Birthplace

by K. S. Villoso

  Ah, well, I thought, struggling to wipe the peanut butter and bread bits from my fingers as calmly as possible. I could always deal with Mark myself when we got back. If even. How long until she tired of this one, anyway? God knew, she was probably doing it to get her boyfriend back home jealous—making sure I saw everything so I could confirm her story. As if I wouldn’t lie for her. Damn bitch. And what about poor, innocent Enrique? The guy looked like he’d never gone to first base before. His face was all red.

  Ciskong came back and started cooking dinner long before those two finally walked inside. They pretended nothing had happened, but I could read Rachel Ann pretty well. She even refused to meet my gaze, which was a classic Rachel Ann thing to do when she’d been out doing stuff with a guy and didn’t want me to pry into her business. Of course, she was still obviously mad at me, so she wouldn’t have looked at me anyway, but you get my point.

  Enrique, on the other hand, had turned from a cool, composed guy into this bumbling, clumsy idiot. He nearly dropped the rice pot when he grabbed it with his bare hands and came close to spilling the stew all over Rachel Ann’s pretty borrowed dress. Ciskong called him names and threatened to hit him with the ladle.

  Other than those things, though, it was a pretty dismal dinner. Ciskong left as soon as the dishes were cleared and Rachel Ann, probably because she didn’t want to look at me any more than she had to, feigned a headache and excused herself. The thing that grated on me was that Enrique had to get up the moment she said that and gently led her to the room, as if she was some sort of fragile thing. I even heard him through the paper-thin walls saying, “Rest easy. I don’t want you to tire yourself and get hurt.” I gagged.

  He came out again. I placed my foot on a chair and stared at him. He went ahead and started washing the dishes without acknowledging me.

  “So...” I said, when the silence became too much to bear.

  “She said you upset her,” he replied.

  “Everything upsets her. You should hear what she says about the cafeteria lady.”

  “She says she can’t stand the way you talk. Like you don’t care about anyone but yourself, and you don’t even have the decency to shut up when you need to.” He pressed his lips together. “Do you care about her at all?”

  I pushed myself, chair and all, away from the table. “Why does it matter?” I asked in a low voice. “You’re her new boyfriend now, aren’t you?”

  He turned red all over again. “That’s...”

  “Oh. So you’re the kind who kisses and then leaves, is that it?”

  “Watch what you say, Pablo,” he said. “If you hurt her again, you’ll have to answer to me.”

  I almost laughed into his face. It was true that he was taller than me, that his arms were more muscular, he hunted with a homemade rifle and probably bench pressed with carabaos while the heaviest thing I’d lifted all year was last Christmas Eve’s ham, but... well, I just thought that his statement made no sense. Me, hurt her? I make her angry. I don’t hurt her. Those were entirely two different things.

  But I didn’t think a guy like Enrique could understand. He was too serious about this. “You care about her that much already,” I said, trying to keep my tone light so he wouldn’t think I was being confrontational. “It’s only been three days.”

  “I’ve never met a girl like her before.”

  “How would you know that? When you get to know her better you’ll realize she’s a dime a dozen. And some of them are better cooks and come with a ‘mute’ button.”

  He frowned. “You’re going there again.”

  “Oh, I’m sorry. Are you her knight in shining armour now? Because I’m not gonna lie to you, she lives in Manila and I highly doubt she’ll be able to visit you alone. She can’t even ride a jeepney by herself.”

  “I’ll find a way to visit her. She...” Enrique drew a hand through his hair. “I don’t know why. But when I talk to her, I feel like I’m not alone. That somebody’s listening, that somebody cares. I know I’m not, but she makes me feel like I’m the most important person in the world.”

  I felt like decking him, then. Since when was it perfectly okay to steal someone else’s lines? Instead, I smiled grimly, and decided to remove myself from the conversation before it got any worse. “Good for you,” I said while I stood up. “You’re a very lucky man, Enrique. Just keep the public display of affection to a minimum, okay? I like keeping my food down.” Without waiting for his reply, I headed straight for the door. I was glad I didn’t have to fumble for the knob on my way out.

  The typhoon hit full-force that evening. It couldn’t have come at a worst time. First the TV reception died down, right after conveniently informing us of how shitty a Christmas it looked like we would have. And then at about 6 o’clock the electricity shut off, which was just pretty much salt in the wound. I had to sit in the living room with only a candle for light while Rachel Ann and Enrique made googly-eyes at each other.

  Look, don’t get me wrong. I appreciate romance as much as any other guy. But you can’t expect me to believe that three days and a few professes add up to love. You just can’t. I didn’t even buy it when Gracie told me she loved me, and we’d been going out about three months that time. We even argued about that—I vaguely recall making up some sort of bullshit about how I appreciated her company, but that I wasn’t gonna lie to her. Considering we made up after, I suppose she appreciated my honesty.

  Anyway, the typhoon made what would have been a glancing observation into the only entertainment available. I couldn’t escape it. The house was too small, and even when I locked myself up in the furthest corner of the kitchen I could hear them whispering to each other. It grated my nerves to no end. She usually talked too low for me to actually understand what she said—he, on the other hand, had no qualms about letting me hear the most godawful lines in existence.

  “I’ll find a way,” I heard him say in a loud voice not long after Ciskong braved the rain in order to check up on a friend. “I don’t care how hard it is. Trust me on this.”

  She followed with her inaudible gibberish. I picked up a spoon from the sink and threw it at the wooden table.

  “No, it’s not okay. You both have to go. You belong with your parents, in Manila. You’re lucky enough to have that. I’d love it if you spent Christmas Eve here, I really would, but you’ll regret it forever. These things... you have to spend them with family.”

  She replied. I caught my name, but then again, maybe I was being too hopeful. There was a brief silence, and I realized, with a pang, that it must mean he was kissing some part of her for a very long time.

  “You’ve come to mean a lot to me, Rachel,” he continued. “I want to start out on the right foot. Keeping you away from your parents isn’t going to do that. People don’t forget these things. I’m sorry, but I’ll have to be firm on this. As soon as the typhoon lifts—”

  She said something that ended with a big sigh.

  “I know. Let’s just enjoy this for as long as we can.”

  They did, too. And it made me wish that all of this happened when she wasn’t mad at me, so that at least I could throw jokes and not feel this awkward cloud settling overhead. I mean, I wasn’t jealous—I really wasn’t. If this was what she did to make herself feel better about Mark and her dad (and me, I supposed, to some extent), then I was happy for her. But it all felt so fabricated—like a game of charades where the object was to recreate some teen romance movie about a girl and an incredibly angsty guy. It was only a shame I couldn’t make fun of it to their faces. I even came up with all sorts of sarcastic remarks that I didn’t think I’d ever find the opportunity to recycle.

  Anyway, night passed with nothing significant to note, other than Enrique telling Rachel Ann to rest and not to worry, because he was going to protect her while she slept, which I honestly thought was a little creepy.

  I woke up at the foot of the sofa to the rush of rain outside. It was so cold that I had to yank the blanket off Enriq
ue and wrap it around myself. This was the kind of weather Mike always called “bed weather.” I couldn’t go back to sleep, though. I watched Enrique’s face twitch while he slept and snored and wondered what it was about guys like him that made girls like Rachel Ann believe he was worth their attention.

  I mean, it’s not just her—I’ve seriously met a lot of girls like that. They meet a guy and they just start sighing and dreaming. I suppose they’ve been fed too much bullshit about this beautiful and strong fellow who’s ready to wrestle dragons for them, while at the same time writing long lines of poetry about the nature of love and roses and rainbows. He’s gotta be everything—he’s gotta be smart, a true gentleman, and is always willing to pick her up in his manly but oh-so-gentle arms. The worst part about it is that guys also think that’s what girls want, so they try to put up this facade. And it comes out that they’re actually more in love with the idea of being in love. They don’t care who the girl is, they just care that it makes them look good.

  I’d spent a lot of time thinking about this crap since I broke up with Joy, because that’s exactly the kind of experience I had with her. I picked her up to go to the mall, paid for all our food, and always made sure I was telling her how pretty she was and pretending to listen to everything she said. I was the best boyfriend I could have ever been (for someone like me, anyway) and for what? I got thrown aside like an empty bag of rice. I never even got further than kissing.

  And you know, it made me wonder why in hell it couldn’t be simpler. I wasn’t talking about sex, because you can just as easily pay a girl for that kind of stuff and then walk away. Why did being attracted to someone automatically mean you have to strive to be her boyfriend, and why did being a boyfriend mean you have to be willing to sacrifice everything for her, be everything she ever wanted you to be? Why couldn’t love just be what it is? You loved someone because you can’t live without them. And you didn’t have to say it because that would be like stating that cutting someone’s head off would kill him. You’d both just know. Hell, just get rid of all the rules. Then people wouldn’t be so confused.

  Shit—he didn’t love Rachel Ann. I knew he didn’t. I still believed Mark did, for all the douchebaggery he was capable of, but this guy? He was either an idiot or he wanted something from her. And he really didn’t look anything like an idiot.

  But there was nothing I could do and nothing I could say. I was little better than a stray dog, sitting around and hoping someone would throw me a glance, let alone a warm smile. And as if I wasn’t suffering enough, it went on for two whole days.

  It was December 22nd, the day the typhoon finally went off and decided to turn into a cloudy sky, that I got the chance to be my own brand of idiot.

  Chapter Ten

  * * *

  * * *

  “We’re going to see if there’s any tricycles willing to take you back to town,” Enrique announced in the kind of voice one would use to say that the puppy just died.

  I barely glanced up from the sofa, where I had been sitting all morning listening to old Christmas songs blare on the radio. Why did he feel the need to tell me these things? It wasn’t like he needed my permission to go. Hell, he was probably using this as an excuse to spend some time alone with Rachel Ann. I heard him sigh under his breath in response to my rude silence before he walked away. Only then did I get up to lock the door behind them, so they wouldn’t come back so soon and bug me again.

  Look, I’ll be perfectly honest. I wasn’t trying to be a sulky little monkey. But there was only so much a guy could take. Ciskong had left early in the morning and we had to eat breakfast alone, so that meant no one spoke to me at all, except when Enrique needed me to pass the fish. And I think he just did it to piss me off. I couldn’t understand why Rachel Ann would still be mad at me, considering she now had what she always wanted—a tall, dark, knight-in-shining-armour who was always at her beck and call and hadn’t so much as grabbed her boob yet. She had no reason to want me to improve my behaviour for her.

  The door knocks came so softly that at first I wondered if it was just a pigeon pecking away at the beams. And then I heard her voice, low and raspy from the cold. “Pablo? It’s me, Bek-bek.”

  I jumped off the sofa and unlatched the door. “Becca!” I said, grinning. Two days of typhoon had not dampened her appearance at all. She looked like she’d been strolling in the sunlight.

  She smiled back at me. It was the kind of smile that gave you goosebumps, which I thought was a good thing. She said, “I was wondering if you maybe had time to take a walk with me. You know, before you go.”

  I looked dubiously at the sky. “It might rain again. And after all of that, I think the mud—”

  She placed a finger on my lips. “I know some pretty sturdy trails. I think you’ll regret not seeing them if you leave so soon.”

  “I can always come back,” I said, knowing as soon as I said it that it was too late to argue.

  We didn’t really talk much while we walked. It wasn’t that there’s nothing to talk about—surely a boy from the big city like me would have something to tell a girl that for all purposes didn’t look like she’d ever set foot outside the countryside. But looking at her made everything that jumped to mind feel stupid. Like, what would she care about the stupid shows I watched or how awesomely boring school was? Worse comes to worst she’d think I was boasting and I happen to think boasting is beneath me.

  I couldn’t help but think—partly because we were so quiet—about if this was what Rachel Ann felt around Enrique. I mean, I’d just broken up with Joy, right? The same way she’d detached herself from Mark. Okay—yes, her wound was like a week old while I’d been nursing mine for much, much longer, but the idea was the same, wasn’t it? There you were strolling with someone who seemed to like your company and you couldn’t help but think about that other person who didn’t, and why. What was so wrong with you that she wouldn’t give you a chance? Were you as much of a screw-up as your father said you were?

  “You’re so quiet, Pablo,” she said. “Is it your toe? Does it still bother you?”

  “I suppose,” I said, looking down and squinting. Truth be told, I had forgotten all about it. “It’s healed pretty fast.”

  “That’s good to hear.” She tucked a hair over her ear. “My dad got his toe injured, too. Patching up the roof during the typhoon. It’s the worst we’ve had. I thought we were going to get blown away. Is it true we weren’t even close to the eye?”

  “Think maybe the eye hit the next town.” I vaguely remembered hearing about it on the radio, since the electricity hadn’t come back on for me to see it on the news. Of course, I’d been so busy trying to avoid Rachel Ann and her new boyfriend that I didn’t think I would have paid much attention either way.

  “Their crops would’ve suffered the brunt of the damage, then.” She pressed her lips together. “I hope your uncle’s crops came through all right. I’d hate to think he wouldn’t have enough to sell come harvest season.”

  “He went to uhh—“check” up on them this morning,” I said, pretending that her words didn’t disconcert me. Maybe she just didn’t go out a lot and had no idea the only farming Ciskong did involved mud. Surely there was no reason for her to try and cover up for him, especially since he was no relative of hers.

  She smiled at me again. She’d been smiling at me an awful lot and this was really something I was starting to get used to. We stopped by a small stream and I started picking fruit a low-lying guava tree had conveniently splattered all over the ground. She politely refused the one I offered her and instead started soaking her feet in the clear, running water.

  I settled on a flat piece of rock and started scrubbing green fruit against my (well, okay, Enrique’s) shirt. She looked at me and asked that inevitable question. “So what’s it like, living in Manila?”

  “Dusty,” I said, without really having to think about it. “The kind of heat you get if you stick your face too close to a car’s exhaust. Smells in a l
ot of corners and lanes are a suggestion.”

  She smiled, but she looked confused. I bit into the guava and tried to rephrase my response. “I guess it’s a little bit like being dropped between a line of ants. If you don’t get out of the way you’re going to get bitten or crawled all over. There’s always something to do or something that needs to get done, but you can never find enough time or energy. The few moments you have to yourself you can’t even really think, because you’re just stewing in your own sweat trying not to run out of air to breathe.

  “There’s all the lights, too. So much damn lights and so many damn highways that you can get lost for two hours five meters away from where you need to go. If you’re not rich you’re busy trying to get rich and pretending you’re rich, and you try to ignore that across that sky-high mall with the fancy restaurants and expensive cars there’s a bunch of dirty people eating from the trash.”

  “It sounds more interesting than this place,” she said.

  “Interesting?” I retorted. “At least here you get trees and a sky that isn’t grey, for one thing. And humble people who just work for the sake of a hard day’s work. Hell, I’m sick of listening to people complain that they get tired trying to earn that money to buy that fancy camera they’re not even going to use that often. It’s just—all so shallow.”

  She looked at me thoughtfully. “You sound so much like Riko.”

  I snorted. “Please don’t compare me to that flowery bastard.”

  “Flowery?”

  “Oh, please don’t sit without taking my hand first, I wouldn’t want you to slip and land on your ass.”

  “So he’s hit it off with your friend, huh?” She grimaced. “And you don’t look like you’re handling it well.”

  “What? Of course I’m handling it well. I’d just rather not handle it well to my face.”