Monsoon Mansion: A Memoir(11)
“Meaning what, Gonzalo?” Mama said.
“Search and rescue, repatriation, flights, agencies, compensation for families of those who don’t make it back, buying back their stash of Arab money, damage control.”
“Well, fuckin’ do something about it, Gonzalo,” Mama demanded. “You cannot—cannot—let us drown.”
Persian Gulf War. Operation Desert Storm. Operation Granby. First Gulf War. Liberation of Kuwait. Mother of All Battles. Different perspectives, different names. The television kept spewing them out. My parents called it “The End of Our Empire.” Later on, Paolo and I would call it “The End of Our Family.”
“You useless, worthless man! You stupid son of a bitch! You’re driving us into poverty! Of all things, poverty! This is all your fault. What the fuck are we going to do now? Pu?eta! We’ve lost everything.” Bam! Mama slammed the door on Papa after her fit.
“Estrella, please stop screaming; you’re scaring the kids. It’s not my fault. It’s nobody’s. Everyone who has money in the Middle East knows that. Estrella, please, open the door,” Papa begged Mama.
She opened the door and held a makeshift weapon—a fine-tooth comb, a ruler, a lampshade—which he snatched from her hand and threw on the floor. She slammed the door on him again, and we listened to her scramble for something in the bedroom. When she had found what she was looking for, she came out with it, holding it in front of her face with arms in a V, her hair wet from sweat, her one sleeve off the shoulder, and the object catching and reflecting light—her Spanish-made, gold-finished letter-opener knife.
She took two steps toward Papa, paused, then tore through the air between them with her stabbing. She stabbed the knife just an inch away from Papa’s ear, just barely missing his face. We all gasped and froze—the maids who were covering our eyes and ears, the personal assistant, the cook, the tutor, the gardener, Paolo, and me. We watched Papa run for his life as Mama chased after him with gold blade in hand. We watched her slash the air, just failing to gash him by a centimeter or two. Papa, who grew up dodging wild animal attacks in his penurious hometown, evaded Mama’s acts of violence by sprinting upstairs and hiding in the extra bedroom. That night, he moved his belongings, too, and they were—physically and emotionally—separated. Only our finances—or soon, the lack thereof—bound them together.
I began wetting my bed.
After Papa moved upstairs, the mansion barely seemed like a palace anymore. Flowers stopped adorning mantels one day, and the next, a car was purchased off our lot. Dessert didn’t come with lunch but just with dinner. The following month, there was no dessert at all. The maids started cleaning the house in unpressed clothes, and the drivers stopped waxing cars. Paolo’s daily routine and my schedule dropped from three after-school activities down to just either piano or ballet. The gradual downsizing proved evident in every part of the house.
Papa made efforts to uplift the collective mood of the mansion. He wrote notes to me, Paolo, and Mama, and he taped them to our vanity mirrors. He took me to not just the ice-cream shop, but also to the ice-cream factory, and he took Paolo on Boy Scout campouts. He ate meals with the household staff, cracking jokes and retelling tales from his childhood: how he went to school with no shoes and how his family slept in between the ceiling and roof of the fish market. He told me, “This isn’t normal. None of this is. But we were not made for normal. And for that, I am sorry.”
He was home more often because he no longer had to travel for business. I liked seeing so much of him, how I could always ride piggyback on him and play tickle fight. Half of the time he was home, though, he was hiding from Mama or shaking his head and covering his ears from her screaming. Was he better off working, traveling many miles and flying first-class, away from us? I wasn’t sure. I was still confused about babies and death and knives and all that screaming.
Papa noticed. He noticed how Mama had gone from dieting to starving, and how Paolo and I couldn’t seem to get along. So he planned a swimming day at Palos Verdes, the members-only pool club on the Antipolo hill.
“Who wants to go swimming?” he said, as he and the drivers packed our Land Cruiser with coolers, towels, and snack baskets.
Paolo and I cheered.
“Okay! Hop in and pick out songs we can sing on our way up,” Papa said.
“I have one! What about that one about puppies on the window?” I said.
“In the window, stupid. You can’t be on a window,” Paolo said.
I stuck my tongue out at him.
“Oh, you guys, come on. Let’s keep it nice and fun,” Papa said.
“Nice and fun, nice and fun,” Mama said, mocking Papa as she sat in the middle-row seat, hiding behind her oversize sunglasses. She left her knife at home.
Papa rallied the maids and boys and had them pack coolers and led a convoy up the hill to Palos Verdes. We arrived at the club an hour later and were welcomed by perfect weather and bath-temperature water. It seemed like all we needed was some fresh air and time outside the mansion. Once there, Papa began grilling, showing Paolo and the boys how to properly start a fire. Everyone, including the help, stripped down to their bathing suits.
The women, on the other hand, gathered around to assist Mama—Judith lathering sunscreen on her back and legs, Dehlia untying her lace-up sandals, and Katring fixing her hair under a floral swim cap. Once prepped for the water, she shooed them away with a one-two flick of her fingers and strode toward me in her lipstick-red one-piece Valentino suit. I’d been giving my inflatable whale a bath on the side of the pool, scooping water with my bucket and pouring it over my blow-up friend. Mama told me to stop playing, to which I obliged.