The Solemn Lantern Maker

by Merlinda Bobis

  When all is still, Noland checks his shopping. Sliced bread, Milo and cheese, in precious little packets. Then two housedresses and a pair of slippers from the bargain box. One dress is red with black fishes, the other blue with red and white flowers. The slippers are also blue. There’s also a cheap plastic curtain. It’s a dull yellow, flowered too and opaque. Quietly he hangs it with laundry pegs to hide his guest, to keep her private and safe. Then he lays his hand on her brow to check for fever and, in a bold impulse, his head on her chest to check for life.

  The woman dreams of a heaviness. She knows the weight of all the sobs of her life, but this is different. She wants it to stay, please stay. The boy stays long enough to hear enough, the one speech that truly gratifies.

  26

  In the still-dark morning Saint Raphael feels his fish twitch, wishing for a return to water. Saint Michael hopes to be free of his soot, to look more formidable. The Christmas angel despairs over the uselessness of her lungs, and wants a new trumpet. The cherub longs to fly down from the roof, try earth for a change. But they are set in their places and movement is made possible only by the passing train.

  Do angels also aspire for things beyond them? If so, one can excuse humans who pray or pay for a wish, whichever is the realistic option. And in between, rest when possible. Be still again, be fixed in place. As the city prepares for the Misa de Aguinaldo, the pre-dawn Christmas mass, Noland begins to fall asleep. It’s a restless sleep. He turns to the hidden guest. One arm makes a gesture toward her, then goes limp again. Maybe he’s dreaming too soon. He hears:

  Star-light, star-bright

  Make-a-wish-a-wish-tonight.

  The nursery rhyme is the ringtone of a cell phone. It plays from all the seven continents but no one picks up the call. It’s the dream of the abandoned. The phone is unattended because everyone is out Christmas shopping.

  The rhyme grows louder. It enters the hut, someone is calling the hut, but even here no one answers. Everyone is asleep, fixed in repose. The caller is persistent, then eventually gives up.

  For a while, silence, then a soft light grows behind the plastic curtain. It grows bright, brighter. In his dream Noland sees it, recognizes it. He hears himself speak in his head. I know a story you don’t know.

  In the brightness, a silhouette rises. It sits up, its arms open. They become wings, they quiver, they stop. Again, fixed and still.

  27

  Everything is fixed and still in each box in a comic strip. But the pose in each box shifts from the previous one, and on it goes. Every story moves, even in a dream, or else there’s no story at all.

  So behind the plastic curtain, a silhouette rises.

  It sits up.

  Its arms open.

  They become wings.

  They flutter.

  The silhouette flies through the plastic.

  It hovers over the sleeping boy.

  He wakes up.

  He rubs his eyes.

  It’s an angel!

  She hushes him.

  She gathers him.

  They tiptoe to the Christmas tree.

  He touches her chest.

  Her chest lights up.

  She touches the tree.

  Its heart lights up.

  She points to this flickering light.

  She whispers into his ear.

  They shrink.

  They fly into the heart of the tree.

  They have many conversations.

  Speech balloons from the tree.

  Stories float around the hut.

  Then the fog.

  28

  The 6 a.m. train zips past. The hanging stars dance in a fog. Rows of red and green flick their little paper tails. Farther up, a cherub slips in and out of the fog. She shuts her eyes again, opens them. Where is she, where is this? She feels the beginning of the query on her lips. Her eyes leave heaven and settle at her feet where a boy is staring. She stares back. He is out of focus.

  He moves closer, a red heart out of the fog. I NY. Now she can see. The boy’s eyes are open so wide that they fill his face, which is brown as a nut. His lips move slightly as if about to speak, and his rather large head covered by a mop of black inclines in the same attitude. I am about to say. But nothing. He is silent, solemn, yet she senses an intense yearning somewhere—is it in the eyes? It occurs to her that no one has ever looked at her like this.

  It’s a look that knows, but without the weight of history to frame the gaze. Yes, he knows about her, all of her from the day she was born, but this knowing now, this ultimate face to face, is what he trusts. The eyes say, tell me a story and it will be the only story that will matter. This is how she wants to be looked at.

  He leaves her.

  “Who? … Where?” The American tries again. She attempts to sit up, at least she feels she’s sitting up, but she has barely moved. Her head, her stomach hurt. She fondles the blue housedress that she’s wearing. The slippers at the foot of her mat are also blue. The smell of plastic fills her nostrils, and something stronger, like dead rats, decay—what is it? She doesn’t know about the creek outside. She turns slightly. Her face touches the yellow curtain. She wants to lift it but her arm is too heavy. She searches for thoughts, for any inkling about who what where how, but her mind is empty, no there’s a fog in there, no her mind’s not even there. It’s only her body that tells her she’s here under the stars, and now under the gaze of the boy again. Her whole body hurts, her whole body isn’t quite whole, it’s missing something. What is it? Where am I? Lost in a fog, where everything is slow.

  The boy has returned with two slices of bread with a yellow spread and a glass of something brown. What’s it called? He motions for her to eat. She wants to, she’s ravenous, but can’t quite pick up the bread. He feeds her. It takes forever to finish the first slice. He watches, hardly blinking. I was right. Your eyes are blue.

  29

  Nena does her last laundry, and Helen commiserates. Nena keeps beating and wringing silently. Helen keeps up the loud sympathy. Thank God, Lisa is absent today, so they’re spared a fight. “Hoy, Nena, I knocked at your door yesterday, I brought the chicken soup but no one was home. What a pity, it had plenty of ginger, and you love ginger, don’t you? By the way, how’s Noland? Haven’t seen much of him. How are his lanterns? Hoy, come to the house for Noche Buena,” and on she talks about how she’s preparing this Christmas Eve meal which Nena and Noland are welcome to share, yes, let’s greet the birth of Christ together.

  The other washerwomen and those waiting to fetch water keep their voices down at first but as the storytelling progresses, the pitch rises, the pace speeds up, the speculations and summations multiply like soap suds.

  “It’s Vim, one of the lantern twins. Bashed last night, maybe because he told the police everything. He saw the shooting, you know.”

  “Dios ko, our poor Vim, our poor foolish Vim, always wanting to do the right thing—”

  “Never learns from his twin. Vic knows how to keep low, knows about life. Ay, poor brothers.”

  “Who would do such a thing to the kindest of men?”

  “I’m scared.”

  “It’s here, whatever it is—and it’s Christmas too, ay, ay!”

  “It’s the Pizza Hut man—”

  “No, don’t say, don’t say—”

  “It’s on City Flash all the time—”

  “Could be a serial killer—”

  “Oh no, don’t say—”

  “You know an Amerkana was also shot?”

  “What?” everyone cries in unison.

  All washing stops, and Nena’s heart.

  “Vim told the police there was an Amerkana, that she fell and just disappeared. Vim lost sight of her—he had run to help that poor guy in the car, then she was gone. But trust Vim to do the silly thing. Look what happened to him, and it’s Christmas too.”

  In and out of the voices, the pump squeaks and grates, like some machinery cranking up the narrative and nerves.

&nbs
p; 30

  Noland is hanging his mother’s laundry, her last job. She’s crouched inside the cart, her distress shifting between the pain in her legs and the news from the women. “She’ll get us into trouble, she must go today. I said no police, no uniforms. Ay Noland, what will become of us? What will become of you?

  “When you grow up, you will be a farmer like your father, but you will be better. You will own these fields of rice.” Once Nena knew what would become of her son. She knew her wish by heart.

  Star-light, star-bright

  Make-a-wish-a-wish-tonight

  “Watch how the stars watch the fields for you, Noland, for when the right time comes, because the stars know your name. Watch how the stars come so close to earth, as if they’re descending on that hill over there. Those stars are angels guarding the land and the hearts that will always be true to it.”

  At four years old, Noland could not understand the story-wish, but he took the stars and angels to heart. He liked it when his mother’s voice hummed with the crickets as he closed his eyes. It was a mother cricket’s wish. “May your heart always be true, my son, like your father’s and his father’s before him,” then she made the sign of the cross on him and herself. She believed in the grace of prayer then.

  What will become of you? She has not asked this question in a long time and more so now, she dare not answer it, not even in her head. Nor has she spoken about her husband, lest they are returned to another story.

  Noland hides his impatience. He wants to get back inside, to surprise his mother with this most beautiful thing, awake. He wrings a bedsheet with her. He pegs it onto the fence. It spreads like a white map. Through it he can see the highway traffic, now picking up. For the first time he feels that he too is going somewhere, finding his own route. He thinks of a blue housedress and blue slippers, and the Milo, of course. Milo’s good. His chest swells with the knowledge that an angel was feeding from his hand.

  “You’ve been very wasteful, Noland.”

  His poor mother can’t understand, of course.

  “Those dresses and things … the money, where did you get it? Ay-ay, what will I find out next?”

  He squats before the cart, before his mother and her laundry, and takes her hands to his chest. Ah, this old habit, this conversation. Her son can speak in there and her hands can hear. His heart is true and she trusts it, but not this time.

  “What trouble will you bring into the house next?”

  It’s eight in the morning. The boy wants to tell his mother about what awaits them inside. He wants to tell her stories about the street of lights and the mall of stars and angels, the thousands of pesos passing hands, the things to buy and eat that he can’t even name, the piles and piles of clothes where he dug like all those desperate for something cheap but special, those without dollars from abroad who must still get on with the tradition of Christmas gift-giving. How he found the perfect housedresses there—do you like yours, Mother? I know you like red.

  “I see you bought her slippers too.”

  The boy hears a strange note in his mother’s voice. He’s never heard it before. He’s never heard jealousy. It perplexes his ear. She says yet almost asks, voice rising slightly at the finish, as if to confirm that the one not bought slippers is loved as much.

  The mall, Mother, it’s heaven. He wants to take her there, if only she could walk. If only his wooden cart would fit through the door. The guard would check it, as he checks all the bags, and send them away. And his poor mother wouldn’t even dare to come close. She’d spot the uniform too soon.

  31

  Light is streaming in through the angels. The American looks up and around, her body bent so she doesn’t hit the roof, her arms stretched out, catching the light from the cherub’s brow and the brightness bisecting the angel at the door. She sees more light sneaking in through the holes and gaps, the seams of this oh-so-strange place. Where is this? One angel’s fish grows a halo; another angel begins to glow. The light bounces on the ancient kerosene stove. The stars above are strung with light; their tails tickle her face. She’s in a daze. Where am I?

  She was hot when she woke up and a boy was feeding her, no, it was an old woman making her drink some bitter thing and she slept again or did she? And was there really a boy, a woman? Yes, she woke up drowning in hot fog and she crawled out of the plastic curtain and found her feet, then this—this magical shabby heaven that smells like it’s rotting. She notes the badly dented television with a Christmas tree enthroned on it. Painted white and hung with tiny red and green stars, and gouged at the belly, exposed. This is what occurs to her at first glance. She puts her hand into the hole of the tree and finds a milk can. She peers at the melted candle inside.

  Suddenly the door opens and the angel there folds in two for a second, then is whole again. The boy and the old woman have entered and quickly shut the door. So they’re real after all. Both are staring at her. They see a giant, a white giant! She withdraws her hand from the tree, suddenly guilty, caught in a grievous act, like feeling up someone’s insides.

  The old woman is crouched on the floor, looking up at her. She crawls forward into a stream of light. It gashes her face, her blinking eyes. “Okay you?” she asks, pointing a finger at her.

  The American steps back, uncertain. The finger is more accusing than concerned.

  The boy hasn’t moved but the woman crawls even closer. “Okay you?” she asks again, then, “Who you?”

  The high-pitched voice is aggressive. The American doesn’t know how to answer. “W-where—where am I?” she asks instead.

  The woman taps her chest. “My house.”

  The guest feels like an intruder.

  “Who you?”

  The guest tries to squeeze an answer out of her head, but there’s nothing there. She closes her eyes, hears the insistent “Who you? Who you?” at her feet. The woman has crawled closer.

  “I—I—” The American sways weakly, then collapses before the boy gets to her. She hears the woman speak sharply to the boy in their tongue, surely against her, even as she helps her back to the mat.

  Above, the stars grow fuzzy.

  “Who you?”

  The American attempts to declare herself, stammering through the “I” that feels like a coil of air making shapes in her mouth, except a name. She sees the word “who” flashing red inside her head. She hears someone sobbing. She hears it drag out of her mouth. “I—I don’t know…”

  32

  Angels weep. He will remember this. They get hungry too, so weeping is all right. He watches his mother settle the weeping guest on the mat, her sharp demeanor now gone. “Okay, no-cry, no-cry,” she croons instead.

  “I—I don’t remember … anything.” The guest’s voice rises in a panic.

  “Sshh … shhh…” Nena feels the other’s hands grip hers tightly, the nails digging in with every word.

  “Some-something happened … something…”

  Everything happened, that’s why we’re here. Nena feels the lump in her throat breaking, but she must settle her or else she’ll start screaming again and everyone will find out. “Okay, no name. You know tomorrow, okay?”

  The other woman nods, repeating, “Name…”

  “Me, Nena. Son, Noland.”

  The boy nods wordlessly. She will always remember him squatting at her feet with that solemn stare. So son and mother. She thought Nena was an old woman. The streaks of gray, the hunched frame in a tattered housedress … so she can’t walk? She tries to smile. “Noland, Nena.”

  “Yes, yes, me Nena, Pilipina.”

  “Pilipina … Philippines…”

  Nena is excited. “Philippines you know, good, good. Philippines here, Manila here, my house here, you here, okay.”

  Okay, she’s okay. The American closes her eyes tiredly. When she opens them again, Nena is still by her side and the boy is holding out a glass.

  “Milo good,” the mother approves. “Noland good boy.”

  “Good …
thank you…”

  They barely hear her; she’s drifting off again. Nena reverts to Pilipino. “I told you she should go. And what’s this curtain? Look, she’s hot, she can’t breathe. Her brain must breathe so she remembers, so she can go … soon.” She quickly undoes the curtain, muttering, “Soon, soon.”

  Half asleep, the white woman murmurs, “You know me, Noland?” but the boy only stares.

  “Sorry no talk, six years no talk…”

  No talk? No one hears his thoughts where he knows everything. I know a story you don’t know. I know you. I know your name. Angel.

  She tries to reach for the boy, who offers his hand, but a whirring sound breaks the quiet. It’s coming from above, outside. Instinctively they all look up. The hanging stars blur before the sick woman’s eyes. The boy closes his own in the attitude of listening. Angel wings.

  33

  A Huey helicopter hovers over the intersection. The slums, the lantern stalls, the stars are whipped about, and so are the crowds below who have come out to look up and wave. The children are ecstatic. They’ve never seen anything this big and shiny fly this low and almost graze their lives. And look, there’s a white man up there, about to land! Mikmik and her gang instigate contact, yelling, “Merry Christmas, Merry Christmas!” Other children instinctively join in. The pilot makes a thumbs-up sign to the man beside him. “Christmas spirit,” he mouths.

  Colonel David Lane doesn’t welcome the gesture, abruptly making his own to the local flight lieutenant: Do a circuit of the track. He has grave doubts about this assignment. It’s a civilian matter, for God’s sake, but after 9/11 any American gets hurt or gets sneezed at in a foreign country and “terrorism” rears its ugly head. The Philippine government has approved this Huey tour, despite protests from local officials, overruled by “higher powers” upholding the Philippine-American friendship and the drawdown of ten million U.S. dollars for military assistance. “These slums go forever along the track,” the Filipino escort behind Lane yells above the din. He’s a veteran from Mindanao, his machine gun set for optimum visibility, as are the rocket pods. “Want us to cover it all, Colonel?”