—
In her bed, Babilonia kissed Auwling, her Manang, good night. “It was nothing, my baby,” Auwling crooned. “Only a dog. No Aswang will hurt you as long as I am here.”
Manang sat on the edge of the bed and held her hand until Babilonia’s eyes closed, then she tiptoed away.
But in that moment between twilight and sleep, a voice floated up into Babilonia’s window. It sounded familiar, clear and sweet. It sang a lullaby that Babilonia remembered, and made her feel safe; she at last gave up and drifted off into sleep.
—
In the small hours of the morning, they were awakened by a roar that seemed to come from the bowels of the earth. It was Dionisio, who had found his beloved wife a distance into the jungle, hanging from the branches of a tree, her sash tied around her neck. Distraught, he brought her into the house and laid her on the bed as Auwling and Lula rose in alarm.
Babilonia, forgotten for the moment, heard the commotion and crept to watch from behind the bedroom door. It must be the Aswang, Babilonia thought, the one she saw in the crack of the floor. Maybe the Aswang had been bitten by a snake. Tatang had warned her about snakes. They were surely more deadly than the Aswang. Babilonia didn’t know why everyone was so sad. The Aswang was dead. But she was a little sad, too. Maybe this was a good Aswang.
Dionisio was inconsolable in his grief, but Manang held him tightly and said over and over, “I will take care of you. I will take care of Babilonia. Let me take care of you.”
—
Soon after the birth of her new half-brother Rosario, the baby, Tatang, Manang, and Babilonia went to America with the American army, leaving Lula behind. Babilonia remembered walking up a gangplank onto a big boat with whistles and gray colors and strange people, who were jabbering. Nothing they said made sense. Everyone was big. They smelled bad and wore too many clothes. Their hair was not straight and black and shiny. Each one had a different kind: light-colored and fuzzy, or red and wavy, or some shade of brown. Some of the men didn’t have any hair at all on the tops of their heads. She stared at them, and they looked down at her and smiled, as if she were some kind of pretty puppy. Women gave her candies and patted her head.
She remembered the boat coming into the harbor in America. Tatang put her up on his shoulders, and in silence they watched the shore coming closer until they could see docks full of people. She remembered a lot of long lines, and being picked up and set down on a pile of suitcases while Manang and Tatang signed things.
She was carried onto a bus and, later, a train. They rode all through the night and stopped at many towns. Tatang would get off in the small towns and buy strange, bad-tasting food, things like pink bologna sliced from a big round tube and tiny sausages from a can; yellow cheese and white, salty crackers.
—
They were sent by the army to a base called Fort Smith, in Arkansas. Their apartment had a small concrete balcony with a fence of iron bars and it faced a big field. Babilonia would stand there and watch the soldiers march up and down the parade ground. Sometimes, when they were taking a break, they would look at her and wave. Then Manang would make her come inside, and close the door. Manang was afraid of all soldiers and afraid to go outside. So there they stayed, all of them together in one room every day while Tatang went to work. Manang didn’t laugh or sing or play games with them. She sewed or ironed or read a book. She cooked their meals. Babilonia played with Rosario, as quietly as she could, and Manang didn’t seem to mind.
Then Tatang left the army, but they decided to stay in Arkansas. It was beautiful, and cheap to live. Tatang had found a house to buy, near a lake, where he could fish and live much as he had done in the Philippines. They packed up their car and drove over mountains and through green fields, past little towns with redbrick storefronts and men in blue overalls sitting on benches. Finally they came to a place in the woods, on the banks of a lake. The forest was not at all like the jungle at home. The trees were different, with smaller leaves. Some didn’t have leaves at all, but fine green needles that fell to the ground and made a sweet, spicy-smelling carpet. It wasn’t like home, but it was peaceful and pretty. Instead of a room, there was a whole house for them, and a little store next to a boat dock.
Tatang bought Babilonia and Rosario toy trucks, red and yellow. They made mountains and roads for their trucks in the black dirt of the yard. They carried water from the lake in a tin can to make small lakes for their mountains.
One day, as Babilonia was digging in the dirt, a car pulled in and a man went inside to buy fish. Then the back door of the car opened and an angel appeared. Got out of the car and walked right over to her. Babilonia had never seen anything like it. It was a girl angel, not a whole lot bigger than she was, but pure shining white. Her hair, as white as rice, was pulled tightly into two long pigtails, with fuzzy wisps sticking out around the edges. She had skin so fine that Babilonia could see blue veins underneath. As Babilonia stared, the angel asked her a question. Babilonia still had trouble understanding English. She shook her head. The angel pointed to herself and said, “Cherry,” then pointed to Babilonia. Babilonia said her name: “Babilonia.”
The angel thought for a moment, then tried to say the name. “Baloney?”
Babilonia shook her head again. “Babilonia.”
“That’s too hard of a name to say. Can I call you Baby for short?”
Babilonia understood. She thought for a minute. She didn’t really want to be called Baloney, even by an angel. She decided she liked it.
“Okay. I am Baby.”
—
Manang came out onto the porch and looked a little startled when Baby stood up and gave her a hug. Manang had been a good mother to her. It had been a long time since Baby had thought about the Philippines, but because of Manang they were always there, part of her, so real that she could almost fold them up and put them into a box.
“Are you all right, Baby? Is anything the matter?”
“No, Manang. I just realized how glad I am that you are my mother.” Manang looked pleased and a little flustered. She patted Baby on the back. “You are much like your real mother. I am happy she gave you to me. Now it is time for me to go to bed and for you to go to work. Good night, Babilonia.” Baby went into her room to change for work just as the phone rang. It was Bean, checking to see if she was all right. Since Carlene’s murder, he had gotten to calling her every hour or two that they weren’t together, just to check on her, like he was afraid the ground was going to open and swallow her or she that was going to put rat poison on her cereal by mistake and die or something. He was driving her nuts. It had been a trying day, with the funeral and all, and Bean had obviously been stoned when he came to pick her up. She didn’t like it, but she couldn’t think of anything to do about it. She had loved Bean a lot once, when they were in high school, when they first discovered making love together. He had been tender then. He used to bring his guitar over and sing. He wrote a song, called “Baby’s Eyes,” that was the most beautiful love poem she had ever heard, and every time he sang it at a dance, he brought her up to the stage and sang it directly to her while the other girls watched with envy. She felt like the luckiest girl in the world.
That was then. Now it was sometimes hard to remember why she had cared for him so much. She knew, from what he told her, that he had been thorough a lot in Vietnam, and she couldn’t just drop him when he needed her the most. She would have to be patient with him until he could get over the traumas he had suffered. Maybe the love would return. Maybe he would cut down on the drugs if she loved him enough.
—
“Bean, I’m fine,” she said, taking a clean pair of shorts out of her drawer. “I’m just getting ready to go to work. . . . Yes, I promise I’ll drive careful, and I’ll lock the doors and look in the backseat before I get in . . .”
Baby held the phone between her shoulder and ear while she hopped on one foot to put on her shorts.
Bean went on for the umpteenth time about how she could p
rotect herself if anybody tried to attack her, by sticking her fingers in their eyes and stomping on their instep, and Baby said, “Uh-huh, uh-huh, uh-huh.” Truth to tell, Baby was a little nervous herself since the murder, but you can’t expect a deranged killer to be hiding under every single bush. It was nearly to the point that she was trying to figure out ways to hide from Bean, just to get a little time to herself.
There were other weird things about Bean, too, since he had gotten home in March. In one batch of pictures he sent, he had included one of his hootch maid, a pretty girl named Nguyen, wearing a purple pajama-looking outfit and one of those cone-shaped straw hats. He said she was the one who washed his clothes and cleaned his hootch, and when Baby asked him if that was all she did for him, he got mad and swore he had never touched a woman over there. That made Baby feel all the more guilty for having seen Jackie while he was gone. Still, once, at an inopportune moment, Bean had called her Nguyen. It made Baby suspicious, but she pretended that she hadn’t heard it. It wouldn’t do for her to get all self-righteous. Especially since Bean was getting more suspicious about her.
—
“Who was that man you were talking to at the graveyard, Baby?” Bean asked while Baby tried to button her shorts with one hand.
“His name is Franco O’Reilly. He used to go out with Carlene.”
“Are you sure he didn’t go out with you, too? The two of you looked awful chummy out there when you didn’t think I was watching.”
“Bean, I swear on a stack of Bibles I never had anything to do with him other than talk to him a time or two. Not every man in the world is after me, you know.” She got the phone tangled in her T-shirt and had to pull it out through the armhole.
“What about Jackie Lim?”
“He was after every woman that had a pulse. I’ve told you and told you there was nothing between us, Bean.”
“Then why do I get the feeling you’re lying?”
“Believe what you want to, then,” she snapped. “I can’t help what you believe.”
She could kick herself for mentioning Jackie too often in her letters while Bean was in Vietnam. Somehow he had read between the lines, and now he just wouldn’t let it alone; he picked at it like a scab every chance he got.
“Look, Bean honey, I have to get to the plant. You know I love you, and you’re the only man for me, so let’s don’t talk any more about this, okay? Please, Bean?”
He hung up on her. Now she would have to sweet-talk him into a good mood again. Sometimes she wished she had never heard of Jackie Lim or the Water Witch. And sometimes she wished she had never heard of Bean.
19.Cherry
I hated to go to work the night right after the graveyard and all, but there didn’t seem any way out of it. At least I saw Tripp, and at the break he asked me to go to the movies with him Saturday night. I felt a little funny about going out so soon after the funeral, and I know it sounds cold, but Carlene was as dead as she would ever be. Besides, a great new movie called Easy Rider was playing down at the Rialto Theater. It had to be good, because Brother Wilkins had already preached three sermons about it. He said that the very Devil himself was the author of that movie, and it glorified the satanic workings of man that were taking us all one step closer to eternal damnation in these, the last days before Jesus came back on the clouds of glory and destroyed the world with fire and brimstone. I wondered, exactly, how Brother Wilkins knew so much about this movie, but I guessed he must have read a review or something.
—
Saturday afternoon, Mama was out in the backyard under the pecan trees shelling peas, and I picked up a pan from the kitchen and went out to help her. I set my lawn chair close to her so I could reach the bushel basket of peas. She leaned over and sniffed at me.
“I believe you don’t smell quite as strong as you used to, honey. Are you still in the onion room, or did you get moved somewhere else?”
“No, we’re still there. You’re probably just getting used to it.”
“Well, it will only be for a couple more weeks. I think you should quit a few days early and give yourself time to get back to normal before school starts. I’ll let you soak in a hot tub with my Youth Dew bath oil after you quit. There’s not much point before.”
Youth Dew was Mama’s signature fragrance, and was sinfully expensive. Every birthday and Christmas, either Daddy or I had to give her a big bottle of it. If she was offering it to me, I must really need it. Frankly, I had gotten so used to the smell that it didn’t bother me. In fact, I could cut up a whole pot full of onions at home and never shed one tear. Isn’t there always a silver lining in every cloud? But I appreciated her offer, and intended to take her up on it.
I took a double handful of peas out of the bushel, filled my pan, and started shelling.
“Mama, Tripp wants to take me to see Easy Ridertonight. Do you think I should go?”
Mama dumped her shelled peas into a big bowl and refilled her pan. “That’s the one Brother Wilkins is so hot under the collar about, isn’t it?”
“Yes, ma’am, it is.”
“To hear him tell it, watching that movie will turn you into a dope fiend and Lord knows what all else. Isn’t that what he said?”
“Yes, ma’am, he did say that.”
“Well, I think we both should go and see what it is that is going to ruin all the kids in this town, don’t you? So we’ll be prepared to fight against it if we need to.”
“We both? Are you saying that you want to go, too?”
“Why not? If you can see it, why can’t I? Do you think I’m such an old fogey that I would be shocked?”
This was really weird. I couldn’t imagine taking my mother on a date with Tripp Barlow. Who would sit in the front seat? Would we all squeeze together, or would she have to sit alone in the back? Would I have to sit in the back?
“Mama, I just don’t know. Daddy won’t like it.”
She ripped open a pod so hard that the peas sailed across the yard. She seemed a little tense.
“I don’t suspect he would. There’s a lot he doesn’t like. And sometimes, Cheryl Ann, I just feel like I’m turning into an old woman before I ever had a chance to be a girl.”
I looked at her as if she were a little nuts. This was a side of my mother that I had never seen before. She caught my look and turned to face me.
“Think about it. Your daddy and I got married when I was seventeen. We just couldn’t wait until I even graduated. I went from being under my daddy’s roof to being under my husband’s. Within a year, I had you. I was a mother before I even got to go to the prom. And now then, there’s Lucille doing exactly what both her mother and I did—marrying the first boy that showed her what a thrill is, and having a baby. Rubynell and I tried to stop her, but you can’t tell kids anything. They know it all already.”
I was a little stunned. Mothers were supposed to be . . . motherly. They were not supposed to think about missed proms.
“I never knew you felt this way, Mama. I thought you and Daddy had a great marriage.”
She bit her lip. “I love your daddy more than anything in this world—except you. I want you to know I have never been sorry for one minute I had you. It’s just that sometimes . . . oh, I don’t know . . . sometimes I just can’t take his everlasting goodness.”
To my horror, she started to cry. I set my pan down and put my arms around her, comforting her like I was the mother and she was the kid. I patted her on the back.
“It’s okay. I know. I know.”
That set her off. Her shoulders shook with sobs, and she hung on to me like a three-year-old. Then she started to laugh.
“Look at me! Sitting out here in the yard bawling my eyes out! I’m really something. I don’t know what’s the matter with me.” She wiped at her eyes with the back of her hand.
I felt kind of sorry for her. She never got to go to a movie, except for Jailhouse Rock,which we snuck out to see when I was nine, because Daddy would no more be seen in a movie house than
he would a beer joint. The only book he ever read was the Bible, and she had to hide her Harlequin Romance novels under the mattress so he wouldn’t see them and burn them up, like he had a time or two, which made her as mad as an old wet hen.
She took a wadded-up tissue out of her pocket and blew her nose.
“I’m sorry. I guess I’ve just been feeling old lately. It won’t be long until I’m forty. I have a whole new patch of gray hair, and my chin is starting to sag like my mother’s did.”
I stood up and looked at her hair, but I couldn’t see any gray ones.
“Where, Mama?”
“Right up there on the top. Don’t you see it?”
“It just looks kind of light blond to me. I don’t think you should worry about it yet. And I don’t see what you’re talking about with your neck.”
“You don’t think it’s a little saggy?” She stretched her chin up for me to see.
“It looks okay to me, Mama. Don’t worry about it. You still look young.” She did look young. Everybody always thought we were sisters, and guys were always talking about my mother and how pretty she was. “I wouldn’t tell you that if I didn’t think it.” She gave me a hug.
“I love you to pieces, Cherry-Berry. You know I do. Maybe I feel old because you are all grown-up. I don’t know what it is.”
“Mama, you wouldn’t want me to stay a little kid all my life, would you?”
“It’s hard to believe you’re twenty-one. When I was your age, you were three. I should have had more children, I guess, but they never came, no matter how hard we tried. I guess the Lord just intended me to have one.”
She didn’t say anything else for a long time, just sat back down to shell her peas. But I could tell that she was still upset, and it wasn’t because she had never been able to have more children. She had made peace with that a long time ago.
“Mama? What is this all about? Really?” I felt like she wanted to say something that she wasn’t saying. She put her hands in her lap and looked out across the yard, like she was trying to see something. I followed her eyes, but there was nothing there except our overweight neighbor, Dood Holloway, who was mowing his yard dressed in Bermuda shorts and flip-flops and no shirt. He had several rolls of fat going down his chest that looked like a row of breasts. He was an under-belly belter.
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