Then the door bangs open. “Nora!” calls my father, his voice muffled behind a towel. I stand and run into his arms. He throws me over his shoulder and runs out of the room. Smoke stings my eyes as we pass through the hall. He runs through the blazing living room as I hang on, my face pressed into his back. The heat from the fire licks at my arms and the back of my neck. It’s so hot that for a moment I think that I am on fire.
We’re out in the fresh air in moments. My father sets me down by a fence across the street. It’s dark; the only light comes from our blazing apartment building. There are people all around, talking and shouting, the words jumbled together so I can’t understand anything they are saying.
My father turns to face the fire. I hold on to his arm, which is slippery with sweat. It slides from my grasp as he moves away, back toward the hungry flames. I want to ask him where Mama is, to plead with him to stay, not to leave me alone. But I can’t. No sound or words come out of my mouth. Then I realize I’m holding something. In my hands lies my father’s watch, crumbling into ash …
I sat up on my mat, my heart pounding. I had fallen asleep staring into the candle’s flames. It had burned all the way down into a puddle of cooling wax. It was still night-time.
My eyes adjusted to the darkness and I sat still for a moment, looking around. Mama hadn’t come home again. What could’ve happened to her? What would keep her from coming home two nights in a row? Where could she have gone? I scratched at my legs and realized I had left one side of the kulambo open.
“Well, it wouldn’t do me any good to fix it now,” I whispered, but my voice sounded loud in the stillness of the grave house.
I couldn’t go back to sleep. I tried to lie on the mat again, using a piece of cardboard as a fan to keep mosquitoes away. I listened for Mama’s footsteps, but there was nothing. I moved my mat closer to the bars so I could watch the alley from beneath the edge of the sheet. The lane was empty, except for a dog sniffing around for stray bits of food. I looked up at the night sky and the large golden moon.
Traces of the dream, like flashes of memory, continued to fill my mind. My eyes strayed from the moon to the moonbeam that had found its way between the sheet and the roof of my grave house. This small bit of light touched the embossed cement that bore Papa’s name, the day he was born and the day he died. My vision blurred suddenly and I squeezed my eyes shut. What did the dream mean? Was Papa trying to tell me something?
“What should I do, Papa?” There was no answer.
The tears continued to flow. If Papa hadn’t died, I wouldn’t be living in the cemetery, and Mama—well, she would be just Mama. I’d still be in school. I didn’t miss the homework, but I missed being there with Evelyn.
I crawled to Mama’s Santo Niño altar and placed a single everlasting daisy in front of it. “Please bring Mama home,” I said in a voice barely above a whisper. Then I sat, hugging my knees to my chest.
Sometimes, I wished that Mama and I had died in the fire with Papa, and then we wouldn’t have to be hungry or alone. There seemed to be nothing left to hope for. The watch and the money I had worked so hard to save were gone, and now—I didn’t want to think about it anymore. I just wanted to sleep. Forever.
* * *
I thought I was dreaming of the color orange, when I realized it was the morning sun shining though my closed eyes. My eyelids were crusty with sleep and my mouth had a sour taste to it. Ugh.
I scratched my mosquito bites, listening for sounds of Mama moving around on the other side of the tomb. Nothing. I was alone. My stomach twisted, my throat burned.
I smacked my hand down on the concrete floor. My palm stung and prickled. How could she leave me alone like this? It felt like my head would explode. I plucked the folded cardboard from its place above the hinges, pulled the gate open, and stepped outside in the clothes I had been wearing since yesterday. Small kids from neighboring grave houses were already out in the alley playing. It was late in the morning. The sun was already high in the sky.
Ernie ran to me waving his arms in the air. All he wore was a pair of blue shorts. “You’re finally awake! Mang Rudy told me to tell you—Hey! Where’re you going?”
I ran, Ernie’s voice fading behind me. Mang Rudy’s advice was the last thing I wanted to hear right now. What I wanted most was to find Mama. But where would I begin to look?
I had a vague notion of where she played mahjong, but I wasn’t sure. She’d once mentioned a woman called Aling Mary and something about a funeral home. There were at least two on Bonifacio Ave. A low whine rose up my chest and out my throat. It was all I could do to fight the panic beating like bird wings in my chest.
I searched the faces of women I saw on the street, hoping that one of them was Mama.
There was a woman wearing the same color dress Mama had been wearing the last time I saw her.
I ran and grabbed her arm, but it wasn’t Mama. The woman stared at me, and then pushed me away.
I kept walking and found that I had wandered off the main road. My heart hammered in my chest. A strange buzzing filled my ears. The edges of my vision blurred. Where was I? I ran up the street and looked at the tombs around me, trying to find something I recognized, but nothing looked familiar.
What was happening to me? The world around me seemed to spin faster and faster. A wave of nausea spread up from my stomach. I gagged and fell to my knees, my pounding heart echoing in my ears. The sudden sharp pain of bare skin scraping rough concrete helped to calm me a little. I squeezed my eyes shut. I tried to focus on my stinging cuts but the dizziness remained.
I could hear the rapid slapping of slippers against the heels of someone’s feet. The sound was coming toward me. The tears in my eyes blurred the stranger’s face. All I could see was a person wearing a blue baseball cap.
Oh my God. He must be one of Tiger’s friends. I had to get out of here. I struggled to my feet, my dizziness making me weave as I moved forward. The world continued to spin around me and the sound of my breathing grew harsher as I stumbled. My mind screamed over and over. Get away. Get away. Get away.
Someone grabbed my arm. I struggled to pull away, but then somehow my legs just couldn’t go on, and they buckled. I fell. The concrete street rushed up to greet me, its tiny holes and pockmarks coming into sharp focus. Then a dark brown arm thumped hard against my cheek and caught me before I hit the ground.
“Nora, what’s wrong with you?”
It was the last thing I heard before the world turned black.
Chapter Nine
My body felt like a sack of rice, heavy and hard to move. I couldn’t remember the reason why at first and concentrated on simply breathing in and out. In and out. A breeze lifted a strand of hair off my cheek. Paper rustled. Someone stirred a pot of something that smelled like—chocolate.
“Is she awake?”
“Don’t talk so loud, Lola. You’ll…”
“Poor thing! How could her mother…”
“Shhh!”
“How dare you shush me! Don’t forget who you’re talking to.”
“Sorry, Lola.”
Mama. My chest felt like it would burst. Everything that had happened in the last two days came back in a rush. Mama’s disappearance. Tiger’s unexpected, unwanted visit. Papa’s watch, stolen. My lip trembled. I wasn’t going to cry. Where was I? My eyelids opened a crack. In front of me sat Jojo in a faded basketball jersey, his face only inches from mine.
“Aha! You finally opened your eyes. Hey, Lola! Nora’s awake.” He handed me a glass of something warm as I pushed myself up on one elbow. “What happened to you out there?”
I shook my head. I remembered Jojo holding me up and carrying me on his back to his shanty, then nothing. I turned away. My face felt swollen from all the crying.
“Anak, go on, eat. You look like you need it. And you, stop asking her questions until she gets something in her stomach.” It sounded like Jojo’s grandmother whacked him on the head with her fan.
“Lola!” Joj
o rubbed the top of his head, even though it probably didn’t hurt, considering the fan was made of woven palm leaves.
The warm glass shook in my trembling hands. The spoon inside rattled against the glass. It had been a long time since someone was this kind to me. How could they be nice to someone who wasn’t related to them? Lola Fely was family, and look where that had gotten me. I gripped the glass a little harder so that I wouldn’t spill. Inside was a thick rice porridge, chocolaty and sweet. My mouth watered. I ate a spoonful. Then I ate some more. The chocolate and rice porridge warmed my stomach and eased the knots of pain I had been feeling since Mama disappeared.
Disappeared. No, I wasn’t going to say that. Not yet. I mean, she could be anywhere, hurt probably, or sick or something. Something.
Lola Mercy was a small woman who walked slightly bent at the shoulders. Her white hair was pinned into a tight bun at the nape of her neck. Sometimes, strands of it escaped and framed her small face. She had a large brown mole right between her eyebrows that she claimed was the reason for her long life. It was the first time I’d seen the inside of Jojo’s shanty. I’d only been as far as the front door to deliver their washed clothes or some gift of food from Mama. Lola Mercy would always invite me in but I was too shy to accept. It was a single room built from bits of wood and corrugated metal. Pinpoints of light filtered through gaps in the roof and walls like tiny stars. The curtain that covered the window next to me billowed gently in the breeze.
I was finished with the porridge, the glass practically clean again after I used my spoon to scoop out bits that clung to the sides.
“Thank you for the champorado, Lola.” I wasn’t sure if she actually cooked the porridge since she didn’t have anything to cook on, but I thought it was more polite to assume that she did.
“My next-door neighbor has a little stove and she lets me cook there a couple of times a week. Of course, I always give her a share of what I make as a thank-you. Honestly, I think her kids are grateful that I do. I’ve tasted her cooking. Terrible!” She made a face, and then smiled again, amused by her own criticism.
She shuffled over with a grin that not only showed off her toothless gums but wreathed her face in a starburst of wrinkles. Her eyes twinkled between the folds of her eyelids.
“Do you want some more? I made a whole pot full, so you can have as much as you like.” Then in an exaggerated whisper, she pointed to Jojo and said, “Don’t worry about him. He’s too fat. He doesn’t need to eat.”
I giggled in spite of myself because Jojo was as slim and straight as a bamboo pole.
“Hey!” Jojo complained through a mouthful of porridge. He sat on the floor next to the bed I was sitting on. The bed was surprisingly soft. The cot sank a little when I pressed my hand on it.
“Nice, huh? I found a bunch of foam lying on a street corner. You know, the kind they use for cushions? So there was this stack of foam in different sizes. I guess they were scraps, but they looked useful to me. Can you believe someone actually threw this away?” Jojo lifted up the thin blanket to show me pieces of green foam piled on top of wooden crates. “My grandmother has one just like it over there.”
Sure enough, next to the other wall stood another set of crates with a homemade foam mattress on top. In the corner next to it was a chamber pot, in case his grandmother had to urinate in the middle of the night.
Lola Mercy came and sat next to me. She shooed Jojo away with her fan. She smelled like menthol, and I noticed small patches of what looked like white tape on her neck and upper back. Ah, so that was what I smelled. Salompas. A painkiller you absorbed through your skin. Mama used to cut small pieces off the medicinal patches and stick them to her temples whenever she had a headache.
“So what happened, anak?”
I didn’t know where to begin or if I even wanted to talk about it. My eyes burned with the effort to hold back my tears, but one look at Lola Mercy’s face, so kind and filled with concern, broke the shell I had so carefully built around myself.
She pulled me to her and rubbed my back as I cried. My world felt empty, hollow. I was alone. I didn’t want to think about the things that might have happened to my mother. I just needed to find her.
After an hour (though it felt much longer) I felt a little calmer. It was time to go and start my search. My stomach no longer felt empty and I could stand without my legs wobbling. The champorado was exactly what I had needed. Warm gratitude filled my chest.
“Salamat po, Lola. I’ll go home now. I don’t want to give you any more trouble.” Or run the risk of wearing out my welcome. Again. The memory of Lola Fely’s sour face was still clear in my mind. I needed my mother, my family, and no one else. It strengthened my resolve to go and look for Mama.
“What? Leaving already? You have to rest!”
“I’m okay, really I am. I have to go home. Mama will worry if she gets there and I’m not there waiting for her.” I had a feeling she would keep me here if I told her I was going on a search for my mother.
Lola Mercy and Jojo exchanged a knowing look.
“What is it?”
Jojo wouldn’t look at me. He sat there, his mouth pursed as if to whistle, his eyes on the floor. Lola Mercy grunted and nudged him with her foot.
“Haven’t you told her?” She nudged him again, this time a little harder.
“Aray!” He jumped up off the floor and rubbed his thigh with a mock expression of pain on his face. “It’s just a rumor!”
“What are you talking about?” What was he keeping from me? My heart hammered in my chest so hard I couldn’t breathe. Jojo looked at his grandmother sheepishly, then turned to me.
“I didn’t want to tell you about it until I knew more and could check it out for myself,” said Jojo. His grandmother turned away and carried the dirty dishes to a basin full of water under a window. Jojo watched her for a moment, and then looked at me, his eyes pleading with me to not be angry with him.
“Just tell me.” It was hard to sit still. I wanted to shake the words out of him.
“I was talking with my buddy at the water pump this morning and asked him what he knew about Tiger.”
I wanted to say that I didn’t listen to gossip, but I kept my mouth shut. Maybe there was a chance I’d learn something, anything about what had happened to Mama. So many possibilities were running through my mind. I wanted to hear what the rumor was, and at the same time, I didn’t. How bad could it be? Then I realized that it could be really bad.
“He said that he saw your mother get into a taxi with Tiger outside the cemetery gates the other day. He said that your mother owed Tiger’s boss a lot of money, that she was in big trouble. He—he thinks Tiger killed her.”
“What?!” My voice came out like a scream. I clamped my hands over my ears, shaking my head as if I could jerk the words out of my brain. “Noooo! Please don’t say she’s dead! She’s coming back. I know she is.”
I couldn’t breathe. My chest tightened with each gasp. Lola Mercy rushed over and rubbed my back. Her warm hands eased my rising panic.
“That’s enough, Jo. That was just a rumor. You’re right, Nora. I’m sure your mother will turn up.” Lola Mercy shot Jojo a meaningful look. “I’m sorry we brought up such gossip.”
Lola Mercy let go of me and came back with something wrapped in banana leaves. She held it out to me, along with a plastic bag. “Here you go. It’s just a little cold rice and fried fish. Take it. Please. I can’t have any extra food lying around or else Jojo will get too fat,” she said with a wink. Then she patted my arm. “Try not to worry. I know it’s hard to do, but if you don’t, you will go crazy. Now, we have to talk about where you will be staying until your mother comes back.”
“But…” A lump formed in my throat.
“Ah, ah, ah. It’s decided. You will stay here with me. You can sleep on Jojo’s bed. He will sleep at your grave house. I would offer to stay at your place, but my dear grandson has spoiled me. These old bones will not like cement floors.” She tugged o
n Jojo’s ear, and he grinned at her.
“But what if my mother returns?”
Lola Mercy looked at me for a moment and said, “Don’t worry. You can go there during the day and if she comes home during the night, then I’m sure Jojo will come and get you, okay? Now, there is another question I need to ask you. Is there someone you can call or write to, in case—well, in case your mother doesn’t return?”
The gentle pity in her eyes made me start to cry again. “No! I won’t think about that. She will come back. She has to.”
“Yes, of course, anak. It’s just good to know there is someone you can contact just in case. Now think!” She raised her sparse eyebrows, making her forehead crinkle into little hills and valleys.
The first person that came to mind was Lola Fely. But she would be the last person I would call. “I have an uncle in Davao. When we first moved to the cemetery, he was supposed to send us money so we could come live with him. We were supposed to call him to see when he could send us the cash. We used to buy the cheapest prepaid phone cards to stay in touch with Tito Danny. But Mama sold her cell phone a few months after we arrived.”
So she’d have money for gambling, I wanted to say, but didn’t. Maybe if Mama had kept her phone, we would be in Davao by now. “After that, Mama wrote to her brother a couple of times. For a few weeks, we would go to Lola Fely’s home and ask the maid if there was a letter for us. But there was never a reply. The last time we were there, Lola Fely herself chased us away with a broom. Mama gave up writing the letters since there was no way to receive mail in the cemetery.” I sighed. “I know Mama has his number written down in a notebook she keeps.”
“Well, make sure you find it. Jojo and I don’t have a cell phone. Do any of your neighbors have one you can borrow?”
Mang Rudy had one. Mama had the same kind, where you had to open it like a clam. Normally, I’d be too embarrassed to ask to use his phone, but if something happened to Mama, then I wouldn’t have a choice. I nodded.
“Good.” Lola Mercy gave my arm another consoling pat.
Everlasting Nora Page 6
