America Is Not the Heart

by Elaine Castillo

  Over where, Roni said absently.

  The Philippines.

  It was okay. It was weird. Everybody was so.

  And then Roni made a gesture with her body, an imitation of someone buttoned-up and prim, hands folded, face angelic, proper.

  Nobody even knew how to roller-skate! I had to teach my nephews. Did you know I have nephews who are older than me?

  Hero smiled. We’re cousins and I’m a lot older than you.

  You’re not that much older.

  A lot older, Hero said. Like ancient.

  Not even, Roni giggled. Then her face suddenly went solemn.

  Do you think Mom and Papa are gonna make up, she asked.

  Hero startled. I don’t know. What do you mean?

  They’re fighting. Because I went away.

  They’re fighting because Tito Pol took you away.

  Roni shrugged. But I didn’t really mind. I liked it over there. He showed me the house, and the school. I kinda thought it was okay. It’s just when I started to think about living there—

  She stopped, thinking of the right words. Hero stared at her, tried to moderate the force of her stare and couldn’t.

  Then Roni said, I don’t know. It’s like when I didn’t really think about it, it was okay. But then when I thought about it some more, I couldn’t.

  Did you tell him that?

  Roni nodded. Toward the end. But he was already saying we had to go back. He said it wasn’t right to stay. And I was like, Duh. But it’s like. I guess I didn’t get that if I stayed there, it meant that I couldn’t come back here.

  Did you want to stay there? Hero asked, ashen. She hadn’t thought about what she would do if she’d managed to bring Roni back, only to find out that Roni had preferred living over there. She hadn’t even considered the possibility.

  Mmm. Probably not? Roni said.

  Then it’s good you came back, Hero said, nearly cutting her off in relief.

  Roni’s body curled inward, coy. Did you miss me?

  Yes.

  Did you think about me lots?

  Lots, Hero said, her voice thankfully even. A lot.

  I missed you, too, Roni said, smiling so hard the apples of her cheeks shone. Lots!

  Hero had to tear her eyes away from Roni. Okay, she managed, ready to end the conversation and get back to watching television, but then Roni said, Oh and I met your parents.

  Ah.

  Roni didn’t say anything else. Sensing that silence would turn Roni confused and unhappy, alone in her thoughts, Hero prompted: Were they nice to you?

  Mm. Yeah? They gave us a big room. They had orange trees inside their house! There was a garden but it was inside the house! Is that where you grew up?

  No, Hero said. They moved into that house after I left already.

  Then she asked again, just to make sure: My parents were really nice to you?

  Roni scrunched her face up. Yeeaaahh—mm. Kinda. They remind me of Charmaine’s grandma.

  Hero fought the urge to snort, then realized she didn’t have any reason to fight it. She snorted. Did my mother put gum in your hand?

  No, Roni giggled. Then, somber: They were kinda quiet. Kinda like you, I guess. I asked them if they had any pictures of you when you were a baby but they said no.

  Hero looked down at her own lap, the dry, folded hands in them. She started pulling gently at a hangnail. You wanted to look at pictures of me?

  Yeah. It’s only fair, Roni complained. You got to meet me when I was a kid. I wanted to see you as a kid.

  You’re still a kid.

  I mean a kid, kid.

  You’re still a kid kid, Hero said. Roni blew hair up into her bangs, vexed. Who had cut those bangs, in the Philippines, Hero wondered. Next week she would take Roni to Mai’s and get them trimmed.

  Did you see the retrato? Of Lola Geronima?

  Yeah, Roni said. She shuddered. It was scary. She looks like a ghost. It’s like her eyes follow you around the room.

  Hero started laughing. I thought that, too. When I was a kid.

  She’s really white. Like really really white.

  She had Chinese ancestors. The Chua side of the family—your Papa’s mom, our grandma—comes from mostly Chinese merchants. Years and years ago.

  Papa says I look like her. I don’t think so.

  Tito Pol probably wants to see you in her. She died when he was very young.

  Roni made a considering noise. Yeah, I heard. Then she let her arms fall to her sides again.

  Are Mom and Papa gonna make up? she asked again suddenly.

  Hero glanced at her face to judge the expression there; she looked like she’d been thinking it for a long time. It couldn’t have escaped her that if she’d stayed in the Philippines, she wouldn’t have been living with her mother; that her parents would have effectively separated. I don’t know, Hero told her. Your mom’s trying to forgive him.

  Roni threw her legs over Hero’s lap on the couch, then leaned up to rest her elbows on her knees, boxing Hero in, her eyes large and searching.

  How long does it take to forgive somebody? she asked.

  Hero rested a hand on the short calves in her lap. Roni was definitely not going to grow up to be that tall; she might even be shorter than Paz. She looked at Roni and shrugged, trying to find the right words, settling for words.

  One way to find out, she said.

  She turned back to the television. Next to her, she felt Roni chewing on that answer, eyebrows stitched together, a line between them. She was getting older, one day at a time.

  It feels like there’re a lot of ways, Roni said finally.

  * * *

  So I found an apartment, Rosalyn said, sucking guyabano juice out of a straw and leaning against the countertop in front of Hero. At Sunnyhills. Right around the corner. Rent’s okay.

  That’s great, Hero said, meaning it. Rosalyn smiled around her straw.

  Then she pulled back, frowning. Yeah—did you even know about the Sunnyhills neighborhood? I didn’t even know anything about it, it was just the manager of the apartments who told me, he gave me a flyer. Some white dude.

  She put the juice down. Did you know that when Ben Gross was mayor of Milpitas that he was the first Black mayor of a major city in America?

  How would I know that, Hero asked, bemused. I haven’t lived here for that long.

  Well, I’ve lived here for like twenty years and I didn’t know that shit! Nobody tells you! I didn’t even know Milpitas counted as a major city! The dude at the apartment building was saying that in the sixties Santa Clara County used to be like nearly all white, and then Ford—I think it was Ford, maybe it was something else—moved their plant from Richmond to Milpitas, or opened up a new one or something, and then they had to find housing for the workers, who were pretty much all Black. ’Cause housing was segregated back then or something, right? And the guy who became mayor, Ben Gross, worked with a bunch of people, developers, church people, law people to create housing. And then Sunnyhills was the first—hold on, I have the flyer in my pocket. Yeah. Okay. The first planned integrated housing development in California.

  Rosalyn started to speak louder and louder, the more she heard her own words, flapping the paper around. It says he even showed around some Russian politicians coming over to visit Milpitas! To see what an integrated neighborhood looked like! Do you know even who Nikita Khrushchev is?

  She didn’t wait for Hero’s answer. I fucking don’t! How come they don’t tell you that in schools here? How come they don’t even tell you about your own city? I lived here for twenty years and I didn’t know that. Grandma didn’t know, my mom didn’t know, Jaime didn’t know.

  Rosalyn frowned. What’s even weirder is to think that Milpitas was an all-white town before. That’s what the dude was saying. Milpitas used to be a
ll white people. But, like. I don’t see any white people anywhere. Do you?

  No.

  And, like. Okay, I get that. They all moved to Los Altos or whatever. But I barely see any Black people here, either. So, like. What happened? If all that housing stuff happened in the sixties?

  Maybe you happened, Hero said. Us.

  Rosalyn looked startled. Us, she repeated.

  There are reasons people live in places, Hero said, not realizing she was quoting Teresa until she was doing it. There are consequences, too.

  We turfed out other people, you mean.

  I don’t know. But did you think it could only happen the other way around? Hero asked.

  Rosalyn didn’t say anything. She looked down at the paper in her hands, crumpled from hard handling.

  Hero thought about telling Rosalyn that in the time since she’d arrived in California, she’d observed that Rosalyn’s Milpitas consisted of the street where she lived, the streets where her friends lived, a two-mile wide boundary around the restaurant, and the Asian strip malls around town where the Filipino grocery stores and bakeries were located. Now, extraordinarily, it included the street where Hero and Roni lived. Hero didn’t know how many other Milpitases there were; one for every person living there, she imagined. It seemed likely that somebody else might share Rosalyn’s ferocious possessiveness over the town, without ever having even stepped foot in Boy’s BBQ and Grill.

  Hero asked, Have you seen that that barbecue place on Main Street, just by the overpass?

  She’d glimpsed it every now and then, whenever she was driving Roni from her old school and they took the Main Street route that passed by Gold Ribbon, picking up pan de leche and chicharon when they were both hungry for a snack and couldn’t wait until they arrived at home or the restaurant.

  Rosalyn thought about it.

  Yeah? I think so? Joe’s or something? Jimmy’s?

  Have you ever gone in?

  No, Rosalyn said, then a look came over her face. Hero recognized that look, remembered what it had felt like to tell other students at UST about Vigan only to discover from the look of terror on their faces that her perspective on the world had been so much narrower than she’d imagined, a knife’s width.

  It can’t be the first time you’ve been wrong about everything, Hero said after a moment.

  Rosalyn looked up at that; stirred, unconsoled. No, she agreed.

  * * *

  A few days later, Rosalyn drove Hero over to the complex, just to show her the outside of the buildings. She didn’t officially have a rental contract yet, and she hadn’t booked another viewing, so she couldn’t show Hero the inside of the actual apartment. She said she wouldn’t be able to finalize the whole thing until she was sure she got the job at Valley Fair.

  But she pointed up to the window of her supposed future apartment and described it, her hands gesturing to indicate a studio apartment: the living area, where she could fit a sofa with a foldout bed; the bathroom, toward the back of the building, no window but the landlord had just put a new fan in; the curtained window from the small galley kitchen that looked down onto the parking lot where they were standing.

  So if I’m cooking or doing something in there, I’ll be able to see when your car pulls up, Rosalyn said.

  Afterward, Rosalyn drove Hero back to the parking lot of the restaurant, empty and darkened except for the street lamps, all the stores and restaurants closed. Hero’s car looked small and spare, the neon lights from BOY’S BBQ & GRILL reflected on the surface of the windshield.

  Rosalyn pulled up alongside the car. Hero kissed her, then climbed out of the front passenger seat.

  You got your keys? Rosalyn called.

  Hero pulled the turtle out of her jacket pocket and shook it. She’d quickly grown to like the weight of it in her hands, the sight of its opalescent shell winking up at her from behind the steering wheel.

  Okay, Rosalyn said, as Hero leaned down into the driver’s side window to give her another kiss. Tell Roni I said hi.

  I will.

  Tell her to come by already. ’Cause she owes me like twenty of my books. And I think she stole a movie.

  I’ll ask her about it.

  ’Kay, Rosalyn said, putting her key in the ignition, and motioning with her head for Hero to get out of the way. Drive safe.

  Drive safely, love you, Hero said, then stopped.

  Rosalyn’s key slipped out of the ignition. That was the only movement she made, for a moment that seemed to Hero to last an eternity—until finally Rosalyn turned just her head, eyes as big as dinner plates. It was a look she’d been shooting at Hero for months now, for what felt like forever, and to that look Hero had been wanting to retort, for months now, forever, What the hell do you want from me, which she knew wasn’t something she could have said out loud, was barely something she could have even thought, because she didn’t want to hear the answer pinging back in her head. It was a truth that Hero could have set her bones by: what Rosalyn wanted, she didn’t have to give. Not to her, not to anyone, not ever, not anymore. Hero had known for years what it was like to want something that nobody in the living world could ever give you, and she wouldn’t have wished that feeling on anyone—especially not on the woman in front of her now, face shucked bare, luminous, and so crushingly lovely that Hero’s whole body ached to be far from her, starting deep in her chest and radiating out into her arms, circuiting through all the long ago shorted-out nerves and the staggery veins, lighting up the thin webbing between her fingers, sinking into all the hurt-hard places where for years only pain had come to settle, and gather, and home. Hero ached to be far from her, knowing that nearness would present a yet more grievous and enduring ache. She stepped forward.

  Rosalyn’s whole body shuddered in recoil.

  Hero stopped moving, didn’t say anything, and waited.

  You get one takeback, Rosalyn whispered at last.

  She lifted her index finger. It shook.

  Hero squared her shoulders and looked Rosalyn in the eye. Said,

  I’m good.

  Rosalyn’s chest rose and fell as she searched Hero’s face, fraught—searching, searching, searching; finding. Wait, are we still going home separately tonight?

  No, Hero said, already opening her arms, already finding Rosalyn there.

  * * *

  By the time Jaime’s birthday came around, Rosalyn had figured out a way to work So by the way she loves me into nearly any sentence that crossed her lips, much to the despair of all those around her, not least of all Hero herself.

  Jaime wanted to celebrate his birthday at home, which Rosalyn protested against for at least a week. It’s your thirtieth, Lowme, we gotta do something big, she said.

  But Jaime shook his head. I don’t wanna do anything big.

  And not because of Lolo Boy, he said, completing the sentence that was about to come to Rosalyn’s just-opened mouth. I just want something low-key.

  ’Cause you’re getting old, Rosalyn surmised.

  ’Cause I’m getting old, Jaime allowed.

  It was an ordinary birthday; cake and barbecue and pancit. The only thing different was that they held it at Jaime’s house. It was Hero’s first time meeting Jaime’s mother, besides seeing her at Boy’s funeral. Loreta greeted her warmly at the door, before eventually receding farther and farther away from the party, the louder Gani’s DJ-ing in the garage got, 93 ’Til Infinity echoing all the way down the street. Loreta probably wasn’t used to so many people being in the house. The next time Hero saw her, she was on the couch with Rhea, nominally watching a Filipino movie but actually talking to each other, Rhea’s hands waving expressively.

  In the garage, Gani had started playing a remix of the Four Tops’ Still Waters Run Deep, a version that slowed, amped, and then looped the wordless crooning at the beginning of the track, so all Hero could hear was a plantiv
e Aaahhhhh-aaaahh-aaaah-oooh-aaaaah, while Maricris’s boyfriend and two of his friends showed off a dance move they’d been practicing, probably just for this very occasion, Maricris and Rochelle sitting cross-legged on the floor of the garage, along with the girls from Maricris’s group, their faces lit up by the fluorescent lights overhead, heads swaying to the beat.

  As people started leaving, Loreta approached Hero to insist that she take home what felt like the entirety of the leftover pancit; two large foil trays, filled to the brim.

  I can’t take all this, she said. Give some to the others.

  Loreta shook her head. Everybody took already. Just take it.

  Behind Loreta, Rhea was in the kitchen making a show sliding leftover cake into Tupperware, not meeting Hero’s eye or giving any indication of having seen her all evening.

  How come Roni didn’t come tonight, Jaime asked as he walked Hero to her car, not sounding quite as drunk as he’d been a couple of hours earlier. The air in Milpitas smelled of shit, like it always did. Hero had long ago stopped noticing it, except for the days when the smell was particularly strong, like tonight.

  She has a lot of homework for her new school. I think she’s making you a gift. Don’t tell her I told you.

  Okay, Jaime said, pleased. Then he called over his shoulder. Rosalyn, Hero’s going now—

  I’m coming, I’m coming, hold up, Rosalyn said, still holding a half-empty foil tray of what looked like an assortment of puto and kutsinta. She’d been tasked with the duty of distributing leftovers to everybody, along with Loreta.

  You’re going? You’re not too drunk? I could drive you.

  I just had one beer, Hero said, climbing into the driver’s seat. Careful walking home.

  Ha, ha, Rosalyn said. She leaned forward through the window and gave Hero a quick kiss. Hero hadn’t even thought to look to see if Rhea was around, watching. From the twitchy look on Rosalyn’s face, she had thought of it, but decided to do it anyway. Rhea wasn’t watching. Hero shook the thought away. She started the car and began backing out of the driveway.