Monsoon Mansion: A Memoir(14)
He and Paolo laughed, then transitioned onto all fours, hovering their bodies over the countries and continents, the soldiers and the seas. They played combat the rest of the morning. I didn’t know why, but I wanted to forget what Papa had just said: that we—our family, our country, and our world—were in some kind of war. I didn’t like the goose bumps that appeared on my arms, nor did I like imagining any of us, especially myself, as one of the toy soldiers, armed and dangerous and in danger. I already had dead babies, broken slides, and Mama’s knife to worry about. And now I was to worry about the Common Enemy, too. I ran back to my room, leaving Papa and Paolo, who were now wrestling each other and rolling on and off the map. I climbed into my bed, picked up the doll and her brush, and did what Mama did when she wasn’t storming in or out of a room, or thundering at Papa about money in the Middle East: I brushed my hair a hundred strokes, no more and no less.
A week ago, Mama called Papa a failure, an ignorant peasant, and a “low-class fuckin’ Indio.” Afterward, she rolled a Chinese jade urn across the ballroom floor and through a French door, shattering the window and creating a crater where the urn landed. Mama had bouts of violence and anger and had pushed me into three meters of water, but I still somehow wanted to be near her.
I admired her for being a real-life doll: long legs, long arms, slim waist, shiny hair, and red lips. She was Rollerblade Barbie in the flesh—with lighters for skates, skidding against all that was beneath her and sparking a fire wherever she treaded. But still, when she wasn’t ablaze, I drew to her like a bug to a flame. I believed that she was what I needed to keep warm: a glowing body.
After the hundredth brushstroke, I made my way to the master bedroom and found Mama reading in bed. She had Vogue on her lap and Elle in her hands, and sepia pictures and newspaper clippings spread out on the comforter. I sat on the davenport across from her and said nothing until she asked if I wanted to see some pictures. I snaked around the photographs, careful not to land my knee or the base of my hand on them. I fit my body between her pillow and what used to be Papa’s. She set down her magazine, picked up a portrait of a man in a European-style suit, a gentleman with Mama’s and Tachio’s eyes, nose, and lips, and said, “My father, your lolo, José Alarcon.”
She reminisced about him—how he wore a suit and smoked cigars, had a car, and had a river named after him. He served as mayor of Rozal, her hometown, for over twenty-five years. She sat taller as she stated facts about him: his fluency in both Spanish and English, his blanco blood—a mix of Austronesian and Iberian—and his being part of the last generation of Ilustrados.
“Ilustrado. Say it with me.”
“Ee-loos-TRAH-dō.”
She stared at the picture and locked eyes with her father. “We are not like everyone else. Your grandparents were Ilustrados. Do you know what that means?”
“No, Mama,” I said.
“It means our family ruled this country with the Spaniards. It means that you, because you are my daughter, have a special role in this country. It means that we are the educated ones, the ones who are fit to rule.” She darted a glance at me. “This is who we are.”
She went on about her father’s politics: kindness to the masses and a large house for the missus justify corruption and crime. “It’s how we do things up north.”
“Was he kind to you?” I said.
She paused, then sniffed, and said, “However he was, I was his favorite.”
Mama set Lolo’s picture down and picked up a family portrait of five boys and four girls. She rubbed her thumb over a girl, about fifteen years of age, standing right in the center in a button-down bouffant dress. “That was me,” she said. “Look how skinny I was. Having children ruined my body.”
“But Mama, you’re so beautiful. I don’t think your body is broken, I mean ruined.”
“You’ll understand when you have children of your own.” She rolled her eyes.
“Who are those other people?” I said, pointing at the two rows of teenagers in pressed outfits.
“My brothers and sisters. There were nine of us.” She enumerated their names and explained the political or religious meaning behind each one: Benjamín, “son of my right hand”; José Junior, nicknamed “Jun”; Lupita, a diminutive of Guadalupe, referring to Our Lady of Guadalupe; Estrella, for the stars on the Philippine flag; Felipa, the most patriotic of the names; Demetria, after the Greek goddess of harvest and agriculture; Corazón, heart, courage, or patriotism; José Cristobal, after Christopher Columbus; José III also nicknamed Wayne, after John Wayne, and born in the 1950s, when American culture had swept through the country.
“I was the favorite,” she said again. She recalled her father unabashedly declaring her as the prettiest of the girls, her sisters scowling and glowering at her high-bridged nose, straight hair, big hazel eyes, smooth mestiza skin, and her thin red lips. She told a story about Lolo parading her like a trophy and waving her like a flag at motorcades and campaigns. She shuffled through photos that confirmed her father’s affections for her, that she, his precious Benny, was the gold sheen to his medal, the in-flesh manifestation of his patrician blood.
She started telling another story: one I had heard a couple of times before, about her first day of school. She’d been learning her numbers and letters at home.