by Angie Abdou
after a cursory goodnight. They have made progress today, of a halting
kind. “For your mother.”
LiLi’s willingness does not surprise Vero. Conversation on the front
step must be a welcome alternative to the empty basement. Nobody
should spend a beautiful early fall evening like this one underground.
Although Vero and Shane rarely sit outside, they have placed comfort-
able chairs here that face out onto the range where Shane often bikes.
The nights are cold in Sprucedale, and the trees have already started to
turn, peppering the hillside with vibrant orange and golds. Vero feels no
sadness at the impending end of summer, only a hint of hope offered
by the fresh beginning of fall. She thinks of sending Eliot off to junior
kindergarten and remembers Joss telling her, “Never make any major
decisions about your relationship until both kids are in school. Until
then: survive.”
That freshness is in the air tonight, the smell of autumn. Vero brings
blankets, places one over LiLi’s legs as she hands her a glass of wine.
So much time passes before LiLi lifts her glass to her lips that Vero
has started to suspect she will not drink the wine at all. LiLi swallows
carefully and smiles her response. Her eyes have that familiar oh, oh, oh
look, and Vero wonders if this is really the first time LiLi has tried wine.
“Shane bikes up there,” Vero points to the steep slope. “On Cardiac
Hill. Joss and I run the lower section. Used to. ” The moon rises above
it even though the sun has not quite set yet. As soon as Vero hears her
own words, she realizes she does not want to talk about Shane, about
biking, about geography. She doesn’t not even want to talk about Joss.
“Where are your friends tonight? We don’t see them lately. The one
who used to come here…Cheska?”
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“She has a…” LiLi sways her head side to side like she has water in
her ears. “…like a boyfriend.”
“Where did she meet him?” Vero is surprised. These girls seem to
stick to themselves. She hasn’t imagined that kind of social opportu-
nity for them. A boyfriend would be nice for LiLi. A happy ending.
If she and Shane can do that for LiLi—can have brought her here
where she could meet someone with financial means and start a good,
easy life—that would be something, a kind of redemption.
“She meet him on the Internet, I think.” LiLi raises the glass to
her lips. Drinks deliberately. “Just because someone do something for
money does not mean she do not like it. Too.” LiLi pulls the blanket
tighter, her eyes on the moon. They’ve left the front door open so they
will hear the boys if they wake. As it gets darker, the light from the
front hall casts a shadow across LiLi’s face. Vero can only see half of
her features.
Vero does not know what LiLi means about money. The boyfriend
pays Cheska? Vero wonders if LiLi is cryptic on purpose, leaving
these spaces for Vero to fill as she likes.
“I made a friend in Jamaica. She looks like you. The same dark eyes,
especially.” Vero fingers the edge of the blanket in her lap, picking at
imagined lint, wonders why she’s decided to tell LiLi this, now. “It’s
weird. I miss her. We became close in that short time. I guess I don’t
have many friends like that anymore. When the boys were little, I
became…inward. This friend, she pulled me outward.”
“Bernie…she became a friend like that to me when you and Shane
is gone.”
When LiLi finally drinks the last of her single serving of wine,
Vero lifts the bottle to refill her glass, but LiLi covers it with her hand.
“No, this is enough for me. I go to my bed now. Goodnight, Vero.
And thank you. For the wine. For the company.”
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“Thank you, LiLi. For today. For your help.”
LiLi holds Vero’s eyes for a moment and then she’s gone.
“Goodnight,” Vero says to the empty doorway.
◊◊◊
Vero does not fill her glass with LiLi gone. The taste of wine bores
her. She moves into the living room, switches off the TV, and listens
for sounds of life in the basement. The boys do not need her. They
have both been quiet for hours. But Vero is not ready for sleep yet
either. She listens for the hum of LiLi’s television in the basement.
She imagines padding down there in her pyjamas and bedroom slip-
pers, bearing popcorn and tea, laughing with LiLi at all the canned
punch lines. The basement is quiet, though. Nothing but the gentle
hum of a bathroom fan.
Vero walks in circles—kitchen, living room, dining room, and
back—she does not know what to do with herself. She’s too aware of
her own body: the prickle of air against her skin, the thrum of blood
through her veins. She cannot sit. Her body insists that she move. She
circles the kitchen again, running her fingers along the clean granite
countertops, and then opens the liquor cabinet, pours herself a shot of
rum, straight up like scotch, and takes a sip.
Maybe LiLi’s bored. Maybe she’d appreciate a visit. Vero strains
her head down the stairwell. It’s not completely dark down there.
She circles again, fingers dragging on the shiny countertops, stops
to listen at the upstairs hallway. There is no sound at all, as if her
boys have evaporated. She circles again, this time stopping to look
downstairs. There is only the slightest hint of light. What does LiLi
do down there, every night alone?
Vero will go see. She will just say hi.
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Hi, I wondered what you’re up to.
Hi, we’re both awake anyway, thought we could chat!
Hi, feel like some company?
Something like that. LiLi will appreciate the gesture. She will
be kind in response to Vero initiating this development in their
friendship.
The stairwell is dark, and Vero grips the railing, taking each step
carefully, feeling the carpet with her toes before transferring her
weight, imagining the embarrassment of a somersault to the bottom.
Well, hello! Blood spurting from her nose. Have a first-aid kit handy?
Ligaya’s bedroom door is closed, but a faint light shines through
the crack at the floor. Vero flicks on the hallway light. She can’t be
fumbling around in the darkness like a criminal, in her own home.
She rests her knuckles on the wood of LiLi’s door, thinks to knock,
but that feels absurd. It is her house. She needn’t knock. She cups her
hand around the doorknob. She simply wants to say hello, one lonely
woman to another, what could be wrong with that?
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CHAPTER EIGHTEEN
Ligaya puts on her nightgown with nothing underneath.
Usually she wears at least her undergarments, sometimes wool socks
and sweat pants too, so that Shane will not scold her
for turning the
temperature in the basement too high.
But tonight, she wears only the new nightgown, soft against her
bare skin. As she sits on the edge of her mattress dressed for sleep, she
does not feel tired. She even considers going back upstairs. She could
visit more with Vero. To fill the time. To do something with this rest-
less energy that has overtaken her. It has been an unusual day in their
house, she and Vero hard and cruel with each other one minute, and
then approaching friendship the next.
It is better Ligaya calls an end to this strange day and stays
downstairs.
Now is the time of the month she misses Pedro most. That timing
could also explain her restlessness, as well as her edginess with Vero.
Ligaya is fertile. She learned to read the signs back home, after the
birth of Totoy. She and Pedro could not have another baby. They knew
that. When Ligaya wanted Pedro most, that was when she could not
have him, so they found other ways. Thank God for that small bit of
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planning. Otherwise the two of them would bear the guilt of even
more deserted children.
The box of pictures in Ligaya’s bottom drawer pulls at her. She
yearns to go to the drawer, spread the photographs in her lap, hold
their smooth surfaces to her cheek. She fights the urge.
She can keep her mind hard against Pedro some of the time, but
she has less control over her body. There has been nobody else. Pedro
is still the only man she knows, and it is his body alone that she
imagines on hers.
But Pedro has moved on. Nanay has told her so. Ligaya wonders
if it is one of the younger women in the neighbourhood, a girl whose
family has not yet sent her packing off to Hong Kong, who holds his
attention now. Ligaya does not wish to think of his calloused hand
spread across Analyn’s curvy hips or his fingers open on Maria’s slen-
der waist. I babysat Maria, she thinks, I babysat her, Pedro. But Ligaya
knows she will have no occasion to have this conversation with Pedro.
She falls back onto her pillow, stares at the ceiling, lets her hands
rest on her own waist, no longer so slender. Not anymore. It is not fair.
A child’s thought, she knows. But still, it isn’t. Ligaya is the one who
has moved, but she cannot move on. With whom would she? The only
men she knows are Lito and his friends from the coffee shop. They all
have children back home. Children and wives.
Ligaya has not touched a man for a year here in Canada—a year
next week. There was another full year before that in Hong Kong.
And no man has touched her. How many times did she take Pedro’s
hands for granted back home? How many times did she shoo him
away as he nuzzled her neck over the washing bin or tried to pull
her into the trees when she was meant to be raking leaves. Now,
alone in her room, Ligaya thinks of Pedro coming to her while she
raked leaves, pulling on her hand, whispering warm promises close
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to her ear. Ligaya wishes someone would pull her into the trees now.
Anyone.
She pulls up her nightgown and holds her fingers to her own
warmth. Ligaya cannot satisfy herself the way Pedro once could, not
quite, but she can come close. In her time away, she has learned, out
of necessity.
◊◊◊
A single, dry finger rested across Ligaya’s lips wakes her. Not a hand
pressed hard into her mouth, holding. Just one finger, soft, tracing
the outline of her mouth. “Shh,” the sound so close to Ligaya’s ear
that she feels it more than she hears it. “Is this okay?” Ligaya thinks
to pull her blanket around her body. But it’s not her blanket. Not her
bed. Nothing in this place belongs to Ligaya. She pulls her nightgown
down over her naked hips and lets her arms remain loose at her sides,
pliant. Warm skin slides in next to her, the blanket pulled tight until
it cocoons both bodies.“Is this okay?”
Again.
A real question then.
No, that’s the word Ligaya sees in angry red. No, how could this be
okay? But her body tells a different story.
It has been so terribly long.
Teeth glance her bare shoulder, but there’s no pain. Harder, Ligaya
wants to say, but since leaving home, she’s learned to swallow her
words.
Go, that’s what she should say. Go away. But this presence in her
bed—it’s warm and soft. Ligaya feels no fear—that particular flap-
ping bird caged in her chest sleeps soundly. How could Ligaya be
afraid of fingers in her hair, hot breath on the shallow dip in her
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throat, the promising hint of tongue at her earlobe? Ligaya’s nipples
rise to the warm skin above her.
Yes, says Ligaya’s body, more. Yes, it is okay. Please. God, yes.
But Ligaya, she says nothing.
◊◊◊
Vero opens the door to Ligaya’s room slowly, the same way she
opened Eliot’s door this morning, quiet against the creak. A candle
flickers on the nightstand, Ligaya’s body is visible only as a slight
rise underneath her comforter. Ligaya does not turn to acknowledge
Vero’s entrance. The blanket remains still.
Vero steps close, weight on her toes, and rests a single, dry finger
across Ligaya’s lips to wake her. Not a hand pressed hard into her
mouth, holding. Just one finger, soft, tracing the outline of her mouth.
“Shh,” she makes the sound close to Ligaya’s ear so that Ligaya will
feel it more than hear it. “Is this okay?” She doesn’t want for Ligaya
to be scared, to feel forced. Ligaya fiddles with the blanket at her
chest, toys with her nightgown under the sheets, but then lets her
arms fall loose at her sides, so that the blanket opens, making space
for Vero.
The skin of their bare ankles and calves slides together, warm, and
Vero pulls the blanket tight until it cocoons both bodies.
“Is this okay?” She says it again, needs to be sure.
Vero’s voice doesn’t sound loose anymore. Her tongue does not
fight with the words. The world is clear around her, though dreams
can be clear too. She has drunk herself sober. Ish. She likes that rush
of sound past her tongue. Isshhh.
Post-drunk.
Post-gay.
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Vero releases a giggle into Ligaya’s hair, feels Ligaya’s body quiver
in response. A quiver of pleasure?
It must be.
Ligaya does not smell of coconuts like Danielle. Ligaya—Vero
loves the roll of the name on her tongue— Ligaya smells like Dove
soap and strawberry lip gloss. She smells real, Vero thinks. And then:
No, she smells like a teenager.
In the dark, Vero can make out a hint of silver glitter across
Ligaya’s cheekbones. Ligaya and her friends have been spending
their mo
ney at the Walmart again. She imagines Ligaya down here
alone at night, playing with makeup in the bathroom mirror. “You
don’t need to live like a teenager,” she says. “You are a woman.” Still
Ligaya says nothing.
Ligaya’s nightgown sleeves are short. Vero pushes one up to bare
a shoulder. She kisses it and then scrapes her teeth against the soft
skin. She liked when Danielle’s teeth pressed a line into her bare
skin, the roughness of it, the way the teeth acknowledged a need and
bit into it.
I am here.
Vero thinks she feels Ligaya pull on her clothes, tugging as if she
wants Vero’s teeth to press harder, into her skin. So Vero presses.
It’s comfortable in this underground room. Cool and dark like
a secret. What happens in the basement, stays in the basement. Vero
snakes her hand under Ligaya’s nightgown and strokes the length
of body from Ligaya’s underarm to her hip. Sometimes she forgets
Ligaya’s age—the way she cares for the whole family, she seems older
than she is. But the softness of her skin reminds Vero that Ligaya
is still young. She has her whole sexual life before her: a suitor, a
husband, children. For now, her body and her life remain simple. She
has packed everything into this one small room, like a college dorm.
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The thought excites Vero. To imagine a life that could be so easily
contained, so light.
Vero rolls on top of Ligaya and is met with no resistance. This
melding of bodies seems inevitable, now. Someone was bound to
come down here, one of them, Vero or Shane. It’s only right that it
should be Vero who has found herself in the basement, in the under-
ground room of this lonely woman. Vero has tried the hardest. With
LiLi. From the beginning.
“I care about you,” she says, smelling the alcohol on her own breath
where it hovers between her mouth and Ligaya’s cheek. “Ligaya, I
do.” But then that doesn’t seem enough. “I love you,” she tries again,
hears the drunk college girl in it, all those late-night I-love-you-
guys! slurred in the pad above Shane’s parents’ garage. Vero wants
Ligaya to know that it’s not alcohol speaking. I must show her.
Still, Ligaya says nothing. She barely moves. But she does not
object. She does not tell Vero to leave. It is consent of a kind. Vero
will take it as such.