Lola Mercy was putting away her rosary while humming a tune that sounded familiar to me. It was a song by Sharon Cuneta, about being in love until you grow old and your hair turns white. Mama’s favorite. She used to sing it to Papa all the time.
It was strange to see someone like Lola Mercy, who didn’t seem to mind being a squatter. I suddenly had to know why.
“Lola?”
“Hmmm?” She stretched out on her bed with a satisfied sigh. “My old bones have been spoiled by this bed. I’ll never be able to sleep on the floor again. Thank God for my grandson. He takes good care of me. You know, he reminds me of his grandpa, always thoughtful, always helpful. And a great charmer,” she said, and chuckled.
“Lola, may I ask you something? How did you and Jojo come to live here in the cemetery? Did something terrible happen to you?” Like me, I wanted to say. Some squatters had moved to Manila from the provinces looking for a better life and had ended up here. What would Lola Mercy’s story be?
“Oh, yes. Something terrible happened. At least, it was terrible for my parents. You see, I moved here because I got married.”
She laughed at the expression on my face and continued, “When I met my husband, I was twenty years old and working at a T-shirt shop not too far from here. He came into the store to buy a shirt for his father. He smiled at me and I thought he was very handsome. I helped him find what he wanted to buy and we haggled over the price for half an hour. I tried hard not to look at him, because I didn’t want to give him the wrong impression. Well, not only did he buy the shirt, but he came back every day at the same time with a snack to share with me, and we became engaged a few months later. We had a simple wedding at City Hall and a party at my parents’ house. Then he took me home to his grave house.”
“When did he tell you that he lived in the cemetery?”
“He told me from the beginning that he and his family lived at the Manila North Cemetery. I didn’t believe him at first, so when he brought me home to meet his parents, I was shocked. Their grave house was a little bigger than the one you live in. His father was a stonemason, a caretaker of a family mausoleum. My husband was born in the cemetery, along with his three brothers. After we were married, we moved into the neighboring grave house. For the next thirty-five years, we lived there and had two children, Leticia and Roberto. Leticia was Jojo’s mother. She married a cemetery boy despite our disapproval. We wanted so much more for her.” Lola Mercy was quiet for a while, lost in a stream of memories.
“Lola, you said ‘was.’ What happened to Jojo’s mother?” Jojo never talked about his parents. Whenever the subject came up, he would make a face and say that he didn’t remember anything about them.
“Leticia married a young man who was always mixed up in some money-making scheme. Most of the time, nothing ever came of it, and their life was hard. She washed clothes and whenever her husband could, he did carpentry work. He built this very place with whatever he could find. They seemed happy enough. When Leticia got pregnant, her husband worried about raising a child, but the excitement of having a baby erased all that. Leticia had a hard pregnancy and an even harder delivery. She didn’t survive. She died here, with a midwife arriving too late to help her.”
Lola Mercy’s voice was down to a whisper. It quavered, and then stopped. With a deep breath, she went on. “Leticia’s husband handed me the screaming baby and said he would be right back. I thought he was going out to make arrangements for Leticia. We waited but he never returned. I stayed here for days, hoping Jojo’s father would come back. The days turned into weeks, and I realized that this was where I would stay to raise Jojo, because this was where he was born and where my daughter died.”
“What about your husband? What happened to him?” I could barely squeeze the words out. My throat throbbed with unshed tears. How did Lola Mercy keep going after such heartache? And what did Jojo think about it?
“Oh, my dear husband was devastated. It was the final blow to his weak heart. Before Jojo was born, my son Roberto went to seek his fortune in the southern islands. He wanted to dive for coral and rare tropical fish and sell them to foreign buyers. Naive boy! We tried to stop him. It was too risky. He left anyway. We had been waiting for months for news, for a letter, but nothing ever came. He never returned. Then after that, Leticia died. My husband passed away not too long after my daughter. They are both buried in the grave house I used to live in, where his brother now resides, and I am here with Jojo.”
She sighed deeply. “And we have lived quietly, not asking for too much, always grateful for the little we have and for each other. I make some money selling roasted corn in the afternoons, and as you know, Jojo does all kinds of odd jobs, so we get by okay. My grandson is very smart, you know. And he’s a hard worker. I just wish I had been able to put him through school.” Lola Mercy’s jaw cracked as she yawned. She murmured, “Hmm, it’s getting late, my dear. You’ve had a long day. Get some rest.” She closed her eyes and sighed. “See you in the morning.”
“Goodnight, Lola.” For the first time in a year, I began to understand why Lola Mercy and Jojo seemed so easygoing, so at ease with the way they lived.
I saw it in the way they took care of each other. Like those beds Jojo had made from foam so his grandmother wouldn’t have to sleep on the floor anymore. How he pretended to be grumpy when his grandmother teased him about being too fat, and how her face crinkled into a smile when they were together. These memories made me feel warm, comforted.
That’s what it is. Consuelo. Comfort. I know what this is now.
This feeling had surrounded me since Mama disappeared, even though I was too distracted, too confused, in too much pain to acknowledge it. But now it wrapped around me like a cocoon, sheltering me. Lola Mercy and Jojo had become more than friends. They were beginning to feel like family.
Jojo and his grandmother believed that if they helped one another and their neighbors, they would have suwerte, luck for the future.
Mama and I had been like them once. We’d wait for Tito Danny to call, or we believed that Mama’s luck would change and she’d win enough money to get us out of the cemetery and home to Davao. Neither happened. Then our need to escape grew stronger, the longer we lived in the cemetery. I hadn’t just wanted to stay alive; I knew that I wanted my old life back, and I wanted Mama to be her old self before the gambling. But maybe we could think of a better plan to leave the cemetery and be more hopeful too.
I balled my hand into a fist. We still have a plan. Like Jojo and his grandmother, all we needed was patience. We would pay back the money Mama owed. I could keep up my studies with Kuya Efren. I could call Tito Danny somehow. I could take the bakery job Aling Lydia offered. We had friends who encouraged us. I had to believe that as long as I had Mama with me, we would have a better life someday in Davao.
But first, I have to find you, Mama.
Chapter Fifteen
There was a loud bang. My arms jerked and the sheet I was folding fell out of my hands. Lola Mercy had dropped the kettle and was bent over attempting to retrieve it as it rolled in circles on the floor.
When she straightened up, she was frowning. “You shouldn’t go back there. It’s not safe.”
Lola Mercy was usually the calmest person I knew. Even when Jojo had come home the other night with his face bruised and swollen, she calmly cleaned him up. When we told her what had happened that night, she listened without comment. But there was nothing calm about her this morning.
She had been rinsing her old kettle and telling me about her neighbor, the one who couldn’t cook, who made coffee in a pot so large, a small child could fit inside. The coffee was sold by the pot or cupful, and Lola Mercy had conceded that it was the best she had ever tasted. She had asked me what I was planning to do today. I had told her I wanted to talk to Rosie again.
“What are you thinking? If Tiger shows up at that woman’s house again, what are you going to do?”
“But Lola, Rosie might know something important. She
told me to come back so I could ask her more questions.”
“No. Absolutely not.” Lola Mercy waved the kettle in the air for emphasis. “And that goes for my grandson too, wherever he is.”
“Breakfast time!” Jojo popped in through the door. He startled his grandmother so bad she dropped the kettle again. He picked it up for her and earned a scowl for his attempted apology. Lola Mercy shuffled out the door to buy her coffee, muttering to herself the whole time about crazy kids and how she was too old to deal with them.
“What’s wrong with her? I thought she’d be happy to have suman for breakfast,” said Jojo after handing me a bundle of hotdog-shaped sticky rice cakes, each one wrapped in yellow-green buli leaves and tied together with a strip of palm leaf.
“I told her we were going to Rosie’s today.”
Jojo looked thoughtful, then shook his head in understanding while he took a plate from the shelf.
What were we going to do now? I didn’t want to upset Lola Mercy, but at the same time, I needed answers from Rosie.
There was nothing to do but wait for Lola Mercy to return. Nervousness bounced around in my stomach like a firefly trapped in a bottle. Would she still be upset when she came back? It was hard to tell from the singsong rhythm of her voice as she chatted with the woman next door.
The flutter in my stomach turned to grumbling when I untied the strip that held the bundle together and placed the wrapped cakes on the plate. They were still warm; the sweet, green, nutty smell of palm leaf and coconut milk filled my nose. It made me hungry and homesick at the same time. When I was little, Mama used to make suman and sell it to our neighbors and to my teachers at school. Sometimes she couldn’t sell all of them, and so she served them every day for breakfast until Papa and I complained. The sight of them used to make me so nauseous that I avoided them whenever possible. But not today. I wanted to eat them so I could keep that small memory of Mama’s suman vivid in my mind and heart.
Most of the sticky rice cakes were unwrapped by the time Lola Mercy came back with her kettle full of coffee. She was humming. I took it as a good sign. I was wrong.
“Hmmp. Needs sugar,” said Lola Mercy after scrutinizing the rice cakes on the plate. She set the kettle down on the floor, passing out three glasses for coffee and a small covered jar of sugar.
Lola Mercy tucked her duster between her legs and folded her body into a squat. She poured the coffee and opened the jar of sugar. She dipped a suman into the jar. “Nora told me you two plan on visiting that woman, Rosie. Is that right?” She held up her hand when she saw my mouth open to answer her. “Let him answer, Nora.”
“Uh-huh. But not until this afternoon. I have to do my water run, and Nora wanted to go home so she can, you know, wait for her mother. Just in case.” He didn’t seem disturbed by the look his grandmother gave him. He just picked up a suman, peeled away the palm leaf, and dipped the rice cake into the jar. He bit into it, spilling sugar down his chin.
“Well, I don’t like it. Look at what Tiger did to you, boy. You don’t want to end up like your friend Teddy.” Lola Mercy shook a rice cake at him, paying no attention to the sugar that spilled onto the floor.
I sat up a little straighter. My skin tingled. How could I have been so blind? This was the reason why Jojo had been so angry at Tiger the other night. Of course Lola Mercy would be upset. Jojo’s best friend had been attacked and killed by Tiger’s gang a year ago. Jojo had said that Lola Mercy was sure that if he were with Teddy that day, she would’ve lost him as well. Who was I to ask her to put Jojo at risk? He was her entire world.
I cleared my throat. “I’ll go by myself.”
Jojo and Lola Mercy looked at me, their mouths frozen in midchew. So I went on, hoping they’d take me seriously. “I’ll go while it’s still light, when there are more people in the streets.”
This time they stared at me open-mouthed. It was either because I had said something amazing or really stupid. Then they looked at one another. Lola Mercy sighed.
“Well, I can’t let you go alone. If you insist that this woman has something to tell you about your mother, then you must go and ask her.”
She gave Jojo a stern look, then turned to me with softer eyes. “Just be careful, anak. And make sure my knucklehead of a grandson doesn’t lose his temper again.”
“Aray!” cried Jojo when his grandmother twisted his ear and pulled him into her arms. She gave him a noisy kiss on his cheek before he could pull away. Lola Mercy turned to me and asked, “Have you found your uncle’s phone number? Have you tried calling him?”
“Not yet,” I answered. “I’ll give my mother one more day, then I’ll call him tomorrow.”
She squeezed my hand and patted it gently. Her hard-won approval was a relief. Jojo and I would be careful. Besides, we had our own small means of protection.
My hand pressed against the pocket of my shorts, making sure the balisong was still there. I was ready to face Rosie and all she had to tell me about Mama. Tiger or no Tiger.
* * *
Bonifacio Avenue rippled with movement. People carried umbrellas or wore hats against the blazing sun. Light reflected off of bus windows and the chrome sidings of jeepneys crawling through traffic in both directions. Commuters on motorcycles wove between the cars, beeping their horns, warning drivers and pedestrians to look out. The humid air thickened with the smell of exhaust and sweat. I pulled up the neckline of my shirt to cover my nose. I didn’t want to breathe in the soot that puffed out of exhaust pipes. It made your snot turn black.
Jojo and I nudged and pushed our way out of the main gate of the cemetery and walked to the corner of Bonifacio and Merced. I was rehearsing what I would say to Rosie in my head when a flash of silver and blue caught my eye.
The traffic was at a standstill. Cars and jeepneys honked their horns impatiently. On the far side of the street was a taxi with its windows rolled down. A hand dangled out with a cigarette clamped between its fingers. It wasn’t the hand itself that caught my attention. It was the watch on the wrist. Papa’s watch. Its blue face winked at me in the morning sun. I didn’t have to look inside the car to see who the hand belonged to.
Inside the taxi, Tiger’s head turned left and right, as if he was looking for someone. He even looked in my direction, but he didn’t see me. Thank goodness for the crowd. The taxi jerked forward as the traffic eased up. There was someone else in the car beside him. It was a woman, leaning back with her head lolling to one side. The shape of her face looked familiar—my heart jumped.
Could it be Mama?
I watched the taxi as it turned into the cemetery gate. If that was Mama in there, and I hoped to God it was, then I had to stay with the car and never lose sight of it. It was the only way to be sure.
“Hey, what are you staring at?” Jojo bumped me as the crowd of people pushed us back toward the cemetery gate. Then a tall man stepped in front of me. His wide back blocked the taxi from view. I tried to jump and move around him. “What is it, Nora?”
“I saw Tiger in that taxi over there. There’s a woman with him. I’ve got to get a closer look.”
“I see it!”
We dodged through the crowd, heading back to the cemetery. The taxi paused at the gate.
Tiger was leaning forward, talking to the driver. The woman’s face was visible now; her body sagged against the car door in an awkward way. “It’s my mother! Come on. We have to catch up to them!”
What’s wrong with her?
I ran ahead, not caring if Jojo heard me or not. My heart thumped so hard it felt like it would burst in my chest. I had to get to the taxi at all costs. But before I could reach it, it rolled through the gate and into the cemetery.
Jojo came up panting behind me. “They might be headed for Tiger’s place.”
“Do you know where it is?” I asked, trying to catch my breath.
Jojo nodded to the left. “Yeah. He lives in a fancy grave house in the Chinese cemetery.”
He spat the words out as if the
y left a bad taste in his mouth, his lips pursed into a thin, grim line. With nostrils flaring, he stared after the vehicle and the man inside who had beaten his friend to death. It was too late for Teddy, but not for Mama.
“What are we waiting for? Let’s follow the taxi.” Before I could break into a run, Jojo grabbed my arm, pulling me back. I tried to break free but his grip held strong. “Let go of me!”
“Hang on a minute!” His large eyes stared down at me until I stopped struggling. “Tiger’s gang will see us coming. It’ll be like walking into a cage of angry monkeys, too dangerous. We’ll take a shortcut.”
Danger was the last thing on my mind. I had to admit, though, that Jojo was right. “Where is it?”
The shortcut was not inside the cemetery. Jojo and I ran down Bonifacio Avenue, keeping close to the outer wall, toward Merced Street. The sky was overcast, the air hot and still.
“I found a small passage through this fence a couple of years ago.” Jojo puffed out each word while he ran beside me. “It leads right into the Chinese cemetery.”
I didn’t see the gate until Jojo stopped in front of it. It was rectangular and small, only as high as my waist. The metal door had the letters PPC, Philippine Power Corporation, engraved along the top. It didn’t have a handle.
Jojo dropped to his knees, running his fingers along the edges of the door. Did he remember how to open it? Hurry. Hurry. My heart pounded out the rhythm of the word. I couldn’t stand still. I got down on my knees to feel the edges for something, anything, to open the gate.
Jojo’s fingers paused at the top corner and pulled a metal bolt to the right. He pushed the door open and crawled through. I crawled in after him, almost climbing over him to get to the other side.
We were inside a small caged area. A humming metal box stood in the center, with sheets of corrugated metal over our heads. We couldn’t climb the chain-link barrier because the space between it and the roof was too narrow.
Everlasting Nora Page 10
