The next day, when they arrived at the cemetery, Manolo did not follow behind Tala, who ambled off on a leaf-strewn path without a word, making her way across the cobblestones. Since the Hideaway she’d been locked in her own thoughts, and it was just as well; his heart felt equally heavy.
He watched her crisscross aimlessly among the gravestones, without direction through a cemetery where the toothpick man had said Charo’s mother was buried in an unmarked grave. Around them, a dreary stretch of ground, a waste of beauty in a patch of city untouched by commerce and cars and the busy grind of it all. It was a place of death, but he did not feel death, the dead beneath them long gone—he felt awake. He mourned all the time wasted on worries and lies, secrets and doubts.
At the perimeter of the graveyard, Manolo waited against a spot on the brick wall. Iron bars protruded vertically from the top edge of the bricks, separating the dead from the living. He itched for a smoke and reached for a stick, lighting it deftly and breathing in its contents. Cigarette in hand, he assessed the scene in front of him with some degree of calm.
He no longer saw Tala and directed his attention to a mourner who had entered the cemetery at some fissure in the haze of time. The man was about seventy, and something in his carriage was seeped in familiarity. Manolo placed him in his mind; at some crumbling city church, this old man would be the worshipper who attended faithfully at the same hour, always wearing his Sunday best, as he had today. He would be one of the few people in the pews praying in earnest, leaving quietly and unnoticed. He had a full bouquet of red carnations in his hand, which he placed at the base of an indiscreet gravestone on the western end of the cemetery. His clothes were neat but not fancy, his shoes shined, and his gray hair trimmed and combed. Manolo felt certain that he came to the cemetery every week, and that each week, the faces around him were new—another set of anonymous mourners being summoned by the long reach of the departed. In this unwelcoming expanse he would appear through the rusty gates, regularly and out of nowhere as others came and went. He alone would be faithful and punctual for the dead.
The man sat now beside the resting place of the one he had lost, unmoving then looking to the trees in the distance, the outline of skyscrapers beyond them, and the sky that encompassed it all, finding, Manolo was certain, traces of his lost love everywhere. He was sure that he’d be sitting there still, looking after the gravestone, remembering and honoring the one in his heart, long after he and Tala went on their way. Manolo wondered how long the mourning lover stayed.
But he soon left the old man to his personal sanctity. Tala had returned.
“I found you.” She placed her long, slim fingers upon his, leaning her head against the bricks and closing her eyes, the smile fading into repose.
The sun was still high and the weather was hot and stuffy. Manolo did not wear his jacket, but carried it with him foolishly, forgetting that even nights in the city were hot, unlike those in the mountains. He slipped his free hand into the folds of his coat till he felt the hard edges of the box he’d quickly stashed there. He well remembered lying like an insect in the dark, his antennae connected to whatever was inside of it. Funny thing is, he had never opened it. It had been enough to know that the box involved him, too, that he wouldn’t be left in the cold. He’d always been more interested in her, the way she maneuvered around him with her secrets and surprises.
He thought back on their visit with the albularyo. She was not the young woman in an unflattering pantsuit and yellow bandanna, who had handed Tala the box on the day he followed her. The older woman with the wild hair had looked right into him, seeing the box in his eyes. He could feel it. And she had wanted it for herself. Since that day, Manolo had never quite felt safe around the trinket.
Tala still had her eyes closed. He listened to the sound of maya birds chirping, watched them hopping around on the nearby branches of a tree. Now and again he glanced over at Tala’s face, not knowing if she was listening, dreaming, mourning, or thinking.
He loosened his hand from hers and reached for the box. It fell with a heavy weight, and he nearly dropped it. The commotion roused her, and as she looked at him and the box, he felt the weight fly. All the while that he’d carried it in his jacket, the sensation of carrying the box had never shifted in such a manner.
“Surprise,” he said, withholding his own surprise at the way the box had suddenly come to life.
“What’s this?”
“Show me what’s inside. Tell me what you see, Tala. Describe everything.” He studied her face. She did not seem to recognize the box. Tala opened it and seemed disappointed.
“Nothing. It’s empty.”
The lid was up, but he could not see past it to the interior. Instead, he looked at the texture of the box in Tala’s hand, the grainy, dead wood against her soft, living skin. How frivolous it would be to look too closely at the hands, close enough to get lost in the endless network of lines that crisscrossed every millimeter of skin, close enough to lose sight of the hand itself.
“Tala, there’s something I want to tell you.”
“That you forgot the surprise at home?”
“Do you remember the night we met?”
“Please, Manolo, not the dream. Not again.”
“No, not that. Do you remember what I told you about my compadre, Palong?”
“He was the one who drowned. You’d just found out.”
“Years before I met you I had been engaged to another woman. She was Palong’s sister. She left me on the morning of the day before we were to marry.”
Tala looked surprised, then thoughtful. She gazed into the distance, as though envisioning his past somewhere there, the other woman a speck on the horizon. The box felt like a shell in his hand, weightless and thin.
“Why are you telling me this now?” she asked.
“Every time I saw a patient, I saw pity in their eyes. Here’s the man who was abandoned on his wedding day, they all seemed to be thinking. Here’s the neighborhood cuckold. I didn’t want to dig her up again. I don’t even know why I thought of her now. I just remembered. And I thought you should know.”
He considered placing a feather in the box, a feather from her wings. After giving this to her he’d take her to the wings themselves. The idea cheered him, then felt futile.
“So you’ve surprised me with a memory. A gift of knowledge about your past. How many more secrets are in that red box?” she asked. She held her hands on her hips, elbows up, as though she were scolding him. The city beyond them dilated in the heat and the graveyard stretched barren. Life could not thrive in such desolate places. Tala walked ahead, absorbed in thought.
When she was a good distance away, Manolo found a rock with sharp edges and began to dig, as quickly as his two hands would allow. The hole was about a foot deep when Manolo felt satisfied. He wedged the box in and replenished the hole with earth, then patted it down so that it was smooth. Then it looked too smooth, and he rumpled the surface with the stone so that it resembled the surrounding landscape. He scratched an X on the face of the bricks alongside him and placed the stone atop the burial ground.
Just as he finished, a thought crossed Manolo’s mind, and he looked quickly to where the old man had been not too long before. The mourning lover was gone.
A week later, Tala gave birth. He never imagined that she, too, would go, before their baby would be old enough to walk, and in spite of his struggle to keep her from the moment he’d laid eyes on her, he would do nothing to stop her.
Part III
22. The Hour of Daydreams
In the summer of my fifth year, I discovered Grandmother Iolana’s special power: she could make the entire barrio sleep, in the middle of the day.
I could never understand why she forced me to take naps every afternoon without fail, marching me into shadows while the world was bathed in light. It was unjustified punishment, reserved for me alone and for no other reason than to make me suffer. When the unwelcome hour came, I did my best to hid
e, avoiding the awful feeling of lying still and quiet in Grandmother’s bed while my whole body yearned to jump up and down and I could barely suppress one thought after another from escaping me in the form of a run-on sentence, the flail of an arm—anything to remind myself of the sound of my voice or the sensation of motion.
She summoned me with her serious voice, typically reserved for grown-up talk or the inevitable reprimand after I’d done something bad. Hearing that tone and my name called in short, clipped syllables, I knew my hopes of escaping her were lost. Before she could wave her slipper in the air and threaten me with its sting, I resurfaced from behind a long curtain or shaggy hedge, following Grandmother to her bedroom, where the bare, white walls closed in dreadfully and the strangely pleasing smell of Vicks VapoRub invigorated the stillness hanging in every molecule of dust. I could not smell but saw the dust, a fine powder of ancient things, now crumbled and forgotten, accumulating on stacks of old magazines piled against the wall, lids of jewelry boxes overflowing with bead and shell, the curvy base of a lamp on the wooden nightstand. Grandmother positioned herself lengthwise beside me on the bed, stroking my broad forehead, still hot from hours of baking beneath the sun, and sweeping aside the long, fine strands, damp from play, she sang a lullaby:
Antok na, anak
Tulog ka
Sayo lang, anak
Ang lahat
Araw, hangin,
Bulaklak
Sayo lang, anak
Ang lahat
At first, I rebelled against this ritual, surely a thing for grandmothers, not to be imposed on children. I squirmed on the mattress and interrupted her song with questions, and if this did not faze her determined melody, kicked her repeatedly in the shins, so that Grandmother would stop her song abruptly, retrieve a slipper from the foot of the bed, sting me with two hard slaps on each palm, and return to her singing. Not long after succumbing to Grandmother with feigned sleep, I discovered her secret. Wakefulness never left me as her husky tone and stern expression gradually calmed, followed by the droop of wrinkled lids and the faint odor of stale coffee drifting from her open, lightly snoring mouth. Antok na, anak. Tulog ka . . . She had opened the land of daydreams.
Her arm, now doubled in weight, was like a felled log on my chest. Wriggling from beneath it, I tiptoed from her room to find the neighborhood under the spell of her lullaby. Over the fence lines on opposite sides, the hollow shells of hammocks had grown full with the slump of bodies in repose and out front, rocking chairs and small talk had been abandoned for cool sheets on neatly made beds. Even the neighbor’s terrier with its rough, speckled coat had fallen asleep at its post, its whiskers twitching and four paws pointing at the sky. Only the chickens remained on vigil, craning and releasing their necks like mechanical toys scraping mindlessly against the gravel.
I felt alone just long enough to listen. A million hidden sounds filled the loneliness—insect wings and ripe fruit falling, the ancient creak of trees and cats scratching their own itchy backs. In their stillness, the most ordinary objects shone with dreamlike clarity—a pattern of rust on the wheelbarrow advancing just so, empty plates and half-full saucers from merienda leaving traces of a moment, never to be relived. Silence became noise, then music, and all of it mine.
Open lanes between sparkling trees invited running. Dirt invited digging, rocks throwing, and fences climbing. After flipping every brick and stone to see what bugs recoiled underneath, I explored my neighbors’ gardens, kicking empty buckets and chasing silly roosters so that their wattles jiggled. Little by little, the faces of other children emerged from behind bushes or the tops of trees. Immune from Grandmother’s spell, we played hide and seek or ran together in twos and threes, wreaking havoc quietly, at first, so as not to awaken our elders. But the enchantment ran deep, and the sounds of our laughter became part of its rhythm, even for the old men in their hammocks, who must have heard our laughter in their dreams.
When hunger called I beelined for home and raided the kitchen for anything sweet—the pastillas first, next the dried mangoes or the flaky biscuits in the tin, and if there were none, I would open a can of condensed milk and pour it over bread, which we always had—fluffy bags of round loaves for Grandmother’s sardines, Papa’s eggs, or Grandfather’s jam. Around this time, a neighbor’s screen would slam open then shut and a dog would begin its incessant bark, and I knew that Grandmother’s spell was breaking. With a single sweep of my arm across the counter, I wiped the crumbs clean then crept back to bed with my soon-to-waken grandmother, already clearing her throat from the phlegm that had accumulated in the past hour.
I must have gotten away with this three or four times before Grandfather Andres caught up with my tricks. One afternoon, after the same routine—Grandmother’s sleepy spell, walking out to an arrested world, playing among my solitary props and newfound accomplices, and returning to raid the cupboards—he appeared. His kindly face, at that hour, stung like an invasion, one that promised unwelcome repercussions. I willed myself to hold back the tears that would betray my disappointment.
By this time the sticky milk had run down the sides of the can and found its way onto my hands, clothes, and hair. Standing on a chair in front of an open drawer, from which I’d removed and scattered every utensil, I had left a trail of dirt and mud across the kitchen floor. I gazed at Grandfather’s small, accusing eyes, trying to figure him out and coming to one conclusion: being married to Grandmother, he must have been immune to the sleepy spell.
Instead of getting angry, Grandfather dragged the chair that I was standing on to the sink, where he washed my hands gently and ran warm water over the tips of my hair before combing it through with his fingers. Then he sat me down at the kitchen table. He served me a bowl of fluffy rice, sliced fresh, ripe mangoes on top, and spread the sweetener generously. Every bite fulfilled my craving and refueled my joy. As I ate, Grandfather rinsed then replaced the utensils in the drawer and swept up the debris on the floor—so that Grandmother wouldn’t know a thing, he said. From then on, he and I were inseparable during the hour of daydreams. Grandfather’s stories freed me from emptiness without roots, threatening because it existed for its own sake. While my grandmother’s lullaby made the barrio sleep, my grandfather’s words made dreams awaken.
He began with the story of my birth. My mother had just pulled her needle up from the last stitch of my first gown when her waters broke. After I was born, Grandfather said what could only be described as magic took possession of our barrio. After months of dry weather that had left the fields sagging and the farmers scratching their heads with worry, it rained a melody that lovers danced to while families sat together on their porches, thankful for a respite from the heat and bearing witness to nature’s beauty. Grandfather said the rain was the first sign—that the angels themselves were celebrating in the heavens.
The downpour continued for six days and nights without end, constant and rhythmic. On the sixth night, fish replaced raindrops. They pounded onto rooftops and slapped against windows. When a layer of fish covered the streets, replacing cobblestones with scales, the villagers came out one by one, wearing nightclothes and slippers, drawn by their collective intuition, woken by a mysterious thumping that had pervaded their dreams. Soon everyone was out in the dark, starlit hours of morning with pails of ice at the ready. The rains cleared, magnifying the sound of the stars and the magnificence of night. Grandfather told me that a famous constellation, the Lost Sisters, was named that very evening.
The next twelve hours were like a holiday in our barrio. No one went to work; instead, our neighbors stayed home cooking fish every way possible—fried, steamed, baked, salted, and simmered. Those who did not man stoves played music from their porches while the children played kickball in the streets. Every house was open to visitors, who swapped dishes and compliments and gave generously of their pantries when a few eggs, extra chilies, or a sack of flour were needed. Grandfather and Grandmother visited each neighbor to boast about their new granddaughter,
so beautiful I broke their hearts, and everyone dropped by to offer their respects to Papa and my mother, who never released me from her bosom.
I did not question Grandfather’s version of events till I was much older and Grandfather had already passed to the next world. After purchasing a bag of groceries one afternoon, I decided to ask the old shopkeeper if it had ever rained fish in our barrio. A fixture at the sari sari store for decades, the shopkeeper had always proved trustworthy with the lowest prices and the latest news. If fish had once fallen from the Manlapaz sky, he would know. The idea made him chuckle at first, then he scratched his chin and grew thoughtful, recalling an occasion when several acres of tilapia farms lost their harvest to a flood stream that swept past the fields and barrio streets, depositing hundreds of fish before doorsteps and upon the open road, their tails still flapping. It had been raining for days upon end, and I had probably been much too young to remember, he said.
Grandfather was the first to describe the sound of Tala’s voice—like the trickle of water. Imagining that sound, I knew I had been born ready to love her. But I also knew that the same willingness to love can be said of all babies and children, while not every mother is deserving.
Up until then, she existed as a series of associations: a smile full of pain, the quiet that settled into the cracks of the house, longing hidden deep in shadows. With Grandfather, I directed my confusion into questions, seeing that there must be an answer and believing I was entitled to it: “Where could she be? Why isn’t she here?”
Grandfather did everything he could to avoid explanations that summer, most likely because he had none. I was happy with the bits and pieces, little glimpses into a past that filled me with wonder. Tala was not the only thing we whispered about during those bright afternoons before the doubt and bitterness began gnawing a hole into childish innocence. One of his favorite subjects involved the mountain’s many phantoms. Grandfather introduced me to the local ghost stories that made every child squeamish.
The Hour of Daydreams Page 18