by Noël Alumit
Robert and I would lie on the floor, looking up at the ceiling, craving.
We’d hear the climax. We always knew the climax; the most distinct sound of them all. The room seemed to expand, swell. The ceiling seemed to rise, bend outward.
BABY OH BABY, J said.
GOD OH GOD, Baby Bounce said.
BABY OH BABY, J said again.
Then a miraculous silence, serenity. The room shrank back into its usual form. Robert and I would lie there exhausted. He’d rest his head on my stomach. I’d giggle a bit. I touched his hair, feeling the thick strands of blackness.
“I think my parents sold the house,” Robert said.
Robert was my best friend. He would be the first person in my new American life to disappear, vanish with the rest of my childhood.
I bought a book. It cost over ten dollars, which was a lot of money for a kid. I bought it because it was about Monty. His face was on the cover. BABY OH BABY. I kept The Films of Montgomery Clift under my pillow when I slept. I kept it in my backpack when I went to school, walking with Robert close by.
BABY OH BABY, I thought, when I thought of Mr. Clift.
“Bong, please get me some Scotch tape,” Mr. Lopez said. But he had to say it three times before I heard him.
BABY OH BABY, I thought when I kissed the book, a yellow book with Monty’s exquisite face on top. Monty dressed in a suit, his warm eyes staring straight at me. Two creases were on his forehead and his hair was combed back, a sheen atop his head. Even though paper was what I felt on my lips, I kissed the book anyway.
“Bong! Get out of that bathroom! Ay, sose, it doesn’t take that long to do what you gotta do!” Auntie Yuna screamed. I put The Films of Montgomery Clift in my backpack and walked out like nothing happened.
BABY OH BABY, I thought when I pressed myself against my pillow, imagining him.
BABY OH BABY, I whispered in the dark, alone.
I held myself. I didn’t know what I was doing, but it felt good. Up and down.
I pressed against my pillow.
I held myself between my fingers. Tightly. Up and down.
I felt a grinding, an unscrewing. A knot being untied. It began down there. Starting from that loose patch of skin between my legs. I shook. And shook. And shook. And shook.
My white Fruit of the Loom underwear was no longer white. More gray. From the wetness that came from me. I threw my underwear away so no one could ever know what I did. What we did.
Mr. Clift. Montgomery. Montgomery Clift.
I discovered what BABY OH BABY really meant.
CHAPTER FIVE
The Low Resonance of a Man’s Voice
Dear Montgomery, February 7, 1978
Mr. Clift, what should I do? I want to see my mom’s letter but I don’t want J to fall in love with Auntie Yuna. Or worse, if the love spell fails, J will walk around Los Angeles like a crazy man.
I’ll sleep on it. Please give me an answer by morning.
“I have a letter from your mom,” Auntie Yuna said to me, waving a torn envelope in front of me with stamps from the Philippines covering the upper right side.
“Let me see,” I said, trying to snatch the envelope from her. She hid it behind herself.
“No,” she said, smelling of King Cobra Malt Liquor. “First, you do something for me.”
“What?”
“Go into J’s place and get me something.” She stood so close to me I saw her rotted yellow teeth, wet with spit. I had grown a few inches since coming to the States, but Auntie Yuna was still taller. She had gotten fat, making her face fatter, making the anger which always showed on her face bigger.
“What do you want?”
“A sock or a shirt. Something that belongs to him.”
That proved Auntie Yuna was a witch. She didn’t have to say what she was going to do with that sock or that shirt. There was a guy who walked the streets of Baguio City. He talked to himself and waved at no one in particular. A love spell that went bad, people told me.
“I won’t get you anything,” I said.
I didn’t see her hand come from behind her and grab the hairs at the very top of my head. She yanked so hard I fell to my knees.
“You get me something of his or I’ll burn this letter, Stupid Boy.”
I struggled to get away, but she yanked harder.
“Get me something of his!” she said. I felt hairs being separated from my scalp. She smashed her chubby fist into my face, hitting my right eye. I was dizzy, and through clenched teeth, I said, “All right, I’ll get you something. I’ll do it. Okay, I’ll do it.”
She let go, and I wondered what I had just agreed to.
•
The next day, I knocked on J’s door. He was on the phone, but he let me in. Baby Bounce wasn’t there. She was on the other end of the line. Even when they weren’t together they were together.
“I think you should do what you think is best,” he said to her.
I looked around the apartment wondering what to take. Maybe his catcher’s mitt? Maybe his calculator? There really wasn’t that much to take. J’s apartment had a sofa and a TV set. His walls were bare and he didn’t have that much of his stuff around.
“Take something easy,” he said. “Take a class you know you can pass.”
There was a red tie on the floor. With lines all over it. It was almost under the sofa, barely visible.
“Don’t sweat it. It’s no big deal. Just take it,” he said. “All you need is one course then you’ll have your degree.”
I rolled up the tie while J’s back was to me.
“I wouldn’t miss it. I wouldn’t miss it for anything. Your graduation is important to me, too,” he said. “It’s taken you five years to get that degree.”
I put the tie into my pocket.
J turned around and faced me.
“There it’s done. No big deal,” he said. “In a few months you’ll be done. Then we can be married.” He hung up the phone.
“What’s up, Bong?”
Looking at him, I believed J was the handsomest man I’d ever seen. His slender face always appeared kind and a lock of black hair fell across his forehead. His dark brown eyes reminded me of milk chocolate.
“What’s up?” he asked again.
I kept my hands to my side, squeezing the lump that was his tie in my pocket.
“Nothing.”
“What happened to your eye?”
“Nothing.”
“I got a shiner like that once. Did you get into a fight at school?”
I didn’t say anything, but he took it as a yes.
“Well,” he said, “you know fighting’s not cool sometimes. But I hope you kicked the crap out of him.”
I had to smile. He smiled, too. At school all the grown-ups told me fighting was wrong. J was the first person to say it’s not so bad.
He held his palms up for me.
“Hit me,” he said.
“Huh?”
“Hit my hands. Let’s see you fight.” Then he did some karate moves that I knew he copied from a Bruce Lee movie.
“C’mon, Big Guy,” he said. “Show me what you got.”
That’s what I liked about Americans. They called kids Big Guy or Sport or Champ.
Even though J is Filipino, he was born and raised in Stockton. I always thought Filipinos were born in the Philippines, but J was living proof that wasn’t so.
“Show me whatcha got, sport?” he said, again holding his hands up, his palms facing me.
I made a fist. I hit him, making a dull slap on his palms.
“Harder,” he said.
I hit him a little harder, but I wasn’t in the mood. In a little while he’d be falling in love with Auntie Yuna.
“Hit me again,” he said.
I hit him again. And again. And again. Putting every bit of feeling into my arms and my fists. I stopped aiming at his palms. Instead I aimed for his face or his chest. Hitting him. Over and over. If I hit him, I thought J would do som
ething mean like slap me or tell me to get out of his apartment. I would hate him for being mean, cruel. Then I wouldn’t have felt too bad about Auntie Yuna turning him into a zombie.
Instead, he caught my fists and held them tight, and asked, “Hey, champ, you OK?”
I didn’t want to cry. But the more I didn’t want to, the more I couldn’t stop myself.
“It’ll be all right,” he said to me. It was a man’s voice. I think I needed to hear a man’s voice at that moment. I was used to hearing that from women. I was used to hearing girls in general speak soft and gentle, but sometimes I liked when a man talked that way. When my dad was kind, I knew it was a special moment, because it wasn’t who he was really about. It made it more special. I needed to hear the low resonance of a man’s voice. I think boys need to hear that every once in a while.
J pulled me into him. He didn’t smell like a department store anymore. He smelled real. That kind of smell a hard day leaves on you: a little bit of sweat and fading deodorant.
“Whatever it is, Bong,” he said, “it’ll work itself out.”
I didn’t think voodoo spells ever worked out.
He looked at me and said, “I feel sorry for the guy who gave you that black eye, you must have put up a real good fight. You got some power in those hands.”
We watched TV, laughing at Laverne and Shirley. Somewhere during a commercial J fell asleep on his sofa. His head was back and his mouth was open, a little bit of drool on the corner of his mouth. I watched him breathe, his stomach rising and falling like a trembling hill. I touched the thin line of drool crawling down his chin. A drop of his spit was on the tip of my forefinger. I wiped it onto my lips.
I took his tie out of my pocket and placed it onto the floor. I turned off the television and headed out, carefully listening to the click of the knob as I stealthily shut the door.
I went back upstairs. Auntie Yuna was waiting for me.
“Do you have anything for me?” Auntie Yuna asked.
“No, not yet.”
Her lips tightened, almost creating one long line across the area that was supposed to be her mouth. She turned away from me then locked herself in the bedroom.
The next day, I found an old sock near the laundry room. I kept it, waiting for Auntie Yuna to come home. When she did, I pulled the black sock from my pocket. I pretended to be real sad. Like I was doing the most terrible thing.
She grabbed it from me, stretching it, feeling it with her hands, then with her cheek, raising it to the light.
“Now where’s the letter?” I said.
She gave me a wicked little smile. The kind where her lips went sideways. The kind that didn’t show her teeth. But I knew they were there.
“When the spell works, I’ll give it to you.”
“That’s not fair. You said to get you something that belongs to J then you’ll give me the letter.”
“I don’t remember that,” she said. Then she walked into her room, slamming the door.
It was comical watching Auntie Yuna for the next few days. I didn’t know what Auntie Yuna expected. She’d give J a smile whenever she saw him, but J always pretended not to notice. She would be at the bottom of the stairwell waiting for J to come home, but J would simply nod and enter his apartment. She’d make up any excuse to knock on his door. She’d ask for sugar or milk or make up some lame story like, “I seem to be missing some mail, would you mind checking if the postman didn’t give you my letters by accident?” J checked, and of course there was no letter for Auntie Yuna.
The only person who noticed Auntie Yuna was our poor landlord, Mr. Boteng. Mr. Boteng must have been at least 200 years old. He was almost bald except for a few patches of hair on the sides of his head. His skin was wrinkled and leathery. He resembled a troll. Mr. Boteng began to drop by often to see if we needed anything fixed.
“No, Mr. Boteng, there is nothing wrong with the pipes. No, Mr. Boteng, the heater works just fine. No, Mr. Boteng, the toilet always flushes that way,” Auntie Yuna would say.
Mr. Boteng had also offered Auntie Yuna rice cakes and soda. He’d come over and present her with a platter of fried chicken. He’d invite her over for merienda, a snack in the middle of the day.
Maybe the black sock belonged to him.
I searched all over the apartment for Mama’s letter. Nothing. I searched Auntie Yuna’s room, looking through her strewn clothes on the floor, examining the pockets of her jeans. I looked under the shrine to the Virgin Mary, through her piles of letters to God and saints begging for favors. I looked under her mattress, inside her pillowcases. I went through her drawers, even the ones carrying her frayed bras. Still nothing.
The only place I hadn’t searched was that ratty old handbag she carried with her wherever she went.
When she came home, I handed her a cup of King Cobra.
“Why are you being so nice?” she asked.
“I just know you work really hard.”
She shrugged and drank her malt liquor. When she was done, I poured her another glass. Then another. Until the bottle was empty.
She passed out on the couch.
I looked through her bag. Under the pens and pencils and lint, I found the black sock, the one I discovered in the laundry room, the one I said was J’s. It was wrapped in string with a picture card of St. Raphael pinned to it. Saint Raphael, Patron Saint of Lovers, the picture card read.
I thought the sock belonged to Mr. Boteng, because he said he had been having heartburns. I untied the sock, hoping it would break the spell. I didn’t want Mr. Boteng’s heart to burn anymore.
I found the letter. It was addressed to Auntie Yuna from some woman I’d never heard of before. The letter was from Auntie Yuna’s friend. It wasn’t from my mom at all.
I put the letter back.
I didn’t sleep the entire night. I watched Auntie Yuna lie there, snoring. I wanted to smother Auntie Yuna, place a cushion over her face and snuff her out. I wanted to set her hair on fire, stick needles into the bottoms of her feet. I wanted to bite her, rip some of her flesh away from her bones.
I went into the kitchen and stared at the dirty dishes in the sink. From the sink, I pulled out a knife still covered with peanut butter. It was a small knife, no longer than my palm, but it would do what I’d wanted it to do. The tip was sharp with jagged teeth. I walked over to Auntie Yuna, trembling. I didn’t know if I shook from fear or anger. I wasn’t going to kill her, just hurt her. I just wanted to hurt her a little, leave a small cut or jab her a bit.
I would have done something like that to her if it weren’t for Montgomery Clift. He had suddenly appeared. I didn’t see him, but I knew he was sitting at the kitchen table behind me. I didn’t want to turn around and see him, afraid he would go away. I knew he disapproved. It was as if Montgomery Clift had strings attached to my brain, and he was pulling them ever so gently. I dropped the knife, hearing a small thud as it fell onto the shag carpet, the green shag carpet. I saw the brown peanut butter on the knife look somehow peaceful against the green. It reminded me of dirt and grass.
I knew he was there—Monty was there. Smoking. A filterless cigarette, maybe a Lucky Strike, between his fingers.
The blue cigarette smoke traveled above my head and floated around. It curled around the lamp and it curled around the sofa. It wafted through the legs of the coffee table, skimming the magazines resting on it. It hovered above Auntie Yuna and blew away from her face when she exhaled. The blue smoke created a cloud near the ceiling. I watched it move and roll, bumping into walls.
The cloud of smoke balled together then parted like waves, creating images above me. I saw a tree, a fig tree I used to sit under in the Philippines. I waited for Mama there sometimes. While she cleaned houses and I was bored, I waited for her under that tree, choosing the ripest figs. I’d bite into one and watch the pink insides ooze out, tasting the sweetness.
I saw Mama’s face appear in the smoke, and I was numb. I was caught between nowhere and heaven, watching Mama
watch me. Her face was pleasant, but sullen. I stared and stared into her face, my breath almost nonexistent. I don’t think I blinked once, fearful my lids would provide a moment of darkness that would separate me from her. So I stood, motionless, peering upward like the children of Fatima witnessing the appearance of the Blessed Lady. I stood there till the sun rose.
When the beams of light came through the window, the smoke vanished. And so did Montgomery Clift. Rather his presence vanished. I was returned to an ordinary apartment, a ceiling void of Mama’s image, made merely of plaster.
I waited for Auntie Yuna to wake up. I could see her breathing, slow and steady.
When she stirred, her head shifted from one shoulder to another, I yelled, “YOU LIED TO ME!”
She almost fell off the couch. She looked at me wondering who I was. She looked around wondering where she was. Her broomhead hair stuck out in all directions.
“What are you talking about?” she said.
“You said you had a letter from my mama, but I know you don’t.”
“You went through my bag, Stupid Boy?” She hissed, got up and wobbled toward the bathroom. She swayed from side to side, leaning against a wall, then against a chair, then against a wall again.
“You’re a liar. You’re a liar,” I said over and over.
She turned and she lunged at me, hitting me so hard across my jaw, I fell down. I took the King Cobra bottle and threw it at her. I missed.
“Stupid. Stupid boy!”
She came after me again. I covered myself with my arms, burying myself so deep inside of me I couldn’t breathe.
“I did get a letter from your mom,” she said. “She doesn’t want you. She said you could burn in hell.” She slapped me from all sides, her feet digging into my back.
I knew she was lying. My mother would have never said anything like that. But still. The thought of my mother not wanting me made me feel smaller than dust balls on the floor.