She surveyed the sweet red peppers on the chopping board. She would not make the usual frills out of them, she thought. They would be little stars instead, paired off with green hot ones. Usually no hot pepper or chili was used in the acharra, because it was a sweet pickle.
To be old, to be pickled sour: this was not how she wanted to be when she grew up. As a young girl, like her friends she thought she’d be married, with happy children and grandchildren, and a husband forever holding her hand in the movies or in the park. They would be devoted to each other, they would not be able to eat without the other, they would grow old together, they would die almost together, and if they didn’t, they would wait for each other in heaven.
Coring chopped the hot green pepper in two—but there are girlhood memories that must be broken, discarded. One cannot be completely a girl again. This filled her with sadness.
Outside she heard the old Ford pull in. She glanced at the clock: it was close to midnight. Someday even this old habit of checking his homecoming would also be discarded. She began shaping a green pepper star.
The kitchen door opened. She heard him hover behind her. The green star was growing its fifth point and her hand burned.
“Coring…”
The old endearment surprised her and how something in her breast fluttered.
“Coring…I won’t leave you…”
It was the stray wind opening and closing her heart, but not because of him. It was because of the girl remembered, a memory hers alone, miles apart from this man promising to stay.
forty-four
Hulog-hulog: gingered drop-drop
Love on the rebound is always suspect. Perhaps because, on the rebound, passion may not have the projectile capacity of the first bounce. “Surely it cannot go very far,” everyone in our street said so, when they heard that Violeta Valenzuela got engaged to Ralph McKenna—imagine that! The gossip was that VV had broken her heart over the dashing Basilio Profundo, of course, and was now seeking comfort in this Red Cano, this “Red American,” as he came to be known.
“Ay, isn’t it too quick, though? And with a man old enough to be her father!”
“I think she just wants to become States-side. Or maybe they already had some hanky-panky, aysus, you never know with these foreigners.”
The card players shuffled their hearts and made conjectures. “A sudden engagement could mean there’s something kicking in there already. Can’t you see she’s so pale these days?” The standby boys played their Beatles songs on Tiya Miling’s new jukebox and seethed with envy. “Why an old man?” And the rest of the street pronounced, “It won’t last.”
What did they know of the true story? It was I who broke my heart.
It was a Saturday afternoon when she invited me to her room and some green mangoes with hot shrimp paste. We munched and sweated together for a while (hot and sour things make you sweat even more in summer), before she said she was sorry she had been difficult lately and to please not breathe a word to anyone about Mr. Alano. I was raring to ask her about their blasphemous altercation over dinner and her stomping away from the town dance and her generous slices of cake during their jam sessions, but I dared not break her affectionate mood as we lay together in her bed, crumpling our faces at the ceiling. The green mangoes were very sour.
“Promise, Nining?”
I nodded, my mouth too full to answer. She didn’t have to worry about me, because by that time, I was willing to do anything for her. I was besotted, I wanted to grow up like her.
“You don’t have to pay back the five pesos—that was a gift,” she said. And she loved me, she loved me. Even in her distraught moments, she always had a kind word for me, even kinder when the twins left and when I told her about the welts on Junior’s back. “You’re not my maid, but my little friend,” she always said when I told her things. “We have secrets together and we must keep them.”
“Thanks very much, señorita,” I said, relieved that my next pay would not be five pesos less. “And yes, I promise.” A lock of her hair had strayed onto my shoulder. I smelled frangipani and felt conscious of my own sweatiness. I could feel the dampness under my arms and on the top of my crown, and the trickle of sweat settling at the corner of my mouth. I licked it.
“You’re the only one who understands me in this house,” she said, then sat up, tucking her legs under her. “Even if you don’t understand—yet.”
“No, I don’t, señorita, sorry. Especially Mother. She doesn’t want me to sleep at home again, not that I want to go home, I’m working for you, or maybe because she doesn’t want my siblings disturbed, but I’m good, I think, and I don’t make any trouble there and I don’t make any trouble here, do I?”
She shook her head. “You think the world is your fault, don’t you, Nining?”
I dipped the last sliver of mango into the shrimp paste.
She got up and looked out her window to the banana and guava trees below. There was something about the way she looked out that made me stare. She was blessing each tree with her gaze. “Ay, all those things that we can’t see…” Then she turned to face me. I sat up, hopelessly taken by the picture of benevolence. Framed in light like that with her long, wavy tresses and her blue housedress, and the white lace curtains swishing softly at her sides, she looked like the Concepción Immaculada.
Why can’t Mother look like her?
“You think I’ll like America, Nining?”
I felt a twinge in my chest. Why, is she going away? Will I lose my job?
“You like Ralph, don’t you?”
I nodded, wanting to hear more, but she only said, “He’s visiting today, so go buy some snacks at Nana Dora’s. You shouldn’t cook again.”
I was confused. But she never cared for the American or his visiting—and did she mean I’ll never cook again because she’s leaving or was she censuring my cooking? A few minutes later, I was laying my worries before Nana Dora’s pot. I wanted our chef of snacks to make me understand why there were too many things that I couldn’t understand and whether I would when I grew up, but I couldn’t tell her everything really. I did not share secrets with Nana Dora.
“Hush, child, don’t sour my food with your worries!” she scolded, dropping the little balls of ground sticky rice into the boiling coconut milk as she stirred it with her paddle of a spoon. Then she was impatiently fanning herself again. “Aysus, on an afternoon like this, cooking is like taking a peek at hell, haay.”
I watched the rice balls sink into the thick, gingery soup with sweet anise. The hulog-hulog, the “drop-drop.” After a while the balls would float to the surface, much like Basilio Profundo’s palitaw, his ardent tongues of two months ago. But unlike them, throughout that summer I would keep sinking, as if the pot’s bottom were too elusive, so there was little hope to rise, least of all to bounce. My projectile capacity was an unheard-of thing, until later when I hitched a ride with VV and Ralph who flew to America and kept rising, on the rebound indeed for both of them, but how so satisfyingly far a destiny.
“For a young thing, you worry too much,” Nana Dora grumbled as she bit into a newly risen rice ball. “Nearly done.”
I withdrew my cares and kept quiet, waiting to finish my errand. The hulog-hulog grew thicker as it simmered, and the hungry queue began to grow behind me. I heard bits of gossip and the tinkle of coins. This time, like all of them, I could easily dig into my pocket and buy. I did not have to plot or angle for a free snack. I was well fed now. So what followed was a little presumptuous of Nana Dora. “Here,” she said, handing me the first cup of hulog-hulog. “Eat, it’s good for you.”
My back twitched in an old pain. I remembered Mother saying the same after she bandaged me. “Eat, it’s good for you.” But what’s good for us, really? And when the seventh child arrived, would it be better? The ginger and anise assailed my lungs. Here was enough flavor to ease constricted chests, to make anyone breathe freely again, but my dread and incomprehension were a load too dense and heavy, and
obsessed with its own flavor. No dilution or diminution was allowed, even when I handed her back a clean bowl. “Thanks, Nana Dora, I have money, you know.”
“No, that bowl was for free, understand?”
Was she putting me back in my old place?
Then she gripped my chin with both hands, forcing me to meet her eyes. I was surprised. Never had she touched me before. But her voice was scolding. “Hoy, Nining, you know the story of Juan and the banana heart?”
I shook my head, handing her the money for a jar of hulog-hulog. I could not look away.
She tut-tutted and continued, “Once upon a time, Juan went to a banana grove one night, to catch an anting-anting, a charm, with his mouth. Do you believe in charms?”
Again, I shook my head.
She pursed her mouth, obviously displeased, as she spooned out my order. “Never mind, you listen to the lesson of his story now—hoy, are you listening?”
I didn’t want any more of her folk aphorisms. She always thought she understood everything and everyone. When she was not prickly, she was preaching. But I dared not argue. That afternoon I took home a very hot jar of floated intentions and the lesson of the banana heart, the charm that I have kept in my pocket ever since:
“Close to midnight, when the heart bows from its stem, wait for its first dew. It will drop like a gem. Catch it with your tongue. When you eat the heart of the matter, you’ll never grow hungry again.”
forty-five
Pork knuckle with dried banana flowers
Around the table, there was a shift in appetites. While my mistress became a little bit more engaged with her plate, her parents grew listless and grim, but all their stomachs grumbled alike. Mrs. Valenzuela sometimes came to a meal with red eyes and a sniffle, and the doctor, his lips a thin line, hardly touched his food. Ralph visited every day, eating more earnestly and moving the conversation along, especially with my señorita, who had begun sitting beside him. The doctor sometimes stared at them, sighed and picked at his plate.
The friends seemed to have grown awkward with each other, though Ralph still tried to be charming, always mentioning some detail about American life. Then odd and long silences followed, broken only by the embarrassing asides of the stomach, and I grew teary. The usual appreciative noises about my cooking were now withheld and I thought the cutlery clattered with censure. At each meal, I felt that the end of a friendship and my job was near, but none explained the why and wherefore, most especially the when. Once Mrs. Valenzuela broke into tears when dates were floated around, and excused herself from the table.
At lunch today, there was barely any talk or appetite. My stew did its best to please, steaming its soy vinegar and bay leaf aroma into the air, making it more humid, then grew cold after a while. It was occasionally prodded and picked at, as if the need to eat were only a distasteful afterthought. I could see the American discreetly examining a piece of meat on his plate. He did not flinch when, in my halting English, I explained that it was pork knuckle, but with the toes removed, I assured him. And the long, thin strips were dried banana flowers gouged out of the core of a heart.
The silence that followed was disconcerting. I felt as if my cooking were suddenly under suspicion or reproach, and I had to explain. That I had visited the shriveled hearts in my old haunt this morning and found no banana flowers peeking out of any of them, so I had to look inside. That I was not about to open my mouth under a heart and wait till midnight like Juan, because that was silly and a waste of time, and it was best to get straight to the heart of the matter, then I went on to quote the lesson of Juan’s story. I had never given such a long speech at a meal. What followed made my cheeks burn. Ralph took my hand and kissed it, saying, “Thank you, Nenita,” then to the rest of the table added, “From the mouth of babes.” In his heart he had understood my broken English.
There was no more of the usual after-lunch banter in the lounge room, just the silent mopping of sweaty faces before the doctor and his wife retired to their bedroom, and left Ralph and my mistress alone. From the kitchen, I heard them whispering. I could not quite make out their words, so I edged close to the door and peeked, my hands full of soapsuds.
“You don’t have to, Ralph.”
“I want to.”
“You must be sure.”
“I am, Violeta. I want to be with you—and everything that goes with you. That is enough.”
I saw her extend a hand and him lean his face towards it, but they did not quite catch each other. It was an awkward gesture, it made them laugh. They pulled back, embarrassed.
“For now, it is enough,” she said softly.
I went back to my washing, feeling full in my chest, as if there the banana flowers had bloomed.
Now I should have left it at that and lived with all my incomprehension, for the day at least. But I was set on gouging at hearts and peeking into their cores. After I did the dishes, I sneaked home with a bowl of leftovers without asking my mistress’s permission. I decided that appetites could be shifted to another table.
The little scene in the lounge room had left me quite heady and reckless. I will go neighboring. I will lay this bowl of stew on my mother’s hands and I don’t care what she says, but she will look at me.
Outside I felt as hot and damp as the air. I could see the clouds gathering and dipping low, looking ominous. Ay, to have the heaven open! Our door was black from the residue of ash, in need of a long, good wash. I heard the murmur of voices inside and smelled fried dried fish, even before I walked in. It was half past two, and my family had just started lunch.
There was boiled rice on each plate, not gruel. I took in their faces, sweat-filmed and absorbed, and the fingers as rapt in picking slivers of flesh from the thin, bony fish; I could see there were raw tomatoes too. Everyone looked up as I entered, all eyes on the bowl between my hands. “Ay, what is it, Nining, what is it? Give us a look, quick, quick!” My siblings were all over me and soon my hands were relieved. Father was pleased, and Mother, as always disapproving, asked whether my employers knew I was here with this. Meanwhile five hands had already dipped into this bowl to grab what they could amid a full-blown quarrel.
“That’s mine!” Junior said, snatching the biggest pork knuckle from Claro’s plate.
“No, mine—I got it first,” Claro whined, trying to grab it back.
“Mine, mine,” Lydia and Elvis chorused.
“Shut up!” Mother ordered, and Father tried to placate Claro while dipping into the bowl. “I’m sure there’s something nicer here for you.”
“But I saw it first,” Nilo said, trying to grab the piece of meat in turn, but Junior began licking it all over, saying, “You still want it? You still want it?”
Claro began to cry. Nilo chanted, “Greedy, greedy!” The two youngest joined in, banging their hands on the table.
“Stop acting like pigs!” Mother screamed.
Junior giggled. “No, we’re not—this is pig,” he said under his breath, then bit into the flesh hanging from the knuckle.
“Are you answering back?”
“I didn’t say anything, Mama, I’m just eating, as you can see.”
“So you’re challenging me now, are you, Junior?”
“Maring…Maring…” Father gently began.
“You shut up too!”
Father abandoned his words to the devil and found Nilo a piece of fat from the bowl.
“So, Junior—you think you can challenge me now, is that it?”
But Junior kept gnawing at his pork knuckle with great industry—the fat, the flesh, the gristle—even as Mother repeated her question. Finally she stood up, slamming her fist on the table. “Lechero ka!” she cursed, then before we knew it she had slapped my brother. The pork flew from his hand and I saw the red mark spread on his cheek, then he was biting his upper lip and squinting at my mother, who had by now pulled him up by the collar. “You’ve been acting up for weeks now. What are you trying to prove, you stupid pig?”
We a
ll gasped in horror as Junior pushed her away then dropped on all fours, searching for the meat on the floor. Taken aback by her son’s defiance, Mother seemed for a moment unsure, as if her fury had faltered, then she began to kick him, screaming, “Pig, pig, worthless pig!” but Junior did not even cry out. He had found his pork and was eating again, slumped on his chest but one hand still firmly around the knuckle, and he couldn’t get up and the kicks wouldn’t stop like his eating and I thought my lungs would burst because I was suddenly falling from the sky and the air was rushing past me, I couldn’t catch it just as no one could catch me, no one, so my back would break and no one could make it better again so I found myself striding up to her and pushing, just pushing her to the wall and she was looking at me really looking now and I could see the shock in her eyes but I couldn’t stop screaming I couldn’t stop—
“Nining!”
It was Father. He had caught me from behind, gripping my arms down. “Nining, Nining,” he said again and again, his voice growing softer, fading with my name. I could see Mother crouched against the wall, breathing hard and holding her belly, staring at Junior gnawing at the bone. I heard his teeth scrape against the unyielding surface and he could not stop squinting, as if his eyes had conspired with his mouth to break the knuckle open.
I disengaged myself from Father’s arms and stood there just looking at her whose eyes were no longer on me. I heard one of my siblings whimper. I retraced my steps to the door without looking back.
forty-six
Shredded heart in vinegar
No one saw me creep back to the house. I curled into bed, pulling the blanket over my head despite the heat. Foolishly I wondered about the boy who could kiss it better, my back, my eyes, kiss them all into forgetting. Especially these—these hands, clumsy and criminal. Walking back with the empty bowl, I had looked out to the red turret and imagined it opened and a Beatles mop flew this way and that.
Banana Heart Summer Page 16