Hero saw Paz looking around at the house, her face flickering between open wonder and blank slate, visibly impressed by what she saw and struggling not to show it. Hero tried to imagine what it might be like for somone who’d never been to the De Vera compound to experience the first sight of it: the cobblestones on Calle Encarnacion leading up to the gate, the courtyard full of mango and sampaloc trees, the now-derelict granary where nineteenth-century servants had kept the stores of maguey, tobacco, and rice from the De Vera plantations and where, family lore had it, Pol had hung a human skeleton, brought back from his time at medical school. During Hero’s childhood, the legend of the skeleton had been used by all of the adults to scare their children into submission. Rather than frightened, Hero had been intrigued; sometimes she wondered if it was that early horror story that had made her want to become a doctor.
The ground floor of the house, traditionally used for carriage storage, was allocated to the servants. There were two staircases leading from the courtyard to the first-floor veranda of the house. The tiles were traditional Vigan clay tiles, and the capiz shell slats in the windows were well maintained, their iridescence kept dull and thus elegant. Inside the house, the floors and banisters were carved from molave and narra wood, gleaming from regular hand polishing, and the sawali ceilings were intact, with the woven, aged bamboo mats above preventing both sound and light from bouncing around too harshly. Pol and the rest of his brothers preferred to be out on the veranda or at least in the atrium, where the air was less stale. The women stayed inside, out of the sun.
Hero saw Escolastica approach Paz, stepping out onto veranda from inside the house. Tita Ticay kept her distance but looked Paz up and down, the white skin of her face making her raised plucked eyebrow look even more dour. Did your family’s driver bring you here, Pacing? she asked. Hero hadn’t ever heard anyone call Paz anything other than Paz or Pacita.
Paz smiled, and answered the way Hero would learn she always answered: rather than lying, or even dodging the question, she preferred to speak the supposedly shameful truth as if it were something to be proud of. Of course not, she said, her voice sweet and direct. We’re too poor to have anything like a car.
She made it sound like it was desirable not to have a car, ridiculous to even want one. Hero had been impressed, not least of all because even she’d gotten in the habit of slipping out of a room whenever Tita Ticay entered it, terrified of her venomous tongue, her keen eyes, the ease with which she spotted weakness, and the pleasure with which she toyed with it.
Hero watched Paz watch Escolastica leave. Paz turned stiffly back around, to see the cooks slip the bellies once again into the cauldron.
* * *
When Paz came home from work, Roni was already asleep. She seemed surprised to see Hero waiting for her, used to Hero already being holed up in her room, not sleeping but listening for the newly comforting sound of the garage door opening late at night.
Can’t sleep? Paz asked without waiting for the answer. Did you eat already? I brought some daing na bangus from work. My coworker made it. It’s real Pangasinan bangus.
Hero shook her head. I already ate.
Paz took out the large container holding the bangus and put it on the table anyway, opening it so the smell of vinegar-marinated fried fish wafted up. Me, too, she said, nevertheless reaching for a small piece of crispy flesh and popping it into her mouth.
Hero opened her mouth, still unsure of whether or not to use English or Tagalog when talking to Paz. Paz had a habit of speaking to Roni in a mixture of English, Tagalog, and Pangasinan. It felt like Roni didn’t really know the difference between Tagalog and Pangasinan, and moved between the two interchangeably as if they were one language. Nobody had told her otherwise, Hero supposed. But for Hero, listening to the mixture was like listening to a radio whose transmission would occasionally short out; she’d get half a sentence, then nothing—eventually the intelligible parts would start back up, but she’d already lost her place in the conversation. But when Pol would come in, they’d switch to English, and like adjusting a dial to get a sharper signal, Hero would be able to tune in again.
When Pol initiated conversations, he initiated them only in Tagalog or English. He spoke Ilocano only to Hero, but even then, half the time they spoke to each other in English. Pol had told her that Paz knew Ilocano, but Hero had never heard the two of them speak it to each other. Hero had the sense that Pol’s Ilocano was stuck in time, that he only wanted to speak it with the people he’d always spoken it to, but even when Hero and Pol spoke in Ilocano with each other in California, there was a playacting stiffness in their voices that hadn’t been there back in Vigan, when Hero used to hang on his every word.
Finally Hero said to Paz: May nangyari sa Roni.
Paz tensed, but kept picking at the fish. She had taken off her shoes, so Hero could see her feet, covered in the light beige nude compression stockings that she wore, like many nurses.
What happened, Paz asked. English, then.
She’s getting into fights at school, Hero said. I don’t know if her teachers know, but it’s happened more than once.
Again—Paz cried, then stopped herself, looked at Hero and flattened her mouth, as if realizing she’d let something show that she didn’t want Hero to witness. Paz squeezed her eyes shut, emphasizing the puffy, purpled circles beneath them. She covered the container of bangus again, then went to the sink to wash her hands. Okay, she said over the sound of the water running, so Hero had to strain to her hear. Her voice was stiff and clipped. Thank you. I’ll talk to her.
When she finished washing her hands, she passed Hero and nodded to the container of bangus. You can eat that, she said.
Paz sounded angry, not just generally, or not even just at Roni, but specifically at Hero. She wondered what she’d said wrong, but once she was back in her own bed she realized that of course she’d struck at Paz’s pride, the boundaries of which she should have already been well aware of; she should have known that it wounded Paz for Hero to report on Roni’s behavior. Was there any other way to say it, Hero asked herself. But she already knew the only other way was to not say anything at all.
Hero had already understood that Paz was the breadwinner of the family. If she worked at the Veterans Hospital in Palo Alto alone that would already have been a decently paid job; but she also worked at San Jose Medical Center, and then sometimes at a nursing home in Mountain View. It explained, to some extent, how they had been able to afford what to Hero seemed like a moderately large house, four bedrooms and two stories, but soon Hero learned that Paz’s salary paid for more than just the house. It quickly became apparent that Paz was also helping Gloria and Carmen pay their rent, that she was putting relatives still in the Philippines through school and helping to rebuild her family home back in Mangaldan, that she was paying for a lawyer to help Carmen obtain her green card, along with seemingly a hundred other obligations that meant that Paz’s not insubstantial salaries were spread wide, far, and thin.
Paz was putting nearly everything but the house on credit, paying off only the minimum amount of debt each month. And when she bought groceries, she categorically refused to budget; if Roni was hungry and wanted frozen pizzas, then there would be ten frozen pizzas of that brand in the freezer. When it came time to buy cleaning supplies or toilet paper, it was brand-name items, never the generic supermarket brand. Only when she went to a Filipino or Asian grocery store did Paz permit herself to pursue bargains.
Pol, on the other hand, kept very little of his money in the bank, preferring to pay for everything with cash, cash that he kept hidden somewhere in the master bedroom, cash that made his wallet bulge. He’d always been like that, even back in the Philippines; most of the De Vera men were. There was a uniquely masculine pride in pulling out a leather wallet and letting everyone around see it thickened with bills. But here, it seemed more a matter of comfort than pride; Pol wanted to see the money he
had in front of him. He never used a credit card. I don’t trust them, he said to Hero.
Once, Hero accompanied Paz and Roni grocery shopping at Magat, the only Filipino store in Milpitas, looking for soft-shelled crabs to make for dinner. Next to Magat was an LBC Express branch advertising good rates for balikbayan boxes and money wiring, and next to the LBC Express was a Vietnamese restaurant, a video rental store, and a large Walgreens drugstore, so overlit that the white glare from behind its windows hurt Hero’s eyes.
Can we go rent videos and then eat Vietnamese soup after Magat? Roni was asking her mother.
And what about the crabs?
Roni, undeterred, offered: Then what about tomorrow?
Paz shook her head. May duty ako bukas, anak.
I can take her, Hero said. Paz startled, as if she’d forgotten Hero was there at all.
Cool! Roni said, and rushed through Magat’s entrance, victorious.
Paz hesitated in front of the door. She likes the soup with tendon, she said finally. The number one.
Hero nodded, then followed Paz into the store, all the way down the center aisle toward the back, where propped on a milk carton was a large balikbayan box full of small gray crabs, their claws a gradient blue, then red at the tips. They jostled each other lazily, sometimes took a swipe.
Roni was already there, reaching her hand into the box. Hi, softy, she was saying. Hi, softy.
Softy? Hero asked.
That’s what I call them, Roni said.
A young woman wearing a checkered panyo over her hair came up to them from the back room. Kumusta ka na, Tita, she said to Paz. Mabuti, Paz replied, and returned the question.
Okay lang, the woman said, reaching out to tug at Roni’s ponytail. Kumusta ka na, ading? You’re getting so tall.
I’m the second shortest in my class, Roni said, then tugged her ponytail out of the woman’s grasp and ran off toward the candy aisle.
The woman laughed, then looked up at Hero. Hi—?
Paz turned to Hero and said: This is Bebot. It’s her family’s store. Then she turned to Bebot. Ito si Geronima. Pamangkin ni Pol.
Oh! the woman said. Geronima? Tocaya ni Roni, pala!
What? Roni asked from the next aisle, without turning her head or even meeting their gaze. She was holding a bag of something called White Rabbit and a clear box of yema balls wrapped in yellow and red cellophane.
She’s your tocaya, Bebot called. You have the same name.
Oh. Yeah. But I call her Hero.
Hero? Bebot repeated, laughing. Then she turned to Hero. So you’re Tito Pol’s niece! Are you just visiting from back home?
Hero nodded, then shook her head. No, I’m—I’m staying with them. Here.
Oh, good! How do you like it? Are you gonna work as a nurse like Auntie Pacita?
Paz interrupted to ask then, sorry, before she forgot, if they could have ten soft-shell crabs—and if they had any king crab legs, by any chance?
Bebot touched her hand to her face, said, Ay, hindi ko alam, we haven’t had any lately. Let me check in the back with Dadong. Teka muna, Auntie, ha?
She quickly moved around them to the storage room in the back. Hero didn’t know if she could thank Paz for her interruption, if she should even acknowledge that it had been an interruption, or if Paz had meant it to be one at all.
While they waited, Hero glanced toward the row of VHS and cassette tapes of films and albums, most of them Filipino, some of them from Taiwan or Hong Kong, arranged on a shelf behind her. Someone was a fan of Nora Aunor—several of her films took prime place in the display: Impossible Dream, And God Smiled at Me, Tatlong Taong Walang Diyos, ’Merika, Himala. Hero stared at the cover of the last tape. Aunor with her hands clasped to her chest, staring upward.
Himala was the first film Hero saw after she’d gotten out of the camp, weighing less than ninety pounds, couldn’t stand to be touched. Tita Soly had moved to Manila from Vigan with her two daughters around the same time that Hero had started college, and had told Hero to come over whenever she wanted, her door was always open. More than ten years had passed between that offer and the day that Hero showed up at her door in Caloocan, sure that she had the wrong address, that after this much time there’d be no way her mind would have remembered something as specific as Soly’s address, not with everything that had been poured out of it since.
Tita Soly was the only one of the aunts Hero trusted. Maybe she wouldn’t want to see her, Hero thought at the door, maybe she wouldn’t even recognize her, considering they hadn’t seen each other in more than a decade, considering the state she was in, but Tita Soly opened the door that day and cried out NIMANG, so loud it hurt her ears. Though it was possible Soly’s voice hadn’t been all that loud after all—at the time, all of Hero’s skin had felt like an ear, any vibration that passed over it at a high enough frequency could have pierced it.
Soly had to tell Hero what year it was. The first day, Soly’s boyfriend had given her arroz caldo and she’d thrown it all up, and they did that a few more times until she could finally keep it down. It was the beginning of a beginning. One of the first next lives. Hero stayed for two years. One of those hazy early non-days, she’d been on the sofa, wrapped in two old blankets dusted with Johnson’s Baby Powder and the Gotas de Oro cologne that Soly must have been dousing her two daughters in, along with a ghost of Arpège, which Soly had worn even when Hero was still a child. It was a wordless comfort, to know that Soly still wore the perfume, and Hero lost whole weeks of her life to burying her face in those humid blankets, falling in and out of consciousness, letting that fleeting, furry wisp of sandalwood wrap her up in its arms. Soly didn’t have maids or cooks or even a yaya for the kids, which was rare for anyone even moderately middle-class, and definitely rare for someone from a family like theirs. Just a labandera who came by once a week, an older woman from Ilocos Norte named Amalia who put a VHS tape in the machine one afternoon and told Hero, It’s the new Nora Aunor, it came out—then cut herself off, didn’t want to tell Hero when the film had come out in case it reminded Hero that she hadn’t been around to go to the movies.
For two years, Hero slept in the living room alone—Soly had avoided making Hero stay in any room with a lockable door. Soly hid away in her own room, probably to call Hamin again and see if he or Concepcion would come get her, or visit, or at least talk to her. They never did. In those days it was difficult for Hero to differentiate between waking and sleep, so she wasn’t sure how much of Himala she dreamt up, and how much of it was really in the film. There aren’t any miracles, Elsa said to the crowd. Walang himala. Sometimes in Hero’s dream she was Elsa; sometimes she was the friend; sometimes she was just another person in the crowd, waiting her turn.
Mas gusto ko si Sharon Cuneta, Paz said, and yanked Hero back into the world.
Hero turned her head dumbly in the direction of Paz’s voice—still in Caloocan, still wrapped in powdered blankets, the new metal plates cold inside her hands, Tita Soly shouting on the phone in another room, alternating Ilocano with English when one language couldn’t contain her anger, JUST TALK TO HER, HAMIN—
And then Paz was standing in front of her, in Milpitas, lifting a bag of live crabs.
I prefer Sharon Cuneta, she repeated, pointing with her lips to the cover of Sharon. The young woman on it was smiling, light-skinned, and rosy-cheeked. Then she moved in front of Hero’s body, blocking her view, and opened her wallet to pay.
* * *
Those early months in California, the person Hero felt most comfortable around was, of course, Pol. She’d always adored him, even when she was a kid in Vigan. He was the one who first showed her American and European movies, the one who let her borrow from the collection of Harvard Classics he’d amassed in the De Vera home. When she was ten years old, she’d asked Pol if she could borrow some of his cologne. When asked what she wanted to use it for, she replied, I
want to wear it. To which Pol replied, smiling, Do you want to learn how to play pusoy, too? Hero shrugged and said, If you’ll teach me. Pol had liked that answer.
A few weeks later, he gave her a brand-new bottle of the Tabac, with which she later liberally anointed herself and all of her possessions. She carried that small white ceramic amphora-shaped bottle with her until it ran out, and then she bought another one with her pocket money. It didn’t quite smell on her skin the way it smelled on Pol’s; what it became on her was hers alone. She even liked the stinging burn it lifted up from her skin on first contact; it felt like the liquid was doing something to her—something that rearranged her cells, down to the very atoms, making the whole of her different, and in making her different, making her more herself.
Not long after she began wearing Tabac, Concepcion complained to Pol about the smell; not only that she smelled like a man, but a particular type of man, a babaero. An adolescent girl, smelling like a playboy, it was unthinkable.
Pol replied, still smiling: Babaera.
Concepcion pressed her lips together. Manong. Please don’t even joke about that.
When Hero decided to go to University of Santo Tomas to become a surgeon like Tito Pol, he’d been the first person she’d told, and the only one who was openly pleased by the news. Her parents, on the other hand, had mixed feelings. Concepcion was unequivocally against the idea, found the profession unbecoming of a woman, not least of all a De Vera woman. A pediatrician, perhaps; an ob-gyn, better, or at least a general practitioner. A dermatologist or a dentist would have also been acceptable. But choosing the punishing hours of the surgeon’s life, entering into its traditionally, and appropriately, masculine world—absurd. Most of the De Veras of their generation were coercing at least one of their children to take up law, if only to prepare to fight the future of land reform, the inevitable battle all the older families would eventually have to wage to keep the land they told each other was their birthright.
America Is Not the Heart Page 6
