Monsoon Mansion: A Memoir(12)
“Come here,” she said.
I put down my bucket and tiptoed to her.
Mama was a former collegiate swimmer. And her way of teaching us anything, including swimming, was to just throw us right in. Mama spun me around so that I faced the pool. She unbuckled my floatie, slid its Styrofoam rings off my arms, flung it about two meters away, and pushed me into the blue that was more than three meters deep. As I began to slip beneath the surface, she instructed everyone not to fish me out, to leave me room to struggle and gargle and kick my way up.
“You jump in to save her and you lose your job,” she said, hands on waist.
She lectured them on how children learned by doing, and that the best and brightest, the leaders of our country and of the world, earned their ranks by nearly drowning. She didn’t believe in lifesavers, not even in swim coaches, but in being hurled into whatever could kill you. As much as she and her ways were terrifying, they proved to be effective. Papa was getting ready to jump in, despite his lack of skill, but I kicked up and kicked up, my pan de sal thighs thrusting me up and my jamon de bola belly buoying me like a ship’s hull. I learned to swim.
And I swam well.
After the knife incident, Mama lived as two people: Mama who hid a knife in her silk robe and yelled at Papa over every meal, and Mama who lured an audience among the maids with her graceful butterfly strokes and swan dives. She was Mama who broke carafes and saucers and urns, and Mama who hummed while wading.
When she waded and sunned, we acted like her other self was back at the mansion, far away from our singing and swimming, far away from the fire crackling in the grill, the bath-temperature water, the normalness of an afternoon at the pool. Paolo and I splashed and shot at each other with yellow-orange water guns and sang while we rode the inflatable whale. We cannonballed and raced to both ends of the pool, and when we ran short of breath, we hung on to the pool gutter to rest.
“Psst, come with me. I have a surprise for you,” he said, pushing his body up on the gutter and out of the water.
“A surprise? What is it?” I said.
“Just come.”
I tried to push up on the gutter like he did, but couldn’t. I instead swam to the steps and climbed out. I followed him behind bushes, through the gate and to the playground, mulch and leaves sticking to my wet feet.
“Look, I found you the tallest, biggest slide in the whole world,” Paolo said.
“Wow, that’s really tall and really high, Kuya,” I said.
“Go climb up and slide down.”
“Let’s go get Yaya.”
“Tell you what, you go and then I go. Deal?”
I hesitated. Then I said, “Deal.”
I walked around the slide and to the ladder, took a deep breath, and wiped my still-moist, wrinkly hands on my shorts. Then I wrapped my fingers around the stainless-steel rods and took one step up after the other, trying my best not to show how scared I was that the slide was three persons tall. I grabbed the bar on the edge of the platform, sat my rump on the cold metal ledge, and let go. The next second, I was in midair, legs over my head, arms flailing up to where I could reach a tree’s branches. I suspended in the air for a couple of seconds, then banged my head on the cement floor.
The slide was missing a leg. Nobody, not even Paolo, knew. Instead of gravity pulling me down the slide and to the grass, it forced the top of the ramp—where I had just been sitting—to break off from the ladder and thrust skyward, flinging me like a projectile onto the pavement.
Mama ran screaming. She must’ve heard the slide fall and my skull smack the ground.
“Help!” Paolo said. He ran to my side and shook my arm, but I didn’t respond. He tapped my cheeks and began crying. “Oh no, oh no, say something. Say something.”
“Get the car! Get the damned car!” Papa said to the drivers.
I heard everyone cry and scream. I heard sandals flip and flop back and forth, the metal gate swing and shut, the car engine rumble. I heard ice swish around in a cooler and then felt it held to my head. I heard Lorna snivel and pray, “Diyos ko, let there be no blood.”
“No blood, no blood,” someone said.
“Stay with us, my darling girl,” Papa said.
“She’s not moving!” Mama cried.
She was right. I couldn’t move. I thought about it and tried to raise my arm or wiggle a toe, to let them know I was okay, but I couldn’t. I kept telling my hand to wave and my mouth to open, but nothing happened. I tried to swallow my spit, but saliva just foamed in the corners of my mouth and dribbled down my chin. I could see whatever was directly above me—faces, arms, my mother’s hair falling in my face, the evening sky turning orange blue. I saw the evening’s first stars, too.
I heard everything they were saying, but I couldn’t respond. I heard the car backing up the driveway, the gates flinging open and closed, the maids praying to Jesus and Our Lady, Paolo sobbing and apologizing, Mama screaming at Papa and blaming him for the fall, Papa telling Mama, “Not now, please, not now!” and instructing the drivers to open the car door and start the engine.
I lay flat and stiff on Paolo’s, Mama’s, and Papa’s laps in the back seat as we headed for the hospital. Mama couldn’t get her bearings. She was just as paralyzed by the accident as I was. She sobbed. Her tears and wet hair fell on my face. They felt cold.