It felt as if my heart had jumped into my mouth.
Oh god.
What do I tell her?
I pulled her closer. “Shh … Everything’s going to be fine.”
Boom! Boom! Crackle. Boom!
The thunder made my ears ring.
Boom! Boom! Boom!
Chiqui nuzzled my shirt. She began to sob and heave and cough. The rain fell even harder. I shielded her with my body. Shh. I kept on repeating, Shh. Shh. Shh.
What else could I do?
“Pablo.”
I looked at Mamá.
“We already talked about this,” she said. “I’m your mother. Don’t you think I know what’s best for Chiqui?”
Chiqui trembled. She whipped around and faced Mamá. “Mee no go. NO go!”
“Don’t worry, Chiqui. I’m not going to let anyone take you,” I said, loud enough so Mamá could hear me. My arms throbbed and twitched. I wanted to punch something. Hard. But I stood my ground. “You lied … at Heinz’s house … You told Chiqui you would take care of her. You said it. I heard you.”
She exhaled and curled her fingers around her imaginary calming stone. “Everything I’ve done … everything I’m doing is for us, mi amor. You’ll see…”
“For us? Don’t you mean you? Because everything you’ve done is for you. I never wanted to leave California. I never wanted to travel the world. I never wanted any of it. Do you think I like not having a real home? Not having any friends or family around? When are you going to realize that this isn’t just about Chiqui?”
Mamá gasped. “But—but why didn’t you tell me?”
“Because I was scared,” I said, staring at the ground. “I was scared of losing you, just like I lost Dad.”
“Oh, Pablito—” Her voice cracked. Tears dribbled from her eyes. She was crying. It was the kind of crying she called ugly. But to me it was beautiful. Even with all the sadness, the anger, and the frustration—Mamá was still beautiful. “I didn’t know,” she whispered. “I didn’t know you were so unhappy.”
“That’s just it, Mamá. I was unhappy. But I’m not anymore. I like it here. It’s not perfect. But it feels right. It feels like home.” I coaxed Chiqui into my arms again. “And home is you, me, and Chiqui. She’s part of us now. We need her just as much as she needs us.”
Mamá didn’t move. She didn’t say anything. I could tell she was giving it some real thought. Her face was blank, but her mouth was slightly puckered, as if she wasn’t quite sure what words were going to come out. Chiqui looked at her, then at me, then at her, then at me again. It was obvious how nervous she was by how she breathed—shallow, erratic, fast. Still, she managed to whisper something to me.
But I couldn’t hear.
I bent down. “What is it, Chiqui?”
“Sista.” She patted her chest. “Broter.” She patted my chest.
“Yes, Chiqui. Sister. Brother,” I said with a nod.
Mamá took a few wobbly steps and dropped to her knees. She embraced us both. Her tears dripped on my head and neck. The owls cooed softly. The rain stopped—I hadn’t even noticed.
It was peaceful.
Mamá breathed deep. She cupped Chiqui’s face and kissed her on the forehead. “Chiqui, mi amor.” And then she pulled me closer and kissed me too. “Pablito … how about you and me and Chiqui go home now?”
I nodded.
Chiqui smiled.
And then we went home.
All together.
The three of us.
FIFTY
TWO WEEKS LATER
The hospital waiting room smelled like Vicks VapoRub. Not because some person with a horrible chest cold was sitting nearby, or because a clumsy nurse had spilled a gigantic tub of it right in front of me. No. It smelled like Vicks VapoRub because I’d smeared a bunch of it on my upper lip. I read somewhere that coroners used it at the morgue so they wouldn’t have to smell the stench of dead bodies.
Ugh.
Gross.
Anyways, there weren’t any dead bodies or anything. But I thought maybe, just maybe, the Vicks VapoRub might make the hospital smell more tolerable. If I was going to have to sit there for hours while Chiqui had her surgery, the last thing I wanted was to inhale the germs and bacteria and viruses, which to me smelled like a toxic bouquet of old sweat, farts, vomit, and bad breath.
“Kumusta? How are you all holding up?” Ms. Grace appeared, holding a big white box with green polka dots and a cardboard hot beverage holder filled with cups. “I’ve got doughnuts, coffee, and hot chocolate,” she said, putting the stuff on a table.
Mamá squealed and pounced on the nearest coffee cup. “Gracias, Grace. This is exactly what the doctor ordered.”
Exactly what the doctor ordered. We were in a hospital. It was kind of funny, actually. But Mamá wasn’t laughing. She just sat there sipping her coffee. Her brow was furrowed, her freckles were paler, her hair was frizzed, and her clothes were wrinkled from sitting and standing and pacing, over and over and over again.
“Any news?” asked Ms. Grace.
Mamá shook her head. “Nothing yet.”
Ms. Grace tucked herself into the seat next to her and rubbed her back as if to console her. “I’m sure we’ll hear something soon.”
Silence.
I looked away and started counting the green polka dots on the doughnut box.
One. Two. Three.
They said it was a routine surgery, nothing to worry about.
Then how come it felt as if decades had already gone by?
Four. Five. Six.
Squeak. Squeak. I looked up at a pair of squishy white nurse’s shoes. But they only walked in the opposite direction toward some other people, worried about some other patient.
Seven. Eight. Nine.
The loudspeaker crackled. Maybe they would call us.
“Doctor Arellano, please come to the nurses’ station.”
Nope.
I exhaled and then inhaled. The Vicks VapoRub made the insides of my nostrils burn. I coughed.
Ten. Eleven. Twelve.
All the polka dot counting was making my eyes water. I shut them. I didn’t want anyone to think I was crying. I mean, there wasn’t anything wrong with crying. I wasn’t sad, though. I was worried. Mortified, actually.
What if something did go wrong?
What if there was a complication?
What if … what if she …
Ms. Grace stood and smoothed the creases from her pants. “I’ll go to the nurses’ station and see what I can find out.”
“Thank you, Grace.” As soon as she was gone, Mamá patted the empty seat next to her. “Come, mi amor.”
I didn’t say anything. I just plunked myself from one spot to the other.
Thirteen. Fourteen.
The doughnut box was farther away. So I had to squint to count.
Fifteen. Sixteen. Seventeen. Eighteen.
Mamá shifted positions and cleared her throat. “I—I wanted to talk to you, Pablo.”
I found her eyes, which at that moment were the same soothing green color as the peridot crystal in her grasp. She took my hand, placed the crystal on my palm, and then placed hers on top, like we were making a peridot hand sandwich.
“I wanted to say … I’m sorry … after everything that’s happened. With everything that’s still happening, I haven’t gotten the chance to properly apologize.” She leaned closer so our shoulders touched. “I’ve been selfish. As a mother, I should have considered the consequences of what I was doing. I should have seen. I should have known you were unhappy … From now on, I want you to open up to me. I want you to feel like you can tell me anything. Anything at all. Whatever it is, we’ll work it out. Together. Okay?”
I felt a strange sort of warmth in my hand. The spot where the crystal was radiated to the tips of my fingers, radiated to my wrist, into my arm, into my chest, into my heart, into the pit of my stomach.
Inhale. Exhale.
Miraculously, I was calme
r.
“Okay.”
We opened the peridot hand sandwich and I gave the crystal back to her.
I smiled.
Inhale. Exhale.
My throat was clear.
“Mamá.” She looked at me.
Inhale. Exhale.
And then all the words—the ones I was thinking and feeling—poured out. “Mamá. You really should know that I can’t stand hospitals. Just the thought of them makes me itch all over. Sitting here feels like the worst kind of torture. Like I’m inside a septic tank filled with puss and puke and poop and germs and all sorts of deadly viruses … If it weren’t for Chiqui, I would have already run down that hallway, out the door,” I said, pointing at the exit sign.
Mama’s eyes widened. “Oh, Pablito, mi amor! Madre mía! All this time you’ve been suffering.”
Squeak. Squeak.
“Carmen. Pablo.” Ms. Grace was back. This time with Chiqui’s doctor.
Doctor Huang was still wearing his scrubs. He had a surgical mask hanging around his neck, so his entire face was exposed.
His smile—it was unmistakable.
“The surgery went well, very well. Chiqui is in recovery. You can go see her now,” he said.
The surgery went well.
It went well!
Thank god. Thank goodness.
My eyes watered. Again. Tears. There were tears of joy, tears of relief dripping down my face. I wiped them away with my sleeve.
“She’s okay, Pablo.” Mamá hugged me from the side. Her freckles had somehow come back to life, hopping around from one pink cheek to the other. She took my hand and squeezed it.
“Come, mi amor … Let’s go see Chiqui’s new smile.”
* * *
The door opened. At first all I saw were the pastel-purple walls and the yellow linoleum tiles and the rollaway beds and all the contraptions with tubes and lights and numbers and sounds.
Bleep. Bleep. Bleep.
There was a nurse with Minnie Mouse scrubs leaning over one of the beds. She straightened her back and smiled. “Good job, Chiqui.”
That’s when I saw her. The pastel-purple walls, the yellow linoleum tiles, the rollaway beds, the contraptions—they all disappeared. All I could see was Chiqui. Her eyes. Her mouth. She was trying so hard not to smile. But I could still see it hidden through the clear surgical tape, through the stitches that ran between her lip and her nose, through her tender, swollen flesh.
It was a smile.
And it sure was beautiful.
FIFTY-ONE
A month had passed since Chiqui came home from the hospital. It was almost June—the tail end of the Philippine summer. By then, we had managed to get through nineteen whole episodes of Speak Cartoon, Learn English for Kids. It was mind-numbing. Excruciating. Torturous. But it was also amazing, beyond amazing to watch her transform into an entirely new Chiqui—one who was confident, curious, friendly—almost too friendly. She wanted to make friends with everyone.
Finally, we’d reached episode twenty—the very last one.
Thank god.
We could finally move on to something more normal. Something that wouldn’t make me want to bang my head against the wall while wearing earmuffs.
As usual, Chiqui’s eyes were glued to the computer screen like her life depended on it. I, on the other hand, was trying but failing to ignore the annoying chipmunk voices. You’d think I would have been used to it after nineteen episodes. But for some reason the jibber-jabbering just got worse and worse and worse.
Crunch. Crunch. Crunch.
Chiqui’s new snack obsession was cheddar-flavored popcorn—the kind that was covered in neon-orange powder. I suspected it wasn’t even made from real cheese. When I read the ingredients, there were all sorts of chemical names that sounded like they belonged in drain cleaner or antifreeze or that bright blue liquid to clean the toilet bowl with. I tried to tell her it wasn’t very healthy. But that only made her hug the giant bag even tighter. She gave me this pouty, frowny kind of look and said, “No. No. No Kuya Pab-low. Dis mine.”
Pab-low.
Ugh.
It was her speech therapist’s fault.
I suppose going from “Pabo” to “Pab-low” wasn’t all that bad, but still. I wished she wouldn’t emphasize the “low” quite so much. For whatever reason, it gave me an inferiority complex.
Oh well.
Crunch. Crunch.
Chiqui went back to her popcorn and her chipmunk voices. Every other kernel would miss her mouth and fall under my desk. I sighed, retrieving the broom and dustpan I had in my closet. Mamá bought them for me at the palengke after I tried to convince her to get me one of those cordless mini-vacuums, or better yet one of those robot vacuums that went around and around the room bumping into walls and cleaning even when you weren’t home. But she just shook her head like I was bonkers and told me an old-fashioned broom and dustpan would be just as good.
Whatever.
A robot vacuum was a great investment. Especially since Chiqui was sticking around for good.
Yahoo!
The process wasn’t going to be a fast one. It might take two or three or four or even five years. That’s what the lawyers had said. But at least the ball was rolling on the paperwork. Whatever that meant. And Miguel was pulling some strings. Lots of strings. I couldn’t help picturing Chiqui tangled up in a life-size ball of yarn, with Miguel pulling and pulling until she was finally freed.
Speaking of freed.
I was totally off the hook.
It turned out that keeping Chiqui’s real name—Tintin—a secret didn’t even matter all that much. Miguel had sent an investigator to poke around. There were no records that her mother had ever given birth. No birth certificate meant that technically, she could have whatever name she wanted.
Weird, huh?
So I decided to fess up, even though I knew Chiqui didn’t want me to. I figured it was okay since the adoption was already in the works. After our talk in the hospital, the last thing I wanted was to keep any more secrets from Mamá.
Phew.
Thankfully, she didn’t get mad at me.
Not one bit.
Neither did Chiqui.
We ended up sitting together as a family. And with Miguel’s help—because Mamá’s Tagalog wasn’t quite good enough—she asked Chiqui’s permission to put Tintin on her birth certificate. Mamá explained that she didn’t want to erase her past; it was important she not forget who she was and where she came from.
Chiqui would be her nickname.
According to Ms. Grace, who always made sure to fill me in on the facts, many, if not most Filipinos went by names completely unrelated to what they were born with.
Supposedly, Zeus wasn’t even Zeus. He was Alberto.
Gasp.
Mind blown.
And Happy wasn’t Happy either. She was Elena.
Double gasp.
And Bing was Susan.
And Jem … drumroll, please … was actually Irene.
Go figure.
So that’s how it was decided.
Chiqui was still Tintin. And from then on, Tintin would be called Chiqui.
Anyways, back to the cheddar-flavored popcorn. I had to sweep the kernels off the floor. I just had to. Geez. There was neon-orange powder stuck in between the floorboards. An old-fashioned broom and dustpan, huh? Clearly Mamá was the one who was bonkers. I’d need some wet Q-tips and a mop to get it real clean.
Ugh.
I glanced out the window. The sun was kind of mellow for a hot summer day. There was also a breeze making the tree branches sway. It almost looked like they were waving at me. Come out and play, Pablo, they seemed to be saying.
Happy, Jem, Bing, and Lito ran out of their house. They placed a can on the sidewalk, and then proceeded to skip and hop and take turns throwing flip-flops at it. Even from all the way across the street, I could hear them screaming and laughing and saying, “Ikaw na! You’re it!”
I couldn’
t help smiling and laughing too. That’s how ridiculous they looked.
“Thank you for watching Speak Cartoon, Learn English for Kids, Episode Twenty!” the chipmunk voice said.
Chiqui slid off the chair, licking cheese powder from her fingers. I cringed. Then cringed some more when she wiped her hands on her pink dress. The dress had cheesy orange stripes. She didn’t seem to care, though. Especially after she spotted the kids playing outside.
“Kuya Pab-low. We go play!” she shouted, hopping up and down. “Pleeze!” she begged, aiming her brand-new smile at me.
It was my Kryptonite. That smile, it was perfect even with the pink scar above her lip—the scar that her doctors said would fade but would never go away completely.
I just couldn’t say no.
Sucker.
“Sige. Maglaro tayo.” The Tagalog words felt weird on my tongue. Like they didn’t belong there. But Ms. Grace assured me I was doing great. A quick study. A natural. Apparently, I was good at learning languages.
Go figure.
Chiqui grabbed my hand. “Tara!”
The big bag of popcorn was forgotten.
The mess of neon-orange powder was forgotten.
The old-fashioned broom and dustpan were forgotten.
Even the annoying chipmunk voices were forgotten.
We left all that behind and went outside.
“Mi amors!” said Mamá when she saw us. She was standing out front with Miguel and Zeus, staring at the facade of the house. Her baggy overalls were smeared with paint, and her hair was desperately trying to escape from the bright red bandanna on her head. “What do you think?” she said, pointing at the wall.
There were three swatches of paint in different colors. The last couple of weeks she’d been on a home improvement rampage—replacing broken tiles, fixing leaky windows, repairing kitchen cabinets, and painting—lots and lots of painting. I studied the swatches, squinting my eyes and rubbing my chin as if I had a beard. There was a pale yellow the exact shade of mashed potatoes, an off-white one that looked like French vanilla ice cream, and a blue one that reminded me of the sea at sunrise.
“That one,” I said, gesturing at the blue swatch.
“Yes!” Mamá fist-pumped the air.
How to Make Friends with the Sea Page 20