Monsoon Mansion: A Memoir(18)

Elma’s parents left all but two of the oldest boys in Bicol when they first started working for us. Her parents, Manang Biday and Manong Bidoy—as my parents had named them—washed our clothes, cared for our plants, cleaned our cars, and when necessary, killed snakes that lived in our trees or swam in our toilets. Her two brothers, our “boys,” swept, mopped, and raked outside. Cleaning inside was a task reserved for help of higher ranks.

Manang Biday’s kids had been writing about what a terrible time they were having with the neighborhood drunks. The old lady wanted to spare her youngest the humiliation and sexual harassment. So she took Elma on a six-hour bus ride to Manila that bright Saturday morning, and convinced my parents that her daughter could be an extra set of hands and feet to send on errands—for free.

Elma was eight when I first met her, and I was six, but because she was born many classes under me, she spoke to me with formality and respect.

“Good morning, po,” she said, a word added to the end of a sentence to make it formal, respectful, obliging.

“What’s your name?” I said, forgetting that her first language wasn’t English, because she was from the lowest class.

“Po?” she said.

“Your name. Ano’ng pangalan mo?”

“Elma.”

I smiled at her and took her hand. Surprised, she let go. She’d never held the hand of anybody from my family or class before.

“It’s okay,” I said. “Halika, let’s play. You like taguan?”

“Opo,” she said. Yes. What kid doesn’t like hide-and-seek?

I whisked her away to the upstairs part of the house, where we played hide-and-seek all day. Once we’d used all hiding spots upstairs, we changed the rules of the game and expanded our playing field to the entirety of the mansion.

“We can hide anywhere but inside the urns. There are witches and dead babies there,” I said, in the kind of Tagalog my yaya spoke: deep, hard, and without a trace of Western education.

“Wan, too, trrree, pohrr, payb, seeks, sebem . . . ,” she counted in English, her consonants forcing through her sharp, crooked, mouselike teeth as they would in her staccato-sounding dialect.

“Woo-hoo, I’m here! Come find me,” I said, calling out to the It from behind the curtain or under the table.

“Ha! Boom!” she said. “Ha! Boom! Found you!”

I shared my snacks with her, as Papa said I should. But I was careful not to let her on my bed. “They’re dirty,” Mama had said. “They don’t even have shoes. Don’t let them on your bed, you understand?”

I showed her the two dolls I was allowed to play with, the only two that weren’t encased behind glass.

“This is Calbolite, kalbo for bald,” I said, handing her a hairless Cabbage Patch Kid doll.

“Nakakatawa naman,” Elma said. How funny.

“This is Tiffany,” I said. “She’s American, so her name is Tiffany.”

“Tee-pah-nee? I’ve never heard of that name. And American? Why American?”

“My daddy brought her from the States. States, do you know what that is?”

“Ah, oo. Eees-teyts. Eeestate-side. Imported.” The words States and imported were familiar and interchangeable to us post-Marcos kids. We came from a nation and generation heralded as the most pro-American in the world.

“I’ll play mom and you’ll play nanny,” I said, coaching her through every second of our playdate.

We played all morning and afternoon. I made her laugh a few times. Every time she laughed at my jokes, I wanted to tell my brother, who was at soccer practice, I told you: I’m a funny girl!

Elma’s every giggle boosted my self-esteem. Her being darker than I was made me feel good about myself—I wasn’t so dark after all. I wanted to be like her, if not be her. I watched how tightly she hugged her mom every time Manang Biday came to check on us. I watched her be riddled with amazement at her first encounter with a kaleidoscope. I watched her scarf down biscuits and pan de sal rolls I’d been warned not to eat too much of. I watched her put together a puzzle I’d been bored with, or play with a broken toy I’d kicked around. I watched her press my drapes and skirts against her cheeks, as if she’d only ever touched soiled rags. I watched her run. I’d never been a runner, and I envied that of her. She could sprint away from whatever troubled her.

“Elma! Elma!” her mother called out to her.

I turned my head.

“Dali! Quick!” I said, as I grabbed her hand and led her down the steps, through the long dark hallway and into the basement. I shoved her into the closet under the stairs and shut it locked.

“Hoy! Hoy!” she started yelling at me in an informal way. “Why am I in here?”

In my panic, I started yelling back at her in straight English, which she couldn’t understand.

“Just hide! Stay in there! Stay! Be my friend, stay!”

She coughed and struggled for air in the closet.

“Shh! Shh! It’s real hide-and-seek now. You’re hiding; they’re seeking. Get it? So, shh!”

“Elma! Elma!” her mother called out again.

“What’s happening here? Biday, ano ’to?” my mother said as she walked out of the master bedroom in her lazy Saturday robe.

“I can’t find Elma, mam,” Manang Biday said.