America Is Not the Heart

by Elaine Castillo

  When she came back, Rhea was still at the stove, her stiff back still turned, a wall. Hero hurried back into the garden, where the sun was starting to cast light upon all the living things that Boy and Adela had planted together.

  Hero put the pillow under Rosalyn’s head, positioning it so Rosalyn’s neck was supported. She didn’t try to get back into the sleeping bag. She crouched next to her on the ground, leaned against the trunk of the persimmon tree, and waited for Rosalyn to wake up, too.

  * * *

  Seven days later, they buried Boy at Redwood Memorial Park in Fremont. The men who’d spent the past few nights playing pusoy dos and drinking in the garage to keep Boy’s body company until burial were the ones to carry his body out of the house, head first: Jaime, Gani, Ruben, Arnel, Edwin, Dante. Tradition stated that no immediate relatives were permitted to carry the body, so JR had to watch. Nobody looked back. Afterward, everyone went to the restaurant, knowing they couldn’t go straight home or the dead would follow them. But they all knew Boy would follow them home anyway.

  The song they played on repeat at the restaurant was the same song they’d played on repeat during the wake, Palaging Masaya by Tres Rosas. It had been his and Adela’s song, Rosalyn explained. It was an upbeat, sixties type of song that reminded Hero of the Beach Boys, bright and sunny, with a vein of minor-chord melancholy running through it. She tried to imagine a younger Boy, an even younger Adela, falling in love to the song. Adela’s face had been a study of stately composure for days, but at the first strains of the song, Hero saw Adela abruptly spin around and disappear into the kitchen, away from the people noisily eating food, asking each other for more Mang Tomas, more napkins, to pass the sawsawan. Both Rosalyn and Rhea stood. Rhea motioned for Rosalyn to sit down, then followed her mother into the kitchen.

  At the restaurant, a woman Hero had seen at the house during the wake but hadn’t recognized sat down next to Jaime, her body turned toward Rhea’s retreating one. She looked almost exactly like Cely, which was how Hero figured out that she was Jaime’s mother. Later, she saw the woman again—Auntie Loreta, Rosalyn informed Hero, sounding wistful—talking to Rhea outside the restaurant, standing by Boy’s truck. Loreta was holding Rhea’s hand.

  Rosalyn led the prayers for novena. Hero was there for all nine of the days, sometimes with Roni, sometimes alone. On the ninth day, Rosalyn recited, face translucent with grief, her voice splintering:

  Our brother Boy was faithful and believed in resurrection. Give to him the joys and the blessings of the life to come.

  The weekend after the last novena, Hero went to Rosalyn’s house, when she knew she would be home alone, the same time they usually had sex. Rosalyn was listless and dull when she answered the door. A look of open surprise came over her face at the sight of Hero, which then turned awkward and remorseful—she was trying to figure out a way to say that she wasn’t in the mood to fuck, Hero realized.

  Hero pushed past her into the house, making her way toward the kitchen, bag heavy on her shoulder. From behind her, Rosalyn called, What’s—

  Sit down here, Hero said. At the table.

  Rosalyn obeyed. Her face was gaunt; she’d lost a lot of weight in such a short amount of time, Hero observed. She’d deal with that later.

  Hero poured Tanduay rum into the plastic tabo she’d brought, then put a few quarters in it. It was supposed to be basi, of course, and the coins were supposed to be Filipino. Even some of their neighbors in Vigan thought it was quaint that the De Veras performed this ritual; not all Ilocano families did, certainly not the wealthy ones. One more proof of the indissoluble indio blood in the De Vera family tree. Hero didn’t know why they did it, only that they did.

  She’d never before done this for another person, hadn’t done it herself since she was a child, and even then, it’d been in a group of people, never alone, never just with one other person. She’d never been the one to preside over the ceremony; she’d always been the bystander, not the priest.

  Hero took out a washcloth that she’d also brought in the plastic bag. She dipped the cloth in the rum, wrung out of some excess, not too much; it had to be just wet enough. Then she turned to Rosalyn.

  Close your eyes, she said, but Rosalyn’s eyes were already closed.

  Hero rubbed the damp towel over Rosalyn’s face: across her forehead, over her eyelids, down over her cheeks, across the upper lip where her fine moustache had grown in because she hadn’t had the time to shave the past couple of weeks. Along her chin, down her neck, over her décolletage, into the dip of her collarbone. She took Rosalyn’s left arm and ran the cloth down from the cup of her shoulder, down to the elbow, rubbing gently, avoiding a new patch of eczema on the inner elbow that had shown up the first day of the novena, then down her wrist, into her hands. She took Rosalyn’s right arm and repeated the gesture.

  Hero put the cloth down and said: We should have done this right after the funeral. The next day you’re supposed to wash your hair in the river.

  Rosalyn opened her eyes, bleary. We have a shower.

  Hero nodded, stood up. Rosalyn didn’t move, reaching out to hold Hero’s hand, which was sore from the exertion. She didn’t say anything. Take your time, Hero replied.

  * * *

  Amihan hadn’t wanted to bury Jon-Jon. He’d told her back in Tarlac that in the event of his death, his wishes were to be cremated and scattered over the rice and cornfields in Isabela. He’d seen the way his older brother had died, unrecognizable except to those who’d loved every part of him and would have known those parts anywhere. He hadn’t wanted to go that way, and so they’d made a pact that if either of them died, the survivor would arrange the pyre.

  Jon-Jon had gotten caught in what they later learned was a skirmish with two men suspected of being AFP officers in civilian dress. At that point they’d been deep into planning the attack on the sawmill, and Jon-Jon had been one of the key strategists. When he first came to Isabela, he’d been defined by Amihan, his mentor and leader: like her he was taciturn and suspicious, quick to suggest liquidation at the faintest sign of treason, the first to volunteer on assassination missions or dangerous supply raids. But as the years passed, he’d come into his own as a conceptual thinker. More than any of them, he’d had a way of digesting and explaining larger ideas with a speed and an ease that far surpassed Amihan, even Teresa. The day he died, he’d just been in a nearby village, collecting what they’d come to call revolutionary taxes, the small fees paid by locals in exchange for protection and—liberation, Amihan said, eyes flinty, whenever someone wondered aloud what the difference was between the logging middlemen who took bribes, and the cadres.

  He’d been shot in the thigh, the belly, and the upper arm; his face was bruised, but the swelling on his fists said he’d fought back. Whoever attacked him had left him for dead, easy enough to pass off as a robbery gone bad. Nestor, an Agta tree cutter, found Jon-Jon on the side of the road, and recognized him as the young man who’d taken over some of the early Marxist lectures, made them bearable. Nestor laid Jon-Jon out in the back of his truck and brought him to the foot of the hill where they’d made their camp. By the time Nestor got up the hill and Teresa and Amihan had gone back down, Jon-Jon was unconscious, bleeding out. On Hero’s table, he woke up to Amihan gripping his hand. He said something to Amihan that Hero couldn’t hear, then called out for his mother. Ima. Hero still heard that call in the middle of the night, still saw Amihan standing at the edge of the pyre, closest to the flames, her face a wet red mask. She and Hero hadn’t slept together for over two years, but when the other cadres tried to get Amihan to release her hold on Jon-Jon, she refused to move—not until Hero put a bloody hand on her forearm, saying nothing.

  Later, Teresa came to Hero’s clinic-room, where Hero was still cleaning the table, sterilizing and rearranging her supplies. There had been long arguments among the cadres about Jon-Jon’s death; someone must have tipped the army off a
bout the impending sawmill attack, why else would they have targeted someone so important to the operation?

  You don’t have to be strong, Teresa said, quiet. Okay lang umiyak.

  Hero tightened her hands around the cloth. You want me to cry so people know I’m weak, or so people don’t think I might be a spy?

  Teresa leaned against the doorway. I don’t want you to not cry because you think you’re not allowed.

  Hero went back to wiping the table. She hadn’t been a twenty-year-old in front of Teresa for a long time—the last to leave the conversation, the first to say yes to an order. She tightened her jaw, said nothing. Focused on a thin wisp of Jon-Jon’s blood that was there, until it wasn’t.

  Donya, Teresa said. Nandito ako. Kung kailangan mo ako.

  It had been the truth, and Hero hadn’t cherished it enough at the time. I’m here. If you need me. A year later, the world had ended. She wouldn’t make that same mistake again.

  * * *

  Roni had passed some exam for St. Michael’s, and she was officially enrolled to begin the following school year, along with Charmaine. Paz told her the news thinking Hero would be glad, glad to no longer have to drop Roni off at school and pick her up. Hero tried to be glad about it, Roni would spend more time with her mother, every morning in the car. She tried to be glad about it, and thus had to avoid the maw of grief in her chest, yawning open indifferently whenever she let her guard down.

  It was difficult to get any idea of what Roni thought about the change; she was strangely detached from the whole thing, as if she didn’t quite realize what a new school would entail, that she’d have to be with an entirely different class, go to school in an entirely different city. She talked about her old classmates, or Rosalyn and Jaime and Adela, like she’d be able to see them every week. Hero didn’t have the heart to tell her that things would be different.

  At the beginning of July, Pol’s citizenship was finalized. Hero found out because she came home from Rosalyn’s one evening to find him alone in the kitchen, pouring from a bottle of Beefeaters. He looked up at her, unseeing.

  Amerikano-ak, Nimang, he said, holding up a piece of paper.

  Hero took the paper and looked down. I certify that the description given is true, and that the photograph affixed hereto is a likeness of me. Be it known that, pursuant to an application filed with the Attorney General at: SAN JOSE, CALIFORNIA, the Attorney General having found that APOLONIO CHUA DE VERA then residing in the United States, intends to reside in the United States when so required by the Naturalization Laws of the United States and had in all other respects complied with the applicable provisions of such naturalization laws and was entitled to be admitted to citizenship, such person having taken the oath of allegiance in a ceremony conducted by the UNITED STATES DISTRICT COURT FOR NORTHERN CALIFORNIA at SAN JOSE, CALIFORNIA on MARCH 17, 1993 that such person is admitted as a citizen of the United States of America.

  Hero had known Pol’s signature since she was a child. He had even taught her to forge it on the days when she needed a guardian’s signature on something and her parents were too busy with their political or social manipulation to sign a field trip release form. Pol’s signature had been a distinctive surgeon’s scribble, hasty yet precise, as a doctor writing so many prescriptions per day needed his signature to be, but it had a particular orthographic secret in it. After his name, he wrote M.D., as in A. De Vera M.D. Hero had incorporated that tic into her own signature, whenever she practiced for her future role. G. De Vera M.D. But in the end, she’d never used it.

  The signature on Pol’s certificate of naturalization, however, was a signature Hero had never seen before, in a handwriting she recognized as Pol’s but only through the shape of the letters. It said only: Apolonio De Vera.

  As far as she knew, it wasn’t a signature he’d started using in California; Hero had seen him sign checks, sign Roni’s attendance folders and report cards for school. His signature hadn’t changed. This wasn’t it. But on the certificate was written the unmistakable direction: Complete and true signature of holder.

  Pol held his glass up toward Hero. Mabuhay, he said, and emptied it.

  * * *

  A week after his citizenship came in, Pol said he wanted to take Roni to visit the Philippines. She’d never been before, and it was time for her to see where her parents were from. Paz, still wary and accommodating from her recent victory with Roni’s school transfer, agreed.

  We can plan for it next year, she said. Christmastime, maybe.

  Pol said he wanted to go in August.

  In August! Paz cried. In a month? You know how expensive that’ll be? I can’t take off work! It’ll be rainy season!

  Pol said he’d been saving up—all that cash he’d kept in the closet, Hero thought. He said he’d talked to Roni about it and she’d given her enthusiastic approval: she was starting a new school, a new chapter in her life, and it would be a symbolic trip to mark that passage into the next phase of her growing up. Pol pulled out the best flowered of all his platitudes, as if he were talking to one of Roni’s white teachers on the phone, and not his wife, in their kitchen.

  Paz said yes, knowing that if Pol had enough money to pay for both his ticket and Roni’s ticket, there wasn’t much she could do to argue. She reminded him that Roni’s new school began in September. September 14, she repeated every few days.

  Roni was excited, pestering Hero for information about the cities she was going to see, Manila and Vigan in particular. Saying things like And is it big, and is it pretty, and are there a lot of people, and do they look like me, and can I speak English, and what kinda food do they have, and do they have Sailor Moon?

  Do you want any souvenirs? Roni asked Hero at the airport, her hands clutching at a backpack, bought new, ostensibly for the new school year but she’d been too excited about it and wanted to break it in on her trip.

  Mm, Hero thought about it. Can’t think of anything. Surprise me.

  Cool, Roni replied.

  Pol was kissing Paz’s temple, brushing hair behind her ear, murmuring something Hero couldn’t hear. Then he turned to Hero. Take care of yourself, Nimang, Pol said, somber.

  She nodded, uncertain at the formality. I will.

  Pol and Roni were the only Filipinos traveling with just a backpack and one checked suitcase. All the other passengers on the Philippine Airlines flight had brought balikbayan boxes, throwing their hands up in frustration when the airport scale said a box was overweight, getting into conversations that were part argument, part groveling with the airport employees, explaining that they had a scale at home and they’d weighed all of the boxes beforehand, and Please, weigh it again, sir, thank you so much, then once the employee was out of earshot, Anak ng puta.

  Hero caught Pol’s gaze before he and Roni were about to leave for their gate. She stepped into the hug he half-held out for her, the smell of English Leather filling her nose. Take care of yourself, ha, Nimang? he said into her hairline. Take care of your Tita Paz.

  Hero nodded uncertainly at the formality, then was reminded, abruptly, of another formality, a lifetime ago. She touched his upper arm and before she knew what she was doing, said: Apo Dios ti kumoyog kenka.

  For a moment Pol looked stricken—then he burst out laughing, the fondness on his face so plain Hero felt her face warm at the sight of it. His hand came over hers on his arm, and he patted it. Agyamanak, he thanked her.

  As they left, Hero watched Roni’s ponytail sway and waited for her to turn around. She did, once. Hero waved. Roni waved back, beaming. Pol turned as an afterthought, and waved hastily. Next to Hero, Paz’s face was frozen, her eyes filled with tears. When she became aware of Hero looking at her, she wiped hastily at her face and spun around, car keys jangling.

  * * *

  The trip was for the whole month of August. During their stay, Hero talked to Roni on the phone just once, the line crackling, R
oni sounding remote and exuberant, telling Hero about the people selling handkerchiefs, biscocho, and Juicy Fruit chewing gum on EDSA, like it was something new to Hero.

  Roni said they would go visit Vigan next. That’s where you’re from! Roni chirped.

  Later, she heard Paz briefly speaking to Pol, asking how things were, reminding him of the dates of their return flight.

  Taking out the trash shortly after Roni and Pol had left, Hero saw a sheaf of salmon-colored papers, half-crumpled and stuffed deep into the plastic bag. She pulled some of them out, shaking the pages free of sauce and dried granules of rice. It was the application she’d seen Pol filling out, months ago. BOARD OF MEDICAL QUALITY ASSURANCE, 1430 Howe Avenue, Sacramento, California, 95825. Papers that listed Pol’s fourth-year clinical rotations, beginning in 1953. Certifications of clinical training, signed and stamped by University of Santo Tomas’s Dean of Medicine and Surgery. Pol must have been compiling the information for months.

  On the last page, a note: APPLICATION MUST SIGN THIS STATEMENT. I HEREBY CERTIFY (OR DECLARE) UNDER PENALTY OF PERJURY UNDER THE LAWS OF THE STATE OF CALIFORNIA, THAT THE FOREGOING INFORMATION CONTAINED IN THIS APPLICATION AND ANY ATTACHMENTS IS TRUE AND CORRECT. Here, Pol had put down his true signature.

  There was nothing wrong with the application, as far as she could see; perhaps it was just an extra copy that he hadn’t needed anymore. Maybe when he returned from the Philippines, he would start an internship at a local hospital. Just beneath the application papers in the trash can was a copy of the photo he’d taken that day, also crumpled and stained. She saw again the photo of Pol with his diamond-print tie. He looked more like Hamin in that photo than she had ever seen him look before. She turned it face-side down.