Monsoon Mansion: A Memoir(25)

The mansion sopped in the downpour and flood. Its many gilded parts began to tarnish, including the loose threads from the decorator’s tassels that thinned in the water. My parents’ beautification project—investment—was now a disaster zone, no longer pretty or shiny or sweet, and most importantly, no longer a source of cash flow.

When the “goddamn forty days” were over, the water receded—it swirled into sewers and glugged, as if to say adieu, before it finally disappeared down the drain. We could, once again, see potholes. Birds could rest again on branches. The crops lay ruined. The floors at the lower level of the house remained slimy with moss and mold. Residue rested on surfaces, taking the shape of murky eddies. The flood tattooed itself on the house: waterlines to help us remember, This is how much the storm can submerge. Never underestimate.

The monsoon stopped and life was once more, and just once more, normal and busy. Looters took whatever of our belongings had floated through the slats in the wrought-iron gates. The boys and our maids scrubbed off the film that had slimed over all that the water touched. Mama took inventory of what remained in our possession. Papa hid in the extra bedroom, drafting and planning and making calls, and almost never came out again to steal my jacks and ball. Paolo became glued to his Nintendo, while Elma and I grew into explorers—searching unknown parts of the mansion, such as nests for birds under gables and nests for tadpoles in pocks on the driveway left by the storm. She and I also thought of exploring what was beyond—the layers of life outside the mansion’s stone walls. The water made an impression on us, and we couldn’t help but think of it: waterfalls, rivers, streams, lakes, and the one that called out to us—the ocean.

The sun came out from hiding, without restriction or hesitation, immediately singeing everything with its touch. It was time for us to go back to our lives, to ready both body and land, skin and soil, for the heat and burn of the scorch.





Mama, Come Back





1994


I woke up in the middle of the night to familiar sounds: the furniture creaking as it contracted in the cool air, the crickets outside, the air-conditioner humming, and my yaya snoring as two hundred pounds of her splayed on a pallet on my bedroom floor. But I woke up with a nervous feeling, a coming to, a reminder that sleeping was a lonely practice done in the dark.

Sleeping was when things changed.

My Hello Kitty night-light glowed enough to let me see what might have shifted. I looked around. Everything but one thing was where it was supposed to be. My translucent Crayola coin bank stood empty on my dresser. The peso bills I’d been given on Christmas and the Hong Kong dollar coins Papa had brought back from his travels were gone.

“Yaya! Wake up!” I said, shaking her arm.

“Mm,” she said as she rolled over.

“My money’s gone!” I said.

“What money?” she mumbled.

I took the coin bank from the dresser and held it up to her face. “Look!”

She rubbed her eyes and squinted and sat up in one motion. “Dali!”

I followed her as she scuffled out the doorway. She ran across the terrace and to Papa’s room, while I made a pit stop at Paolo’s bedside.

“Kuya!” I said. “Wake up! My money is missing!”

He opened his eyes, sat up, and slid into his slippers as if he knew exactly where my money had gone.

“Where are you going?” I asked.

“Quick!” he said, running out the door and down the steps.

Papa and Yaya stood by the master bedroom door, pursing their lips and shaking their heads.

“What?” I said.

They didn’t respond.

I looked to Paolo for an explanation and all he did was grimace. He started to cry, and I did, too, although I had no idea why.

“Check the basement,” Papa said to Yaya.

I then understood. I knew what the basement stood for: Mama’s innermost parts. If they were checking there, it meant that they were checking for her. I knew that it was not only my coins and bills they were searching for, but my mother, who had slipped out of the mansion and into the night.

“Mama! Mama!” I cried.

I clutched my coin bank under my arm like a baby doll, and sobbed as Yaya, Paolo, and I descended down the steps. We looked inside closets and behind shelves, between armoires and under the padded bench where Mama sat to strap on her shoes. Yaya took inventory of the jewelry and Paolo looked through her clothes. When he didn’t find what he was looking for, he threw hangers onto the floor.

“That’s enough,” Yaya said, embracing Paolo and leading him back up to the main floor. “All her things are here, so she won’t be gone long.”

When we emerged from Mama’s cavern without her, the night had turned soggy with our sadness, as if the mansion’s walls had sopped up our tears. Papa spoke on the rotary phone, asking the person on the other line about my mother’s whereabouts. He thanked the person and hung up, and said to us, “Her aerobics friends don’t know either.”

Paolo reminded him that Mama had just purchased a cellular phone—the black block with numbered white squares. Papa flipped through the Rolodex, pulled out a card, and dialed the number written on it.

“Not answering,” he said. He told Yaya to send Katring, Loring, and Elma on a search of the neighborhood, and the drivers to the nearest bus terminal. “Estrella, why? The kids.”