She had gambling-itis.

  Aling Lydia shook her head, pressed her lips together, then let out a sigh. She gathered the clothes into her baskets. “I have six pairs of pants, five T-shirts, five blouses, three skirts, five dusters, and fifteen pairs of underwear. I also have towels from the house and aprons from the bakery, but since you’re by yourself, those can be washed tomorrow. Do you think you can manage?” She stood there, eyebrows raised, waiting for an answer.

  I hesitated, my fingers twisting the edge of my shirt. I can do it. I nodded.

  “Well, the laundry has to be done. This is a lot of work for you to do on your own. If your mother fails to show up again, I may have to find another labandera, do you understand? I’ve been very patient with your mother. We are from the same town, after all, but that doesn’t mean she can continue taking me for granted.” She picked up the basket full of clothes and motioned for me to take the other one. Aling Lydia had a washing patio on the other side of the house. She set the basket of clothes down on the tiled floor. She had several plastic palangganas of different sizes. The basins were stacked by the wall, next to a faucet with a hose attached to it.

  “The laundry soap is over there on the stool. It’s a new bar, so don’t use it all up. I’m going to the market now,” said Aling Lydia, patting the sweat off her face. She softened her tone and said, “And if you get all of this done by the afternoon, I’ll give you a nice treat along with the day’s wages, okay?”

  The clap, clap, clap of Aling Lydia’s wooden slippers receded, then came back. “By the way, I found someone who wants to sell their manicure tool box. It comes complete with a supply of cuticle lotion, acetone, and a collection of nail polish. Let me know when you’re ready to buy it.” Then she walked away, humming to herself.

  I had a hundred forty-five pesos in a little box hidden in the grave house along with Papa’s watch. All I needed was another fifty-five pesos and I’d be able to pay Aling Lydia for the kit. I was so close. Doing manicures would make so much more money than selling everlasting-daisy garlands on street corners.

  Looking at the pile of clothes made me think about Mama again and where she could be. How could she do this to me? How could she leave me to do all this work on my own? I touched one of the pants and almost cried. Denim. It was so hard to wash by hand, because it was so heavy when it got wet. I kicked the stack of palangganas in front of me and pressed the heels of my hands over my eyes, willing myself to calm down and get to work.

  I filled the largest basin with water and picked up the new bar of laundry soap. It was as long as my arm, and was actually four bars of soap stuck together. It was blue, with the letter T stamped on the surface of each bar. Mama had told me that bars were best for hand-washing. The stores sold laundry soap in bags of powder now, for people who had washing machines. I was glad Aling Lydia didn’t have one of those. I broke off one bar and placed the rest on top of a stool where it would not get wet. I piled some of the clothes into the water and began scrubbing.

  After we moved to the cemetery, Mama had taken me with her when she looked for washing work. I’d never washed clothes before but she said it was time for me to learn. She also told me if I worked alongside her, we could make enough money to move back to her family farm. We had been lucky and found three labandera jobs. She taught me how to soak the white clothes in a blue tint to prevent yellowing. She showed me how to squeeze water out of denim without hurting my hands, even though she only gave me the lighter pieces to scrub. We’d play little games while we rinsed the clothes, racing to see who would finish first.

  I pushed those thoughts out of my mind. Remembering things like that only made me wish all the harder that Mama was here. Instead, I watched the bubbles form foamy hills and mountains in the basin as I scrubbed. I played a game with myself, counting how many pieces I could wash before the mountain of soapy fluff overflowed and oozed over the edge of the basin.

  After an hour, I was emptying out the palanggana of soapy water, my arms covered with suds, when I heard the gate open. I could hear someone knocking on the front door, and then the sound of footsteps coming my way. The voices of two women grew louder as they drew closer.

  “Tiger gives me the creeps! Did you see him leaning against the fence across the street?”

  “You know, I heard that Lorna has been talking to him.”

  My heart nearly jumped out of my chest when I heard Mama’s name. The palanggana almost fell out of my hands as I strained to listen.

  “Oh, I knew that. But what I want to know is what they talk about. I bet it’s nothing good. Anyway, Aling Lydia told me that if Lorna missed another day of work, she would have me take over. So that’s why I’m here now. But it looks like Aling Lydia already left for the market.”

  “Come on, let’s see if that good-for-nothing Lorna is there…”

  Two women appeared around the corner of the house and stood looking at me with their mouths open like small black holes. One woman was very short, with gray hair pulled up into a knot on top of her head. The other woman was taller, about Mama’s age, with black wavy hair that came down to her shoulders and a black mole with a hair growing out of it on her chin.

  “Hey, what are you doing here?” said the smaller woman, a cigarette dangling from her lower lip.

  “I work here, and you have no right to call my mother a ‘good-for-nothing’!” I couldn’t bring myself to say anything more. What right did they have to come here and think they could take Mama’s job?

  My job.

  “Naku, of course she’s not,” mumbled the smaller woman, embarrassed. She dropped her cigarette to the ground and stepped on it. Then she nudged her friend, whose eyes traveled from the pile of clothes to me and then back again.

  “Just tell Aling Lydia we came by,” sneered the taller woman, and they turned to leave.

  I slammed the bar of soap onto the concrete, breaking it in half. They were not going to take my job, no matter what happened.

  I filled the empty basin with water for rinsing. I dunked the clothes one by one, my mind wandering back to those two women and what they had said. Who was that guy, Tiger? Why would my mother want to talk to him?

  Th
e questions pounded away at my head and there was nothing I could do to stop them.

  Chapter Four

  I was eleven years old when we moved to the cemetery, a few weeks after my home had burned to ashes. The news had called it the “Holy Week Fire” because it had happened a couple of days before Easter. It destroyed my whole neighborhood. I will never forget it. We lived in one of a row of small apartments located in Mandaluyong, a city that made up the eastern part of Metro Manila. It was a nice but poor neighborhood, full of life, where grownups worked in offices or as teachers, children went to school, and you could find a sari-sari store on every corner.

  The fire had destroyed our small apartment with everything we owned and loved. When Papa died in the fire, time seemed to stop, and everything I saw seemed to have no color, no life.

  Mama was strong and knew what needed to be done from the start. She had joined the long lines waiting for government money, and made sure we had a place near the bathrooms in the evacuation center set up in a local elementary school. When we received our relief money, we moved in with Papa’s aunt.

  Lola Fely, who insisted I call her Lola even though I really couldn’t think of her as my grandaunt, had made all the arrangements to have Papa buried in their family crypt. She had arranged a weeklong vigil for Papa in her own home, since it would be too expensive to have a wake at a funeral home. Mama made sure all the donations she received during this time were given to Lola Fely to cover the expense of Papa’s burial.

  Afterward, Lola Fely welcomed Mama and me with open arms into her home. She lived with her son, along with his wife and three children. Her grandsons were older than me, all of them in high school. Mama and I slept in my cousin Elmer’s room. He wasn’t happy about it. Lola Fely had given us clothes, slippers, and towels. They weren’t new, but we were thankful just the same.

  Mama had been so grateful that she wanted to give some of our relief money to Lola Fely, who refused it at first, then accepted it after Mama insisted. I could tell by the way she kept sneaking a look at Mama that she only pretended she didn’t want the money. Especially since she had arranged for a priest to come and say mass in honor of Papa’s fortieth-day-of-death anniversary, the day his spirit would rise to heaven. She had paid for all the refreshments as well.

  Mama expressed her gratitude by working alongside Lola Fely’s maid, cleaning the house and washing their clothes. She also became the family cook. At first, Mama had wanted to move to Davao and live with her brother, who owned a farm. He had promised we could live in a hut he’d built himself near a grove of mango trees. But when Mama realized that we wouldn’t be able to visit Papa’s grave if we lived there, she changed her mind. She decided we should stay in Manila and she would look for a job. I sat by Mama when she told my grandaunt her decision. Lola Fely said it was fine, but I noticed how she pursed her lips, and it made me think she wasn’t fine with it at all.

  That’s when the complaining started. Lola Fely would find spots on the floor that Mama didn’t clean. She would whine to her son about how much she spent on food and water, making sure she said it loud enough so Mama could hear her from the kitchen. Mama pretended not to listen, but I saw a tear run down her cheek before she wiped it away. I felt my own eyes water and turned away so she wouldn’t see. Lola Fely made comments about Mama’s cooking at dinner. One night, she said Mama’s adobo was too sour, and threw her spoon down on her plate, startling everyone. Mama apologized and left the table, embarrassed.

  “Mama, let’s go to Davao,” I whispered to her as we washed the dishes. I wanted to leave, to get away from Lola Fely, from Manila and all its painful memories.

  Mama had sighed and shaken her head helplessly. “Once I find a job, it’ll get better, you’ll see. We just have to be patient.”

  It hadn’t. Mama had made sinigang once, a delicious soup with tender pieces of pork and vegetables flavored with tamarind. My cousins deliberately ate most of the meat, leaving only a few vegetables for Mama and me.

  Later that night, while we were getting ready for bed, Mama whispered, “I’ve been thinking—we still have money from Papa’s savings and a little of the relief money left over to pay for bus and ferry tickets to Davao. Even if we can’t visit Papa’s grave, his spirit will be with us no matter where we are.”

  Mama told Lola Fely the next day.

  “What? Why waste my nephew’s savings on a boat ride? Why not put some of that money to good use and invest it in my dry-goods business? That way you can stay in Manila,” Lola Fely had said. I could tell that Mama was too embarrassed to disagree.

  The dry-goods store never came to be, and Lola Fely wouldn’t acknowledge any questions Mama asked about her money. Instead, she bellyached about all her household expenses. She even complained about the wages she paid her only maid, Dina. Mama couldn’t help herself and told Lola Fely that she was actually saving money, since she hadn’t had to pay for a labandera since Mama and I had moved in. Lola Fely had walked out of the room, her face red with anger.

  Then one day, Lola Fely found me looking at Papa’s watch after helping Mama sweep the front porch. It was the only thing of his that had been saved from the fire. I liked to keep it in my pocket so Papa would still be close to me in some small way.

  “What do you have there? Your father’s watch? Let me see it.” She held her open palm out to me.

  I looked at the outstretched hand and knew that if I handed over the watch, I would never see it again. I put the watch in my pocket and kept my eyes on the floor.

  “You ungrateful child! You are shameless! How dare you keep that watch from me after all I have done for you and your mother? Did you know that she ruined your father’s future?”

  “What?”

  She sneered like a snake about to swallow its prey. “That’s right. Your father asked me not to tell, but he’s dead now, so it doesn’t matter. Your mother worked as a maid for our family and your father had the crazy notion he was in love. They eloped and broke your grandparents’ hearts. In the end, it killed them both. That watch belonged to his father first, my brother. Now hand it over.”

  My eyes were glued to the floor, stung by the venom in her voice. My eyes filled with tears. A maid? It explained a lot. I’d always wondered why Mama treated Lola Fely with deference and even a little fear. I could see it in the way my cousins never invited me to go to the mall with them, and the way they made me sit on the floor when we watched television. I squashed the poison growing inside me. She wasn’t going to make me hate my mother.

  “You are a stubborn, stupid child, just like your father! Why do I bother…” Lola Fely continued to scream and brought my mother running from the kitchen. The whole house was in an uproar.

  After that, I became invisible. Lola Fely wouldn’t acknowledge me. She ignored me when I said “good morning” or if I asked her a question. Even my cousins didn’t speak to me. When I’d come into the living room to watch cartoons with them, they’d turn off the television and leave the room.

  When I told Mama about it, she became so angry. She told me Papa’s other cousins weren’t like Lola Fely’s family at all. They were far kinder but couldn’t afford to take us in. She said it was time to take action. She went to the market and bought a cell phone, the cheap kind that flipped open, with a small prepaid plan. Mama called her brother and asked for a loan to pay for bus and ferry tickets to Davao. But she told me Tito Danny said we had to wait at least six months so he could save enough money to send to us. She hugged me and told me to be strong, that six months wasn’t very long.

  But our welcome finally came to an end when Elmer accused me of stealing his cell phone. I had been dusting the living room when my foot tapped something under the coffee table. A cell phone slid into view. I picked it up. I knew it belonged to Elmer and was about to take it to him when the screen lit up. I paused, distracted by the messages, when Elmer walked into the living room.

  “What are you doing with my cell phone? I’ve been looking for it since last ni
ght.”

  “I just found it under the coffee table. Here.” I held the phone out to him.

  He snatched it from me, rubbing the screen on his shirt. “You’re a liar. I know I left it in my room yesterday. You stole it, didn’t you?”

  “No!” My voice cracked. I swallowed. “I told you. I found it here, just a few minutes ago!”

  “Liar!”

  Lola Fely walked in. “What’s going on here?”

  Elmer told her. Then his grandmother screamed at me. She said I was a good-for-nothing, an ingrate, a disappointment to my father. How dare I steal from her family. I cried and told her I hadn’t done it, but she wouldn’t listen.

  She grabbed a broom, pointed the handle at me and yelled, “Dapa!”

  Mama rushed into the living room in time to see me refusing to get on my hands and knees. Lola Fely handed my mother the broom and ordered her to beat me, and said if my mother didn’t, she certainly would.

  Mama couldn’t take it anymore. She grabbed me by the arm and dragged me up the stairs, into our room. She calmed me down and told me she believed me.

  We packed up our few possessions, waited until morning, and left. I had no idea where we were going. Were we going to live in the streets? Then Mama told me we were moving to the cemetery. She said that Papa’s family mausoleum at least had a roof and ample space for sleeping. Sleeping? Before I could say a word, Mama reassured me that we were not going to be the only ones there. She had meant the living, not the dead.

  Squatters lived there, a fact I had never noticed at Papa’s funeral. But would it be better than living under Lola Fely’s grinding heel and accusing eyes? At the time, I’d tried to cheer myself up with the thought that at least we would be close to Papa.

  In order to survive, my mother and I took laundry jobs from households outside the cemetery gates. I could not go to school, since we couldn’t afford to replace the uniforms I had lost in the fire or buy school supplies. The work gave us sore backs and dry, raw hands, but we were getting paid for it. It wasn’t a lot of money, just enough for food and other needs like soap and candles.