But now of course Charmaine would need other operations first.
And though Charmaine is grateful to Alicia for taking the initiative with Dr. Srichapan, she also knows that Alicia gets pleasure in having lasting proof of Charmaine’s downfall, pleasure that Charmaine can no longer be the prettiest of their circle.
Six months in recovery and her healed face gives her an almost Chinese cast. She has continued eating at Wah Sun because they don’t disturb her there. Alicia had called a friend and they had turned Charmaine’s bathtub into a slaughterhouse, where Benjamin’s body was cut up, desanguinated. With this friend, Alicia and also another girl, Beatrice, had disposed of the disparate parts, sealed in plastic garbage bags, in different parts of the city. Alicia would not tell her where. Except to say that the head and hands, markers of identity, were thrown into the Pasig, whose frequently stagnant waters likely sucked the bags down into its sediment.
The girls had pooled money for Charmaine’s operation and physical therapy, and they had also donated a small living wage to help tide Charmaine through this unemployable stage. How Alicia has paid the butcher/helper who took care of Benjamin’s body, Charmaine doesn’t know and doesn’t want to find out.
Seven months later, she goes to Ah-ma’s. Ah-ma, who betrayed her. She forces the fat woman on her knees, having persuaded the grandson to go into another room and then locked the door behind him. She takes out a knife. She asks the Chinese woman to take a close look at her face. Why wasn’t she warned? Charmaine could have taken measures. Ah-ma says the responsibility wasn’t with her. After all, Charmaine and all clients ask the questions they want answered. And indeed, everything went all right with Charmaine. She survived.
She lived where others perished.
She triumphed.
And her face—Ah-ma can’t help but observe how much more feminine Charmaine is now: the jaw, the nose; softer, less sharp.
In the end, Charmaine can’t make herself do it. So she asks the fat woman for money. All the money that she’d been paying over the last two years. Close to ten thousand pesos. A refund.
Upstairs in the squalor of her living quarters, the fat woman scrounges in cupboards, underneath the sofa cushions, beneath and behind the sofa. Charmaine can’t believe the stench. She lives here with that grandson? Poor kid. Charmaine takes everything that Ah-ma can find—or so the woman claims. But Charmaine doesn’t want to linger. She doesn’t count the bills. Maybe half of what is owed to her. Probably less. The bills in the pockets of her skirt as she descends the creaky wooden stairs and out of Ah-ma’s life forever make her look like a teddy bear with loose stuffing.
Alicia and Charmaine knock. Esmeralda answers the door and smiles at the two women. It’s been a long time, Esmeralda says. Okay. The fortune-teller isn’t shocked that Charmaine is still alive. That might be a sign that she knows nothing, that her son operated on his own. It may also be a sign of her acting gifts. Alicia looks behind her at the quiet residential street before both she and Charmaine disappear into the cool, shadowy interior of Esmeralda’s Sampaloc home. In Alicia’s purse there is a knife, and a cell phone with the butcher/helper’s number. But first Charmaine must be sure. How can a mother not report a missing son? But that may not necessarily be an incontrovertible sign of guilt. To ascertain that, Charmaine will stare and stare into Esmerlda’s eyes during their session. And if she finds proof there, she will act.
She and Alicia. Norma and Alicia. She has lost Charmaine in the attack. All she wants now is normalcy. But no forgiveness.
ABOUT THE CONTRIBUTORS
GINA APOSTOL was born in Manila and lives in New York City. She is a two-time winner of the Philippine National Book Award and has published three novels: Bibliolepsy, The Revolution According to Raymundo Mata, and Gun Dealers’ Daughter. She has received fellowships from Civitella Ranieri, Phillips Exeter Academy, and Hawthornden Castle. Her stories have appeared in Massachusetts Review, Gettysburg Review, and Charlie Chan Is Dead 2.
F.H. BATACAN is a Filipino journalist and crime fiction writer. She worked for nearly a decade in the Philippine intelligence community before moving into broadcast journalism. Her first novel, Smaller and Smaller Circles, won the Grand Prize for the English novel in the 1999 Palanca Awards, as well as the Manila Critics Circle National Book Award and the Madrigal-Gonzalez Best First Book Award. She recently finished a collection of short stories and is working on her second novel.
KAJO BALDISIMO’S artwork has been seen in the pages of Dark Horse Comics, a Star Wars comic book, as well as several magazines in the Philippines. While his day job keeps him drawing storyboards for Manila’s top TV commercial directors, the most exciting part of the day (or night) for Baldisimo is the time he can go back to drawing the next page of Trese.
ROSARIO CRUZ-LUCERO writes historical and crime fiction. The sugar haciendas on her home island of Negros are her trove of materials for her stories of murder and mayhem. Although she has lived in Manila all her adult life, “A Human Right” is only her second story set in this city. Her latest book, published this year, is La India, or Island of the Disappeared.
JOSE DALISAY has published more than twenty-five books of fiction and nonfiction. A Fulbright, Hawthornden, British Council, David T.K. Wong, Rockefeller, and Civitella Ranieri fellow, he teaches English at the University of the Philippines, where he also serves as director of the Institute of Creative Writing. His second novel, Soledad’s Sister, was shortlisted for the inaugural Man Asian Literary Prize in 2007. He lives with his wife June in Diliman, Quezon City.
LOURD DE VEYRA published his first novel, Super Panalo Sounds!, in 2011, along with his third collection of poems, Insectissimo!, following Subterranean Thought Parade and Shadowboxing in Headphones. He has won prizes from the Carlos Palanca Memorial Awards for Literature and the Philippines Free Press, and he won the very first NCCA Writers’ Prize for poetry. He also fronts a spoken word jazz-rock band, Radioactive Sago Project. He currently works as news anchor for TV5.
ERIC GAMALINDA has published four novels, three books of poetry, and two collections of stories including People Are Strange, which was published by Black Lawrence Press in 2012. He teaches at the Center for the Study of Ethnicity and Race at Columbia University. Since 1994, he has lived in New York City.
JESSICA HAGEDORN was born in Manila and now lives in New York. A novelist, poet, and playwright, her published works include Toxicology, Dream Jungle, The Gangster of Love, Danger and Beauty, and Dogeaters, which was a finalist for the National Book Award in fiction. She also edited both volumes of the groundbreaking anthology Charlie Chan Is Dead: An Anthology of Contemporary Asian American Fiction. Visit her website at www.jessicahagedorn.net.
ANGELO R. LACUESTA has received several awards for his short stories, including the Philippine Graphic/Fiction Award, the Palanca Memorial Award, and the N.V.M. Gonzalez Award. He has also been a literary editor of the Philippines Free Press. His short story collections have won the Madrigal-Gonzalez Best First Book Award and two Philippine National Book Awards. He is currently a private businessman and editor-at-large at Esquire Philippines.
R. ZAMORA LINMARK is the author of Drive-By Vigils and two other poetry collections published by Hanging Loose Press, and two novels, Leche and Rolling the R’s, the latter of which he adapted for the stage in 2008. He currently lives in Honolulu and Manila, where he was born.
SABINA MURRAY grew up in Australia and the Philippines. She is the author of the novels Forgery, A Carnivore’s Inquiry, and Slow Burn, and two story collections, the PEN/Faulkner Award–winning The Caprices and Tales of the New World. Her work is included in The Norton Anthology of Short Fiction and Charlie Chan Is Dead 2. She has received fellowships and awards from Harvard University, the Guggenheim Foundation, the NEA, and others, and teaches at UMass Amherst.
BUDJETTE TAN is a creative director by day, copywriter by night, comic book writer after midnight. He is the author of Trese, a series of urban fantasy graphic novels cocreated with Kajo Baldi
simo. Trese won the Best Graphic Literature award at the 2009 and 2012 Philippine National Book Awards. Tan is also the editor of the graphic novels Skyworld, The Filipino Heroes League, Bathala: Apokalypsis, Erik Matti’s Tiktik: The Aswang Chronicles, and coeditor of the YA magazine Kwentillion.
LYSLEY TENORIO is the author of the short story collection Monstress, and his stories have also appeared in the Atlantic, Zoetrope: All-Story, Ploughshares, Manoa, and the Chicago Tribune. A former Stegner Fellow at Stanford, he has received a Whiting Writers’ Award and fellowships from the MacDowell Colony, Yaddo, and the NEA. He teaches at Saint Mary’s College of California, and lives in San Francisco.
MARIANNE VILLANUEVA is a writer from the Philippines and the author of the short story collections Ginseng and Other Tales from Manila, Mayor of the Roses, and The Lost Language. Her work has appeared in the Threepenny Review, ZYZZYVA, the New Orleans Review, Sou’wester, Prism International, Phoebe, the Asian American Literary Review, J Journal, and many others. She lives in the San Francisco Bay Area and returns yearly to her father’s home province, Negros Occidental.
JONAS VTMAN divides his time between Manila and Berlin. This is his first published story.
About the Akashic Noir Series
The Akashic Books Noir series was launched in 2004 with the award-winning anthology, Brooklyn Noir. Each book is comprised of all new stories, each taking place within a distinct location within the city of the book. Stories in the series have won multiple Edgar, Shamus, and Hammett awards and the volumes have been translated into 10 languages. Every book is available on our website, as eBooks from your favorite vendor, and in print at online and brick & mortar bookstores everywhere. For more information on the series, including an up-to-date list of available titles, please visit www.akashicbooks.com/noirseries.htm.
ALSO AVAILABLE IN THE AKASHIC NOIR SERIES
BALTIMORE NOIR, edited by LAURA LIPPMAN
BARCELONA NOIR (SPAIN), edited by ADRIANA V. LÓPEZ & CARMEN OSPINA
BOSTON NOIR, edited by DENNIS LEHANE
BOSTON NOIR 2: THE CLASSICS, edited by DENNIS LEHANE, JAIME CLARKE & MARY COTTON
BRONX NOIR, edited by S.J. ROZAN
BROOKLYN NOIR, edited by TIM MCLOUGHLIN
BROOKLYN NOIR 2: THE CLASSICS, edited by TIM MCLOUGHLIN
BROOKLYN NOIR 3: NOTHING BUT THE TRUTH, edited by TIM MCLOUGHLIN & THOMAS ADCOCK
CAPE COD NOIR, edited by DAVID L. ULIN
CHICAGO NOIR, edited by NEAL POLLACK
COPENHAGEN NOIR (DENMARK), edited by BO TAO MICHAËLIS
D.C. NOIR, edited by GEORGE PELECANOS
D.C. NOIR 2: THE CLASSICS, edited by GEORGE PELECANOS
DELHI NOIR (INDIA), edited by HIRSH SAWHNEY
DETROIT NOIR, edited by E.J. OLSEN & JOHN C. HOCKING
DUBLIN NOIR (IRELAND), edited by KEN BRUEN
HAITI NOIR, edited by EDWIDGE DANTICAT
HAVANA NOIR (CUBA), edited by ACHY OBEJAS
INDIAN COUNTRY NOIR, edited by SARAH CORTEZ & LIZ MARTÍNEZ
ISTANBUL NOIR (TURKEY), edited by MUSTAFA ZIYALAN & AMY SPANGLER
KANSAS CITY NOIR, edited by STEVE PAUL
KINGSTON NOIR (JAMAICA), edited by COLIN CHANNER
LAS VEGAS NOIR, edited by JARRET KEENE & TODD JAMES PIERCE
LONDON NOIR (ENGLAND), edited by CATHI UNSWORTH
LONE STAR NOIR, edited by BOBY BYRD & JOHNNY BYRD
LONG ISLAND NOIR, edited by KAYLIE JONES
LOS ANGELES NOIR, edited by DENISE HAMILTON
LOS ANGELES NOIR 2: THE CLASSICS, edited by DENISE HAMILTON
MANHATTAN NOIR, edited by LAWRENCE BLOCK
MANHATTAN NOIR 2: THE CLASSICS, edited by LAWRENCE BLOCK
MEXICO CITY NOIR (MEXICO), edited by PACO I. TAIBO II
MIAMI NOIR, edited by LES STANDIFORD
MOSCOW NOIR (RUSSIA), edited by NATALIA SMIRNOVA & JULIA GOUMEN
MUMBAI NOIR (INDIA), edited by ALTAF TYREWALA
NEW JERSEY NOIR, edited by JOYCE CAROL OATES
NEW ORLEANS NOIR, edited by JULIE SMITH
ORANGE COUNTY NOIR, edited by GARY PHILLIPS
PARIS NOIR (FRANCE), edited by AURéLIEN MASSON
PHILADELPHIA NOIR, edited by CARLIN ROMANO
PHOENIX NOIR, edited by PATRICK MILLIKIN
PITTSBURGH NOIR, edited by KATHLEEN GEORGE
PORTLAND NOIR, edited by KEVIN SAMPSELL
QUEENS NOIR, edited by ROBERT KNIGHTLY
RICHMOND NOIR, edited by ANDREW BLOSSOM, BRIAN CASTLEBERRY & TOM DE HAVEN
ROME NOIR (ITALY), edited by CHIARA STANGALINO & MAXIM JAKUBOWSKI
ST. PETERSBURG NOIR, edited by NATALIA SMIRNOVA & JULIA GOUMEN
SAN DIEGO NOIR, edited by MARYELIZABETH HART
SAN FRANCISCO NOIR, edited by PETER MARAVELIS
SAN FRANCISCO NOIR 2: THE CLASSICS, edited by PETER MARAVELIS
SEATTLE NOIR, edited by CURT COLBERT
STATEN ISLAND NOIR, edited by PATRICIA SMITH
TORONTO NOIR (CANADA), edited by JANINE ARMIN & NATHANIEL G. MORE
TRINIDAD NOIR (TRINIDAD & TOBAGO), edited by LISA ALEN-AGOSTINI & JEANNE MASON
TWIN CITIES NOIR, edited by JULIE SCHAPER & STEVEN HORWITZ
VENICE NOIR (ITALY), edited by MAXIM JAKUBOWSKI
WALL STREET NOIR, edited by PETER SPIEGELMAN
FORTHCOMING
ADDIS ABABA NOIR (EGYPT), edited by MAAZA MENGISTE
BAGHDAD NOIR (IRAQ), edited by SAMUEL SHIMON
BEIRUT NOIR (LEBANON), edited by IMAN HUMAYDAN
BOGOTÁ NOIR (COLOMBIA), edited by ANDREA MONTEJO
BUFFALO NOIR, edited by BRIGID HUGHES & ED PARK
DALLAS NOIR, edited by DAVID HALE SMITH
HAITI NOIR 2: THE CLASSICS, edited by EDWIDGE DANTICAT
HELSINKI NOIR, (FINLAND) edited by JAMES THOMPSON
JERUSALEM NOIR, edited by DROR MISHANI
LAGOS NOIR (NIGERIA), edited by CHRIS ABANI
MISSISSIPPI NOIR, edited by TOM FRANKLIN
PRISON NOIR, edited by JOYCE CAROL OATES
SEOUL NOIR (KOREA), edited by BS PUBLISHING CO.
SINGAPORE NOIR, edited by CHERYL LU-LIEN TAN
STOCKHOLM NOIR (SWEDEN), edited by NATHAN LARSON & CARL-MICHAEL EDENBORG
TEHRAN NOIR (COLOMBIA), edited by SALAR ABDOH
TEL AVIV NOIR (ISRAEL), edited by ETGAR KERET & ASSAF GAVRON
USA NOIR: BEST OF THE AKASHIC NOIR SERIES, edited by JOHNNY TEMPLE
ZAGREB NOIR (CROATIA), edited by IVAN SRSEN
About Akashic Books
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Akashic Books is an award-winning independent company dedicated to publishing urban literary fiction and political nonfiction by authors who are either ignored by the mainstream, or who have no interest in working within the ever-consolidating ranks of the major corporate publishers. Akashic Books hosts additional imprints, including the Akashic Noir Series, the Akashic Drug Chronicles Series, the Akashic Urban Surreal Series, Punk Planet Books, Dennis Cooper's Little House on the Bowery Series, Open Lens, Chris Abani's Black Goat Poetry Series, and AkashiClassics: Renegade Reprint Series.
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