Mango Seasons

by Michelle Cruz Skinner

  Nick, I want you to be well and safe. I remember Emmy’s party that you came to with my cousin Ray. When we talked I liked your crinkly eyes and the easy way you had of standing. Over the years I had forgotten that party, even when I would make myself remember particular times. Now it’s quite clear. I know you spoke quietly and didn’t drink too much like the others. Outside in the yard, you pointed out the cadena de amor and said you missed plants. You didn’t see enough of them in Manila. You were studying accounting and you loved plants and I thought that funny.

  “I can’t take the chance on studying botany or ag.,” you explained so seriously. “I need something more certain.”

  That’s the only time that stands apart. All the others blur together now. The rosals that scented my whole bedroom, the restaurant where Marisa slipped and twisted her ankle, your fine barong tagalog. I don’t know. Maybe it’s just this standing and sitting so long we don’t know anymore if we are awake or asleep. I sometimes feel I’m pushing aside curtains, waking up, then waking up, and waking up. I’m not sure I’ve reached the last one.

  Remember when I was reading about the saints and how they became saints? We were sitting in the living room and I read aloud to you: “After a thorough investigation, the church verified hers as a true miracle.” And I said would it matter to her if it hadn’t been verified? Would it have changed anything? I think miracles are happening around us all the time.

  “Nick,” I say aloud and the children look at me sadly. We breathe and wait.

  II: NOVENA FOR DANDING

  In this hour of desperation, what does a man have but none none none, nothing? No way, so few words to say what has happened to him to this absolute point of time, forever. Pasyensiya na. Pasyensiya. Like Nanay used to say to Vince and I suppose she also said to me although I don’t remember. He always wanted so much he couldn’t have, little plastic-wrapped candies in his fat fingers. He was only fat until he turned eight. Then he grew skinny from wanting.

  Now, now, at this ticking now, wanting seeps through me in the chill of air, the tile I press my body upon. And Danding sits across the room crying, the gun he holds pointing at all of us. Wanting, dios ko!, all of us crying to be out of here.

  The front of my shirt is bleeding the blue ink of my pen, a note to my Clara. On this floor, I lay. Amen. Forever and ever. Keep this shirt in memory of me. Emil, Marisa, Gemma, Clara, my holy quaternity.

  “Ama namin, ama namin.” The woman, really just a girl in tender pink dress, says “ama namin.” I want to love her, the crying Danding, but feel nothing, none but the pressing cold and my body draining into the dirty white squares of floor.

  Everything bad that could happen has happened. Everything bad that can happen will happen. Everything against my will has happened. Lying here conjugating my life.

  Danding cries cries with his back to the vault now uselessly open. It was not for lack of trying. We have all helped him for we will do anything for Danding. Who cannot love a desperate man? He and the girl in tender pink cry in symphony. A river of tears… a river of tears… I cannot remember the rest.

  I cannot remember everything. At this this this impending point, I expected clarity. All. All should be clear, known, staining my tongue like duhat. An undeniable black for everyone to see. Walang balat na matatago. All black and blue the hugeness of life.

  I can see enough to know no one else will ever see. These colors will be mopped off the floor and walls. They will never go beyond the vault, varnished tables, tellers’ booths, telephones, tile. We will be covered over. Scrubbed, papered.

  The damned officials!, the ones sitting in the highest offices of the bank building in Makati, desks wide as beds on which they fuck over their clients, partners, and women they spy on the streets below, they have set the vault to open to a timer so they can steal while the rest of us work. Gil is one of them, Clara. Your brother, who secures my job, our lives, demands our attention. Kuya Gil. Gil, Gil in his high office. They see us as birds do. An opportunity.

  Danding, if you had asked me, I would have told you! Now all we can do is wait, bulag. We can’t see the Marines but they have surrounded us. We can feel them pressing in the walls, waiting for an opportunity to let them all fall.

  If they let the Filipino soldiers in first, you, Danding, will die. You are an embarrassment. You have betrayed all the beautiful stories. Sneaking onto a U.S. base, with a gun, into a bank and waiting, waiting. Your care and patience will kill you. They will kill us too, for knowing you, for letting “Danding” whirl through our minds like worry for a dear brother, a repeated novena. Even a patient character cannot withstand the years grown into the ache of your knees, your back. You should have been a doctor, we know. And we are all wanting with you, breathing as flat as the tiles to which we cling.

  A loud thump shakes the building. Then all is still as bone. Laid upon the floor, we hold our breaths. They have shut off the air conditioning. Around us the walls are heavy with whisperings of our soldiers.

  The

  Beginning

  of

  Summer

  Tita Connie and Tito Gil have finally permitted me to go home to Olongapo by Victory Liner. Since Mama, Papa and Marisa left for the States they have treated me like a motherless and fatherless child. I suppose they feel a responsibility for me. As Tita Connie reminded Mama, I’m her goddaughter. I really should call her Ninang, but Emil and Marisa called her Tita when I was young, so I do too.

  “If she’s going to live in Manila,” said Tita Connie, “then of course she’ll stay with us.” Their home is not far from La Salle University, but they have given me Ric’s room.

  When I first walked into it, I could sense him. That room is too much him. Even his clothes are still in the closet. I’ve tried to shove them far back so I don’t see them. So they don’t touch my clothes. I asked their maid for a different pillow for the bed because his, I lied, was too fluffy. At night I feel his ghost in the room and I pull the sheets over my head. I know I cannot say anything to Tita Connie and Tito Gil that they will understand.

  I’m not sure why they have allowed me to go home by bus. But Emil couldn’t come get me and Tito Gil said maybe it would be OK for me to go alone. The past few days Tita Connie has been hinting at misfortune. I think she almost wishes something bad would happen so she could say to Tito Gil “I told you so.” Not that I blame her. She is always having to accommodate him. Sometimes I find it difficult to believe Ric was his son.

  Today Tita Connie got the wish she probably never wanted. It’s a bad day. Rain falls throughout the ride to Olongapo, as if the entire island is besieged. The bus’s wipers race back and forth across the huge windshield, never fast enough to obliterate the rain. But the driver forges ahead. Somehow with the rain shrouding the road, I feel I’m in another place, that I’m on an adventure. I feel a braveness as we plunge into the indistinct countryside, toward the road and fields that slide away.

  At the bus station this morning Tita Connie almost changed her mind about letting me go.

  “Ay, Gemma,” she sighed. “It’s not a good day for traveling.”

  Her nephew Doming and I sat in the car with her and stared quietly at the windows covered with rain. He kept his hands on the steering wheel and waited for a decision. I assumed he was related to our family on Tita Connie’s side since I’d never seen him before.

  “Well,” said Tita Connie. “If they’re letting the buses run, it must be OK.” She opened her door and pushed her umbrella out first. It opened with a loud “whumpf.” She surged into the rain. “Come,” she called to me, “let’s get your ticket.” She paid for the ticket with the characteristic generosity I’ve come to expect from her.

  Before I boarded the bus she hugged me, keeping the umbrella over both of us as she did so. “You look so much like your mother,” she said. Her eyes and her comment—I looked like my mother—held me. “You be careful,” she finally said, letting me go. “Don’t let anyone sit beside you.”

  The
bus makes one rest stop on the way to Olongapo, but I don’t go inside. I don’t trust any of the bathrooms along the way. I never drink much on the ride because I don’t want to have to use a bathroom. They lack toilet paper and the seats are often missing. But the smells, of urine and closed spaces, are what bother me most.

  In San Fernando the bus driver slows down and several vendors grab the handrail by the door and climb on. He probably slowed down deliberately for them. I buy four ears of corn from a man who has a small basket full. One is enough for me, but he is selling them in bags of four clouded with steam. Tita Connie would not approve. She gave me sandwiches to eat, but she fills them with a relish and mayonnaise spread that I hate.

  When the bus finally pulls into the station I don’t see anyone, not Emil or Mila or even Naty. No one has come to meet me. I check my watch. Eight o’clock. The bus is two hours late because of the rain. I decide to take the jeepney home instead of waiting for someone to show up. Then I see Emil. He moves from under the bright yellow bulb burning in front of the ticket window. I smile and hold the corn out toward him, offering one.

  “Gemma,” he says, his voice immensely sad. I suddenly believe that Papa has died. I think perhaps Papa has killed himself. “Gemma, they killed Aquino.”

  I’m still thinking about Papa and imagining him dead so I don’t respond immediately. And when I do all I can say is “when?” as if it mattered.

  “This afternoon,” says Emil.

  Suddenly, the whole night is changed. The rain falls on us in the courtyard of the bus station, seeping into our skin like oranges.

  The next morning we wake and nothing looks quite the same as before although empirically, as I am learning to say in school, empirically, everything is the same. The chairs are the same cane chairs we have always had. The dining room table is wood. Mila and Naty are still here. I have not grown suddenly older.

  As I sit in a chair the cane squeaks, and I think how loud it is. No secrets at all. Mila and Naty ask Emil and me who we think did it. They have their own ideas and I have never seen them so angry or interested.

  “Well,” says Naty as she slices onions, “they’re going to cover it up. You just watch.” She wipes her onion tears on the back of her forearm. “They’re going to be like people deaf, mute and blind.” The knife lands chunk, chunk, chunk against the cutting board.

  Mila and I are supposed to be picking the stones and husks out of the rice, but we’re both sitting at the dining table with the untouched rice bilao in front of us. “I think,” says Mila, “it might have been that son of his. That boy’s bad. Remember that incident several years back when he stabbed somebody?” She turns to Naty. “Was it the Australian ambassador’s son?”

  “I don’t remember.”

  “It was some foreign official’s son,” I say.

  “That’s right. And his father got him off on that one.”

  I feel suddenly older in ways both good and bad.

  In the afternoon Emil and I decide to go out. The day is overcast and the air is damp from the rain. We can’t stay inside, so we go out for a walk. But afterwards, we’re still restless and we drive down to Magsaysay.

  We find parking by Shakey’s pizza and decide to walk from there. We could probably find parking further down the street, but since we’re not sure where we’re going, the parking location doesn’t matter.

  As we’re locking the car doors, Doctora Campos and her children walk out of the pizza parlor. She and her husband own the Shakey’s. We always got extra toppings if Doctora Campos or her husband was in the kitchen. I wave at her.

  “O, how are you?” She hugs me lightly. “Naku you’ve gotten so big. You’re at La Salle now, aren’t you?” Her two children, a boy and a girl, stand behind her, shifting their weight uncomfortably and looking at the ground. The girl’s headband falls into her face. Doctora Campos pushes the two forward so they can say hello. They whisper greetings while looking at the pavement.

  “How are your parents?” she asks. “Have you heard from them? Do you think they know what’s happened?”

  “I don’t know,” I say.

  “We haven’t talked to them yet,” says Emil. Somehow calling them about these recent events never occurred to us.

  “Ay,” says Doctora Campos, “it’s too magulo these days. All these bad things happening. Why, take your father for example. And now Aquino’s been killed…”

  “It was probably the army,” says the cigarette vendor sitting next to us. She and Doctora Campos are strangely happy as they discuss the possible murder scenarios.

  We leave them there, after saying our goodbyes, and go to Kong’s where we both order mango juice from a distracted waitress. Her eyes don’t look at us as she takes our order, in fact she never seems to focus on anything. This lack of precision gives her an ethereal quality, which is odd for a waitress in the bright lights of Kong’s. I stare at her and she doesn’t seem to notice. Something has happened to her, I think.

  An old friend of Emil’s, Freddy, walks by and we pound on the window to attract his attention. The people at the next table laugh at us. Freddy comes in and orders a Coke. We all order sandwiches since it is merienda time.

  “You’re so big already,” he says to me. “You look like your mother.”

  “Are you on your way somewhere? Are we keeping you?” Emil asks.

  “Just going to get a haircut. It can wait.”

  “So what are you doing back here?”

  “Looking for a job,” he says. “On the base.”

  He and Emil discuss the job situation. Then the conversation moves to Aquino and I look around to see who’s listening because I’m used to being careful. But I don’t think it matters anymore. What are they going to do? Everyone’s talking.

  The afternoon grows darker and still Emil, Freddy and I sit in Kong’s talking over the empty glasses that smell sweet. Emil sticks his finger to his plate to pick up a crumb that’s left from his sandwich. Freddy’s hair hangs in his eyes, but he continues talking without noticing this. While he talks he bows his head slightly as if he is thinking through what he’s saying as he says it, and he can’t stop. I look at the mango pulp rings on my glass. “He’s a martyr now,” I say.

  Freddy nods. “They must have known the risk of that, but decided to kill him anyway,” he says. “A calculated risk and they made the wrong calculations. Actually, any decision would have been wrong for them.” Freddy sits back in his chair with a contented smile on his face. We are all giddy from the knowledge that something immense has happened, something so immense it cannot possibly be hidden. Our hands tingle from the danger, we grow lightheaded and lighttongued, as we plunge in to this new world that is so much like the one yesterday.

  “This is the end for them,” says Emil.

  “Yes,” agrees Freddy. “It is.”

  I call over the ethereal waitress so she can give us our bill.

  * * *

  “O,” says Tita Connie upon my return, “I was so worried something would happen to you. Everything is so magulo what with Aquino shot and everything. Maybe you should have stayed in Olongapo.”

  “I have to go to school,” I say.

  “That’s true. But the schools aren’t safe, you know. All those students starting trouble…”

  But I go back to school anyway because she can’t really stop me and she wouldn’t try. Besides, what else am I going to do? Tita Connie is right though, everything is magulo, in school and everywhere else. There have been a few protests over the past two days. A lot of protests, I suppose, since I don’t remember any happening before.

  Emil and I wrote to Mama and Papa and Marisa last weekend, before I came back to Manila. He wrote the letter and I just added on some news at the end before we mailed it. But I didn’t tell them everything. I didn’t tell them that two weeks ago, before all of this happened, I was walking home at night and I heard gunshots from the next street. The newspapers didn’t have anything about such an event and I never heard anythin
g on the radio, but I swear I heard gunshots. If I told someone, what proof would I have? These things happen and sometimes we witness them, even if we hear only the crack of a gunshot. But everything can be made to appear as if it never happened so that I don’t know what to believe about myself.

  I heard what sounded like a gun. I stopped against the wall of a house and looked around. But I was the only one on the street. Still, I was sure that inside the houses, where the lights shone, other people had heard what I had. I pressed against the wall and thought of Ric. I always say his name in bad moments, as if somehow the saying of it will help.

  Pressed against the cool concrete of the wall, I knew I wasn’t going to read about this in the paper, or hear it on TV or the radio. This is why Papa had to leave. His world just didn’t hold together anymore after the bank. I don’t know what happened in there. I never even saw the inside of the bank because we couldn’t get on the base except during the annual Fil-Am Fair. Even then we only saw the outside as we walked by. I remember the windows were high up on the walls, too high for anyone to look in or out.

  Papa walked out of the bank in his blue-stained shirt, a man who didn’t believe he should be alive. Mama says his survival is a blessing, but for Papa it is also a curse. I could see this in the way he piled the newspapers neatly on the coffee table, in the great care he took to tie his shoelaces. He had the unfocused eyes of someone who didn’t want to see too much.

  After Papa and Mama and Marisa left, Emil and I went to Baguio. The days dragged without them and Emil and I were caught in that long moment before the rains began. Everyday we watched the bananas grow heavier on our tree. Standing in the brown grass, or even hidden in the house, we grew heavier too. Finally Emil said, “Let’s go to Baguio.”

  This was only a week after they had left. Emil made arrangements at work, he called Soly to meet us in Baguio. In another week we were winding up the road into the mountains. Higher and higher we climbed until the trees turned to pines and we had to roll up our windows against the chill and the night.