Rosethorn

by Ava Zavora

  "I was thinking of inviting some of my friends in the city over tomorrow night for a little dinner party," she mused as she looked off into space. "They'll be expecting Umbrian fare, but I was thinking of dishes I haven't visited in a long time, from my mother's land." She started counting on her fingers, whispering the names to herself. "...And Marcello and I will make thirteen. Oh no, that will never do. Would you, as a favor to me?" Elise had turned to her, her hands clasping hers. "Save us from bad luck?"

  "You mean--"

  "Join us?

  "Oh, I don't know, I have to study I think." Sera did not know why she felt like resisting Elise, why she did not want to meet her eyes.

  "But you're on winter break aren't you?"

  Sera made a vague sound of assent.

  "Then it's settled, you'll be our fourteenth. May I impose on you further by asking you to help me for the day? Marcello's back is hurting him, and I'm going to need some extra hands. Oh, good," Elise clapped delightedly, again not waiting for Sera to refuse.

  Marcello wandered in the kitchen then, lured by the smell of rosemary bread rising in the oven. And when Elise took out the tin pan, all three tore steaming hot pieces, even Sera, surprising herself and laughing as she drizzled thick green oil on hers and devoured it, not caring that it burned her, suddenly hungry, as she hadn't been in a long, long time.

  "So you are succumbing to my wife, orfana piccolina?" Marcello asked the next day in passing as Sera followed Elise to the kitchen, carrying bags bulging with spoils from their trip to Woodside that morning, and he to the cab waiting outside, the trunk containing a suckling pig freshly roasted on a spit, lechon, wrapped in banana leaves and foil. When he carried in the large package easily, Sera was only slightly surprised that his back did not seem to hurt him.

  "We're going to Little Manila," Elise had pronounced that morning when they took the 7 train to the 65th Street Station. Sera had been expecting the Food Emporium, Dean and Deluca, or Gristede's.

  "Your mother's Filipino?" Sera asked, looking at Elise's pale skin, almost blue-white in the winter chill, her gray eyes, and straight nose.

  "From Sorsogon. She was a student at the University in Manila when she met my father. He was stationed in Cebu during the second World War."

  "I never would have guessed."

  "That would have made my mother happy."

  Startled yet again, Sera waited for Elise to explain, but she was unfolding her long list.

  "We'll need jicama, ube, okra, bitter melon, laing, bangus, mangos, calamansi, noodles. I think I’m out of bagoong...."

  With each item pronounced in Elise’s singsong voice, a little of Sera melted or perhaps succumbed, as Marcello would put it later, for food was the language of home, of her grandmother, of her childhood left behind.

  In perfect Tagalog, Elise bantered with the snaggle-toothed, leathery-faced fish man, astonished then delighted when she flirted with him. She went about the stores, efficiently squeezing the mangoes for utmost ripeness, tantalizing Sera with hints of that night's menu--"for homemade mango gelato, my dear, better than any you may find in Manila or Florence" and laughing her robust laugh.

  To the bakery for merienda, turon, its crispy golden skin sticky with honey, and fresh pan de sal, and then to a little restaurant where Elise was greeted with hugs from the chef--"You've been gone too long" ---and they were sent off, after a quick lunch of grilled chicken skewers, into a waiting cab with a whole roast pig, specially set aside for Elise.

  "We'll eat what the peasants eat, Sera," Elise said as they unpacked their treasures from that morning. "But tweaked just a little. We'll start off with lumpia shanghai-slivers of roasted duck and strands of sotanghon steeped in broth, with bean sprouts, minced onions, jicama, and shiitake mushrooms, accompanied by a pineapple chili sauce. Some savory empanadas of ground pork, raisins, and shavings of gouda.”

  “For the main course we'll have pinakbet, bitter melon, okra, eggplant, onions and garlic sautéed in bagoong. For a bit of green, laing, spinach and string beans simmering in coconut milk, with just a whisper of heat. Garlic-fried bangus resting on a bed of banana leaves. A mound of pancit malabon, fat noodles with thin moons of salty egg, green onions, and crushed chicharon. And of course, our roasted suckling pig, which has slowly turned on a spit over a fire all day yesterday, thick, crispy skin the color of caramel and moist flavorful meat underneath.”

  “The finale to this decadence will be simple and sweet--freshly churned gelato, dense, creamy, and studded with bits of ripe mango on top of a warm mango tart. How does that sound?"

  Bewitched, as if Elise where an enchantress casting a spell, Sera could only nod with her mouth slightly open, her eyes glazed with visions of the coming feast.

  They sat next to each other, perched by the edge of the soapstone countertop, Sera carefully wrapping the lumpia in a choreographed assembly learned at her grandmother's lap and Elise cutting then filling empanada purses.

  "Adobo was the only thing I learned from my mother, that most basic of dishes, which I think must reside in the soul of every Filipino. Some soy sauce and rice vinegar runs in our blood, right?" Elise began as she rolled out her dough. "She only cooked it when my father was away and I always fantasized that it was our secret, that only I knew this part of her. But she was ashamed of the smell afterwards. She was ashamed of many things."

  Sera watched Elise's lightning quick hands, in contrast to the unhurried, thoughtful way she spoke, as if she were telling a story not her own.

  "I only understood it when I was older, when I met her brothers and sisters for the first time. You see my mother was mestiza, she was more Spanish than native, with fair skin that is so highly coveted in the islands, even now. The only one among all her dark-browned family, she was kept from the sun as my mother kept me from the sun.”

  “I wonder if she ever felt imprisoned by this ridiculous ideal. I wonder if at the age of 17 when she first met my father, if she did love him then, or if she just saw him as a way out of the ugliness of poverty. She was not only beautiful, but could sing, as well. She must have been a mirage to the hot and weary soldiers, the cool, white sampaguita in the heat. But it was my father, a 25-year-old originally from New Jersey, whom she chose, and who took her back home after the war.

  "I imagine her relief when I was born, even paler than she was. I can imagine how she must have thought looking at me that I would never know of being the other in a foreign land. She only knew high school English when my father brought her back to New Jersey and I try to imagine what it must have been like for her, so far from home, how harsh the winters must have been, how she must have felt to be in a country where many places refused to serve Filipinos.”

  “There were never any wistful stories of her homeland, nothing passed on to me of where she came from, except for those rare times when she cooked adobo and I was allowed to sit with her. You're wondering why I'm telling you all this," Else paused in filling her empanada purses, smiling a little.

  "Marcello says I am too impetuous, but there's something about moments like this when I think of mothers and daughters and aunties and lolas all sitting together in some kitchen making empanadas and wrapping lumpia and sharing confidences. I think women have never felt closer to one another than when they were in the kitchen. Don't you?"

  "Am I supposed to share something private, too?" Sera asked, suspicion evident in her guarded voice, the way she pulled the sleeves tightly down to her palms.

  "No," Elise said softly. "But you may, if you wanted to." Elise’s gray eyes held hers until Sera looked away and continued wrapping her lumpia.

  "Do you always talk this way?"

  "What way?"

  "Without irony."

  Elise laughed. "You mean I don't sound like a New Yorker-jaded, hmm? Hard and sophisticated, unsurprised by anything, seen everything?"

  "Yes, I suppose that would describe what you are not. Or what you seem not to be."

  "You're withholding final judgment of me t
hen. That's encouraging. And the day is still young." A mysterious half-smile to show she was not affronted and Elise turned to her empanadas.

  Young for what, Sera wanted to ask. What did she want, this woman, with her soft, musical voice and Cleopatra eyes, who rolled out dough in pearls, her fingers ringed with glittering stones, wearing crushed velvet skirts as if they were every day clothes, and spoke sadly of adobo and her own mother as if each were inseparable from the other?

  She felt herself succumbing to Elise, even though she felt she should mistrust her. She was suddenly, after a bitter year-and-a-half of living in New York with no friends, being enfolded into this strange woman's life, and Sera did not want to resist.

  She could not remember a time recently when she last cooked a real meal. She tried to recreate her grandmother's dishes at first, but soon lost interest in cooking for herself. Her roommates, for some reason, were a succession of models who seemed to subsist on lint and caffeine.

  She briefly went home once and when her grandmother saw her, she could not hide her distress over how thin Sera was.

  "You're studying too hard. You're not getting any sleep. Perhaps you should drop one of your cleaning jobs so you'll have time to eat." Her grandmother had to smother a gasp as she ran her hand down Sera's spine.

  "That's what comes of living with models," Sera had said lightly, as if gauntness were catching.

  Her grandmother had bombarded her with food, bowls of afritada and arroz caldo as if she were sick, even making her favorite, kare-kare. She sent Sera off with a backpack full of Tupperware meals and another bag full of food, convinced that pan de sal and rice were talismans that would keep her from ill health.

  It would please her grandmother to know that Sera would have a proper meal this evening.

  Elise danced as she slapped garlic cloves with the blade of her fat knife and threw it in the sizzling oil of her hot skillet. A sorcerer with her wooden spoon, she presided over the beginnings of her pinakbet, inhaling with rapture. "Smell that, Sera, the oil being baptized first with the garlic, then with the minced onions, a smell as ancient as cooking itself."

  Sera chopped and sliced, prepping and fetching each ingredient to be handed over to Elise, who would then stir and mix into a waiting pot. As the oil sizzled and sauces simmered throughout the afternoon, Sera and Elise danced around each other and the pots as if they had been cooking together longer than a day, and Marcello wandered in and out, occasionally dipping a finger or two, declaring his suggestions in rapid Italian to Elise, then winking at Sera as if he approved of her, sweating as she hovered over the deep fryer, tongs in hand.

  After dancing over pots, when the last lumpia had been fried and the mango tart was safely in the oven, Sera and Elise dressed the long table in rich burgundy damask and tasseled napkins wrapped within napkin rings of what looked like emerald-cut rubies. Blood-colored roses were strewn about the table, next to cream plates, gleaming silverware, and crystal goblets. An enormous gold charger was found, big enough to bear the roast pig in the center of the extravagant table.

  After an appreciative nod at the table and quick glance at the clock, Elise took Sera by the hand, saying, "And there's even enough time, stivoli di tuono."

  "Enough time for what? And why do both of you keep calling me that?" Sera said, irritated.

  "It means literally, boots of thunder," Elise said as she went down the hall to the bedroom, Sera stomping after her in her black combat boots.

  "Now, let's see, I think I may have something for you here." Elise took out a box from her closet and digging through folded sweaters, excavated a wrinkled dress of deep red velvet, with a scooped neck and long, bell-shaped sleeves. "I wore this when I was much slimmer and younger, before my fondness for pain au chocolat and noisette crepes got the better of me."

  "I brought something to wear,” Sera said, with a feeble protest as she fingered the velvet dress Elise had set against her. They both faced the oval mirror.

  "Oh, but this would go so well with your coloring. It was made for a girl with long, raven hair. And somewhere I have a black choker that would set off that neck and earrings that would glitter set against your hair." Their eyes met through the mirror, the older woman leaning in with her chin on Sera's shoulder as she held the dress against her. "And you may keep your thunderous boots on as my feet are bigger than yours."

  "No time to dilly-dally, my dear." And Sera was whisked to the bath, where Elise mixed some elixir of fizzy bath salts and a frothy potion of lemon verbena before shutting the door.

  As she sat in the steaming hot water, Sera looked at her bare arms, crisscrossed with angry welts on top of faint gray scars, smarting in the heat. They did not seem to belong to her but to another creature entirely. Someone unbearably sad and destructive. Out of place in this warm and lovely home. Not tonight, she thought as she started vigorously washing herself.

  When she came out, freshly scrubbed and shy in Elise's terry bathrobe, the velvet dress was waiting for her on the bed, newly steamed into an even richer red. She was placed on the chair in front of the dressing table, Elise behind her with her hands in Sera's wet hair, contemplating how it should be dressed. "Has anyone ever done your hair for you?"

  "No one but my grandmother, and not since I was five."

  "I'm thinking of pre-Raphaelite waves, half your hair loosely bound up and then cascading in the back."

  "That sounds busy,” Sera said wryly. "And complicated."

  "Yes," Elise murmured. "That's what we'll do."

  20 minutes of mousse being run through her hair and being blow-dried, then being pinned and pulled here and there--then "Voila! The beggar maid becomes the queen."

  Sera did not laugh at Elise's extravagant comment for indeed the girl in the mirror in the red velvet dress was not her, her eyes shining like obsidian and her hair a mass of soft waves framing her face.

  "Well," she said, trying to sound as if she was not impressed with her reflection, "I'll match the table."

  "Would you rather wear, is that a bullet?" Elise asked as she held up a black velvet choker. Sera had forgotten that she was wearing it, had long ago ceased to regard it as ornamentation, not something she remembered to put on for she had never taken it off. She had worn it as she wore sadness, not realizing that it had become part of her.

  The smallest hesitation, not unnoticed by Elise, and Sera unclasped the bullet necklace.

  Elise encircled her neck with the choker from which hung a red ruby and dangled earrings of black marcasite on her ears, a bit of sparkle in her hair.

  "And to gild that strawberry of a mouth," Elise said as she carefully applied a dark red lipstick. "Now press," she commanded as she held a folded tissue in between Sera's wine-stained lips.

  "Ang maganda ka, anak. You're beautiful, my child," Elise said as their eyes met, and Sera could say nothing, not even thank you, or ask why, why the dress and the jewelry, why her.

  "My boys are coming tonight. Be careful you don't break their hearts,” Elise said, shaking her finger at her as she ushered her out to Marcello, who had changed into a black suit with a silk cravat at his throat, exclaiming, “Brava! Bellissima!"

  "Now it's my turn," Elise called out over her shoulder as she retreated to the bathroom.

  Emerging just in time for the first guest, Elise had changed into a long chocolate suede overcoat trimmed with rich brown sable over a black velvet dress, and wore long strands of black crystal beads and pave diamonds. Diamond clips sparkled in her jet black hair and thick, beaded bracelets circled her wrists.

  "Ah, mi amore," Marcello said as Elise twirled in front of him like an excited girl.

  Her excitement was infectious, as Sera too felt like twirling in her borrowed dress, about to attend her first New York party.

  Am I really here, she later asked herself, sitting at the table between Elise's flirtatious 23-year-olds, Erich and Rolf, their German names at odds with their handsome Asian faces, each one battling the other for Sera's attention.


  I think I'm flirting, Sera thought, surprised at how easy it was to tease and smile and say witty things and laugh as if she had the lightest of hearts. Is this what it means to live in the moment, but am I really living in the moment when I'm observing myself, with Rolf on one side and Erich on the other?

  Feeling that she belonged, no longer the surly beggar maid, Sera succumbed and became, along with the others, a voluptuary for the night, indulging a newly awakened appetite for feasting. I'm happy, she realized, her plate full of food, talking to the boys about books and movies and music, instead of hiding in the shadows of a crowd, with an armor of aloofness.

  Someone, Elise perhaps, put on some jazzy music. The boys quickly pushed the furniture to the walls and Elise and Marcello danced in their living room, to be joined by other guests. Erich, or was it Rolf, slipped her some champagne that made her light-headed enough so she let Erich or Rolf take her in his arms and turn her about the room, and she was dancing too, the steps coming to her as if she had been dancing all her life, so easy in the arms of a man who knew how to dance.

  It was Erich who led her, she decided. Rolf had the mischievous wit, but Erich was the suave one, irresistible almond-shaped hazel eyes with long lashes looking down on her, not too tall, for she realized were she to kiss him, she would not have to strain and he would not have to lower his head too far to meet her. That she was tempted surprised her. Is that all it took, she thought, to overcome a year-and-a-half of mourning, some champagne and a red velvet dress?

  She danced from Erich to Rolf then back again, once bumping into Elise and Marcello, who leaned over and said as she was whirled away, "Champagne agrees with you," and she replied, over Erich's shoulder, "No, it is I who agree with champagne. In fact, tonight, I agree with everything!"

  Everyone laughed at her nonsense but she didn't care. She could not stop laughing, when was the last time that happened?