by Nicki Chen
In the back section, aquariums on three levels lined the walls, reflecting shades of blue and green back on each other. Walking between them, she was drawn to the large saltwater tanks with their endless variety of brightly patterned fish. They were too expensive, though, and presumably harder to care for. It would have to be freshwater fish. She moved among the tanks, standing and squatting, judging the fish for their beauty and swimming style. The darters were out. Whoever said watching fish was relaxing couldn’t have been thinking of fish that moved more like pecking chickens than soaring eagles.
She gave the guppies, angelfish, barbs, and tetras due consideration. Her favorites, though, were the goldfish, especially those with long flowing tails. One beauty had a white tail and orange body. Another was gold all over.
She pointed them out to the man who conveniently appeared at her shoulder when she was ready. “Also this orange and white spotted one,” she said. She moved on to the next tank where several goldfish wove past each other like scarf dancers auditioning for a part. “Those two,” she said, pointing out the orange and gold long-tailed fish that looked like twins.
“How big is your tank?” the man asked.
“I haven’t bought one yet.”
“Oh,” he said, drawing it out in an accusatory way. “You must buy the tank first. If you want five fancy goldfish, you must buy a big tank—fifty, sixty gallon. I will supply everything: filter, gravel, plants, fishnet, light, fish food.”
“Mmm.” It sounded expensive. “Can you take a check?” She threw out the question even though she knew what his answer would be.
“Cash only.”
She always carried cash. She hoped today she’d have enough. She wanted to get started right away.
When he’d finished adding it all up and she’d bargained for a better price, the total was still slightly more than she had.
“You pay for fish later. Everything else, you pay now,” he said, tapping on his calculator to get a new number.
She bristled a little. How did he know she was short?
“Fish must wait,” he added. “One, two days. Maybe longer.”
Diana frowned. “No. I’ll come back this afternoon.”
“Too soon. You must prepare the water first. If water is too fresh, fish will die.” He held up a book the size of her hand. “Buy this book. Only fifteen pesos. You will learn best care for fish. Come back when water is right. Then you buy fish.”
She sighed. “Okay. But you must save those five goldfish for me.”
“No, ma’am. Is not possible. If other customer wants, what can I do?” He raised his palms and shrugged.
“You can show him other beautiful fish.”
He looked unconvinced. “I will try, ma’am.”
According to the little fish book, the aquarium shouldn’t be placed near a window, which, according to Diana, would have been the very best location, right in front of the living room window. Then she would have been able to put her feet up on the footstool, relax, and watch her graceful goldfish swimming back and forth. The book warned against it, though. Sunshine encouraged algae growth. She had to find another spot.
“On the buffet?”
Clarita shook her head. “No, ma’am.”
The maid was right, of course. They needed to keep the top of the buffet free for serving food to guests.
“Why don’t you just put the tank down somewhere, Clarita, until we decide where to put it.”
“It’s not heavy, ma’am.”
But it was heavy. Though Clarita was young and fit and taller than many Filipinas, she was still small. A hundred and ten pounds, Diana guessed, maybe a hundred fifteen. Diana and Jay hired her a few months ago when their first maid, Angelica, quit to take a job as a yaya for a Dutch family with a new baby. When Diana hired Angelica, she’d told her she liked caring for children. In fact, she only consented to work for them after Diana assured her they were planning on having children soon. After years of waiting, Angelica finally sent her cousin to take her place.
“I give up,” Diana said after a quick tour of the bedroom. “There’s no good place for this aquarium. I’ll have to go back to Cartimar and buy a stand.”
“Yes, ma’am.” Clarita adjusted the aquarium an inch higher on her belly and then turned and hurried away toward the kitchen.
That evening when Jay got home, the tank was bubbling on its wrought iron stand, the light buzzing and the artfully arranged water plants growing out of the well-washed gravel.
Diana kissed him. Then she stepped aside, giving him an unobstructed view of the new aquarium.
“There’s going to be a large anti-American demonstration tomorrow,” he said, ignoring the bubbling sixty-gallon aquarium not ten feet away.
She shuffled closer to the aquarium, daring him to notice. “A demonstration, huh? I thought Filipinos loved Americans.” She was teasing him, of course, trying to lighten his mood. But she was aware of the tensions that simmered below the surface related to the history of American colonialism and the huge US military bases on Philippine soil.
“It’s a love-hate relationship,” Jay insisted, “the most explosive kind. You’d better stay home. It could get rough.”
It was just a march, she wanted to say. Besides, an anti-American demonstration did not a revolution make. You couldn’t argue with Jay, though, about anything that had to do with her safety. He was crazy that way. “I’ll be fine,” she said.
“That’s all? You’ll be fine?” He set his attaché case down, closed his eyes in a long, slow blink, and sighed. “You’ll be the death of me, Diana.”
“I wouldn’t want that to happen.” She took his hand and smiled up at him. His hazel eyes had taken on a sea green tint.
“Then you’ll stay here tomorrow, right?”
“Don’t worry, honey. If I do go out, I won’t go anywhere near the demonstration.”
Seeing he was about to object, she put an arm around him and kissed his lips.
When was he going to get over this obsession with her safety? She had a life to live, things to do. Tomorrow she and two other women from the D-TAP Women’s Club were scheduled to interview two dozen boys for scholarships to the technical and vocational training section of the Don Bosco Technical College in Mandaluyong. She couldn’t back out. True, she might have to drive past the demonstration, but she certainly wouldn’t be right in the middle of it. That wouldn’t be good enough for him, though. She’d just have to get home before he did and hope he wouldn’t call while she was away.
“What do you think of our new aquarium?” she asked, dragging him closer.
“Where are the fish?”
She laughed and hugged him. “You’re as ignorant as I was. We have to wait a few days for the water to cycle. If we put the fish in immediately, they’ll die.”
“Hm.”
“I bought it for relaxation. You remember Dr. Feliciano’s parting words at our last appointment, right?”
He frowned. “Buy an aquarium?”
“No. She said if we wanted to get pregnant, we had to find a way to relax.”
He stared at her as though his mind were elsewhere. “Oh,” he said.
5
Diana and Madeline Dinh were leafing through the first few applications when Gerda Klein burst into the room. “That blasted demonstration. Ayala Avenue was blocked all the way from Rustans to the Makati Medical Center.” Ignoring the drops of sweat trickling down her forehead and collecting on her eyebrows, Gerda glared at her watch. “Seven minutes late.”
“Don’t worry,” Diana answered. “We’re almost on time.”
“I like to be punctual.” Gerda found a chair at the head of the table, opened her folder and nodded at Brother Carlo. “Would you be so kind, Brother, as to send in the first candidate?”
According to his application, Rolando Matapang was the eldest of six children. He lived in Tarlac City, and he aspired to become an electrician.
“You may sit there, please.” Gerda indicated a
chair at the head of the table.
The boy edged into the chair and waited, straight and nervous as a schoolboy in the principal’s office.
“Now,” Gerda demanded in a voice that had all the warmth of a drill sergeant, “tell us about your marks in high school.”
“Yes, sir,” the young Matapang replied. “I mean, yes, ma’am.” He dropped his head. “I . . . I finished with . . . um . . .” From his reluctance, one would have thought he had something to hide, but in fact his grades were more than adequate. After a few softball questions and comments from Diana and Madeline, he calmed down and was able to present himself as a smart, articulate young man.
Gerda gave him five minutes and then excused him and called the next boy. It didn’t seem like much time, but with twenty-six candidates at five minutes each—Diana quickly did the math in her head—the interviews would take two hours and ten minutes. She checked her watch. It would be interesting to see if Gerda’s precision would last.
The next boy was more confident, and the third candidate had an adorable smile. Sometimes he was so busy smiling, in fact, that he couldn’t remember the questions.
Diana kept notes, jotting down the boys’ answers and her impressions of each of them. In their clean white shirts, heads neatly barbered, smooth faces scrubbed, the boys reminded her not of her own college days but of how old she was. At seventeen and eighteen, they were roughly half her age. She could have been their mother. A handful of the candidates didn’t look up to the task, but they were all so earnest and hopeful that she wished the Women’s Club had allotted money for more than three scholarships.
Gerda did make a valiant effort to keep each interview to five minutes. But by the time they finished interviewing, eating the sandwiches one of the older students delivered, making their choices for the scholarships, and touring the facilities with Brother Carlo, it was already three o’clock—later than Diana had hoped, but she still had time to make it home before Jay got back from work.
She drove through the school gates, humming, enjoying the sense of satisfaction of a simple job well done. Yes. She’d almost forgotten how pleasant it was to have a job and colleagues.
Once she turned onto the highway, she forgot about the pleasures of work and concentrated on getting home on time. Epifanio de los Santos Highway, the highway with a name so long everyone just called it EDSA, flowed normally for a while.
Then, as they approached the intersection with Ayala Avenue, everything stopped, and out came the vendors of steamed peanuts, cooked quail eggs, sampaguita leis, Chiclets, and loose cigarettes. A young girl selling strings of fragrant sampaguita blossoms knocked on Diana’s window. She was tempted. She would have loved to buy some to wear around her neck and hang on her rearview mirror. She couldn’t, though, without having to tell Jay where she’d been, so she waved the girl away. A boy barely in his teens scuffed past smoking his own wares. “Philip Morris,” he yelled, “Marlboro.”
She peered down the street to her right and saw only the usual crush of traffic and crowds of people waiting for buses. A normal day on EDSA. She tapped her fingers on the steering wheel, wondering when the light would change. Who wouldn’t be stressed with traffic like this?
At the next light she saw a few demonstrators carrying signs: No to US BASES and JUNK VFA, even one that said, STOP THE RAPE OF OUR WOMEN. They had finished marching, though. They were standing with their signs resting casually on their shoulders, waiting for the next bus.
She opened the door of their apartment with just enough time to change into shorts and a T-shirt and wash the sweat and grime off her face. When Jay walked in at five fifteen, she was out on the balcony watching the ebb and flow of life sixteen stories below—workers making their way home on the jeepney-clogged side streets, cars and taxis rushing down Roxas Boulevard, drivers lounging near resting cars, and brown-legged boys pedaling their bikes just inside the palm-lined boulevard.
What held Diana’s attention, though, as it so often did, was the garden between their apartment and the twenty-story condo next door. The green of the garden was an oddity in this crowded, gray city. A silver-haired woman in wooden clogs strutted along its driveway, flinging her arms toward tasks to be accomplished, pantomiming her instructions. A gardener in an electric green T-shirt ran to her across the grass, only to be sent back for a different tool. Another gardener, smart in red shorts with white stripes, stood at attention, rake in hand, his young, firm legs and muscular shoulders impatient to be set in motion.
“What are you looking at?” Jay came up beside her, smelling of that familiar mix of floor wax, dusty reports, smoke, and stale sweat that she associated with his office.
“I was just watching the gardeners next door.”
He shook his head. “Can you believe that place still exists? With a property that size, they could build another twenty-story condo.”
“Thank goodness a developer hasn’t got his hands on it yet.”
He put his arm around her shoulder and joined her in contemplating the garden. One of the gardeners was pushing a hand mower, causing thick blades of grass to spray out like sprinkles of green water.
“So much green,” Diana said.
Jay squeezed her shoulder.
Maybe he wouldn’t mention the demonstrations. She nestled in closer and directed his attention to the red sun slipping away on the far side of Manila Bay.
He leaned down and kissed her forehead. “I’m glad you stayed home today, honey. I hear it was a huge demonstration.”
How fast the body reacts! And how little control she had over it! Surely Jay could feel her racing heart pounding against his chest.
“So far,” he said, “no reports of casualties, but . . .”
“It was just a demonstration, Jay. A peaceful demonstration.” She pulled away from him.
“That’s how things start, honey.”
Why had he put her in this position? Because—damn it! It was his fault. It was his unwarranted worries about her safety that pushed her into a corner. She didn’t want to lie to him or sneak around behind his back. If it were up to her, she’d share everything with him. Every thought, every step. That’s the way it should be between a husband and wife, wasn’t it? Still, she couldn’t stay locked inside this apartment. She just couldn’t.
He was looking at her. Waiting for a response. In the long dusky shadows, she couldn’t read his expression.
“Are you thirsty?” she asked. And when he nodded, she kissed his cheek and hurried off to the kitchen to make some calamansi juice.
All through dinner she harbored the bitter taste of her anger. Whether it was anger at him or at herself, she couldn’t say. Spooning chunks of Clarita’s pork adobo over her rice, she half-listened to his long, convoluted account of some office politics. Akiyama, a Japanese director, wanted to ingratiate himself with the former prime minister of Japan by finding a position for his nephew. It was the kind of story Diana hated, even on a day when she wasn’t nursing a grudge. D-TAP gossip detracted from her image of her husband’s profession as a noble effort to help the poor in Asia. If he was going to talk about work, why couldn’t he tell her about the people who would have clean water or more productive farms or jobs as a result of his projects?
Forcing down a few more bites of adobo and rice, her mind wandered, snapping back just in time to hear the crucial bit of information. The job Akiyama planned to give to the former prime minister’s nephew was currently occupied by Abby’s husband, Saudur. If Akiyama got his way, Saudur would be left high and dry. Jay went on to recount the tangled tale of how Eddie’s secretary had used subterfuge to get access to the file that detailed Akiyama’s plan.
“And that’s how we found out,” he declared, stabbing his plate so hard she was afraid he’d break it. “Akiyama doesn’t care a whit that Saudur’s an experienced officer and the nephew is an unknown quantity.”
Diana stared at the adobo on her plate, the chunks of soy-sauce–darkened pork, the strips of fat. “What will S
audur do? He has a family. They can’t go back to London, you know. Nobody wanted to hire him there.”
Jay chuckled. “Who told you that? I’m sure he could’ve found a job in England, just not the one he wanted. Hey. Aren’t you going to have some pancit?” He scooped up a forkful of rice noodles with shrimp, pork, and vegetables and stuffed it in his mouth. “Anyway,” he said, pausing to chew, “Saudur has friends. Eddie and I joined forces and found something for him. A position that suits him even better than what he has now.”
Diana let her breath out. “Thank goodness. Why didn’t you tell me that in the first place? Which department?”
“It’s in the regional office in Vanuatu.”
“Vanuatu? You mean Abby and Saudur will have to move?” She wasn’t even sure where Vanuatu was. Somewhere in the South Pacific, she thought. It didn’t matter. One way or another, Abby would be gone.
“It’s the perfect place for Saudur. In Vanuatu he’ll finally have his fill of fisheries projects.”
“What if Abby doesn’t want to go?”
He shrugged. “She’ll like it there. Everyone says Port Vila is the most beautiful town in the South Pacific. Here, let me give you some before it gets cold.” Using the serving spoon and his fork, he pinched up a messy clump of pancit and dropped it on her plate. “Enough?”
She nodded. Men didn’t need their friends the way women did.
She picked at the pancit while Jay described how he and Eddie Wu used their contacts to uncover the job in Vanuatu. “Saudur didn’t know about Akiyama’s machinations until today. We didn’t want to worry him until we had something positive to offer. You remember Marshall and Carole Anne Charbonneau, don’t you?”
“Yeah. Blond with a southern accent.”
Jay frowned. “Oh, right. You mean Carole Anne. Anyway, I contacted Marshall, and he assured me he had a place in the Vanuatu office for Saudur.” He paused for Clarita who was standing behind him, waiting for an opening.
