Monsoon Mansion: A Memoir(19)

“Boy! Boy!” my mother called out to our male servants, Manang Biday’s sons. “Look for your sister! Dali!”

I heard the scurry of their steps as they searched the house for Elma. They looked upstairs and downstairs with flashlights in hand, never noticing that I was also hiding. They didn’t think to look in the basement, my mother’s clothes closet, because they didn’t think Elma would know where the secret door was. That’s why I hid her there. Told you I’m more than just book-smart. I’m street-smart, too, I wanted to tell my brother. He was always making fun of how sheltered I was and how little I knew of the real world. He was wrong. I knew about people from the outside. And I knew how to get them to do things for me, like hide and stay.

But that was gone when my mother came to the basement for a change of clothes.

“Shhh! Shhh! Shhh!” I said with my mouth against the closet door, shushing Elma, who was still coughing inside the cubby.

“What are you doing here?” my mother said.

“Nothing.”

“What is that? Who is that coughing? Is that the laundrywoman’s daughter?”

“No, no. I don’t know. Mama, no!” I said, as she pushed me out of the way and opened the closet door. Elma emerged wheezing, blue black from not being able to breathe. I turned just as blue when I saw her face. I thought I’d killed her.

“Bidaaay! Biday!” my mother said, yelling up at the ceiling, toward the main floor.

“Mam, mam, mam, yes, mam,” Manang Biday said as she nearly fell down the steps, rushing to her daughter’s rescue and my mother’s fury.

“Why is this here? This one’s going to steal jewelry, isn’t she?” my mother said, holding Elma by her sleeve.

“Naku, mam, she’s not,” she said to my mother. “Elma, anak, okay ka lang?” She stroked Elma’s forehead over and over, like a newborn being hushed to sleep. Elma’s arms were tied around her mother’s waist, still heaving but slowly recovering from her near suffocation.

“I’m sorry, Elma,” I said crying, reaching my hand out to her. “I just wanted you to . . .”

“Go!” my mother said, interrupting my plea. “Next time something like this happens, that one can’t stay here.”

“Sorry, po, mam. It won’t happen again. Please forgive us, please. Elma, apologize.”

“Sorry, po, mam Doctora,” Elma said with a scratch in her throat. “Pasensiya na po.”

“Hunh. Sa susunod, you’ll lose your job, you’ll see,” my mother said, as she inspected her boxes of jewels. “Ingrata. I let your family live in the back lot for free and you repay me with this ridiculousness? Hmm.”

Speechless, Elma and I both cried. She cried to her mom, into the sweaty side of her batik cleaning dress, while I cried running away from the scene. I ran—at least I tried to—upstairs and to my bed. And I was alone again, with no one to play with.





Gilded





1993


Money dwindling, my parents should’ve walked away from the mansion, but instead they decided to prettify it with the last bit of wealth we had. “A beautification project,” Mama called it. “An investment,” Papa said. And so it was born: Mansion Royale, a grand palace.

That summer, Mama rehired her decorator, whom she had laid off the same week she sold the his-and-hers Rolexes, Omegas, and Pierre Cardins; the same week our accountant and lawyers gave their two weeks’ notice, stating that they foresaw our family no longer affording their services. The decorator came, salivating as he walked up the grand staircase, carrying and fumbling fabric swatches, furniture brochures, and gold tassels—tassels that swished side to side, glistening in the tropic sun and in the light from our chandeliers. The tassels swished and swayed like the purple-clad decorator’s hips and swung in alternating tempos like his hand. Magical, I thought, my eyes widening at the sight of tufts of braided gold thread.

“Don’t touch,” Mama said. “You can look, but you can’t touch. These are very important samples.”

“Oh, yes, Madam Doctora is right. Very important, very expensive,” the decorator said. “Not for little girls, but for ladies . . . like us.”

He and Mama tittered as they plunged back into the chaise lounge sitting before the table of ornaments, their feet splayed out and thrown up into the air.

I took a tassel and stuffed it into my ruffled-lace socks. Mama and her clotheshorse friend didn’t notice, their eyes busy perusing brochures and their mouths forming oohs and aahs. I skipped upstairs, my new toy tickling my ankle.

I modeled in front of the hallway mirror outside Paolo’s bedroom, styling the tassel on my hair, in my hair, and hanging down my forehead as if an extension of my hairline part. I wore it on my belt, on the tongue of my shoe, and in the pinch between my shoulder and sleeve.

“For ladies, like us,” I said, blowing kisses at the mirror.

“You’re crazy,” Paolo said.

“No. I’m Mama,” I said, with one hand on my hip and the other holding the tassel in front of my mouth as if to feed myself grapes.



The next morning, I woke up hungry for breakfast, only to find no food on the breakfast table. Instead, Papa’s ledgers and blueprints and yellow pads covered what would’ve been a spread of pan de sal, fried egg, dried fish, and garlic-fried rice. Papa and Mama stood over the table, fingers scratching chins and pointing at “Plan A,” “Plan B,” and “Pros and Cons” drafted on the papers. I hadn’t seen them standing next to each other in months, much less agreeing with each other and not screaming.