America Is Not the Heart

by Elaine Castillo

  Jaime followed the car to the sidewalk. Then he started waving, a big grin on his face.

  Okay, drive safely, love you! he called.

  Rosalyn swiveled her head at the sound, then ran up behind Jaime to punch him in the shoulder, hard. I fuckin’ told you not to say anything—

  Jaime doubled over, laughing and grimacing, clutching at his injury. Rosalyn put the tray of food down onto the roof of the Supra then shoved Jaime hard into the lawn, where he kept laughing, even on his side in the grass. On the lawn, Rosalyn kept him pinned with one arm. She used the other to wave at Hero, I got this. Hero waved, honked her car horn twice, and drove off.

  * * *

  When she got home, Pol was seated at the kitchen table helping Roni with her homework, which consisted of building a clay model of one of the California missions, Mission San Juan Bautista. The clay was cheap, whitish, and looked difficult to mold, given the misshapen forms of what was supposed to be a Spanish-style hacienda, soldiers’ barracks, a church, a plaza. They’d set the model up in an old Domino’s pizza box, and used the miniature tablelike plastic ornament that came with the pizzas to keep the slices together, as the centerpiece of the mission itself. It was perhaps meant to resemble a well.

  They both looked up at the same time as Hero walked through the door. She was jolted at how alike they looked; the exact same expressions in their faces, the same features, the same fatigue bordering on rage.

  You’re still up? Hero said, directing her words at Roni. You should go to sleep. It’s late.

  Roni said, I’m almost done. Hero looked at the mission, the crumbling clay roofs and poorly adjoined walls. It looked like the mission, after one of those earthquakes Roni was always having to do emergency drills for. There were a few blobs Hero couldn’t make sense of; people.

  I don’t know why they give you so much work, Pol was saying. I didn’t have to do this at your age.

  How was Jaime’s party, Roni asked. Was he mad that I didn’t come?

  Hero put the pancit down on the table. He wasn’t mad.

  What’s that, Roni said, looking at the trays with interest.

  Just pancit, Hero said. You hungry? You want some?

  Roni looked at the trays, then down at her model. I’m done with the model, she said. After this I have another assignment but it’s not due ’til day after tomorrow.

  Let me get you a plate, Hero said, but Pol stood up.

  I’ll get it. Roni, take the model off the table.

  Roni stood, shakily balancing the pizza box on her forearms. Hero held the box from the other end, and Roni walked her backward until they could set the model down safely on the floor away from foot traffic.

  Then Roni went to her backpack and pulled out a sheaf of writing paper, sat back down at the table and started writing just the title of the next assignment while she waited for her food.

  Hero sat down next to Roni, leaned over to take a look. A book report?

  Roni nodded. But I’m making the book up this time.

  What? Why?

  ’Cause the last time I wrote a book report Mrs. Kelley didn’t believe that I read the book and she gave me an F. She doesn’t believe any of my book reports. I used the word virago in an essay and she made me define it in front of everybody else to prove that I knew it. So I’m gonna make up a book that sounds like something she’ll believe I can read.

  Something she’ll believe you can read, Hero repeated in disbelief.

  Roni nodded. Yep.

  Nimang, you want a plate, too? Pol called.

  They’d barely spoken to each other since he and Roni had returned; she’d barely looked at him. She looked down at her feet and prepared to say no, but instead said, Yes, please.

  Pol came back with two plates and two forks, started piling pancit onto the first plate, when the garage door started to open. It was just past midnight. Pol sagged with relief as the sound of Paz’s car engine approached. Not long after, the doorway to the garage opened.

  Paz jumped at the sight of everybody at the kitchen at once. Why are you guys still awake? It’s late already.

  I had homework, Roni said. Now we’re eating.

  You want pancit, mahal? Pol asked.

  Paz looked at the plate in his hands. I—okay. Sino na luto?

  It’s from Jaime’s birthday party, Hero said. I think Lola Adela made it.

  Roni brightened at the name. When can I go to her again?

  Ask your mom, Hero said, not meeting Paz’s eyes, staring at a smooth swath of forearm skin where Roni’s eczema had once been.

  When you have free time, Paz said. Ate Hero can take you if it’s okay with her.

  It’s okay with me, Hero said.

  Roni clapped so excitedly she dropped her pencil, and had to lower her leg to the ground to pick it up from the floor with her toes like a monkey. Don’t do that, Paz said.

  Pol put a plate of pancit in front of Roni, gesturing for her to move her papers so she wouldn’t get grease on them. Hero thought Roni’s plate had been grossly overfilled, until Pol slid her own plate in front of her. The plate Pol had made for her was so full of pancit she could barely see the white of the melamine, could barely see the red and blue flowers edged along its rim. The pile of noodles was nearly three inches high. This is too much, Hero said. Pol balanced a fork at the side of her plate and didn’t reply.

  Paz was getting her own plate and fork out of the cupboard. She came around the side of the table and before she could begin serving herself, Pol took the fork from her hands and began shoveling pancit onto her plate in big, generous piles. Hero saw Paz open her mouth, probably to echo what Hero had said, that it was too much, but she closed it again.

  Paz took her seat between Roni and Pol. She picked up a wedge of lemon on her plate, squeezed it over the pancit, then began digging into the mass of noodles, crunching along bits of pork and cabbage, her right leg slowly lifting up onto the chair, her white uniform pants stretching.

  Hero started eating; it was good pancit, better than usual. Jaime’s mom might have made this, she said. Not Lola Adela.

  It’s good, Paz judged. Maasim. They put a lot of lime in it already.

  Mm, Roni approved. Yeah, it’s sour.

  You like sour, Paz said, half a declaration, half a question, checking to make sure her knowledge was up to date.

  Mm-hmm.

  Pol got up suddenly and went back to the cupboard. He pulled out a fourth plate, a fourth fork, and returned to the table.

  Paz eyed him, fork suspended in front of her mouth. She didn’t say anything.

  Pol didn’t say anything, either, but piled a portion of pancit onto his plate, larger even than the one he’d given Hero, if that was possible. He squeezed a lemon all over it, then squeezed another. He went back to his seat. Bon appétit, he said, with a crooked, formal smile. Then he scooped up an impossibly large forkful of noodles, much larger than his mouth would fit comfortably, and started eating.

  Paz made a sound, somewhere between an uncertain laugh and a more certain cry. Dahan-dahan, baka you’ll choke.

  Hero tried to remember the last time she’d seen Paz and Pol eat together. She couldn’t. She couldn’t even remember the last time they’d all eaten together. Pol had been in the Philippines during his birthday; maybe he had eaten pancit in Vigan, or somewhere else in the Philippines at the time of his birthday, but Hero doubted it. Since coming back, Pol looked thinner, despite not having lost any visible weight in his paunch or his face. He was thinner but heavier, as if he’d gained all the weight in his bones.

  Pol’s second forkful was just as large as the first, and he shoved it in before the first was finished, so his cheeks puffed up, chipmunklike, running out of storage space. Roni started giggling at him, then forked up a proportionately large bite and put it in her own mouth, imitating him like she thought they were play
ing a game.

  Paz tsk-ed at her daughter. Careful, anak.

  Compelled, Hero started eating her own pancit faster, shoveling spoonfuls in, the thin rice noodles slipping raggedly down her throat, sometimes after she’d barely chewed them. She took another greenish lemon wedge and squeezed it generously onto the remainder of pancit on her plate, so the next bites made her eyes squint and her tongue sting.

  Roni finished her plate first; compared to the rest of the table, Pol had given her the most reasonable portion. Wordless, Hero reached for Roni’s empty plate and passed it to Paz, who refilled the plate, then passed it back to Hero, who passed it back to Roni, still instinctively taking care to bear the weight of the heavier plate with her palms, even though her grip had improved of late. That reminded her; she still needed to ask Paz if she could still recommend anybody for the PT. After she was done eating, she thought, her mouth still bulging.

  Next to Hero, Roni started forking the pancit into her mouth with renewed fervor, having sensed that she was part of something that was happening both outside of her and yet also secreted within her, sourced from some inherited hollow, nameless and hungry and theirs. Pol was working on a bite of his own, just as enormous as the previous ones, noodles hanging out of his mouth and dangling wetly over his chin, slowly, slowly being pulleyed up past his lips.

  Across from Hero, even Paz was starting to stuff her mouth, faster and faster, with bigger and bigger forkfuls of the long noodles, lips trembling, eyes wet and red, jaw tight except for the determined chewing, one hand raised to her mouth to make sure her dentures didn’t suddenly pop out of place. Hero turned from Paz and caught Pol’s gaze. His lips were all tremors, too, and his eyes wet, too, and those lips and eyes were still the same ones on her own face, and in a jerky fit of chagrin and love Hero cut her gaze elsewhere. At Roni, who had graduated to using her fingers to pincer heaps of the noodles straight into her mouth, eyebrows high on her forehead, looking around owlishly to make sure she was still in on the joke.

  For a brief, queasy moment, Hero looked down, thinking she might have to spit some of her noodles back out onto the side of her plate, or perhaps more discreetly into a paper towel. Instead she kept chewing, pushing past the feeling, and looked up again. Pol was still working on the same bite, the noodles now off his chin and in his mouth, concentrating hard, cheeks shining with the strain. Next to him, Paz was serving herself again, hand closed around the handle of her fork so tightly that Hero could see bone. Hero knew her own hand was gripping the fork just as tightly.

  Then, before she was even fully done with her serving, not even halfway through the mouthful she was still chewing, Hero let go of the fork, pushed it aside. Picked her plate up again. Asked for seconds.

  ACKNOWLEDGMENTS

  In the spirit not of acknowledgments, but of utang na loob, or absolutely unpayable debts of the heart:

  Like everything else in my life, writing this book wouldn’t have been possible without other people. To my mother, without whose ferocious love and support neither this book nor its author would exist. Thank you for helping with some of the fact-checking—along with seemingly the entire Filipino nursing staff in at least two Bay Area hospitals who made their editorial opinions known through the diasporic powers of WhatsApp and Skype. To my father, great friend, and the first person to say, Read this. The world without you is that word you taught me: saray. To all sides of the clan, the ones related by blood and the ones who didn’t need to be, who saw me reading and left me to it, who picked us up from school after their shifts, who made food, posted bail, wired money, grew vegetables, to everyone who shared a house, a plate, a life.

  To Emma Paterson: dear friend, vital first reader, and agent extraordinaire, who believed in this book before it existed, and gave its author a safe place to land. None of this would be possible without you.

  To Laura Tisdel and James Roxburgh, whose care, insight, and generosity made editing this book a joy. To their respective teams at Viking/Penguin and Atlantic, without whose tireless, passionate work books simply don’t get made. At Viking/Penguin, many thanks to Amy Sun, Olivia Taussig, Theresa Gaffney, Lavina Lee, Tess Espinoza, Samuel Raim, Christina Caruccio, Jane Cavolina, Juliann Barbato, Cassandra Garruzzo, and Fabiana Van Arsdell. At Atlantic, many thanks to Kirsty Doole, Jamie Forrest, and Poppy Mostyn-Owen. Thank you to John Freeman for publishing an excerpt of the novel, and to the whole Freeman family—Allison Malecha, John Mark Boling—for the incredible kindness and support. To the foreign rights team at Rogers, Coleridge & White for helping to give this book more homes than I could have ever dreamed: Laurence Laluyaux, Stephen Edwards, Zoë Nelson, Tristan Kendrick, Nicholas Owen, and Katharina Volckmer. Special shout-out to Elda Rotor at Penguin Classics, in deep gratitude for the early enthusiasm and solidarity; getting an Ilocano thumbs-up meant everything. Special shout-out also to Matt Varga, fellow Pinoy and all-around design gangster, who gave this book its American cover, and in doing so imparted what felt like talismanic protection, in the way of anting-anting. I’m grateful every single day for this diaspora, and am overjoyed to find us everywhere.

  Thank you to the Voices of Our Nations Arts Foundation (VONA) Fiction crew of 2014—Sharline Chiang, Frank Costilla, Navdeep Singh Dhillon, Junot Díaz, Lilly Gonzalez, Dayna Mauricia, Lateef McLeod, Ruby Murray, Karen Onojaife, Melissa Sipin, and Ursula Villarreal-Moura—who saw this book’s ugly baby pictures and responded with more compassion and understanding than any writer could hope for. A week with you taught me more than any degree factory ever could.

  To Amaal Said, cherished friend, brilliant poet and photographer; it was a pleasure and privilege to be in front of your lens. Thank you for making me feel seen, cared for, and myself.

  To my girl Rachel Long, beloved friend and heart-searing poet, teacher and organizer extraordinaire. Thank you for a million, trillion things: for the days in the park and the nights in the pub, for our respective couches, for all the last trains home, and for simply existing.

  To F., forever.

  In terms of utang na loob, this one’s last but definitely not least:

  To the Bay, and in particular the 408. This book, along with its author, owes you everything.

  ABOUT THE AUTHOR

  Elaine Castillo was born in the San Francisco Bay Area. She is a graduate of the University of California, Berkeley. America Is Not the Heart is her first novel.

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