“Ramon,” I tell her.
“Right. This is the main street of Olongapo.”
“It’s not very big,” says Marisa.
“No, it’s not. Why don’t we walk around and see what’s here? Your daddy is meeting us at…” She looks at her watch. “At twelve-thirty. So we have lots of time to see what’s here.”
I look at my watch. It’s only a quarter past eleven. “Are we going to have lunch when he gets back?” I ask.
“You always ask about food,” says Marisa.
“Well twelve-thirty’s lunchtime.”
“That’s enough, you two,” Mama says. “Yes, we’ll have lunch when your daddy returns.”
The stores along Magsaysay are small, like market stalls. They’re narrow and filled with so much on the walls and shelves that it’s hard to see everything. I stop at one and look at the glass case in front. It’s full of knives—switchblades, butterfly knives and even a bolo.
“Would you like to see one?” asks the lady behind the case. She’s sitting on a tall stool with her fingers resting on the top of the case. Her fingernails look newly manicured. A small electric fan blows on us from inside the store.
“No.” I know Mama and Tatay wouldn’t let me have one.
A lot of the stores we pass are selling blue caps with gold embroidered names and letters that I don’t recognize. Marisa finally notices them and says, “What’s that?” She’s pointing to one hanging above us. “What does ‘Usin’ mean?”
“U-S-N,” says Mama. “That stands for United States Navy and those are the names of the ships.” She points to some of the words on the caps.
“What about this one?” asks Marisa. She’s pointing to another abbreviation.
“I don’t know,” says Mama. “They use lots of abbreviations.”
Marisa and I stare at them as if we can figure them out. “A,” says Marisa.
“Alpha?” I suggest.
“Let’s see what’s inside,” says Mama. She walks into the little store.
Inside it’s kind of dark because the light isn’t on. I guess there’s enough light coming in from the street. Despite the darkness, the store is hot. I can feel the heat on my face.
“Good morning, ma’am,” says the saleslady to Ma.
“Good morning,” says Mama.
“Are you looking for anything, ma’am? May I help you?”
“Oh, no,” says Mama. “Just looking.” She looks at the Olongapo t-shirts up on the wall. “How much are those?” she asks.
“Fifteen pesos, ma’am.”
“Fifteen. How dear, naman,” says Mama.
“O, ma’am, they’re very well made,” says the saleslady. She brings one of the Olongapo shirts out from a cabinet with many shelves. She gives Ma the t-shirt. “See, ma’am, how sturdy the material is. And our designs don’t fade.” Mama studies the shirt. “Are these for gifts, ma’am?”
“No,” says Mama. “I may buy t-shirts for the children.”
“So you’re visiting.”
“No,” says Mama. “We live here.”
“Then you must be new,” says the saleslady.
“Yes.” Mama smiles her laughing smile. “How did you know?”
“Because, ma’am, only people who are new buy these t-shirts for themselves.”
She and the saleslady keep talking and I’m getting tired. Gemma and Marisa are looking at wooden boxes and ashtrays on another shelf. Marisa points at the carved wood signs and asks me if they make sense. They’re in English and I can read them, but they don’t make sense to me either.
“Look! Look!” shrieks Gemma.
We all look at her pointing at one of the wood statues. It’s a man and his penis is huge and sticking straight out.
“His titi! His titi!” She’s laughing.
“Gemma,” says Mama, sounding mad. But she’s smiling and almost laughing too.
The saleslady gently takes a hollow wood piece from Gemma’s hands and places it back over the man. Now we can all see it’s a man in a barrel. Gemma’s looking at us and giggling with her hands over her mouth.
“Emil, take your sisters outside,” Mama says. So I do.
Outside I pull my shirt away from my body and move it quickly back and forth to fan myself. I remember what Mama and Tatay said about watching Marisa and Gemma. “You shouldn’t touch just anything,” I say to Gemma. “It might belong to someone else or… you don’t know what it could be.”
“I didn’t know,” she says.
“That’s why you don’t touch,” I explain.
“How are we supposed to know?” asks Marisa.
Mama comes out, so I don’t have to explain any more. She gives us all t-shirts. “Don’t unwrap them here,” she says. “Wait until we get home.” She checks her watch. “Why don’t we walk a little farther?”
At the intersection up the street is a traffic circle with dried-up plants surrounded by a short fence. “I think we should start going back,” Mama says. She has us cross the street and we stop for a while at the traffic circle, waiting for the other lane of traffic to clear. A jeepney driver signals to us, but Ma shakes her head. The jeepney drives away with the passengers bouncing in the back.
The dried-up plants inside the fence remind me of the yard of Lola Ofelia’s house. The grass was brown by the end of the summer even though Mama used to get up early every morning to water it. She thought she got up before everyone else, but I was awake too and I saw her through my window spraying the yard with the garden hose. When she asked Mang Pedring about the grass, he just shrugged and said, “It’s because of the heat.”
We meet Tatay at the same place he left us. He parks the car at the curb and rolls the window down to talk to us. “Do you know where you want to eat lunch?” he asks.
Mama leans down. “That place across the street looks good.” She holds her hair back with her hand, so it won’t get in her face when she talks.
“OK,” says Tatay.
“Look, Daddy,” says Gemma. “We got new shirts.”
“That’s good,” he says. “You can show them to me in the restaurant.” He locks up the car and then we all hurry across the street while there’s no traffic.
“Do you think this is named after King Kong?” asks Gemma.
“What?” asks Tatay.
Gemma points to the top of the restaurant windows where “Kong’s” is written in gold. “Is it named for King Kong?”
“Probably,” says Tatay. “Maybe they serve monster size plates of food here.”
Marisa nudges me and points to two women standing outside the doorway next to the restaurant. They’re wearing halter tops and shorts and boots. The boots are black and shiny and have high, high heels. They remind me of pictures I’ve seen in Tatay’s and Tito Gil’s magazines.
Ric and I snuck some magazines once, the last time I was at his house. We snuck them out back, to the garden, until the maid found us sitting by the gumamela bushes and trying to hide them behind our backs. “You put those away,” she said. “I’m going to check on you later.” But we hid them under Ric’s bed instead and looked at them again that evening. I remember that feeling of looking at them, the women with the big, ripe breasts, pressing against the pillows. But these women in the halter tops aren’t the same. I think they’re sad, although they don’t look sad. They look old. And their makeup is too bright.
“Don’t stare,” says Ma, as if she doesn’t want us to know about these women.
“What are they doing?” asks Marisa.
“Waiting,” says Mama. She’s pressing her lips together and frowning.
“What?” Marisa insists. “What are they doing?” she asks again. I wonder if she really knows, if she just wants to hear Mama say it.
Tatay opens the door to the restaurant and I feel the air conditioning all down the front of my body.
* * *
I’m eating the breakfast that Naty made when I hear a pounding noise. “What’s that?” I ask Mila.
She lo
oks up from her ironing. “I don’t know,” she says. “Why don’t you look?”
Gemma asks, “Can I look too?” A piece of egg falls out of the spoon she’s holding over her plate.
“No, Emil will tell you what it is. You finish your breakfast.”
I go to the gate and open it. But when I look out, there’s nothing. I hear the pounding coming from up the street, near the school, but I don’t see anything.
“What is it? What is it?” Gemma asks when I get back.
“I don’t know. I couldn’t see anything.”
“I’m done now,” Marisa says. The bread crusts are lying on her plate. She has toast because she doesn’t like runny fried eggs.
“Aren’t you going to eat the rest of that?” Mila asks.
“I don’t like that part.”
“OK then,” says Mila.
Marisa walks to the door because she wants to be the first to see whatever it is. The screen door slams shut behind her. Mama told us not to let it slam, but Marisa forgets those things.
“Is Mama still in bed?” I ask Mila.
“She has a headache.”
“Emil! Emil! Come!” Marisa’s yelling from the gate. “All of you!”
Gemma and I leave our breakfasts and run to the gate. The pounding is louder now, like hands clapping and drums. There’s not enough room in the gate for all of us to see, so I step into the street. Since I’m outside, Marisa has to step out also. Walking and dancing down the street from the school is a huge group of people. They’re dark and I can hardly see them because of all the others watching.
“Negritos,” I hear. I turn and Mila is looking through the gate with Gemma. She’s got her hand tight around Gemma’s wrist. “Go tell your nanay,” Mila says to me.
I don’t really want to go, but I think if I run fast, I won’t miss anything. So I run into the house and pound on her bedroom door. “Mama! Mama! There are Negritos outside!” I open the door a little so she can hear me. “There are Negritos outside!” Then I close it again quickly and run back to the gate.
When I get outside, next to Marisa, the Negritos are almost in front of our house. Now I can see they’re dark, dark brown and smoky. Their bodies seem covered with smoke. Even the material around their waists is thin and smokelike. I think of mango trees when the fires are set underneath. They look hazy through the heat, like these men. Part of the pounding is the chanting of the men as they stomp forward, forward, back, sometimes turning in circles. I can feel heat as they get closer and closer. Underneath the smoke, they’re sweating. They press into the space around us, stomping against the asphalt. I worry they might step on glass, something sharp, that the darkness could turn to blood. I don’t want to see them bleed.
I can smell the heat of their bodies, close enough to blood. They stomp, forward, forward, back, turn, and I’m splashed with their sweat. Marisa’s standing against me, arm to arm. Her arm presses into mine and sticks. Some of the men carry spears they thrust forward and up. Behind me I feel pushing. Mila is pushing through.
She walks up to the man at the end of the group and gives him something. Another woman does the same, then a man standing in front of the sari-sari store. Mila comes back with an odd look on her face. She smiles, then goes blank, as if she’s confused.
“Come on. Come back inside.” Mama is standing behind us holding on to Gemma. We all go back in. The back of my hand, after I wipe the sweat from my forehead, smells like smoke. I smell again to make sure. Smoke and the sweat that’s like blood.
When Tatay comes home Marisa tells him about it. “It was loud,” she says, “because they were playing drums and clapping. It was so loud, Daddy, I could feel it. You know, thump, thump, thump, like my heart beating.” She beats against her chest as she describes it.
“Daddy, Daddy,” says Gemma, who’s sitting on his lap. “Daddy, they only wore underwear.”
“It wasn’t underwear, stupid.”
“I’m not stupid. Mommy says you shouldn’t say that.”
“OK, Marisa,” says Tatay. “Don’t call your sister names. You know it’s not nice.”
“It’s true, Daddy,” Gemma insists. “They only wore underwear.”
“That’s not what they’re called,” says Marisa.
“They’re loincloths,” I say.
“Yeah.”
“Did you give them money?” asks Tatay.
Marisa and Gemma look at him blankly. I remember Mila rushing forward with something in her hand. “I think Mila did.”
“Ate gave them money,” says Mila. She’s got the tablecloth pulled back and she’s folding clothes on the dining table. “I just handed it to them.”
“Do you think they’ll come here a lot?” I ask Tatay.
“Maybe,” he says.
“I hope they do,” says Gemma. “They’re kind of scary.”
“Why didn’t we ever see them in Manila?” I ask.
“Because they live here,” says Tatay. “They live in the forests on the base.” He lifts Gemma from his lap and sets her down. “I have to go change now.”
The television’s not hooked up yet. So Gemma, Marisa and I go back to drawing on the back of letters and other paper Tatay brings home from work. Bending down, with my head close to the paper, I can still smell the sweat on my hand.
I think about the forest and I remember Isabela, which wasn’t a forest at all. I remember climbing the mango trees. It was like flying. I liked to go slowly along the limbs, taking my time, feeling the rough bark under my hands and knees and feet.
Just before we left to go back to Manila, a friend of Mama’s came to visit. She had two small children and one older boy. I had to climb the tree with him even though I would rather have climbed alone. “You know how to tell when a mango is ripe?” the boy asked me. He had a little bit of a mustache above his lips and there was sweat on it. “You smell it,” he said. “It should smell sweet.”
So before I plucked the next mango, I held it to my nose. It smelled sweet and yellow.
I remember the boy said he was fifteen and I felt little. He didn’t say much. Mostly we picked mangoes and my hands grew sticky from the sap. I picked mangoes, then let go and watched them drop down to Marisa’s open hands. From up there, she and Gemma and Mama were far away. We plucked mangoes until Marisa yelled, “That’s enough!” She repeated again “That’s enough! That’s enough!” just to hear herself say it. They went into the house with their bags full.
The boy sat down on a tree limb and lit a cigarette. In his hands, in the darkness of the tree, it looked white. Smoke curled slowly from his mouth, as if the air was so thick there was no space for it. It curled in on itself.
The boy’s eyes were dark, and I was afraid he was angry, that he had been quiet because he was angry. He noticed me watching his hands and held out the cigarette. “Go ahead,” he said. And when I took it and breathed in, I felt suddenly heavy inside. I opened my mouth quickly but the smoke was slow coming out. My face felt warm and the boy smiled, not angry at all. I think he thought I was funny, but he didn’t laugh. The wisps from his cigarette burned my eyes.
I smell my hand again. It’s still smoky and I’m glad the smell of the trees has clung to me.
The
Gift
Apples
Before I left Manila, Romy gave me stationery with cartoon children on it and said to write him. My hands were sticky because we’d just eaten some ice cream, so the gift wrap stuck to my fingers. I remember looking at the small card with “Mila” written on it and realizing I’d never seen Romy’s handwriting before. Two years and I’d never seen his writing.
I saw the same stationery in a store the next day when I was on an errand for Ate Clara. It was in the window along with a doll and toy truck. Before we left, I gave the stationery to the Gonzalez’s maid, Cely. Romy won’t write me back anyway. He didn’t even come by the day Kuya and Ate left although he could have.
Luz, who’s the only one who writes, says that Nanay’s well. She
doesn’t even mention Romy, although I’m sure she sees him. He lives only a few doors down from our house. But Luz never liked him, so she won’t ever write anything about him.
He’s no good, she’s told me. “You can’t rely on him.” But I haven’t got anyone else to rely on and at least he’s here. Her husband is in Saudi. Bert’s a construction worker and she only sees him every six months. Still, I guess he makes good money. They just bought a large-screen TV, and a new electric fan for the bedroom. “If we buy anymore,” she said, “we won’t have room to walk.” But she was happy about the new things, and I know she wants a better sewing machine.
Olongapo is not bad, I wrote Luz. I described the new house to her. My last visit home, I brought some things that Kuya and Ate wanted her to have, old clothes and some canned foods. She was their maid until she got married. Then, since I was the younger sister and didn’t have work, she asked them to take me in her place. Luz told me she didn’t want them to have trouble, like with the maid before. That’s why she wanted me to be the new maid.
They’re good to me, like Luz said they would be. Ate doesn’t ask for a lot, and Kuya hardly asks for anything. Gemma, though, is my darling. I like to set her on my lap while I comb her hair. She doesn’t like ribbons, but Ate likes her to wear them in her hair. “Your nanay just wants you to look pretty,” I tell her.
Some days I pick her up from school. Ever since that time Emil let her and Marisa go home alone and they got lost, Ate has sent me to meet them. Emil doesn’t always come home with us. I think he just doesn’t want to be seen at his age going home with me. Even Marisa doesn’t like it. So I act like I’m only there for Gemma, and that seems to make Marisa feel better.
“They go to Columban School near the base,” I told Luz. She likes to hear all about them. So I described the school to her, with the basketball courts in front. The elementary is on the right side and the high school on the left. I told her that a lot of priests teach there and some nuns. “Last time I was there I saw a priest playing basketball with the boys and some nuns were in the garden. They looked funny squatting in the mud with dirt on their fingers. One was young, as if she was just out of high school.” I told her that some days Ate meets them at school, instead of sending me.
Mango Seasons Page 4
