'Round Midnight

by Laura McBride

  If that Honorata did not exist, the one sitting on this bed did.

  Nanay was right. The only way to live life was forward.

  When she was fully calm, when she could take in air without hearing it, she repacked her suitcase, bumped it down the stairs of the hotel, and walked along the crowded street until she found a taxi. “To the airport,” she said, and as she rode, with the car lurching and the smell of exhaust making her sick, she thought about the possibilities. She thought about what she had learned of the United States, about the snow in Chicago, the lights on the Strip, the grocery stores with their long aisles of boxes and cans. She thought of the television shows she and Kidlat had watched in the bar where he worked: Charlie’s Angels and The Brady Bunch and L.A. Law. She remembered the way America looked in those shows, the blue skies and the ocean and the houses so new and big. She pictured the women—their long feathered hair as they sped away in a car; or the mother with the short bob, smiling as everyone in her family did what she wanted.

  When she got to the airport, she didn’t hesitate. She didn’t hesitate because she wasn’t the Honorata who had left Buninan for Manila a decade ago. She wasn’t the Honorata her uncle had put on a plane a year ago. She wasn’t even the Honorata who had sat in this airport, head in her hands, just weeks ago. She was on her own, and there was no one to protect her, and she did not need protection. She had won a jackpot, and she was pregnant. Honosuerte. She had a passport, and she would buy a ticket to Los Angeles. Bahala na. Come what may. She would live in the city of angels.

  She took a room in a hotel near the Los Angeles airport, and a taxi driver showed her the nearest hospital. At first, the man at the hospital was reluctant to help her. She couldn’t register for a birth without a doctor, and how long would she be staying in LA? Did she have a permanent address? So she went to a Catholic church, and there the woman in the office helped her find a doctor, and also asked where she was living and if she could afford an apartment. With her help, Honorata rented a furnished apartment in Inglewood, not too far from the hospital. She told the woman at the church that she was planning to buy a house, before the baby was born, if she could. The woman gave her a puzzled look but did not ask any questions; instead, she gave her the name of a congregant who was also a realtor.

  “We don’t have a large Filipino community here,” she said. “You might be more comfortable in Eagle Rock. Or West Covina. The realtor will know.”

  Honorata thought about these words. The enormity of what she had done, leaving Pilipinas after she had found a way back, felt like a wave sweeping her out to sea. She could not think about this now. She couldn’t think about whether she would buy a house in Eagle Rock or Inglewood, couldn’t imagine driving the maze of roads she had seen from the window of the plane, all those neighborhoods, all those people, all those communities—some with Pinoy and some without—and did she want to live with them? Would there be tamarind and pandan and lemongrass for cooking? Would her child speak Pilipino? Would she always be shunned, a mother without a husband?

  It overwhelmed her, and the plan that she had worked out carefully—that she had written down and repeated to herself over and over as she flew all those hours—no longer seemed so clear. What was she doing in LA? She didn’t know anyone here. She didn’t know anything about the city. She couldn’t buy a house and set down her life, her child’s life, without knowing anything. It was too big. It was too much. Why had she thought she could do it? Where did she belong?

  Honorata spent the months before her baby was born in the furnished apartment, ricocheting between days she felt strong and days she felt weak. There was almost never a day in the middle, a day of balance. She was super Honorata or she was disgusting Honorata, and the seesaw nature of her own temperament exhausted her. She began leaving the apartment only to attend morning Mass, or to talk quietly to the priest in the dark confessional stall on Saturday afternoons, or to buy food and the things she would need to bring a baby home. She didn’t call the realtor. She tried to avoid the woman from the church office, though the woman looked for Honorata sometimes and stopped to ask how she was feeling, if she needed anything. One day she brought a box of new baby supplies to Honorata’s apartment, and Honorata blinked back the tears as she showed her the diapers, the sterilized bottles, the baby wipes, and the blanket with a matching cap that a parishioner knitted for all the new babies.

  “Do you have someone to go with you, into labor?” the woman from the office asked.

  “Yes,” Honorata said.

  The woman seemed to know she was lying, but she didn’t say anything. The next Saturday, after her confession, a priest came out from the sacristy, wearing street clothes, and waited until she was done praying, until she had awkwardly shifted her belly and pulled herself up from the kneeler. Then he reached over to help her stand fully upright. He asked if she had a minute to talk, if they could walk outside, and when Honorata went with him, he invited her to join a young adult group that met on Tuesday evenings. “Some people have children, and others are single,” he said, “but they will be people your age. You might enjoy it.”

  Honorata did not commit to going, but she noticed that the priest was also about her age, that he had very large ears and that he walked gracefully, as if he might suddenly turn and spin. He wasn’t particularly earnest, which she appreciated.

  Her contractions started in the morning.

  They continued all day, and when she called the doctor’s office, they asked her to time them, and when she said they were coming every three minutes, they told her to go to the hospital, not to delay, and did she have a bag ready?

  She had a bag.

  Honorata had had little to do but prepare for this day for months, so she had a bag for herself and another for her baby, and on the top of that bag were the blanket and the cap the parishioner had knitted. She called the number of the taxi company she always used, but when she said she was having a baby and needed to go to the hospital, the dispatcher hung up. Frantic, she found the phone book someone had left under the brown leatherette couch in the main room. The front cover was ripped off, and Honorata was not sure how old it was, but there was an ad for a taxi company on the back cover. Shaking, she dialed it carefully.

  When the dispatcher answered, she gave her address slowly, said she was ready right away, but not why she was going to the hospital. Then she stood outside on the sidewalk, and waited, and the taxi came in just minutes. The driver, from some African country—she couldn’t quite understand what he said to her: something about the baby, something about his wife—dropped her off at the emergency entrance, and she walked in by herself, doubling over when a contraction came, and carrying the two bags, one in each hand, like ballast.

  The birth was easy.

  Nanay had told her it would be easy—that her births were easy, and her mother’s too. When she said this, a look had passed across her face, and Honorata knew she was thinking that Honorata’s baby might be different, might not be like any other baby they had birthed. Her mother had this thought and decided not to say it, but Honorata had seen it, and her mother had seen her see it, and they said nothing of this to each other.

  So Honorata was not counting on an easy birth, and yet it was.

  Malaya was born just after midnight. When the nurse, a Pilipina, handed her the baby, already wrapped tightly in a pink blanket, with a pink bow fastened to a lock of hair that looked quite black, with her eyes squeezed narrow—from the antibiotic, the nurse said—and her face wide and red as a beet, Honorata experienced something she would later think of as the only true religious moment of her life. It was awkward to hold her, lying there almost flat in a bed, and the baby’s body wrapped too tight to fit naturally against her own, and yet the instant that she had the weight of her in her arms, the moment she looked into those ointment-smeared navy eyes, Honorata felt her own body begin to grow, as if the edges of her were expanding and then loosening, wavering, shimmering, dissipating; as if she were not held inside h
er body at all but existed everywhere and enormous and without shape. She was at once formless and formed: holding her baby carefully so there was no chance she would fall, though her physical body—her arms and shoulders and back—were weak and tired.

  And that was the moment in which Honorata let go of the fear that had gripped her in the furnished apartment, with its stained tan carpet and its cream-colored walls and the plastic flower in an orange pot in the corner. That was the moment in which she knew she could do it, that she was free, that she had a daughter and a purpose and the strength to do whatever it would take. She was not a foreigner, an outcast, a sinner, a whore; she was a mother, and, incredibly, she had her own money, and nothing that came after this would be as hard as what had already been. This was the revelation.

  They kept her in the hospital for two nights, bringing Malaya to her every three hours to nurse and also when she would not stop crying. Honorata could not get her to stop crying either, but it didn’t matter, it didn’t frighten her. In the village, there had been babies that cried all the time and babies that did not, and at a certain point, they all became children just like any other.

  From the hospital, she sent a telegram to the church for her mother so that she would know she had a granddaughter, and then, in a moment of inspiration, she sent her a second telegram. She had decided to move to Las Vegas. She would buy a house there, and there would be a room for Nanay. Her mother could not live eight thousand miles away from her granddaughter, and as soon as possible, Honorata would be home to fetch her for a visit. Nanay would have to learn to fly.

  21

  A woman had moved into the house at the top of the cul-de-sac, but Coral had been unable to say hello. She often heard her neighbor drive in, because she braked and then revved again as she managed the slight incline to her garage, but the woman kept her door shut and picked up her mail quickly, without looking to see who else might be on the street. Finally Coral left a plant and a note at her new neighbor’s door. The gift was gone the next morning, but nobody stopped to acknowledge it.

  It was another week before Coral realized the woman had a child.

  On Saturday, Coral saw her pushing an elaborate stroller toward the park. She watched her go by, and when she noticed her returning, she stepped out the front door and said hello.

  “Hello,” the woman replied. She didn’t look directly at Coral.

  “My name’s Coral. Welcome to the neighborhood.”

  “Thank you.”

  She looked down, uneasy. Coral thought she must be shy.

  “May I see your baby?”

  The woman looked up and flashed a small smile.

  “Her name’s Malaya.”

  “What a lovely name.” Coral walked to the stroller, and looked at the little girl. She was asleep, her cheek flushed, and one curl, moist with sweat, was pasted to her small pink ear.

  “Oh, she’s beautiful.”

  At this, her new neighbor smiled fully, and her face, which had seemed still and severe, was suddenly open and pleased. She reached out to move the brightly woven blanket off her daughter’s shoulder, and as she did so, her fingers lightly caressed the infant’s soft skin.

  “Did you make her blanket? It’s so intricate.”

  “My mother made it. In Pilipinas. Where I’m from, we make this cloth.”

  “It’s wonderful.”

  The woman didn’t speak, but she also didn’t move away. She stood there, gazing at her baby, and Coral shifted awkwardly. It was sweet, the way this mother looked at her baby, but intimate too, as if Coral should not be standing right next to her. She started to step away from the stroller, and the woman spoke.

  “My name’s Honorata. I move here from the Philippines.”

  “Well, welcome, Honorata. I hope you like it.”

  “Have you lived here long?”

  “On this street? Nearly three years. But I grew up not far from here. I’m a native.”

  Coral was used to people commenting on this fact, but, of course, Honorata was too new to know that native Las Vegans were rare.

  “So you choose this neighborhood because it’s a good one?”

  “Well, I like it. And it’s close to the school where I work. I’m a teacher. I teach music.”

  “At a Catholic school?” Honorata asked.

  “No. At a public school. Just a few blocks that way.”

  “I’m going to send Malaya to Catholic school.”

  The baby stirred then, and made a little noise, like the bleat of a calf. Honorata stroked the child’s cheek, and made a shushing noise with her lips slightly parted. Coral turned to go back inside.

  “It was nice to meet you. Let me know if I can do anything. Just knock.”

  Honorata looked at Coral.

  “Do you like that house there?”

  “That one? With the dead grass?”

  “Yes. Do you like it?”

  Coral wasn’t sure where this was going.

  “Umm. Well, I wish they still had the water on. Nobody’s lived there for about a year.”

  “Oh. So not good house?”

  “I don’t know. The house’s fine. I’m not sure what happened to the owner.”

  “You don’t want to buy this house?”

  “That house? No.”

  “I might buy it. The realtor told me that rental homes are good investment. Lots of people to rent homes here.”

  “Oh. Probably. That’s cool.”

  “So, okay with you?”

  Coral paused.

  “I don’t want to buy that house. It’s nice of you to ask me.”

  “Okay. I find out about the owner.”

  “I think if you call the county, they’ll tell you who owns it. Or you can ask your realtor.”

  “Thank you. Very nice of you to tell me.”

  Honorata smiled at her.

  “You’re a teacher?”

  “Yes.”

  “You look young.”

  “Actually, I’m thirty-two.”

  The baby was fussing now, and her neighbor moved the stroller back and forth, trying to get her to settle. Still, she didn’t move on.

  “That’s very good. Be a teacher. Have a house.”

  Coral laughed.

  “My mama agrees with you. It was nice meeting you, Honorata. Take care.”

  “Bye, Coral.”

  At this, the baby let out a cry, and her mother bent quickly toward her.

  Coral didn’t see much of her neighbor after that. On weekends, she sometimes saw Honorata pushing the stroller toward the park, and when the evenings cooled off, she could hear her singing to the baby, in a language Coral couldn’t make out, in the backyard. In the spring, an older woman came to visit, and when Coral stopped to talk with Honorata, she learned that her mother had come to live with her. Coral had never seen anyone who might be the baby’s father on the street, but she didn’t pay close attention. It was possible that there was a father; that he visited Malaya at times.

  One day Coral’s niece Keisha came over to play, and when she saw Honorata and Malaya on the street, she rushed out to say hello. The child was learning to walk now, pitching one foot forward at a time and swinging like a pendulum from her mother’s hand. She was a beautiful baby, fairer than her mother, but with her mother’s bright, plump lips and dark-fringed eyes.

  Coral watched from inside the house as Keisha crouched down and began to talk to the little girl. Malaya laughed at something Keisha did, and Coral saw Honorata smile and then show Keisha how to take the baby’s hand, how to steady her as she threw one eager foot in front of the other. After a little, Keisha came running in.

  “She says I can go over and play with Malaya one day!”

  “Really? That’s great.”

  “I told her I wanted to babysit, but she said that I would have to get older first.”

  “Yeah. Playing with her is a good way to start. She’s learning to walk?”

  “She’s so funny. I tried to let go of her hand, but
she just sat down on her bottom.”

  Althea came by later to pick up Keisha and stayed to eat dinner. Malcolm was at basketball practice, and then the team was going to the coach’s house to eat pasta so the players would be ready for the middle school tournament the next day.

  “I can’t stand the coach. He loves Malcolm, of course, and I appreciate that. But he says these things that make my skin crawl.”

  “He asked Malcolm if he was planning on a basketball scholarship,” Keisha piped up. “That’s why Mom’s mad.”

  Althea raised an eyebrow at her sister.

  “Did your mom tell him Malcolm is planning to be a doctor?”

  “Malcolm told him.”

  “And he clapped him on the back and said he really liked to see a kid dream big.” Althea sounded like she might spit.

  Coral looked at Keisha. “I wouldn’t want to be Malcolm’s coach and step on your mom’s toes.”

  Keisha laughed.

  “Don’t say those things to her, Coral. You just wait till you have a son.”

  “Auntie Coral’s going to have girls, Mom. Did I tell you I get to play with the baby down the street?”

  “What baby?”

  “My neighbor at the end of the street.” Coral rinsed off the cutting board and handed it to Althea. “She has a little girl. Learning to walk. Keisha ran out and met her today.”

  “That’s great, Keisha.”

  “I asked her if I could babysit.”

  “You’re too young to babysit.”

  “That’s what she said. But she said I could play with her.”

  Althea turned to Coral. “Keisha’s planning on you having a daughter.”

  “Well, that might be a bit complicated.”

  “Are you still dating that guy? From Japan?”