“Are you sure?” I asked.
“I’m a simple woman,” Lalaine said. “I just want a quick sale. I’m sure your dear father can help—but if you don’t want the car, Dencio probably knows people who—”
“No!” I said. “Not Dencio. Look, I want the car. Give me a day or two. I’ll talk to my father. Three hundred sixty-five? Consider it sold.”
She glanced at the SUV again, wistfully, then smiled at me. “This is a very sad day. I’ve lost my husband. They’re moving his body to the University Chapel, and I will be going there later to join him. I came home just to change and—and because you called to say you were dropping by. You make me very happy by … helping me recover. Thank you. We have a deal.” She took both of my hands in hers and pressed them, just long enough to send over a surge of warmth. “Let me get the keys so you can take it for a drive. And maybe you can drive me to the chapel, no? We can pay our respects to someone we both loved, you and I.”
I could hear birds singing in the mango trees.
Like I said, somebody died in this car I’m driving, but I’m certainly not going to tell that to my future passengers, especially if it’s someone I might want to hang out with and drive around, maybe to Tagaytay, because I know it will freak them out. Heck, I’ll admit it, owning this Ford Escape freaks me out—and it’s only been four days—so much so that while I love this car, I’m ready to convince my dad to sell it and maybe find something else. I’m sure we can clear a profit of at least a hundred thousand pesos on the deal if we move fast. My dad and I can split that up and maybe I can buy an iPhone 4S with my share. It won’t be a car though it’ll look good too. But first I have to get some papers from the widow. I didn’t realize all the IDs and powers of attorney—which apparently she’d managed to get the professor to execute for this and that emergency, in happier days—that you need to transfer a certificate of registration. I’m going back to the wake tomorrow for those odd details, and to listen to all those speeches long-faced people make about what a nice man and brilliant colleague the dear departed was, but also to ask a few more questions of Lalaine Sanvictores. I hate these tired clichés, but there’s more to this woman—let’s just say there’s more to woman—than meets the eye.
CARIÑO BRUTAL
BY
R. ZAMORA LINMARK
Tondo
Friday, September 20, 1974, 7:45 a.m.
Lala makes the sign of the cross when she comes upon the naked, mutilated body of Vanessa Blanca hanging from the ancient balete tree on Moriones Street, a block away from the Tutuban train station. Like most of the Tondo residents in the crowd, Lala believes that the tree—beside the small bridge overlooking the shanties along the black, stagnant waters of Canal de la Reina—is haunted by evil spirits. Lala’s mother once told her that during the war, the Japs hung a handsome American corporal and his Filipino spy from its branches. She tries to look away, shifting her stare from the grotto of the Virgin Mary that the priests from Santo Niño Church had built inside the hollowed base of the tree. But her gaze keeps returning to the body of the former Miss Gay Tondo Universe.
Vanessa. Vanessa Blanca. Nobody’s mistress. Everybody’s whore. Last known residence: Olongapo, before she escaped to Tondo after President Marcos declared martial law on September 21, 1972. “Operation Biniboy” had gone into effect, banning transvestites in Olongapo and every other town occupied by the US military.
Vanessa was a bakla who preferred sex with straight men. Bakla. Biniboy. Businessgirl. A puta con huevos. Add these names up in whatever language and they equal “Beauty.” A beauty now reduced to a castrated goddess. Vanessa’s long, ash-blond tresses have been shaved off. Her bra and torn panties stuffed in her mouth. The cord of her hip pads, drooping over her back like a cape, is coiled around her neck. Slash marks and stab wounds on her torso. Cigarette burns on her inner thighs. Her penis, severed.
Fourteen-year-old Lala wants to cry but can’t. Questions gnaw at her like the balete’s aerial roots that, upon touching the earth, will creep toward the tree and feast on what’s left of its origin.
Who did this to Vanessa? And why?
Vanessa was her among ina. A surrogate mother who made Lala feel and think that she mattered. Who convinced Lala she had a future outside of Tondo, outside of a life that reeked of gang wars at Pier 2, Barrio Matae’s shit, and Balut’s burning trash.
For three years, Lala lived with Vanessa, learned from her, waited on her. She ran Vanessa’s errands, bought her gin and cigarettes, cleaned up after her, massaged her feet. It was Vanessa who gave Lala, born Efren Cruz, her name: Lala L’amour.
Lala did not mind being an alalay to Vanessa. Apprenticeship with a renowned Tondo Beauty was coveted by any boy who dreamt of being crowned the next Miss Milky Way, Miss Independence Gay, Muse of the Night, or Miss Gaygaylangin.
In exchange for Lala’s loyalty and servitude, Vanessa fed her, dressed her up in the latest creations by Manila’s fashion czar, Caloy Badidoy. Vanessa sent Lala to school. First, at Magat Salamat Elementary School, where she finished third in her class. Then, to Gregorio Perfecto High School, where Lala was an honors student until she dropped out five months ago.
When Lala turned twelve, Vanessa started her on the highend birth control pill “Diane” so Lala could grow breasts. In no time, she blossomed into a young Vanessa. Adopting Vanessa’s sexy and sophisticated ways. Accentuating the “A” in attitude, Vanessa-style. Accepting her Vanessa-given duties as a prelude to beauty with danger.
As for love—Lala had to learn about it the hard way. One day, she came home from school with bruises and a swollen lip because the boy she had a crush on had punched her in the face and called her Bakla! When Lala told the story to Vanessa, Vanessa just laughed. “Good for you, Lala. Now, you know better.” A week went by and another beating occurred—same bully. Vanessa called Lala “pathetic” and told her to toughen up or else go back to her rat-infested shanty on Pilapil Street and become a washerwoman like her mother.
Vanessa.
Cruel, cariño brutal Vanessa. Who believed there was no greater love.
Lala remembers how Vanessa suddenly left one night without saying goodbye to anyone. Not to her pimp Divina Balenciaga from Kambal Krus. Nor to Lola Brigida, the walking drugstore of Pritil, who supplied Vanessa with Madrax, Tussonex cough syrup, Magadol, and the horse tranquilizer fondly known as “Pinoy Ekis.”
After weeks without hearing from Vanessa, Lala and the Tondo Beauties wondered if she’d been taken to the dungeons of Camp Crame. Or nabbed by the cops at Precinct Five for violating curfew, raped for alleged theft, and, just for fun, killed. Or maybe she was happily holed up at the Manila Hotel with some American or Japanese businessman.
Lala continues to stare at Vanessa, barely recognizable. Vanessa’s ankle catches Lala’s eye. BNG. Lala doesn’t remember Vanessa having a tattoo or getting involved with the Bahala Na Gang, or any gangs for that matter. Vanessa would’ve told Lala. Besides, Vanessa was not the type to be claimed. A tattoo could only mean she’d spent time in jail where she’d had to choose which gang would protect her—Sigue Sigue Sputnik, Low-Waist, OXO, Commando, Bahala Na. All in exchange for sex.
Lala searches the crowd. She spots Divina Balenciaga comforting Lola Brigita. She is about to wave to Divina when the cops show up.
The crowd—mostly students from Gregorio Perfecto High, street vendors, and market-goers en route to the nearby Divisoria, Manila’s mercantile mecca—disperses. Except for a barefooted boy ordered by one of the cops to stay behind.
Lala crosses the street and stands in front of Distelleria Tondeña, a factory that makes the nasty Chinese red wine known as shoktong. Fortune-tellers in front of Quiapo Church sell it to rich girls who want to induce miscarriage. The cop hands the kid a knife and gestures to Vanessa’s hanging body. Then he walks toward Lala.
“Ang init,” the cop says. Removing his cap and wiping the sweat off his forehead with the back of his hand, he asks Lala if she likes the heat. Withou
t waiting for her response, he adds, “Grabe. And the day’s just beginning.” Cool ka lang, Lala tells herself. Act normal.
Lala keeps her eyes on the boy climbing the balete tree.
“Sayang si Vanessa, no? Ang ganda pa naman niya,” the cop says, shaking his head and clucking his tongue. Too bad about Vanessa. She’s so beautiful.
Lala eye-trails the boy now crawling across the lowest branch where Vanessa hangs.
“Amoy dalaga.” The cop smiles. Smells like a virgin.
The boy cuts the rope with the knife. The rope snaps. Vanessa’s body falls.
Lala closes her eyes.
The cop asks Lala if she knows Vanessa.
Lala nods.
“Close ba kayo?” the cop asks.
Lala shakes her head no, adding for emphasis, “Hindi.” She tells the cop they were neighbors, that her mother did Vanessa’s laundry.
The cop then tells Lala to go home before she gets implicated. “Baka mapahamak ka pa,” he says, his voice almost sincere.
Lala turns to get a real glimpse of the cop. She notices the jagged scar on his right cheek, his bloodshot deep-set eyes and trimmed mustache. He’s handsome, Lala thinks. Parang action star. Embroidered on his shirt pocket, in red, is his name. Eli Cortez.
Lala walks away. Eli. Eli Cortez. Was he one of the cops infatuated with Vanessa?
Lala looks back and sees that the cop hasn’t moved. He nods at her. She takes a deep breath. Relax ka lang, she tells herself. He starts walking in her direction. She turns onto Elena Street. At Gregorio Perfecto High School, she begins to slow down. He whistles “Seasons in the Sun.” She makes a left on Ricaforte. He catches up to her in front of Iglesia Ni Kristo on Juan Luna Street. They’re practically walking side by side on Pavia with its fruit and vegetable stands and milling crowd. She loses him there.
Maybe he’s gone back to deal with Vanessa’s body, Lala tells herself, back to that tree that is forever growing and rotting.
She enters Liberty Bakery and buys three pieces of pan de sal. As she exits, she spots him, Eli, across the street, in front of El Tondeño, which sells embroidered velvet slippers. Eli stands there, waiting. She takes a bite of her bread. Learn from the dead, she tells herself, and walks toward him.
THE UNINTENDED
BY
GINA APOSTOL
Ali Mall, Cubao
1. THE STORY SHE WISHES TO TELL
The story Magsalin wishes to tell is about disappearance. Not necessarily about writers who have slipped from this realm, their ideas in melancholy arrest, their notebooks tidy; later one might see the analogy, or at least the pathos of inadequate homage, if one likes symbols. Of course, the story will involve several layers of meaning. There will be a whiff of murder, or maybe a kidnapping, but the clues will be too fraught with personal despair to bear tight scrutiny. Her protagonist is a moviemaker whose scandalous father precedes her fame. Her name has an Italian flavor, Chiara or Lucia, with the first C glottal and the latter c a florid ch: she is Kiarrrra, or Luchiiiia—Magsalin has yet to decide. Both names mean clear, or lucidity, or something that has to do with light, something vaguely linked to eyesight, hence to knowing, thence to paradox. It is Chiara/Lucia’s body that may go missing.
2. A MYSTERIOUS E-MAIL MESSAGE
The subject line intrigues her: Translator needed, meet me at Muhammad Ali Mall. The message must be from a foreigner. No one calls the mall by that name. Some Filipinos do not even know the seedy building is named for the greatest, Muhammad Ali.
She has just arrived from New York, on vacation in her birthplace, Manila, to continue a task that she believes has great spiritual potential, though the rewards are yet to surface. She is beginning a mystery novel.
The curtness of the subject line, Magsalin thinks, is rude. She thinks the message is a joke, a hoax drummed up by her writer friends, a bunch of alcoholics hiding out, often in pork-induced stupor, in Flushing, Queens. Magsalin ignores the message.
Later, she searches Chiara’s name online. She finds an item mentioning her arrival only 18 hours ago, an innocuous piece with a photo of the filmmaker at Manila International Airport, wearing huge shades and a safari outfit. The report speculates she is scouting sites for a movie. No quote emerges from the director herself.
Magsalin checks Chiara’s cred through praxino.com, Magsalin’s website of choice for occasional curiosities. A tour operator reports that Tom Cruise was sighted in March in the Ilocos, sporting an ugly ingrown toenail revealed by beach flip-flops. She learns that Sandra Bullock did not buy her black baby in the area near the old US air force base in Pampanga. Madonna’s orphanage in Malawi is hemorrhaging millions, bilked by savvy entrepreneurs. Eric Clapton’s late son’s former nanny, a Chavacano, remains in seclusion in Zamboanga, still mourning her single lapse. Donatella Versace did not slap her maid. Finally, she turns up a video of Chiara Brasi, a wan and wavering figure, in one of those canned interviews to promote a project. This video is also quoted in FabSugar, the Emory Wheel, Irish Times, Moviefone: Chiara rode a helicopter over Manila with her father, the war movie director. A fond memory, in 1976. Someone had unhinged the helicopter’s doors, and she looks out as if the sky is her vestibule.
Magsalin goes back to the e-mail, composes a response. She hits send.
3. MEETING AT A PASTRY SHOP
During the best of times Ali Mall is a decrepit, cramped cement block of shops hosting Rugby glue sniffers, high school truants, and depressed carnival men on break. It was built in 1976, a paean to the Thrilla in Manila, which took place directly across the street at the Araneta Coliseum in Cubao, site of the match that destroyed the career of the heavyweight champion of the world, Joe “The Gorilla” Frazier, and the source of our modern discomfort perhaps—a sense of the futility of earthly striving— whenever one thinks about Muhammad Ali. Cubao is the omen of Ali’s shambling shadow. Cubao heralds an incommunicable fall.
Even at noon Ali Mall is creepy. The circus is nearby, and a creaky carousel winds around like some tiresome concept of eternity. Magsalin enters by the basement annex, through the Philippine Airlines office toward the Botak shop and a trinket store selling Hello Kitty barrettes. A security guard is texting by some plywood boards, next to an idling clown. Magsalin heads straight to a bakery selling cinnamon buns and pan de sal.
She notes, like a skillful detective, that her likely client, wearing a tank top, panama hat, and tan wedges, is attempting the incognito look. But the designer shoes (Clergerie) and incongruous shades (also French: Chanel) are amateurish. Even an idiot would know she’s rich. Magsalin has not lived twelve years in New York for nothing. This woman at the counter, drinking bottled water and not eating her bread, has the luxury of looking underdressed, no-nonsense. She’s flat-chested. She shows Magsalin a thick manila envelope, bulging with papers. A manuscript.
Chiara is muckle-mouthed. Her charm is furtive: now you see it, now it seems only dreamed. She is shy. That is what Magsalin thinks, until she recognizes that the faraway gaze (obvious even behind Chanel), the averted angle of her chin, the awkward pose on the stool, the surprisingly uninteresting monotone are in fact indifference. Magsalin considers leaving. How dare this stranger look so self-assured? But then, Magsalin thinks, the woman also looks sedated, drugged.
But really, how is Magsalin to know? Her own buzz of choice is cheap Chilean pinot noir, hardly a peril.
Anyhow, Chiara’s past is full of shady anecdotes. At least, her father’s is—and the newspapers used to be full of Luca Brasi’s escapades. It was in Lubao, Pampanga, that he had an affair with both a costume designer and an electrician during the filming of his Vietnam War movie, now more or less forgotten—though at one point it was thought The Unintended would challenge the genius of Francis Ford Coppola’s Apocalypse Now, except be less commercial. He and Coppola are practically contemporaries; both grew up in New York. But while the one has a genial paternal aura, even in the documentary by his faintly bitter, long-suffering wife, the other is satyric, greasy
, saturnine, and unstable.
It is no wonder that his daughter has the off-putting temperament of someone only intermittently aware.
4. CHIARA’S TRIP
Chiara affirms she is the daughter of the director of The Unintended. Magsalin confesses she saw the film several times in her teens. She recalls watching it frame by frame in a muggy class along Katipunan, called “Locations/Dislocations,” about the phantasmal voids in Vietnam War movies shot in equally blighted areas that are not in fact Vietnam. Within the disturbing web of contorted allusions, hidden historiographic anxiety, political ironies, and astounding art direction resident in a single frame, for instance, of a fissured bridge—in real life dynamited by the Japanese in 1943 and still unrepaired in 1976, and rebuilt specifically and reexploded spectacularly in a filmic faux-napalm scene against a mystic pristine river actually already polluted by local dynamite fishers—the movie kept putting Magsalin to sleep, for whatever reason, though she omits that detail before the filmmaker’s daughter. There was something both engrossing and pathetic about it, about reconstructing the trauma of whole countries through a film’s illusive palimpsest, and what was most disturbing, of course, was that, on one level, the professor’s point was undeniably true: our identities are irremediably mediated— but that does not mean Magsalin has to keep thinking about it.
Chiara seems unconcerned, however, by the scholarly implications of her father’s cult classic; at least she seems unburdened. She nods absently at Magsalin’s furrowed approximations of her memory, as if she, Chiara, has heard it all before, as if she needs another Adderall. What she really needs, Chiara says, almost upsetting Magsalin’s cup of chai, is someone to accompany her on a trip.
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