Mango Seasons

by Michelle Cruz Skinner

  I pretended to be sleeping. After Emil fell asleep in the next bed, I crawled back onto the floor. I didn’t see Ric after that. A month later he was in the car accident.

  These are what I remember. I open up that evening that seems to be mixed up with a lot of other evenings. Sitting beside him on the porch, in the car, I felt my heart was breaking, or exploding because I was so full of all the sweat, and smiles, the kiss, Ric’s hand on my shoulder, the garlic smell of lumpia, the volleyball bouncing over the spikes, and Marisa’s hurt face and I never want the sad, sad night to end.

  Soledad

  After Ric died, I went back to school. I didn’t know what else to do. Every day I think about him as if he were still alive and I get a soreness in my throat. It seems sacrilegious in a way to remember Ric in his old polo shirt with the faded blue collar, the raising of his eyebrows and tilt of his head to point out a girl walking across the lawn or sitting at the table next to us. These things seem ordinary and I think I should remember more important times. But I’ve tried and I can’t think of any.

  I can’t even cry. At the funeral Marisa and Gemma cried, one on either side of me as if I could hold them both up. Their faces were swollen for a week. All I’ve felt is a sore emptiness in my throat and a constant heaviness like sleep. When I did give in last week, I had to will myself to get back up. Marisa says I was sick then. I don’t know. I know I couldn’t move or eat or drink or care. For three days I lay pressed into the bed. On the fourth day I put on my brown house slippers and forced myself to have bread and coffee. The bread hurt going down my throat and I wished I could cry.

  The school year is almost over and I have to prepare for all the tests. So I fight back the desire to lie down and sleep through everything because I finish this year, finally. I’m afraid if I stop I’ll become too heavy to get back up. Sometimes I can see clearly all that I’m doing and it amazes me. I study at home for hours, meet with my study groups, prepare final projects, attend meetings, buy groceries, eat. Somehow I’m getting by with very little sleep and I seem like someone else, very familiar, but not quite me.

  This morning I opened the medicine cabinet and found Ric’s razor, shaving cream, and a nearly empty bottle of Dial deodorant, all on the top shelf. Despite the fact that we shared an apartment room, and I live in the midst of all his things, I’d managed to ignore them until this morning. The soreness in my throat got hard and stuck. What to do about them? What to do about everything? And why was I left with all this? Marisa lives here too and she could have taken care of some of these things. Eventually, I closed the cabinet. I brushed my teeth, took my shower and left.

  Sometimes Marisa is just too irresponsible. She rarely cleans so I have to do it. I always have to clean the toilet because she won’t touch it. She leaves empty glasses on the tables and bookshelf after she’s finished with them. For a few months she was dating the professor, an intelligent man I wanted to punch in the face not because he was unkind, but because he was hopelessly married and stupid to be seeing my sister. If anyone had found out, she would have been expelled, but he probably would have kept his job. Actually, a lot of people knew, but no one who mattered or cared enough to tell.

  She cried a lot after it was over and I didn’t know what to tell her. I’ve never known what to tell her or anyone else at times like that.

  * * *

  The guy Ibrahim who lives next door gave us flowers, because of Ric. He’s from Pakistan, I think, and he goes to the university. We see him a lot in the hallways and sometimes talk. He’s an EE student, that much I know, and wants to go to the States for his Masters. When I’m talking to him and looking at the tight lines of his face, I think he’s older, much older than the other students. I don’t know how old he is, but I do believe he worked for several years before saving enough for school. That I can see in his face and hands. This afternoon when I got home he’d left three rosals in a green vase on our doorstep. I wondered why he’d left them now, so late.

  The rosals were beginning to open and looked large for the small vase. I pinned my books under my arm so I could carry the vase and the small white envelope underneath it. His sympathy note is very polite and written in a loose script that looks as if it will flow off the page. I show it to Marisa when she gets home.

  “That was very sweet of him,” she says. She squints at the paper and brings it closer to her face. “What does this part say?”

  “Grace,” I tell her. “Grace of God.”

  The room is getting darker and close so I rise to open our windows. I’d forgotten to do that when I got home.

  Marisa pulls out a chair without glancing up from the note she’s reading. Finally she looks at me. “Maybe we could invite him for dinner.”

  “Because he wrote a nice note?” I don’t feel up to this.

  “No. Because we live next door to him and we don’t know him very well.” She sets the paper down. “We should get to know him.”

  “He’s Muslim.”

  “So?”

  “I just meant we should keep that in mind when we invite him. There are some things they won’t eat.”

  “I know that,” Marisa says and rises quickly from her chair. She stomps across the floor to her room. When she slams her door the vase falls over and water runs across the note and down to the floor.

  * * *

  We decided to invite a few other people, besides Ibrahim, so we wouldn’t feel awkward. Actually, it’s more of a party than dinner. Easier for us and probably better for Ibrahim too.

  Everyone here knows, knew Ric, but none of us mentions him. It’s a very deliberate avoidance that everyone’s aware of and no one wants to talk about. I don’t know if I’ll ever get to the point with Ric that I have with Lolo. Lolo was eighty-one when he died and he’d been sick for a while before that. Diabetes, cataracts, the things I associate with old age.

  Several times a year, we visit Lolo in his mausoleum. But with Ric in there, I don’t see how I can go. How do I walk in and pray knowing that in the wall, behind the brass plaque is my friend, my cousin? His name will stare down at me.

  On All Saints we usually stay all night, our family and his, and burn candles while we pray. After the early evening prayer, Mama flips the switches in the fuse box so that we can plug in the fan we brought and turn on the lights. Mama and Naty prepare the food on the gas stove in the kitchen while Mila and the rest of us dust the tombs and benches. Marisa and Ric’s Mama always do the sweeping because they don’t like to dust.

  Gemma, Marisa, Ric and I always slept on the upper floor that looks over the tombs. I don’t know how I’m going to be able to sleep there this year. I can’t think of him there with Lolo and Lola. It’s just that I believe, all of us believe, Ric should be here with us, sitting on the floor in a room filled with the smell of vinegar, garlic, and frying oil. He should be sitting here in this hot room smelling, as all of us do, of food.

  I feel guilty for having this party. Ric I know wouldn’t mind, but I do. After the initial quiet of everyone’s arrival, we’ve noisily cooked and set out spoons and forks, gotten drinks.

  Everyone’s talking above the clash of silverware hitting plates. Bowls and plates and pots of food sit on the stove and dining table because we don’t have much space to put everything. The kitchen’s a mess and Nilo spilled his whole plate onto the floor. He cleaned up, but not very well. I try not to think too much about the cleaning we’ll have to do later.

  Ibrahim has made a vegetable dish that everyone compliments him on. It’s really quite good. Curry-flavored. He’s giving the recipe to Ana who’s perched on one of the two chairs writing on a small pad of paper in her lap.

  “Before or after?” I hear her ask.

  “Before, before,” says Ibrahim waving his hands.

  Nilo, with his new plate of food, is trying to edge into a corner of space next to Ana. He bumps against her, but she ignores him. Ana’s the one who gave Nilo the nickname “cowboy.” He likes the nickname despite the fact that Ana
doesn’t like him.

  “Hoy, cowboy,” Marisa calls Nilo. She’s trying to get him away from Ana. “Have a seat.” She pats the chair in front of her.

  Soly brings her plateful of food and sits next to me. “How did you do on your project?” she asks.

  She doesn’t know anyone else here although she did know Ric. We were all three in architecture and had several classes together. She and I still have classes together. But really, I’ve invited her because I like her, the easy way she smiles and sits next to me. This is grace.

  “OK. I got marked down for materials. He didn’t think some of them were appropriate. Poor choices, he said. Also he didn’t like the office layout.”

  “Oh, he’s never happy.”

  “I don’t think we can make him happy.”

  “Why?”

  “I mean, he doesn’t expect any of us to do well enough to meet his standards. We can’t. So he’s never happy with any of us.”

  Soly looks at me a moment. “That’s true,” she finally says. And I realize that I sounded like Ric. I said what Ric would have said.

  Soly stares down at her plate as she eats. I can’t think of anything else to say so I ask her if she wants a drink. “Yes,” she says and I get us two Tru Oranges.

  Later that night, driving her home, I still can’t think of anything to say. Soly’s window is partly open and wisps of her hair flutter in the breeze, like a cobweb protecting her. This just seems the wrong time, a bad time. Ric’s too much with us. When we get to her house, we look at each other a moment, but we’re both too sad to make an effort at more than “goodbye.”

  * * *

  Tatay called early in the morning and didn’t seem to notice that we weren’t quite awake yet. He asked how we were, how we were doing in classes, how our car was running and finally came to the inevitable. “How are you doing with job applications?” I know what he really wanted to ask was, “Have you found a job yet?”

  “Pretty well,” I said.

  “You know I heard of a job here, on the base, that you should look into.”

  “What is it?”

  “Engineer I at Ship Repair Facility.”

  “I’m in Architecture.”

  “They’ll take that. It says here ‘or Architecture degree plus two years experience.’”

  “I don’t have any experience.”

  “Don’t worry about that. Just apply.” And I knew he had a connection, a kumpare or kumare somewhere who could help. “It’s a liaison position, between the Navy Engineers and local contractors. You can count your experience from working at de la Cruz’s.”

  I worked at Limtiaco and de la Cruz for two years as a draftsman, but I doubt this is the type of experience the Navy has in mind. “Well, send me the information,” I said.

  I’m not really interested. And I’m not sure I want to go back to Olongapo where I’ll have to live with my family again, at least until I get married. Still, I miss walking through Gordon Heights in the early mornings. Last time I was there, Gemma woke up early almost every morning so she could walk with me.

  I’m worried about her. We talked this morning and she said she hasn’t been walking. Too tired. She’s been sleeping a lot lately, Mama told me. And not eating much. What Mama didn’t say is that Gemma’s sleeping because dreaming is a lot easier than waking up and knowing Ric’s dead.

  “Get up early and walk,” I told Gemma. “It’s good exercise. You’ll feel better.” I’m afraid his death grows heavier and heavier on her each day.

  * * *

  I open the medicine cabinet to get my deodorant and there are Ric’s things again. For the last few days I’ve been able to focus only on the lower shelves and not look up there at them. I decide to throw them out. Marisa and I aren’t going to use the shaving cream or razor or deodorant. They’ll simply sit on the shelf and get rusty. The chemicals will separate and the shaving cream and deodorant will get lumpy and discolored. So I toss them, quickly. When I get home this afternoon I’ll put the rest of his things in boxes to give to his parents.

  As I’m brushing my teeth, I notice my hair in the mirror. It’s getting long and curling around my ears. Before I go to class, I stop at Rose Unisex Salon, where I always get my hair cut. The man Laura, who’s unnervingly beautiful but has thick fingers, cuts my hair. He’s always perfectly dressed and made-up in various rose petal shades. As I leave, he waves at me in the same manner movie stars wave.

  “You got your hair cut,” says Soly. She sits behind me in the small room. I nod. “You have some hair on your shoulders.”

  “Better than balakubak” I say and she laughs. When she leans near me to talk, I can smell her skin, sweet like mangoes from far away.

  Halfway through class she whispers “Look at his shirt” in a choking, almost-laughing voice.

  “What?”

  She leans closer. “Look at his shirt.”

  The room is large and chalky and the light through the windows is fine, not like the sun outside. I look at Professor Escobar’s shirt. He is wearing a short-sleeve barong with the large, simple embroidery. Underneath he wears a kamiseta, only it’s not a kamiseta. I stare a moment and realize it’s a T-shirt with printing on the front. “Jollibee Yumburger” it says though I can’t read all of it. But I can see the mascot bee.

  After class we sit in a small carinderia by the campus. I invited her, suddenly, and she said OK so now we’re here. Every green vinyl chair is filled. The place is crowded with students, but no one I know.

  Soly is drinking Cerveza Negra. I drink regular San Miguel. Dark is much too strong for her. She’s so small. Her wrists are like birds, although she would laugh at me if I told her this.

  “Emil,” she says. “Have you seen this?” She taps a finger on the lower corner of the newspaper and slides the whole page across the table to me.

  I look. It’s the movie section. “Which one?” I ask.

  “In the corner,” she says. “With Gloria Dizon.”

  “Oh. No, I haven’t seen it yet.” I wait a moment, carefully. “Would you like to go?”

  She’s looking around the room. “What?” she says.

  “Would you like to see the movie?”

  “Maybe.” She shrugs. “I don’t know.” She smiles at me and twists the ring on her finger. It was her lola’s ring she told me once. “When’s it showing?”

  I look at my watch. Five-thirty. “The next one’s at seven. Then nine-thirty.”

  “Let’s go to the nine-thirty. That way I can study for a few hours.”

  “I’ll pick you up at eight-thirty?”

  “Make it nine.” She gets up, leaving her half-full bottle on the table. I walk her to the corner because she insists on taking a jeepney home. “It’s in the opposite direction,” she says. “I don’t want you to go out of your way.” I feel a kind of tipsy warmth, lush, from her or maybe me, the smell of beer on both of us. “I’ll see you later,” she says.

  The movie stars Rogelio Amador as the son of a rich sugarcane grower who falls in love with the daughter of one of the tenant farmers. It’s set during the twenties or thirties and Gloria Dizon is the daughter. The theater is full because in this movie Gloria’s going to do what a lot of actresses have done lately, undress in one of her scenes. The billboards around town have paintings of her from the back with her hair loose and her dress sliding down her arms. The Catholic Women’s League tried to have them all torn down. All anyone can see in those paintings are her shoulders. But I guess it’s the implication of those shoulders, the bare back, that they’re worried about.

  Soly and I sit in the dark theater waiting with everyone else and I wish they weren’t here with us. I want to have Soly alone, with her fingers next to mine and her hair brushing my shoulders, waiting. When Gloria’s scene appears, it’s full of shadows like a black and white movie. Still there is something about the cool white of her skin, the fuzziness of that dark night that spreads a tingling warmth from my spine. Soly leans against my arm and I like the feel
of her skin against mine, the faint smell of mangoes again. I want to run my hands all over her.

  When I take her home I kiss her and she even tastes sweet.

  * * *

  Ric’s parents came to pick up his things and we couldn’t get the two of them, Tito Gil and Tita Connie, out of here fast enough. Marisa and I had packed everything neatly into boxes that took up most of our floor space. We had stayed up until two in the morning packing. Marisa was mad at me for that. I’d gotten home late because I’d met Soly for a drink, which turned into dinner. And till I couldn’t leave her so we walked and kissed until I was dizzy and the smell, the taste, of her had seeped into my clothes and skin. I finally came home because I knew I had to pack. Marisa was waiting for me, angry.

  “I thought we were going to pack this evening,” she said. Her voice had the flat tone she takes on when she’s mad. I think she does that because she’s trying to sound calm. But anyone can hear she’s mad.

  I smiled at her. “We are.”

  “It’s ten o’clock.”

  But I could still smell Soly, my palms were sweaty, and I didn’t care. “I know.”

  Marisa wanted to say more. She knew I was late because of Soly. But she couldn’t say anything because she had been through this too many times herself.

  I went into my room, the room I’d shared with Ric, and took some boxes out of the closet. We’d saved a lot of boxes in there and they were stacked to the top of the ceiling. They took up so much space our clothes hung crushed in the other half of the closet. I dragged three out to the living room.

  “We’re packing in here?” Marisa said in a voice that meant she didn’t think this was a good idea.

  “We’ll have to drag all the boxes out here anyway.”

  By the time it was one o’clock she was too tired to be mad. She packed automatically because she knew we had to. Me, I could have stayed up all night doing anything.