I knocked on Gabriela’s door with a beating heart, my apology carefully memorized.
The door swung open and at first I did not recognize the woman who opened the door. Her hair was a tangle, like thick black telephone wires matted in a coiled mess.
It was Nena.
I tried to speak. ‘Good … good afternoon …’
Her eyes stared into mine without any recognition. She was covered with a greasy-looking filth, like she’d been rolling around in the motor oil that dripped from the engines of the tricycles on the street. She smelled like she had not bathed for weeks. I took a tiny step back and resisted the urge to cover my nose.
‘M-Ma’am?’
But the woman did not seem to see me. She squatted down on her haunches, muttering to herself. She might have been praying but I wasn’t sure.
A hand touched my shoulder and I whirled around.
‘Bernardo!’ It was Sister Lydia, who lived down the road. ‘My, how you’ve grown!’
‘Sister Lydia,’ I said. And then I couldn’t go on. What is wrong with Nena? I wanted to ask. But my old fears locked the question in my throat.
Sister Lydia seemed unafraid. She stepped past me and bent down, gently helping the witch up to her feet. She spoke slowly to Sister Nena, like she was speaking to a child. ‘There, there, darling. Go back inside.’ She put a hand on Nena’s elbow and tried to usher her back into the house but the woman just turned and pressed her face against the door.
Sister Lydia turned to me. ‘She is sick. She’s been very sick since the dog bit Gabriela. You heard about it, didn’t you?’
‘Yes, I heard.’
‘And what did you want from Nena?’
I bowed my head. How could Nena free me from the curse in this state? What was I to do now? Perhaps Gabriela would know. ‘Gabriela, is she here?’
As if in answer to my question, the dog began to howl inside the house, like a wolf at the moon. Goose pimples rose on my arms and I shuffled uncomfortably. ‘Oh, that Judas. He scares me.’
Sister Lydia’s eyes widened. ‘Nardo, that isn’t Judas.’
I squinted at her. ‘What do you mean?’
‘Judas was rabid. Dangerous. After he bit Gabriela, he went wild in the streets. We had to call the police. They caught him and destroyed him.’
‘Destroyed him? Then …’
The dog’s howls became louder. They were coming from the room above our heads.
Sister Lydia covered her face with her hands. ‘The dog is dead. That sound …!’
There was a banging above our heads and a window swung open. The dog’s howls resonated from deep inside the upstairs room. They subsided for a moment and then a shrieking began, unearthly and high and sharp.
Nena suddenly began to scream. ‘Gabriela! Oh save her, Lord! Gabriela!’
She threw her head back and held both arms out at the window as if someone was going to leap into her embrace.
Only then did I notice the small face staring down at us from the window. The hair was matted in long unkempt strands. If Gabriela had ever been a beauty, it was hard to see. Her expression was contorted with pain and madness. She strained towards the window, grunting like an animal. And then she opened her mouth and gave another bloodcurdling howl.
‘The dog infected Gabriela with rabies,’ Sister Lydia said, gently putting an arm around Nena, who was sobbing into the wall. ‘For a month, her mother tried to cure the illness with her spells and potions but nothing worked. By the time she took Gabriela to a doctor, it was too late. Nobody can help her now.’
29
Andi
Everything pales into insignificance.
I’ve heard that said; read it in books.
But when it fits something you know in real life. Well. Everything pales into insignificance. All our troubles. The shoebox house. The workaholic parents. The basketball, or lack of it. Everything paled in the face of what Bernardo had been through.
I am the blame. Bernardo’s soft, sad voice echoed in my head like my brain had somehow vanished and the sentence was just bouncing around in my big empty skull.
Yesterday’s Andi might have sniggered to herself – I mean, giants and witches and curses. I don’t go for Harry Potter or The Lord of the Rings or … but what Bernardo’s been through – it wasn’t just about magic, was it?
It took Gabriela a month to die of rabies.
After her death, her mother became obsessed with Saint Gertrude, who has the power to free souls from Purgatory.
‘Mad Nena, she pray and pray so that Gabriela can go to Heaven,’ Bernardo explained. ‘Sometimes I pray too. I be very sad for her.’
I was tempted to say Gabriela did not sound like the Purgatory type. Wasn’t Purgatory a way-station for sinners who could still be saved? I had no doubt that she went straight to Hell.
But the earnest expression on Bernardo’s face made me hold my tongue.
On the day Gabriela finally died, Bernardo – who had grown to six and a half foot tall – took the bus to the nearest church in the next village, San Isidro. He went to Confession and begged forgiveness for his part in her decline.
Confession is supposed to be the secret sacrament, right? The priest, as God’s stand-in, is sworn never to reveal the confessions of his people. That’s how the slate can be wiped clean, and everyone can start from scratch and all that. Well. San Isidro had not been immune from the brutal bullying of the witch and her daughter. The priest could barely contain himself when he heard that Gabriela was dead and that the witch had lost her mind. He leaped out of the confessional and shook Bernardo’s hand.
Soon villages up and down the hills of Montalban were buzzing with the news.
Everybody knew.
And that’s how Bernardo became a hero.
He had freed the people of Montalban from the tyranny of Nena and Gabriela.
Turning into a giant was actually a sideshow to the whole thing.
The fact that the earthquakes stopped was a bonus.
That night, I watched Bernardo sleep his silent sleep.
His hand lay across his chest and his head was thrown back, his Adam’s apple bobbing gently as he breathed.
My brother.
Home at last.
Things were going to be better from now on, I swore to myself. Bernardo didn’t deserve to be treated like a freak. He didn’t deserve to be treated like a stranger either. And I was going to be a great sister. At the game tomorrow, I would cheer for him until my tonsils fell out. And he was going to shock the Colts into a stupor and the Souls would play themselves to victory and it would be all because of Bernardo.
The door opened.
Mum’s face appeared in the crack.
Our eyes met and she quickly shut the door.
There was something in her expression that made me jump out of bed and follow her out.
‘Mum? What is it?’
I could hear the drone of the news on TV downstairs.
Mum turned away but not before I saw her flick tears from her eyes. My heart began to boom in my ears.
‘Mum! Something’s wrong? Is it Bernardo? Did you get more results back from the hospital?’
‘No! No, it’s not that.’
I pulled her shoulder round to face me. Her eyes were smudged from weeping.
‘Then what is it?’
Her mouth trembled. ‘It’s not Bernardo – there has been an earthquake in the Philippines. A massive earthquake.’
I stood there, my bare feet suddenly rooted to the carpet. I had never felt so small and so helpless, the blood rushing about in my head like a wild river. ‘An earthquake?’ I had stopped breathing.
Mum’s eyes were black holes.
‘Montalban was at the epicentre. San Andres … it’s been destroyed.’
Part Three
Wish Fulfilment
1
Bernardo
‘Slam dunk!’
Jabby looked resplendent in a brand-new red, white and blue Mounta
in Men kit.
I laughed. ‘You’re not tall enough!’ And he wasn’t. Only players over six foot ever managed dunks.
Jabby looked hurt. ‘Do you know the Americans banned dunking in the nineteen seventies?’
‘So you’ve told me a million times.’
‘And you know why they banned it?’
‘Yes I do. You told me.’
‘They banned it because Kareem Abdul-Jabbar, my namesake, was just too good! They banned it so other players could catch up!’
‘Whatever. You can’t do it, Jabby.’
‘Watch me.’
And with that, he jumped, jumped from standing, without even a running leap, up and up and up, up beyond the ring, up to the rafters of the dome, up to the big round glass light, up like a shooting star, so fast that I thought he was going to crash right through and shower me with broken glass; but no, inches away, he peaked and then down he went, the ball raised aloft, muscles bulging, hard determination on his face.
And BANG.
He banged it in.
The ball shot through the basket and Jabby grabbed the ring, hanging on with a big grin on his face, swinging like a monkey, back and forth, back and forth. And then I realized that the whole stadium had begun to swing too, back and forth, slowly at first and then faster and faster and faster and faster, and then Jabby couldn’t hang on any more and let go of the ring, and then he was falling, falling, falling.
‘Nardo! Help! Help!’
I opened my eyes.
‘Jabby?’
Even as I said his name I knew it was just a dream.
Andi’s basketball duvet had fallen off her bed onto my face. Michael Jordan leaped high above me on the wall poster. Sunshine streamed in through the gap in the curtains.
‘Andi?’ I called up to her bed. But when I sat up to look, it was empty and the door was ajar. Andi was already up.
Slowly, morning noises drifted into my awareness. The TV’s chatter from downstairs. The trickle of water in the bathroom. Birds singing outside the window. There was a buzzing noise, like a saw. Uncle Will – Dad – was sleeping off the night shift in the next room.
I sighed and lay back, my arms under my head. A dream!
It was Jabby’s ambition to do slam dunks even though he was just five ten and not much of a jumper. He could list the names of all the NBA players under six foot who managed dunks on a regular basis and he spent hours practising and jumping around like a pogo stick. Maybe this was a portent of good things to come. Maybe Jabby was about to make a breakthrough.
I grabbed my cellphone from the side table and thumbed a text message to Jabby.
DREAMED U CD DUNK.
Then I remembered. The Souls game. It was today!
My stomach contracted and I sat up, my back suddenly cold with sweat.
The door opened. Andi was already in her school uniform. For a moment the amber eyes looked serious but it must have been a trick of the light because she bellowed cheerily, ‘Mum says get up, sleepyhead, today’s your big day!’
I was in and out of the bathroom and down the stairs in less than ten minutes.
The TV’s drone cut off abruptly when I got to the bottom of the stairs. Ma appeared in the living-room doorway.
‘Good morning, darling!’
Her hair was mussed up, and there were tired lines around her eyes, which were red.
‘Oh.’ I searched her face. ‘What’s wrong, Mama?’
She rubbed her eyes. ‘It’s hay fever.’
‘Hay fever?’ I had never heard of hay fever. Perhaps she meant high fever?
She rubbed her eyes again. ‘It’s an allergy. I only get it here in England. In the summer. Never get it in the Philippines. Oh, I can’t believe I’ve got hay fever now. It’s not summer any more, for heaven’s sake. My eyes are so sore!’
She led the way to the kitchen and put some eggs out to fry for breakfast.
Andi was already sitting at the breakfast table.
‘Hey, Bernardo.’
‘Good morning.’ There was something overly bright about her smile. And the way she directed her gaze back to her cereal bowl was just a little bit too quick. I looked from Ma to Andi.
No! Stop it. What was wrong with me? Yesterday was a breakthrough! It felt like Andi and I had finally connected. I felt so close to her after we talked. So why was I now mistrusting everything I saw?
My Darth Vader ring tone began to play. I couldn’t believe it. Somebody was actually calling!
I’d had a few text messages of course, but in all that time no one had phoned – all my phone contacts were from San Andres … and nobody in San Andres could afford overseas calls. It was so pointless having the phone that I’d left it on a shelf in the kitchen and forgotten about it.
I picked it up and did a double take.
Mum eyed the phone.
‘Is it from the Philippines?’ she said.
‘I had a missed call last night. From Jabby!’
‘Is that so?’ Mum turned towards the kitchen sink.
‘And look, another call!’
‘Jabby again?’ Mum’s voice was muffled. She was bent over the sink.
‘Yes.’ I frowned. ‘Two missed calls from Jabby.’
But Mum was no longer listening, throwing water on her eyes and mumbling something about hay fever.
2
Andi
It had been a rough night.
Dad rushed in from work at two in the morning and the three of us watched the rolling reports on the twenty-four-hour news channel. The earthquake was a seven on the Richter scale, which is as strong as they come, and the village was so close to the epicentre, the place was totally destroyed.
Dad and I sat on the sofa, shoulder to shoulder. We could not take our eyes off the screen. And even though we had the heating on full blast, my hands were freezing.
Mum, frantic and sobbing, worked the phones, trying to get through to Uncle and Auntie, but of course there was no answer. All the lines were down. The news helicopters were not able to land for hours, and when they did, everything was still in such chaos, nobody could tell them anything. Then the army arrived and soon there were scenes of trucks filled with men and women carrying children, and dogs and goats and chickens; and then the soldiers began to pull people out from under broken buildings.
One news crew stayed in an emergency room, and kept a tally of the casualties arriving. Fifty, one hundred, two hundred. The figures climbed by the minute.
Then tents began mushrooming in fields and there were doctors with surgical masks and nurses and bandages and splints and plaster casts.
And all the while Bernardo slept.
I was all for waking Bernardo up so that he could keep watch with us, but Mum shook her head.
‘No, no, don’t tell Bernardo anything.’
I stared at her. ‘That’s crazy, Mum. We’ve got to. Besides, it’s unfair.’
Mum took my hand. ‘Look, we will tell him. But not yet. First, we must make sure your Uncle Victor and Auntie Sofia are all right.’
All right? It was a gentle way of saying ‘not dead’.
Mum’s brown skin had a pale yellow cast, like the night had sucked some of the blood out of her.
‘… and whatever we find out, I need time to pull myself together. And I want to choose my words carefully. It’s … it’s just too awful. I don’t know how to tell Bernardo what happened.’
And she suddenly looked so tiny and so sad that all I could do was put my arms around her.
Poor Mum. Poor Bernardo. The villagers had tried to stop him from coming to England, hadn’t they? They believed that without Bernardo, they were doomed. And now … and now …
Mum was right. Bernardo didn’t have to know just yet.
My brain was a hive of buzzing as Bernardo and I walked to school. I could barely hear him talking for the swarm in my head, but I could have won a Best Actress trophy for all my laughing and smiling, strolling along as if I didn’t have a care in the world,
as if I hadn’t spent the night watching a horror story unfold on the other side of the world, as if my heart had not turned to lead.
We were almost up to the school gates when Bernardo suddenly stopped.
‘Andi! I forgets the uniform of Rocky.’
‘Oh no,’ I said, still acting to the hilt. ‘You’ll have to play basketball naked!’
Bernardo grinned. ‘No, no, I just go back. There is many time.’
I slapped him on the arm, maybe a little bit too heartily. ‘And don’t you dare try to get out of the game.’
Bernardo waved as he turned back towards home. ‘Why I do that? Nothing will stops me from playing.’
3
Bernardo
Ma had given me my own key.
I didn’t knock or ring the doorbell. Ma was on the night shift and she would be resting upstairs. Uncle Will was probably asleep as well. No point disturbing them. I crept in as quietly as I could.
The TV was on. Was that the news? I thought the breakfast news ended after nine o’clock in the morning.
I called out in Tagalog, ‘Mama! Would you believe Andi and I went all the way to school before I realized I’d forgotten the basketball kit!’
I poked my head into the living room. ‘Ma!’
But Ma wasn’t there.
‘Ma! Are you upstairs?’ I called. But the volume was turned up so loud she couldn’t possibly have heard me.
I glanced at the screen and froze.
Mad Nena.
Her face filled the screen. The eyes empty. The lips moving. There was a news commentary over the shot but I could read her lips repeating the one word. Gabriela. Gabriela. Gabriela.
The camera zoomed out.
At first I thought it was some sort of scrap heap or a messy lumberyard or a garbage mountain. But no. The scraps of corrugated iron that lay broken over everything were once rooftops. The blocks of broken concrete were once walls. The shrouded figures on the ground … were once people. There was an army truck full of survivors, their faces bruised, their clothes covered in grime. A woman cuddled a tiny baby, her face expressionless. Was that Sister Len-Len?
It was as if my knees had suddenly turned to water. I grabbed at the door frame to stop myself falling. But I missed and landed hard on my elbow.
Tall Story Page 13
