“Uyy, you can’t look at him.” She grabbed at my arm.
I recoiled, perhaps echoing my mother’s response the other day. So this is how a bruised fruit feels. “What d’you mean?”
“You like him, don’t you?”
I crossed my arms tightly and turned away.
“Go on, call him,” she giggled.
The vision of well-being at its peak was too much to bear, but I managed to sound indifferent. “I’m working, you know—you call him.”
“I dare you.”
I felt my cheeks burn.
“Aha, she does like him!”
“Calcium, vitamins! Calcium, vitamins!”
Saved by the Calcium Man. I settled down a bit as I turned towards the road again, pretending I was searching for the hawker. Nowhere to be seen yet, but his wares were already branding the air. I calculated the time and his temperament. Surely he had haggled again through several households, so lunch would be late. Under Nana Dora’s hut, of course.
“I hate that stingy old man, really so stingy—ay, really so handsome, go on, call him!” Chi-chi had an annoying way of shifting gears.
I willed my eyes to leave the bare-breasted boy and said, “Goodbye,” ready to run, but—
“Hello, girls!”
None of us could move before the perfect teeth at the other side. His preening and our ogling crossed and recrossed the road, and better sense was ambushed by hormones. We were a very young love tableau, fixed between a church and a volcano.
For a moment, a JCM bus and an old Ford filled our view, then the heart-stopping smile again and something close to a cleft chin. Chi-chi and I often disagreed on the merit of the latter.
“How are you, girls?”
Even his English was impressive, “so slang na slang,” meaning it had an American twang, and that was supposed to be wonderful.
“Hello, boy!” Chi-chi answered, also in English. Ay, so gauche. You don’t say, hello, boy!
“Calcium, vitamins!” The other English speaker was just limping into view with his usual basket.
Manolito Ching finally crossed the road, dribbling the ball towards us, and Calcium Man reached the red gate, announcing his wares with more aplomb. The dogs went wild. The red gate opened, the girl in white uniform examined the proffered basket and money exchanged hands. I felt relieved for him. “Kumusta—hello!” I called out. The old man waved and winked at me, then poured all the contents of his basket into a white basin which the maid held gingerly. I imagined live clams and mussels and jade green seaweed.
“Catch!” someone said, then I felt something hit me and I nearly stumbled.
“Hoy, why so snobbish?” he asked, coming close to pick up his ball. “I’m Manolito Ching.”
“We know,” we both said.
“And I’m Chi-chi and this is Nenita.”
He had sent me away without even asking for my name.
Chi-chi was all over him, gushing like a plastic bag with an irreparable hole. Charm and more charm escaping. When she smiled like that, she lost her contrary look. She became quite pretty, eyes crinkling at the corners, mouth softer. But the bare-breasted boy was looking only at me, or so I wished, though I hated to admit it.
“Kumusta,” I said coldly, and turned to go. I refused to speak like him. We did not speak in English while shaving ice in their kitchen, and only the richest families spoke in English or Spanish at home anyway. Manolito’s family spoke both, and they used the dialect for the maids.
“So hot, isn’t it?” he reverted to the dialect, because of my current station (but what would he know) or because I had put him in his place with my snobbishness. I had no wish to find out. I turned to go, confused at the sight of moist rose-pink nipples. He was much taller than I and was standing too close. Ay, that musky smell.
“Oh, don’t go.” He laid a hand on my arm. “Let’s play ball.”
“Let’s,” Chi-chi said, not missing his familiar gesture. Her smile had lost half its luster.
“I’m busy,” I said, unable to withdraw my arm, which prickled with goose bumps. Perhaps this is how fruit awakens to its ripening. This little sweet shock.
“Schoolwork?” he asked.
“What do you mean?” Chi-chi answered for me. “She’s actually working.”
“Sige, see you soon,” I said, hastily walking off.
He blocked my way, dribbling the ball before me. “Just for a little while?”
I stared at ebullient confidence. All gleaming treinta y dos exposed, as we’d say. Thirty-two: the full set of perfect teeth again.
Chi-chi grabbed my arm. “C’mon, just for a little while.”
I allowed myself to be led or I lagged behind as the two got engaged in serious talk. Animated, Chi-chi looked very pretty indeed, despite her rag of a dress. She had by now grabbed his arm (she had a way of grabbing arms) and was guiding him towards her guava trees. She was even whispering things to him. I stopped in my tracks, embarrassed at her effusive display. What an easy girl that Chi-chi is, I told myself. Something twisted in my gut. I could see the heir of the almost mansion nodding and Chi-chi smiling her crinkly smile to her fullest capacity of prettiness, until we reached the guava trees.
Quickly my best friend ran true to form. She could not help the instinctive gesture. Her eyes went round and round then rolled to heaven, scouring the trees, plunder in her heart.
“Let me climb it for you,” Manoling said, letting go of the ball. First the dribbling, then the scaling of trees; next it would be mountains.
Chi-chi and I looked at each other. Of course, we both knew that there was hardly anything up there today, even if she hoped otherwise. We knew our guavas. But Manoling was set to flaunt his gallant intentions.
Suddenly Chi-chi was shaking in a strange way beside me, covering her mouth and muttering something I could barely make out. By now, he had reached the highest branch of the tree.
“Two guavas…two guavas,” she said, swallowing a fresh burst of giggles.
I looked up. My cheeks were on fire. Was it a fruit or a vegetable?
Up there, Manolito Ching’s shorts were too short indeed.
twenty-four
Dinuguan: blood stew
Manolito Ching: neighbor.
Manolito Ching: friend.
Manolito Ching: crush.
Manolito Ching: interceding neighbor, friend, crush.
The nature of a thing (or person) is realized in the intent of its user. A week after Chi-chi’s whisperings to the heir of the almost mansion, Tiyo Anding and my father were hired at the Chings’ construction. Chi-chi and I did not discuss this happy consequence, but in my heart I wanted to apologize for thinking her easy, a flirt, grabbing at his arm like that and smiling her prettiest. She had a purpose, of course. She had more wit than I did, and she had mettle. Surely she had begged Manolito on behalf of our jobless fathers.
Mother was wrong. There is, in fact, dignity even in the abject state of begging. It takes great courage to beg and even greater courage to bear rejection. Ay, her lean heart, her fat spleen and my too young confusion. Which one to sweeten, which one to beg?
Supplication is a bitter business.
But I did not know that yet on those days of mooning over the almost mansion. For a while, I stopped sighing at the window of our house from my bedroom. My eyes shifted across the road. Mother was wrong. There was something in her firstborn that was worth a look after all, worth a hand on the arm. Surely a ball would dribble across the road again. I took to regularly pruning the hibiscus hedge on the front lawn, and VV joked that such industry could also hurt.
For a week, I couldn’t climb the guava trees without blushing.
I erased stories: He did not slip ice into my dress.
I invented stories: He spoke for my father to his father.
In the kitchen where he saved me from fire-breathing dragons.
He snuffed out the fire with his kindness; he salved the spleen with it; he coaxed back the sweetness of the
blood with it. In the kitchen, it should be the kitchen. It was the only part of his house where I could set my story. It was the only place where I was invited in.
His mother was there in her embroidered silk robe. Her face was heavily powdered, her eyebrows darkened into formidable arcs. Her most beautiful tortoiseshell comb with gold studs reflected the whirring of the fan, and she smelled of sandalwood soap. She was supervising the maid’s cooking, rambling condiments, body parts and history, mixing them up, mixing up the maid’s mixing. The blood stew was not going well at all.
“Vinegar curdled my husband’s blood last year so we must mix the intestines with sugar, so business goes well with the mayor, and rub the pork shoulder with peppercorn, and get the garlic into the liver, then put more heart in his onion and sprigs of oregano on his spleen and don’t forget to deepen his bile with green chilies, entiende?”
“Ay, no, ay, yes, Señora—I don’t think we use spleen or bile at all, just shoulder and tripe and a bit of liver—”
“You teaching me how to cook my husband’s favorite dish?”
“Ay, no Señora, of course not, dispensa—pardon me, Señora, but I’m not sure what to do anymore.” The maid was wringing her hands before the ingredients of the master’s order for dinner.
Dinuguan: “bloodied.” It’s pork blood stew with the vigor of offal. Black, sourish, thick and spicy, again with coconut milk. Truly a dish with character, literally with guts, and usually cooked for special occasions. But in the affluent household of the Chings, it was daily fare. Or perhaps it was cooked that night because the town mayor was coming to dinner. The two men shared certain favorites.
But spleen and bile? Talk about culinary surrealism. Each of us has enough spleen and bile as it is. Imagine if we fed ourselves with more.
“But the mayor is coming, don’t you understand, you idiot? The dish must be complete, well rounded with everything close to his heart!”
The spleen is actually not too far from the heart, if we examine an anatomy book. Like the heart, the spleen is described as the size of a fist. Think of these organs as sisters, or perhaps one as the handmaid of the other. The heart pumps the blood, the spleen cleans it. Safe inside us, heart and spleen function in harmony. But out here where we often break one and vent the other, it’s not easy to ensure harmony. Out here, there is little balance between our love and anger.
Mr. Alexander Ching loved his wife. Mrs. Soledad Ching loved her son. Manolito Ching hated his parents. No, that’s too harsh. Dear Manoling was merely ashamed of his parents and hated to be seen with them. Perhaps he had appraised them the minute he was born and found them wanting. But surely he was kind.
The street gossips, who played cards at Tiya Miling’s store every afternoon, often spoke of “that peculiar family.”
“Ay, the boy never sits with his parents at church, if he comes at all. Now, if that doesn’t tell you anything…”
“He prefers to live in the city, away from his folks, strange boy.”
“Father busy getting richer and courting the mayor’s favors, mother busy preening her jewels, all dressed to the nines, even at church. But the shoes, the shoes, just watch out for them—they’re never a matching pair. Now if that doesn’t tell you everything…”
“Father greedy, mother mad, poor boy. Locked in that mansion so scary with dragons and lions and all.”
“But why build a mansion in our street—now that tells us nothing.”
“Land is cheap among the poor.”
“My street is not poor, speak for yourself!”
Gossip reeks with offal breath. Or perhaps with spleen in dysfunction, blood not quite cleaned. Bad blood, stewing blood.
“Puñeta, Gloria!” Señora Ching cursed the maid, who was now shaking before the beginnings of the blood stew that she would never taste. In the almost mansion, the dogs ate better than she did. The dogs had meat, regularly supplied by the local butcher. The servants had dried fish (their palates were supposedly less discerning) or whatever they could afford with the miserly pay. There were four maids and two drivers in a household of three.
“Didn’t you hear me?” the señora continued. “I said spleen with sprigs of oregano and bile made greener by chilies, and the vinegar to soak that shoulder so the intestines can rest with peppercorns for the mayor’s election next year. That’s my husband’s order, don’t you understand, you idiot?”
Señora Ching was again mixing up the recipe, condiments mixed with history mixed with body parts. Shrill, pitched like a boiling kettle, her voice rose to the kitchen ceiling, then higher still, up to the red turret where she always locked herself for hours.
In his study, the señor heard her distress escalating, and came to the rescue. “Nerves,” he murmured to himself, scratching his head in wonder, even if he had lived through scenes like this many times over. “The señora is just tired,” he told the maid, then, “Come, my dear, you must rest.”
Perhaps it was then that Manolito walked in, hands on his ears then on his nose, as he couldn’t take tantrums or the scent of his mother’s sandalwood soap, then he checked what was for dinner—
No, his hands were on his mother’s arms, calming her with compliments in that soft voice of his, saying oh, what lovely soap, then he checked what was for dinner.
When he saw the assembly of internal organs on the kitchen table, he made a face. No, he sighed, smiling apologetically. He told his father he’d return to the city, that he’d leave before dinner, no, maybe after dinner, so he could escape his parents, no, so he could return to his schoolbooks.
The town’s most powerful businessman shrugged, while the mother began to scream, “It’s because of that dish, you know he hates it, it stinks like your mayor, and you never talk to your son, now he’s leaving again, then he’ll leave me forever and you don’t even care!”
Mothers are wrong. Sometimes.
So he told her he cares, or did he?
That he’ll never leave forever. Would he?
Certainly not. Surely he longed to dribble the ball across the road again.
And lest I forget, I’ll end with a scene which, in my silly heart, I hoped happened as the blood stew boiled sweet-sourly, the offal gentled by the son’s goodwill.
He spoke about two neighbors who could use a job at the construction. And the father acquiesced easily, kindly. You see, I always wanted to save the Chings from the spleen of street gossip. I always wanted to save Manolito, my first love that never went anywhere, from my own bad blood.
twenty-five
Perfumed heart tempura
You can never be sure about the destination of first love. Inside, it weaves its way to the core of that red fist lodged like a perpetual protest in the chest.
Be it rain or shine or rich or lean or sad or mad or glad, I’ll tick.
Outside, the route is less definite. But the journey is as defiant.
Three days after I had overpruned the hibiscus hedge with my eyes set on the red gate, Señorita VV said I was getting “hyper” and needed some rest, so she’d prepare dinner herself, and could I go next door and pluck a heart.
I did not head straight to my old territory. I did a little restless tour of our street.
Towards the church, my eyes shifted between the red gate and the door of our house which I tried but abandoned, fearful that my mother would ask why I was gallivanting and I’d find myself staring at the white cucumber of her nape again, so I walked on, past the stone house where I caught a whiff of Mrs. Alano’s burnt caramel, and then further, Tiya Viring munching her sweet tamarind and a book of romance, then Juanito Guwapito arguing with his mother over the price of homemade peanut butter—all wrapped in life’s exigencies. None could help me.
So I turned back, sighing at the volcano and the turret bisecting the sky, and wondering if one needed such power to win back a look, and hoping Nana Dora would know but she was busy packing up her pots, so I thought I’d ask Boy Hapon, probe his chickens’ wisdom on romance, but that wou
ld be too daring, so I chose our door again but heard Mother’s voice and lost my nerve. Thus, foolishly, I opted for the red gate where I could implore the dogs, the lions, the dragons to let out the boy with the ball.
But all I could do was stare at the iron lock, then cross the road again.
First love is too confusing.
What and where is the first route of the heart really? And how do we call it back after that restless wandering?
They say there is love at first sight between a mother and her firstborn. It is imperative for the child’s survival. And there is love at first sight for the teacher who walks in on that first day of school with the smile of the sun, then kisses the bruised knee better. There is love at first sight for the boy or the girl who could smile like the sun and, just maybe, kiss better the daily bruises of growing up.
Falling in love. Throughout our adult lives, are we simply displacing that filial embrace with something that is like home, but as far away as possible from home’s boring predetermination? Where the loving stroke of a hand is more of a genetic inclination: Of course I love my own.
But how can I save that twelve-year-old from these arguments? Of course I love my own? Even today, it takes great effort to believe myself.
To win back Mother, to coax back her blood and her knowledge that we share it. Whatever made her forget? That late afternoon, I nearly forgot that my chore was to pluck a heart, not to assuage it.
Pluck it and perfume it, then fluff it a bit with stiffly beaten egg-white batter, with a bit of salt to taste. First the banana heart has to be stripped to its palest core—where blood had been scared away? No, where blood is white and rich and sticky, and must be washed away. Because it is only flesh that matters, sliced thinly and dipped in the batter sprinkled with fragrant oregano, and deep-fried in sweet coconut oil till golden brown. And you serve it with spicy soy sauce.
Later that day, I realized that I need not have toured our street for relief. In my employer’s kitchen, VV showed me how to make a heart unrecognizable from its own form. Not a fist now, but something more delicate, unthreatening, like little brown boats moored on a plate. But I could not draw true comfort from them over dinner. They were not moored, but stranded like me who could never sail beyond my servile station.
Banana Heart Summer Page 9