“Yeah.” She looks guilty.
“Abra,” I say, “You don’t have to worry. I’m an expert on twins.”
“What?”
“I raise twin boys from the day they are born. Feeding, shitting, burping, bathing. I know all about it.”
“You never said you had sons.”
“Not my sons. I just raise them. You know what they say? Chief cook and bottle washer. That’s me.”
“When was this?”
“Oh, back in the day. I been meaning to give you this.” I hand her a book. One of those thick pocket editions of classics. “My story. It’s all in here.” I tap the worn cover.
“East of Eden?”
“Wouldn’t you know? John writes my story, and it’s a best seller.”
Couple of days later, Abra comes by the kitchen. “What are you cooking up?” she asks.
“Take a look.” I got a giant pot on the stove filled with water.
She looks inside. “You boiling water?”
“Not just any water.” I get the long ladle and stir it around. I got a small bowl to the side. Carefully ladle a couple of tablespoons into the bowl and hand it to Abra. “Try this.”
“Hot water, Felix.”
“You’re not concentrating. Close your eyes.”
She takes another sip. “Maybe lead from the pipes,” she says. “It’s gonna kill us eventually.”
I shake my head.
“Hey,” she says. “I started reading the Steinbeck. That’s not you in the book. It’s a Chinaman named Lee.”
“What does anyone know about the difference between Chinamen and Pinoys?”
“Felix, this Lee character has a queue. And he talks chinky. It’s disgusting.”
“How far you read?”
“Maybe a couple hundred pages. Took that long just to get to his part. I’m not reading this racist shit about a stereotype.”
“Keep reading. John’s long-winded.”
“Seven hundred pages, Felix.”
“Klinker’s on page seven hundred.”
“I’m giving you your book back.”
“Look.” I’m stirring my pot. “You take a rest from Das Kapital.”
She gives me her look.
“Oh, you think I was born yesterday? Katipunan ng mga Demokratikong Pilipino. You go to some mountain retreat, come back with the revolution.” I wave my hands. “That’s good. I support it. One hundred percent.”
“You do?”
“Of course. Why else you come to this roach-infested hotel? You trying to save me, no?”
She shakes her head. “I don’t know why.”
“Listen, this East of Eden is maybe same stuff but easier. What they say? ‘All books lead to Rome.’ Way of saying, same place. In this case, California. John and I, we figured it all out. Trust me.”
Just then, Emil and Andie run in. “Uncle Felix, what are you making?”
“Making soup. Wanna try?” I ladle out the hot water into two bowls. They scramble to sit at the end table next to the window. I hand them two spoons. “Wait. Hot. You got to blow first.”
I see Abra watching the twins. Steam from the bowls, swirling around their dark little heads, silhouettes in our dusty window. Outside, city street noise like the soft crash of distant metal. Watching them blow.
Maybe it’s a couple of weeks. Abra’s got a job with Mrs. D., waking up at four a.m., leaving at five, starting work at six, making it over to the Mission, some sweatshop with all Filipino ladies making jewelry stands out of felt and Styrofoam. Making dollar and fifty an hour. Probably talking unionizing in between. Comes home by three p.m. smelling like glue, just in time to pick up the twins at school and start organizing to save the I-Hotel. Organizing every day until midnight. Sleep four hours, then start again. Something’s got to give.
I see Abra. I ask, “When’s it happening? “
“What?”
“The revolution.”
She’s gotta show optimism, so she says, “Soon, Felix. Soon.”
“How long I gotta wait?”
Then one day she says, “Felix, you didn’t tell me there’s a character named Abra in that book.”
“Abra, you a slow reader, but I give you a break.”
“Read it on the bus yesterday.”
“What you think?”
“I thought I was named after the province of Abra, where my dad’s from.”
“Funny. I thought you got to be Abra Cadabra.”
“I heard that joke before, Felix. All through school.” She’s growling like some animal. “Be careful.”
“No sense of humor.”
“See this?” She pulls out a knife from her jeans pocket.
“Fucking switchblade. Are you crazy?”
“Carry it with me all the time, ever since junior high. You know the name of this knife?”
We both say it same time: “Abracadabra.”
“Pretty tricky,” I say. “You want to see knives? I got knives, too.”
She’s packing up the blade. “That’s why I didn’t finish high school. Got kicked out for ‘possession of a deadly weapon.’”
“I thought you’re pregnant with the twins.”
“That too.” She adds, “I guess I’m not nice like the Abra in the book.”
“Oh, maybe not so different,” I say.
Another day she says, “Felix, I finished the book. I have a question.”
“What’s that?”
“Who is Lee, really?”
“Lee is me.”
“No, be honest. Think about it. In the story, there is Cain and Abel. Cain kills Abel, right? Every character is either Cain or Abel. Killer type or killed type. Except”—she points at me—“for Lee.”
“It’s a Western concept. Good, evil, sin. What you expect? Chinaman’s outside of it.”
“Hmmm,” she grunts.
I go back and read the book again. She’s right. I suggest to her, “If Lee is me, Felix Allos, then I tell you what. I’m leaning toward Cain. I got the killer in me.”
“Felix,” she says. “Let’s get this straight. Lee in the book is fiction.”
“Change the name to protect my true identity.”
“I’m not convinced.”
“O.K. John takes some liberties.”
“Is that so?”
“One day I tell the real story. It’s even better.”
“That’s a start.” Abra’s serious. “This is what I want to know. What is Lee’s story? Does he even get a story? What is it?”
I go to the kitchen and boil up my big pot of water again. Lately I’m just boiling water. I look inside the pot and think about the Chinaman Lee in the book. What does he do in this situation? He goes to Chinatown and consults with the tong elders. Did I forget? You’re goddamn right, that’s what I do. I talk to the manong elders. I talk to Wahat and Virgilio, most learned manongs in the I-Hotel. Why not?
I say to them, “Stop writing poetry and playing pool. This is an emergency.”
Pretty soon we got a group together. Alfred, George, Devin join up too. Got everybody reading John Steinbeck.
Abra asks, “Where have you been?”
“Abra,” I say. “You got your study group. I got mine.”
Study group argues about everything.
“First of all, what about this title? How come East of Eden? Why not West of Eden? We’re not West?”
“Hey, you ever see an apple tree in Salinas? Nothing but lettuce for miles and miles.”
“I know this very woman Katie in Salinas. She was some kind of whore. Ouwhee!”
“I heard she had Siamese twins. Are you sure about this?”
“How does a white woman have Siamese twins? Ha ha ha!”
“Maybe it’s your kids. You Siamese by way of being Pinoy.”
“It’s possible. Felix is Chinese by way of being Pinoy.”
“This never happened. Miss Katie was a great lady.”
“My question is this: You got your Adam and your Ev
e in Paradise, right? So they having great sex all the time, right? Rolling around in Paradise. What happened?”
“Something about the apple of knowledge.”
“This is the key. If you have knowledge of sin, it’s sin. If not, not.”
“Innocence is bliss. That was the Philippines before the Spanish.”
“Fucking Spaniards. How come we got to go believe in their knowledge hook, line, and sinker?”
“Did you forget? They got the cannons. Bigger balls.”
“Hey, you wanna see bigger cannons?”
“California is like the Philippines. Another kind of paradise.”
“You know every town I go to, up and down California, it’s always like this: Chinatown next door to whoretown. You got your bars, your gambling, your dancing, your prostitution. All same street. One happy family. How about that?”
“Maybe Eve’s serpent’s a Chinese dragon. It’s making perfect sense.”
“That’s it! There’s your answer. In the book, Lee’s the serpent. Wise guy brings knowledge to the white people.”
“Maybe so.”
“Chinese dragon raises the twins. Maybe they learn the secret handshake.”
“You thinking sex is sin, but you got to get to the bottom of this story. The sin we’re talking here is murder.”
“Worst kind. One brother kills the other brother.”
“Why is Cain killing?”
“He’s not listening to the Chinaman.”
“Because he wants his father’s love.”
“No. It’s because of the land. He wants the land.”
“He’s already got land.”
“Wants more land. Greedy capitalist.”
“You know what the real story is, right? There’s always a woman involved. I saw it happen myself. You remember the Samson brothers? Johnny Junior shot his brother Babe. There was this girl. Anyway, she ran off with another guy. What was her name?”
“Maybe there’s something to this. My brother, he stays back in Binolonan, works for my father, raises a family there. Me, I come here and send every penny back to my father. Keep the family going. Never make anything for myself. Can’t go back. Am I jealous? Sure, I’m jealous. I would kill to take my brother’s place.”
Study group discussions go like this. I’m thinking there’s never gonna be an answer for Abra.
One day, Virgilio comes in serious with a piece of butcher paper. Spreads it out on the table and says, “We gonna figure this out today, but we got to write it down.”
Everybody’s staring at the butcher paper with nothing on it. Looks like my pot of boiling water. “Virgilio, you the poet. You write something.”
“Poetry,” Virgilio says, “can be like a list.”
Alfred says, “That’s deep, man.”
“Now I’m thinking like this. Top of the list, on one side you got Cain. On the other, Abel.” At the top of the paper on the left, Virgilio writes Cain and then Abel on the right. “So now you got to figure, Cain is the farmer and Abel is the shepherd.” Under the Cain side, he writes farmer and under the Abel side, shepherd. “You following my drift?”
“How about gatherer, hunter.”
“Settler, nomad.”
I say, “Vegetables, meat.”
Guys roll their eyes. “Only thing he thinks about is food.”
“O.K., try flora, fauna.”
Virgilio says, “This is the obvious. Try to think harder.”
“Domestic, wild.”
“House, hotel.”
“Earth, stars.”
“Land, sea.”
Someone says, “Inventor, explorer.”
“Politician, soldier.”
“Slave, conqueror.”
“Citizen, alien.”
“Outcast, wanderer.”
“I don’t get it. No difference.”
“Think about it. You get kicked out your country. You an outcast. What you call it?”
“Exile.”
“Right. That’s Cain. He gets kicked out, but Abel, that’s his life, following the herd. You could be wandering around like an ordinary hobo, no reason at all.”
After that, it opens up.
“Immigrant, migrant.”
“Sailor, pirate.”
“Indian, cowboy.”
“Peace, war.”
“You can put in ideas?”
“Why not?”
“Knowledge, sin.”
“Justice, liberty.”
“Science, religion.”
“History, prophecy.”
“Physics, math.”
“Comedy, tragedy.”
“Novel, poem.”
“Life, death.”
“Hell, heaven.”
“Man, God.”
“That’s it. Every time Abel dies, he turns into God. What a concept.”
To make a long list short, it goes on forever. We got to tack it up to the wall and leave it there to cogitate. You come into the room every few days, got more stuff on the list. You see guys next to the list arguing the fine points.
“How come we got peace on this side? It’s Cain who killed Abel.”
“It’s like this. Cain side is the idea about peace. Once you kill, you gotta make rules about not killing. Peace comes after war.”
“That’s the tricky thing. You can switch it, and nobody knows the difference.”
One day I see: pragmatists, idealists.
Next day, it’s: democracy, autocracy.
Then: nationalist, internationalist.
Then: Capitalism, Socialism.
Then: bourgeoisie, proletariat.
Then: Socialism, Communism.
Then: Russia, China.
Then: China, Russia.
Then: Mao, Marx.
Then: CPA, ACC.
Then: Aguinaldo, Bonifacio.
Then: IHTA, KDP.
“What’s KDP?”
“Short for Katipunan ng mga Demokratikong Pilipino. Pinoy student Commie radicals.
“What’s it mean?”
“Means we kill them.”
Now we got one war on our hands.
I say to Abra, “We got infiltration in our study group.”
Abra says, “Felix, you don’t have a study group.” She points at our wall. “You got a list.”
“It’s a poem. Says it all.”
“Who wrote in the stuff at the bottom?”
“What does it matter? Matters only if they got the sides right. Like you said: killer type, killed type.” Emil and Andie run by. “Both side twins. Come from the same womb. No escaping.”
“You wrote that in, didn’t you?” Abra looks accusing.
“Me? How do I know these things?” I shake my head. I’m walking away.
“Felix, what about the Chinaman Lee who raises the twins? Did you figure it out?” She’s got her hands on her hips.
“Working on it. By and by.”
“You know what I think?”
“What?”
“Steinbeck was a fucking chauvinist pig. All the women in the book are stereotypes. Sexy and evil. Or sexless and pure.” Abra’s getting excited. “The only good woman in the book is Lee.”
“He’s not a woman.”
“Isn’t he?” By now she’s yelling. “Can you believe that? He never gets married. He never has sex. He just reads and cooks and takes care of the house and raises the children. I don’t believe it!”
I get quiet a long time, thinking.
Abra walks over to me. “I’m sorry.”
“No, you got it right.” I nod my head. “Book is like this hotel. Bunch of men raising another bunch of men.”
Abra touches my arm. Then she hugs me. I feel her warm body next to me, my arms around her back, her breasts pressing next to my chest. I pull her into me. How long it’s been. Everything fitting into the perfect spaces. My muscles fill out. My lip touches her ear. My hands get electric.
“Felix.” She’s pushing away. “No!”
Next thing I see
her running away. I look down at my stupid penis. How did it get so big?
After a while, I knock on Abra’s door.
“Go away.”
“Abracadabra.”
That’s the open sesame. Next thing, she’s there in the door with the switchblade. “Felix, remember you asked me that personal question a while back?”
“What’s that?”
“About being a feminist.”
“Stupid question.”
“I’m a feminist.”
“Don’t worry. Like being a vegetarian or a Communist. It could pass.”
“I’m telling you this because I think you’re my friend and like my father. Are you going to listen?”
“O.K.”
“I’m a lesbian.”
“I know.”
“You know?”
“I’m not born yesterday.”
We laugh.
I think Abra cries, so I say, “Now that’s settled, can I hug you?”
“No!”
It takes a few weeks, but finally I knock on Abra’s door again. “Abracadabra.”
Door’s open and behind Abra, I see the twins sitting on the floor coloring.
“I’m boiling water,” I say.
“How long is this going to go on?” she asks. “You know what the twins say?”
Emil says, “Uncle Felix is fixing empty soup.”
Andie says, “You got to use your imagination.”
Emil says, “We gonna starve.”
“I finally got the recipe,” I say.
Alfred and Devin are coming by with the butcher paper with the poem. They tack it up in the kitchen. I’m cutting up vegetables. I got a pork knuckle thick with cartilage. I got one fat fish head. I got beans. I got more bones. I got oxtail. I got chicken feet. I got the fish sauce and the bagoong. I got limes. I got seaweed. I got coconut milk. I got peanuts. Alfred throws in a carrot and the fish head. He says, “Land. Sea.”
Devin checks the poem and tosses in a potato and some beans. “History. Prophecy.”
It goes on like that. Like chanting, we throw in everything: farmer, nomad, comedy, tragedy, life, death, proletariat, Capitalist, Communist, Socialist, man, God, evil, good, Mao, Marx, science, religion, peace, war, young, old, women, men, son, father, daughter, mother, brother, brother, sister, sister.
5: Rations
About this time, Joe and I take Macario downstairs to the Paddy Wagon. Paddy Wagon’s a strip joint with a bar and a couple of pool tables. Every night Joe’s there, so to talk to Joe, you gotta spend some time in the Wagon. “Come on,” I say to Macario. “You got something against naked ladies?” But it’s not about the strippers, because you got to be blind and drunk to appreciate these old-timers. This one is looking fat, but you got to give it to her. She can move. Everything on her jitters. We sit at the bar and buy a round of beers.
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