Rachel Ann looked like she was going to hyperventilate. “Enrique lives here?”
“Of course. I took him in when—there you are!” Enrique had appeared by the window, his scowl deepening at the sight of the old man. “Did you set the rice like I asked you to?” Ciskong demanded.
“Yes,” Enrique drawled.
“Go and get us a chicken. I’ll make something—won’t take too long. In the meantime…” He whirled around to face us, and this time his smile was so wide you could see his canines jutting out. “Do you two want some coconut juice? I’m glad I brought more than usual.”
He ushered us towards the table in the kitchen before going outside to fetch the coconuts. He opened them with a bolo right in front of us, cutting off a thick slab of the white flesh on top before handing us one each. The sweet-sour water felt cool against my parched throat. After I drank all of it, I sat on the plastic stool and picked at the meat with my nails.
“So how is Julio?” the old man asked, using a spoon to lift the lid from the pot of rice. “I haven’t seen him in so very long. Years and years.”
“He’s been in Canada for about four years, now,” I replied, wondering how he couldn’t know. He’d been visiting my aunt, hadn’t he?
Ciskong nodded. “That in America somewhere? He always did have big dreams, that Julio. I told him so, the last time I saw him. I told him, ‘Julio, dreams are all well and good, but don’t ever let them make you forget who you are.’ He probably didn’t listen, knowing your father. Always been so stubborn.”
I realized at that moment that I had never met anyone who knew my father that way; that I had never met anyone older and wiser than how my father made himself seem. My father was the eldest, and if you heard him talk he’d make you think that he was the only person on Earth worth listening to. I suddenly wanted to ask Ciskong what else he knew about my father, but I was semi-conscious of Rachel Ann sitting beside me, working on the coconut meat like a goat chewing a piece of paper. It didn’t feel like the right moment.
And anyway, Enrique was there. He came in while Ciskong was speaking, a dead chicken in his hand. He’d only gone to fetch it less than ten minutes ago yet it was already clean and gutted. Rachel Ann grimaced at the sight of it. He acknowledged her with a frown and took the carcass to the dirty, concrete countertop. “What do you want with it?” he asked.
“Just a stew, maybe,” Ciskong said. “Cut it up and then get me some papaya.”
Enrique grunted and pulled out a cleaver that had seen better days—it looked like something you would pull out from a plane wreckage five years after the accident. While he chopped the chicken, Ciskong came up with a big pot and started boiling some water.
I won’t bore you with the rest of the details, but pretty much me and Rachel Ann just sat there, feeling useless while they cooked. Ciskong spoke in low tones, asking me about school and so on and so forth, and sometimes glancing over at Rachel Ann, smiling that smile of his, and complimenting her. He never picked up the subject of my father again. Less than an hour later, the plates were set and we had lunch. The tinola was a tad undercooked, a flaw that Rachel Ann also seemed to notice, but we were both too polite to mention it and ate just the papaya and broth sparingly. Enrique and Ciskong didn’t care—they gobbled the stew up like a couple of starving dogs, chicken, bone, and all. That made me wonder if they’d ever heard of salmonella and if it was wise to mention it now. I kind of didn’t want to ruin their meal.
Afterwards, Enrique started making coffee and I seized the opportunity to talk to Ciskong again. I didn’t want to approach my goal head-on, for fear of having Rachel Ann notice what my intentions really were. So instead I talked about the weather, and food prices, and because it’s such a popular topic, the government. Ciskong nodded politely, as if he really didn’t care either way and just liked the sound of my voice. That took me aback. I’m rarely the blabbermouth. I’d be lying if I said I was more of a listener, but I always fancied myself a disinterested observer, at best.
“So anyway, manong,” I grunted, clearing my throat and rubbing my thumb across my lip where Enrique’s stupid coffee burnt it. “Sakwul. I really like it here. It’s so quiet. Is that how you pronounce it, by the way?”
“Sakul,” he said, licking his lips.
“But that’s how you spell it, right?” I asked. I glanced over at Rachel Ann. She was watching Enrique wash the dishes. I couldn’t understand why she found that so damn fascinating.
“Spell?” the old man asked, furrowing his brows. “I don’t quite get what you mean.”
I shrugged. “That’s not important. I’m curious how Dad liked it here, though, growing up.”
“Your father didn’t grow up here,” Ciskong said, and I smiled and thought, There, one point for Pablo.
“He didn’t?” I gasped, which might have been too much because Rachel Ann rolled her eyes sideways to glance at me momentarily. I couldn’t hold her attention as long as the lean, muscular Enrique, though, and she turned away again. “He didn’t? I’m surprised. He never mentioned—well, I thought—so where exactly did he grow up? I’m curious.” I curled my fist under my jaw and batted my eyelashes.
Ciskong smiled. “Your father spent much of his youth in Camalig, as I recall.”
Damn. I’d already tried Camalig. I tried to feign interest, anyway. “He didn’t visit me much, growing up,” Ciskong continued. “Wanted to go to the big city as soon as he was able. And his mother scraping by to put him through school, too, so I guess he really didn’t have much of a choice.”
That came as a surprise. I’d never met my father’s mother. “I thought his father only died eight years ago?”
“They separated,” Ciskong said, lifting one leg to rest on the chair so he could place his hands over his knee. “Your grandma and grandpa. It’s a long story.”
I frowned. “I didn’t know this. Where exactly did this happen?” It would be too suspicious to ask directly, and I knew people from that generation rarely strayed far from their hometowns.
Ciskong smiled again—well, I shouldn’t say again, since he never really stopped smiling. But it felt like that. He lifted his coffee cup to his lips. Say it, I thought. Just one word. Say it and have it done with. I’ll just figure out the spelling later. Instead he got up. “I have to check on the carabao,” he said. “I don’t think I tied him up properly. It’s nice out, though. Enrique, do you want to show them the sapodilla tree down the field? The fruits should be ripe, ’bout this time.”
Enrique gave out a sound somewhere between a snort and a grunt, which made him seem a little bit like a fat woman choking on a lemon. But he got up and gestured. I started to tell Ciskong how bad an idea I thought this was, but by the time I turned my head he was already gone and Rachel Ann was halfway down the field with Enrique.
I sighed and closed the door behind me.
Chapter Five
* * *
* * *
The sapodilla fruits were more than ripe—they were practically rotting, lying out there on the ground. Rachel Ann helped herself to the only one that didn’t look like worm food and I had to content myself with the intact side of something that looked like someone’s head after it had been dropped fifteen stories from a building. The taste exploded in my mouth. The sweetness was mixed with a hint of rum, minus the bitter aftertaste, and the texture was mushy and chalky. I almost didn’t care that I had to wipe soil grits from most of it. After I salvaged what I could, I threw it to the side and ate another one while I enjoyed the birdsong and breeze.
I was enjoying myself so much that it was a shame I had to look at Rachel Ann to see if she felt the same. She was, but for an entirely different reason. She had nibbled at her fruit, thrown it aside, and was now sitting beside the straight-faced farm boy, looking like she wanted to gobble him up. My fingernails made little furrows into the skin of the fruit in my hand.
“So Mang Ciskong took you in, huh?” she was saying. “How’s that like?”
I made a face—it wasn’t much of a question. Clearly Enrique thought the same, because he just looked at her and snorted. But she was Rachel Ann, and giving up had never been part of her vocabulary. She pressed her lips together, I suppose to make them seem redder and fuller, and she drew herself up to his leg.
“Tell me,” she insisted. “I’m sure you must have had an interesting life.”
Enrique glanced at her and scowled. “There’s nothing to tell,” he said. “You’d get bored.”
“She just wants to hear your voice,” I offered. Enrique glanced at me sideways and I thought I saw the shadow of a smirk on the corner of his lips. But it was gone as quickly as it came, and he turned back to her, contemplating.
Rachel Ann, poor clueless girl that she is, was unaware of this exchange. She had started babbling. “Well, you see, I’m the only child in my family, so you can see how boring everything is. My father is a soldier—a colonel, in fact!—and Mom’s an accountant. I used to have a little Shih Tzu. We called her Pickles. She died a few months ago.”
Something about that perked his interest. “What’s a Shih Tzu?” As soon as the question left his lips, he paused and drew his eyes down, suddenly embarrassed.
“It’s a kind of dog,” she said, matter-of-factly. I had to stop myself from smiling. As loud and obnoxious as she could be, she managed that answer without a trace of condescension. I realized at that moment why I’d hung out with her all these years. She was honest. I have nicer friends, friends who don’t call attention down on you every couple of seconds, friends who don’t try to shatter your eardrums or hit you with books, but I’ve never known anyone more honest. By that I mean she doesn’t try to pretend to be better than she is, and she doesn’t expect you to. She runs through life at the beck and call of her emotions, crying when she’s sad, laughing when she’s happy, and loving well…when she’s in love. And now she was looking at the farm boy and there was no speck of judgement in her at all. Most people I know would’ve said something, and embarrassed all of us.
I chimed in. “Imagine a mophead,” I said. “With legs.”
Enrique grunted. “I think I’ve seen those, back when I lived in Manila.”
Rachel Ann’s eyes started shining. “How long ago was that?”
I should’ve said something sarcastic. But I don’t know—I guess my train of thought had me distracted, or maybe I really did want to hear what he had to say to that. I kept my mouth shut.
Enrique didn’t seem too pleased by the sudden attention, but he said, “About seven years ago.” The way he kind of mumbled the words got me thinking about whether he was as much of an asshole as he made himself seem, or if he was really just shy. God knows, Rachel Ann was hanging onto each of those four words.
“What brought you here?” she asked. “Manila is so far away.”
“My mother died.” I felt the finality of that tone and shivered a little. I don’t know why. I usually don’t care about things like that—don’t want to hear about it, don’t want to know. I was suddenly aware how uncomfortable the grass was under my legs and pulled myself up. I pretended that a dragonfly hovering in the distance had caught my eye.
Rachel Ann opened her mouth, but she didn’t get a word out. “My mother died,” Enrique repeated. “Lolo Ciskong came and took me in. I didn’t know anything about farm work, but I had nothing else. It took me a long time to learn. At least now I can help out, especially as he’s getting older. He doesn’t have a son of his own. The farm doesn’t earn much.”
“Don’t you go to school?” Rachel Ann asked.
Enrique snorted. “School’s not needed out here. I can read and I can write. Maybe even that’s too much.”
“But you need school,” Rachel Ann intoned. “For your future.”
“That’s what they drill into your head too, huh?” Enrique spat to the side in distaste. “I hear it all the time. But you know, my life isn’t all that bad, or something to be pitied, just because I don’t go to school. I’m poor—so what? I can get enough to eat when I work hard and maybe that’s enough for some people. Money can’t buy everything.”
His tirade was clearly reserved for someone else’s ears, but even then, Rachel Ann’s face had gone beet red. “I didn’t mean that,” she murmured. “I didn’t mean that at all. I’m sorry.” She lowered her eyes. Something about that made Enrique uncomfortable, because he got up and stalked off without another word.
The field was suddenly silent. I couldn’t even hear birds chirping. I went up to Rachel Ann, who had her arms wrapped around her legs, and poked her with a twig.
“What?” she snapped.
“I’m hungry,” I said. “Ciskong is an awful cook.”
“Why don’t you call him grandfather? He is, from what I understand, your grandfather’s brother.”
I shrugged. “There’s a reason my mother’s very close to giving up on me. Come on. Let’s go look for food. Wasn’t there a store some ways down?”
She gave me a scrutinizing look for a moment, and then sighed. “I suppose you’re right. That tinola was awful. The leg I got still had feathers on it. I could barely keep it down. It’s because they don’t have women, you know. Women to cook and clean for them. The poor things.”
“And I suppose you want to volunteer,” I said, walking ahead. You’d think I could have at least anticipated the well-thrown rock that smacked between my shoulder blades then, but you’d be wrong. For reasons I was afraid to fathom, I was not myself that afternoon.
Normally, Rachel Ann balks at the idea of eating anywhere that doesn’t have employees and neon light advertisements. She claims she’s afraid of getting sick. I, on the other hand, have no such qualms. Why should I? On the days my mother can’t get home early enough, I’ve always had to buy my own food, and being picky is never an option when you have less than a hundred pesos in allowance. I’ve scarfed down chicken intestines from a vendor who refused to wash his hands, gritty rice, even questionable adobo. When I tell her these stories, she frowns, places her hands on her hips, and proclaims she will never offer her liver to help restore mine. I always tell her such a thing isn’t possible, as if she’s capable of learning. It probably is…I don’t know…but hell, it shows how different her world is from mine.
So either she was too hungry, or too madly in love with that Enrique to care, because she didn’t even complain when we got to the store. We sat outside the stall and she ate the blood stew without so much as batting an eyelash. She didn’t even bother using a fork—she just mixed up the rice and the deep brown paste and then shoveled it into her mouth with a spoon.
I pulled my cell phone out as I sipped cola from a glass bottle with a straw. By now it was probably sometime in the morning in Canada and I didn’t think Dad would try calling then. I pressed the button and as soon as the phone turned on it showed two new messages from Mike: “wher u na?” and “pls call me urgent”.
“What time are we going home?” Rachel Ann asked, pushing a finally-empty plate away and burping.
I glanced upwards. It was getting dark and the smart thing to do would be to say our goodbyes and head back to town as soon as we could. But I still didn’t have what I needed to hear. I’d gone this far—it would be stupid to turn back now. I bit the rim of my bottle, wondering if I should tell Rachel Ann about what brought us all the way out here in the first place. She might have been able to use her charms to wheedle the answer out of her new boy-toy.
I found the thought so funny that I laughed out loud before I could stop myself. She frowned at me. I turned away from her and gestured at the food-stall owner. “Can you get her a jelly drink?” I asked, and then, when she moved to grab a plastic cup, I waved Rachel Ann aside and pointed at my phone. I didn’t bother to explain. I just got up and went down the path far enough so she wouldn’t hear.
I dialed Mike’s number, and then again. He took his sweet time answering.
“Yo,” his voice rang out, grating from all the static. “What’s happening?”
<
br /> “What’s happening? You’re the one who texted me. Don’t take too long—I’ll run out of load.”
“Yeah, hold on.” There was a long pause. I hung up and stood there like an idiot until he phoned me back.
“Yeah,” he said. “Sorry. Had to get away from Mom. She doesn’t know I know where you are. Not that I really do, either, but—”
“My load.”
“Right. Well, your friend’s dad came back. Turns out he was just staying at the hotel down the street. When he learned you both left without a moment’s notice he flipped. They even had to call the police. Long story short, he’s waiting out on the deck with a gun saying he’ll shoot you once you show up.”
I pretended that didn’t scare me. “So the police did nothing?” I asked, trying to keep my voice low.
“What could they do? He pretended to be kind long enough for them to leave, and then he went right back to ranting and no one bothered to call them again. He thinks you’re both hiding something and intends to find out what, right before making you pay for it.” I heard him laugh nervously.
I sighed. “She’s not pregnant, Mike. I’m not even that attracted to her.”
He paused. “That?”
“It’s a figure of speech. I let her tag along because she was having problems at home in the first place. This isn’t anything but charity, Mike. A very inconvenient charity, now that I think about it.” I scratched my neck. “So what now?”
“What now?” He snorted. “Can you stay where you’re at?”
“Yeah, I guess. The old man’s friendly. My great-uncle, I mean. Lolo Ciskong.”
“Ah, so you did find him. I was afraid—” He started mumbling.
“Sorry, Mike. Did you just have a stroke?”
“I meant that I didn’t believe you actually…I thought you’re both in some hotel in Legaspi. Well, either way, that’s good. I wouldn’t come back here if I were you. Her old man’s really scary. I really think he means to shoot you. All that shit was a few hours ago and last I heard he’s still sitting there.”
Birthplace Page 6
