Banana Heart Summer

by Merlinda Bobis

  Tiya Viring’s purple yam delight cooked with sweetened coconut milk into a sticky, anise-flavored dessert topped with a thin spread of margarine.

  Mrs. Alano’s special markasotes, a hard cake baked from mostly egg whites and best eaten with freshly brewed coffee; her own version of leche flan with a hint of lemon rind and chili only for tough, enduring palates; and of course the definitive version of moist upside-down cake with imported almond slivers and glazed cherries, and a secret sprinkling of native bitter nuts for character.

  The Valenzuelas’ sweetened kundol, which is strips of kundol gourd slow-cooked in sweet syrup with whole pili nuts and flavored with the tangy limonsito berries; and the fiesta biko with strips of jackfruit and a generous topping of palm sugar plus slivers of young coconut meat, all cooked of course by my own hands.

  Ay, so much sweetness trickled through our street and ran us down. In that grey season that tried its best to be festive, we shrank away in our shameful inadequacy. Junior even intimated that at home we were slipping into the rice gruel and fish sauce routine, as Father’s job at the Chings’ construction was taking too long to resume. But thank God, Mother did not lose her dignity for too long. I was paid my first monthly wage. And thank the saints, my siblings’ little tummies were reinstated on the map. Señorita VV made sure we had a share of their feast, every dish of it, down to dessert. The Valenzuelas’ sweetness trickled through our street indeed, but not to run us down. It defied walls in the spirit of generosity. It went neighboring. And with tales that ranged from the sweet to the sweet-sour to the unsweet, but never bland.

  Let’s begin with the sweet kundol, my own creation. Its fate simmered in quite strange circumstances during the eve of the fiesta, which trickled from the sweet to the very sweet, concluding in the town dance, where the American learned about our gradations of sweetness.

  Limonsito berries. These diminutive, crimson berries make the dish, more than the kundol gourd. They have a clear, sticky juice, like colorless nail polish. The twins and I sometimes used them as such, when we got bored, flavoring our nails. Slightly sweet, slightly bitter, slightly burning—I can scour every corner of my tongue and not quite find the words to do justice to this quaint taste. All I know is it reins in the sweetness, remaining coy, playing hide-and-seek in the palate: where is it, what is it, how is it?

  Ralph must have asked that question when he first saw my mistress, as she was breaking a crimson berry between her teeth. She had just woken up from her siesta and was wearing a white shirt that reached only to her bare upper thighs. Her hair was loose and as agitated as her face, she was close to tears, telling me that she’d stop singing for Mr. Alano and she wouldn’t sing tonight, definitely not, and I answered, but you’re wonderful, really, and the dance won’t be a dance without Patsy Cline, while feeling helpless with my hands full of strips of soaked kundol—then Ralph walked into the kitchen.

  His smile was even more crooked as he stood there, gazing at her.

  I looked at him, I looked at her. His face was turning redder by the minute, even his ears.

  “You must be Violeta, Andy’s daughter. Hello,” he said, coming closer and extending his hand. “I’m Ralph, Ralph McKenna.”

  My hands wrung out the water from the kundol strips with too much enthusiasm. Ralph was wearing an orange shirt and a woody, herby scent that made me want to keep inhaling, ay, what is it, how is it?

  Señorita VV pulled her shirt lower and took the proffered hand, embarrassed about her disheveled appearance, but only for a while. “So you’re the Ralph—hello,” was all she said and left us. I saw that he went on looking at the door long after she had gone.

  “I think I need some water.” He was smelling his hand, stained with the sticky juice of the berry. He didn’t say my name in the usual way. He didn’t say my name at all.

  Later in the day, I went neighboring next door, my first attempt since the green mango disaster. I took home my first full wage, all of twenty pesos, and the sweet kundol and various savory dishes, and some clothes for the night. Mrs. Valenzuela said I should visit my family, perhaps sleep at home, because it was the eve of the San Nicolas fiesta. I should be with family, at least for tonight. So I cleaned the house and the garden, and cooked most of the feast for the next day.

  Meanwhile Ralph hovered around, making conversation with my employers, sometimes staring at Señorita VV’s bedroom door. “We’re worried about her, Ralph, she’s been acting strangely for weeks. She locks herself in there when she’s not at the hospital or at her college. I hope she doesn’t forget she’s singing for tonight’s dance.”

  “And she sings too?” Ralph sounded more wistful than impressed.

  “Lucky you, Ralph, you don’t have children to worry about. Look at me with all my grey hair, and yours still as red and thick like when we were back in Oregon. So was it an amicable divorce?”

  Ralph sighed.

  Some sweet is always tucked into a sigh. I seek it, even now. I shred the tiny exhalation, be it elated or mournful, believing it is hiding there.

  My father sighed, my siblings sighed, my mother almost sighed when I laid my offerings on our dinner table. It did not look as rich as the table at Tiyo Anding’s wake, but in our house this spread of dishes was alien, especially with the twenty pesos, which I had laid out as well. Each crisp bill was a punctuation of abundance.

  “Pride,” Mother said through her teeth.

  “But, Maring…” Father chided her with a funny croak in his voice.

  Then Junior called out, “We’ll also have a fiesta!” to my mother’s back disappearing into the ceiling. His bravado prompted me to add, “And I’m sleeping here tonight, isn’t that great?”

  She stopped in mid-ascent. “But your siblings have been sleeping comfortably with more room.”

  From where I stood, I could not see all of her. It was like being denied by only half of her body, from the womb to her feet.

  “Maring, how could you?” Father said, running after her.

  My siblings stopped in their tracks, suddenly unsure. “Sit down,” I said, in a tone more grim than inviting, and brought out five saucers and teaspoons from the cupboard. “This will just be a tasting, get me? The fiesta is tomorrow.”

  Quickly they came back to life, grabbing their share, a teaspoon of each of the savories: the goat meat calderetta with its sweetish-sour sauce, the pork and chicken adobo, the mechado with its little mecha or “wick” of fat peeking from each chunk of pork, and the beef afritada, all steaming in their oily paper plates. It was one of those rare moments when our house smelled rich. The hearty aroma of meat floated in and out of garlic, hot peppers, parsley, bay leaf, green onions and sweet capsicum.

  “Hoy, I said no more than a taste!” I silenced protests, slapped greedy hands and righted long faces, but with little success, because sometimes only a taste can be more distressing than pleasurable, a very miserly treat. Like endearments in half sentences or embraces not coming full circle, ensuring the torment of gaps. I thought of the boy who touched my arm, only my arm…

  “And the sweet kundol?” Nilo asked, licking his saucer. He had devoured his share too quickly.

  “After everyone finishes, okay? And again, only one teaspoon each.”

  “You’re rich!” Junior said, hiding one of the pesos behind him.

  “I saw that, put it back.”

  “Just one, Nining,” he said.

  “Me too.” Claro also grabbed a bill for himself, and everyone did the same, even little Elvis.

  “Hoy, don’t be greedy! Hand them back, quick, or you won’t get any sweet.”

  Reluctantly, each one behaved, including me. I’m grown up now, I thought. I need not appease my own hunger for sweetness. After I handed all the twenty pesos to my father, I left the house, my clothes for the night tucked under my arm. Mother was right. My siblings needed more room.

  Outside, the grey pall was not visible at all. The whole street was awash with light and Mr. Alano’s band was in
the middle of “Pretty Woman,” in the vacant lot beside Nana Dora’s hut. I crossed over to the site of the town dance.

  The few banana trees had been cut down for more space, and bunting and multicolored lights were strung over and around the fenced-in crowd, all freshly showered and in their best attire, smelling of “spray net” and cheap cologne. The women’s hair was stiff and teased up, the men’s generously pomaded. There was a nervous thrill in the air between them, seated on opposite ends of the dance space, modestly checking each other out, hearts covetous and anxious all at once. What if she says no? What if I become a wallflower? What if my hands sweat?

  When I grow up, I’ll never go to a dance, I promised myself. I’ll die of covetousness, I’ll shrivel against the wall, and my hands will keep sweating even in the afterlife.

  I crouched against a banana stump among the shadows, watching the town dance, called the kudal-kudal, the “fencefence”—a woman could be “fenced in” by an ardent suitor who would expect her to dance only with him throughout the night. And the dance that mattered most was “the sweet,” or if you were lucky, “the very sweet.”

  Ma-sweet na, ma-sweet na—it’s about to be sweet, about to be sweet!

  When the first strains of slow music began, arms tingled in anticipation of the sweet, or the slow-drag, in our street where the watchful cross strictly banned the body’s wayward desires. The dance floor was the only legitimate place to hold someone close, but not too close. If a woman danced very sweet, she was considered loose, easy.

  The band meandered through its introductions, slow and easy. The men shuffled across to the women, hands extended. My Señorita VV picked up the microphone as Mr. Alano nodded to her. She nodded back, breathed in, then belted out “I Can’t Stop Loving You” in true Patsy Cline style.

  It was not until the fifth sweet that I noticed the red-haired giant leaning against the fence outside, eyes only on the vocalist gleaming from her swept-up hair to the sequins on her pink shoes.

  thirty-seven

  The flight of tails (With eggplant and banana heart in peanut sauce)

  In the wee hours of the morning, I listened to Boy Hapon’s chickens, their exclamatory footnotes on romance. I could not sleep. I could have been sleeping at home. I thought of Mother, of how miserable she looked. After the baby is born, she will be sweet, she will be sweet.

  Thou shall not covet thy mother’s sweetness.

  So I thought of Patsy Cline instead, storming off after an argument with Roy Orbison, and the radio man suddenly resurrected from the wings, trying to walk her home, and the American watching from a polite distance, perhaps biding his time to offer the same ambulatory assistance.

  But I was the one who walked her home, explaining, “I’ll have to sleep at your place, Señorita VV, you might have early guests tomorrow, who knows,” but she was not listening. She was walking too fast, her sequined high heels clip-clopping on the pavement. I felt rebuffed for the second time that night, but her tent dress softly brushed my arm with each step and I felt comforted. “You were very good, you know,” I ended.

  The next day was too busy for despair. Even my señorita was up and about, entertaining friends from her college and the hospital. There was a steady stream of visitors, thus several breakfasts from seven till ten and at least four lunches till two. I was cooking, serving and washing up nonstop, with two other maids hired for the day. Outside I could hear the fiesta band, not Mr. Alano’s though, playing the usual marches from house to house.

  A fiesta is a gustatory tour. It is a lesson in eating your fill through strategic moderation. You do not feast in only one house, but tour the tables of the whole street, sometimes eating multiple breakfasts, lunches and dinners, and taking home wrapped portions of the feast, forced on you by generous hosts. Best to have only a modest helping in every house, or perhaps just the best dishes, in order to accommodate everyone’s generosity. And space these feastings, making sure your stomach settles down after a meal in one house before you proceed to the next. Be very mindful of unspoken rule one: You must never skip a friend’s or a relative’s house, otherwise there will be many hurt feelings and recriminations.

  And unspoken rule two, for the host this time: You must have a fiesta! An empty table is shameful, even criminal. It kills your amor propio, your self-respect. Your house disappears from the map. So you turn your pockets inside out and if they yield nothing, you borrow fiesta money, perhaps for one or two dishes lest a guest drops by. Never mind if you beg the kindness of usurers and shrink before their eyes. You put your self-respect on the line, in order to keep it on your guest’s full stomach.

  Finally, unspoken rule three: You do not go feasting in your own feast. You are the host, not the guest. Not for the twins Chi-chi and Bebet though, who chucked out all the rules long ago, as easily as they did bones or corncobs gnawed bare and thin. They reinstated their stomachs on the map. They went feasting on our street’s collective heartbreak that summer—their father forever flying in our eyes.

  As I spooned each dish onto the plates of my employers’ guests, I imagined Tiyo Anding flying, with his long, long esophagus trailing behind like a tail, but he did not slam against the driveway of the Chings. He only kissed it—a tail-kiss, a genuflection, then he took off again. Then Tiya Asun followed, tail as distended, then Chi-chi, then Bebet, their eyes going round and round in unison. They flew over our fiesta, floated in and out of the grey, feasting on the aroma rising from our kitchens, tables and bodies hell-bent over plates, certain that this posture will ground us, this act of keeping the esophagus in its right length.

  Their tails lashed about, their tongues flooded, and they gulped the fiesta air, filling their lungs with—

  Boy Hapon’s fish roe with bittermelon and his secret ancestry

  Señora Ching’s roast pig wondering about her son

  Mr. Ching’s blood stew currying favors from the mayor

  Señorita VV’s pork mechado languishing on her plate

  Ralph’s adobo stirring him with bay-leaf longings

  My beef afritada accusing my father’s silent mouth

  My chicken relleno turning bitter on my mother’s tongue

  Mr. Alano’s paella made richer by his quandaries

  Mrs. Alano’s embutido, her pork roll with pickled endings

  Tiya Viring’s and Juanito’s eloped soupy pochero

  Tiya Miling’s offal burning in hot peppers and sorrow

  We are touring my street again, reliving this flight of tails, which concluded in Nana Dora’s hut. She was there with her pots, refusing to feel redundant in a street where, for a day, every dish must be home prepared. She looked up and cringed at the flying tails. She waved her carving knife at them, demanding that they land, now! She threatened to chop off the vision—because hunger is always unsightly. It’s our gut hanging out, unkempt like unassuaged love. We see it in someone else and instinctively we grab at our own stomachs, then quickly withdraw our hands, knowing we have betrayed ourselves.

  But Nana Dora was forgiving. She did not cut off their tails; she ransomed them. She chopped the oxtail in her pot instead, for she had come prepared, and cooked it with a shriveled banana heart, a casualty from the site of the town dance. A tail for a tail, with a heart thrown in, and the cloves of crushed garlic, the tear-inducing onions, the eggplants, string beans and toasted rice simmered in peanut sauce, which turned a touch vermilion with the achuete spice—and she served this ransom to her guests, just landed and catching their breaths, with sautéed shrimp paste.

  She almost believed their tails would behave and restore themselves to their old place, respectably hidden again like her own hunger. But tails are beyond ransom; they know it is common hunger that makes them family. The family of the deceased was grateful for Nana Dora’s attempt at assuagement. They delighted in her repast, for was this not about her feeding as much as theirs? Then they took off again, tails linked together, making a scallop pattern in the sky. Off they flew to where the sun set behin
d the volcano, and disappeared forever. I missed them, I missed them.

  thirty-eight

  Tiling-tiling’s ice drop

  When Chi-chi said goodbye, she recounted with relish how they had feasted on Nana Dora’s kare-kare, the oxtail stew, under her hut. My affection for our prickly chef of snacks grew—so three weeks after the funeral, she was still caring for the orphans, or perhaps giving them her own taste of farewell, soupy and savory. Tiya Asun’s family had decided to leave our street for her village fifty miles away, for good. “Ay, tell me now, Nana Dora, how can I live with this? A few paces from my house is that window, and it will always be there, always. Ay, how do I live with this?”

  So I concocted my own recipe for farewell. I borrowed five pesos from Señorita VV and begged for an afternoon off with my friends and siblings, then I prepared our old haunt. Under the gaunt banana trees and their browning hearts, under the guava trees that would refuse to flower until after a year later, I watered the dried-up earth. Here, we did girl things together, like curling each other’s hair with cassava tendrils and painting our nails with limonsito berries, and our lips with the crimson flowers of oro-alas-dose, then mincing around in make-believe high heels, which meant a stone tucked between heel and slipper. Then we fried dead beetles in hibiscus leaf oil and made mud cakes on the side. Then, all done up like high society misses, we squatted around this pretend meal, spooning the beetles and mud close to our mouths while smacking our lips and telling stories about food, real and wished-for: hoy, what will you eat when you grow up?

  When we grow up, our stomachs will have grown too, and our mouths, and our capacity to make them happy. During those afternoons of wishful play, we never doubted this, that happiness was simply gustatory and sorrow meant gruel and fish sauce for the rest of our lives.