Monsoon Mansion: A Memoir(45)

Sara believed that she would one day be reunited with her father. Karana boarded a ship and sailed for California. They showed me that it was possible: to leave a once upon a time and enter an ever after.

I checked out a book from the library and brought it home, optimistic after being hesitant for so long. Why take a book home if there was no power and you had no light to make words visible on a page? I had started reading a book by J. D. Salinger: The Catcher in the Rye. In it a boy kept think-talking about all these “phonies.” His name was Holden and he talked, walked, and wore his hunting hat all angry, all pissed with the way adults lived and treated him. He went to an exclusive private school and felt as if he had to get away. Just like me.

Salinger’s words sounded too honest and too familiar to put down. Holden’s voice and angst transfixed me.

I signed my name on the borrowing card, slid the card back in the pocket on the back of the book, and took Holden home.

That night, as I entered through the mansion doors, I patted around for leftover mosquito coils, folded the hem of my shirt into a pouch, and collected in it bits of pyrethrum repellent. Then I walked up to my bedroom, escorted by Milo and welcomed by the cats, and knelt down by the window. I emptied the contents of my shirt onto the floor and picked up the coils piece by piece, laid each one around me, instead of along the perimeter of the room, and lit them. I unzipped my backpack, took my notebook out, opened it to a blank page, and wrote, in bullet points, names of people—real and imagined—that reminded me of who I was or wanted to become: Mr. Santiago, Rizal, Karana, and Holden. I also made a list of goals, mantras passed down by my brother, father, teachers, and friends.

Be good. The pen is mightier than the sword. Do not trust all grown-ups—they are phonies. Fight the Common Enemy. Do all it takes to survive. You are Prinsesa ng mga Tala. You are made of light.

I tore off the pages and taped them to my mirror, then stepped back into my ring of coils, my halo of half helixes.

A votive circle. A vigil for inner peace.

The coils arranged close together brought an illumination that was small but bright enough to let me read. I pulled Catcher in the Rye out of my backpack and recited lines from the page. The book and I enshrined in the center, aglow, like a nun in a chapel holding the Book of Common Prayer.

God was now speaking to me, telling me to keep the faith and promising me an escape. He spoke not through scripture nor through the retelling of parables by a priest, but through angsty, tormented Holden Caulfield, and all the other voices in the books I had read. At the turn of every page I breathed in, felt my heart tighten and release, and said, as the nuns next door repeatedly sang, “Amen.”

Amen.





Aqua Vitae





1997


I knew the mansion had been deteriorating more and more. The lack of air-conditioning trapped humidity in and caused mold to spread on walls and floors, and paint to peel off in strips wider than my hand. Every storm tore off terra-cotta shingles and allowed rainwater to leak in. And the shortage of household help or concerned adults left foliage uncontrolled and creeping up our stone walls. The water hyacinth in the pond and paddy had grown to its meter peak. It sprawled and matted over the mere, clogging irrigation, trapping odors, stealing oxygen from the fish, and creating plenty of room for mosquitoes. The birds-of-paradise in the garden had died, and the Indian mango trees were now laden with nonvenomous snakes.

But this, water not running through pipes and coming out of the tap, I hadn’t foreseen. Water wouldn’t come out of the spout in the upstairs bathrooms.

I thought to inspect the faucets on the main floor. I walked down the steps, down the long dark hallway, past the secret door and through the breakfast room, where Norman sank in Mama’s peacock chair, napping, feet up on the table, his shoes caked with mud and chicken turd. I snuck past him and into the bar, where my yaya used to serve me refreshments and teach me the letters in my name. I walked up to the bar sink and turned the now-rusty hot and cold faucet handles.

Drip, drip, drip.

The last drips of water in the mansion circled around the faucet’s mouth, cumulated into a bead, and trickled into my palm.

I licked it.

And I licked it again until tears replaced the moisture in my hands. I cried. I knew that this was not a beginning, but an end.

Norman moseyed into the bar, yawning, stretching, the corners of his lips frosted with drool. He warbled like Elvis about hound dogs not being high-class and crying all the time. His muffled trill grew louder as he approached.

He saw me hunched over the sink and said, “Yep, no more water.” He stopped paying the water bill, he explained, because he was saving money for a big political project and there was no point paying for a utility if the government only let us have it for four hours a day.

“Damn El Ni?o sucking these islands dry of water. It’s a fuckin’ archipelago in the middle of the fuckin’ Pacific—and no fuckin’ water. You, Miss Upper-Class Kid, better get used to living like the rest of this goddamn country. No food, no power, and now, no water. You know how I grew up? This. Just like this. With nothing. My cousins, they all worked for the governor because there was no other work. They killed and got killed for the governor. I got out of that place and swore that I’d only come back if I were the governor.”

I turned around and stared him down, my eyes burning.

“Whatcha lookin’ at me like that for, Strong Will?” he said. “I’m just makin’ conversation, geez. Just makin’ you a, how should I put it? A well-rounded person.” He pulled out a chicken foot from his safari shirt pocket—one that belonged to his deceased fighting bird, the one he named after me. He stroked the claw and the spur still attached by a rubber band, and traced the crumples and rumples on the dead bird’s skin. “You’re welcome, miss.”