Monsoon Mansion: A Memoir(5)
“I’m trying, Kuya. Look,” I said, spasming to the beat.
“Whatever, get away from me,” he said.
“It’s my birthday and Mama had the garden decorated for me!” I said with arms crossed.
“Yeah, yeah. Whatever you say. For you, all for you.”
“Do you not like it?”
“Do you?”
I shrugged.
I can’t remember blowing out candles on my cake. In fact, I will have no memories of ever blowing out birthday candles. It will be one of those things that I remembered from other kids’ parties, but never experienced myself. Mama believed that what was more important were the outfits and the fondant roses and the red carpet strewn down the main staircase and the patent leather shoes and the purple orchids and the polished jade urns and the sheen on the mirrors and the fresh shellfish and the restaurant-grade crabmeat. “I love you and I want the best for you,” she always said. And to her, love was as big as the rocks on her ring and earrings, as wide as the garden that accommodated her guests, and as deep as the blue blood that ran in her veins.
But I recall linking arms with my brother for the champagne toast. It was one of our few family traditions—to toast to the celebrant’s good health and good future, in medicine or the oil business, and to sip champagne, arms braided with your closest confidant. I didn’t have champagne, of course. I had bittersweet apple cider in a flute.
“Better a flute than that damn baby bottle,” Mama said. She made sure that the yaya hid my bottle, which I’d drunk from since the day I was discharged from the neonatal unit.
My brother, however, took sips of alcohol whenever my parents brought out an import or a vintage from their collection. They let him, and he loved it—one sip here, a swig there.
If not caught in conversation with Mama and her peers, Papa carried me around and introduced me to his friends and colleagues. He kissed my cheek and my Lucky Star after every time he said, “This is my youngest. My darling girl. I can’t believe she’s three.” His guests replied with a tip of their glass, and if Catholic, with a sign of the cross thumbed on my forehead. If Arab, like most of Papa’s oil friends, they replied with as-salaam alaikum and a firm handshake. I didn’t like their handshakes because I didn’t like their hands. Men’s hands frightened me.
Mama walked up and down our driveway in heels, where the buffet and gift tables were set up and where the drunken guests drifted. She was twenty-six weeks pregnant, and although her belly barely showed, her ankles were plump like ripe mangoes. Her empire-waist bouffant dress came down to mid-shin, emphasizing her bulging shanks. The tight velveteen bow around her waist cinched her in half.
“Half pregnant, half in denial,” the maids whispered. “Parang si Sisa.” Like Sisa, the Filipino literary character we all knew as the crazy one.
The maids always made fun of Mama’s ridiculous outfits—how she wore black Chanel blazers in the hot tropic sun, or how she coiffed her hair in flowers taller than the dining room centerpiece. While Mama occupied herself with besos, the maids joked about her and her ornately dressed amigas from behind the buffet or kitchen table.
As my parents entertained their investors, they left me in the company of the maids: Angge and Judith—who only I knew were lovers; my yaya Lorna; Dehlia; Masing; Loring; and the youngest one at only fourteen, Katring. I spent most of my time at home with them, hearing everything they had to say. They gossiped about my family in Tagalog.
“Did you see that one madam? Her clothes were so tight, she couldn’t breathe,” one of them said.
“What about the other one, the really skinny one? The one that goes to the gym with Doctora?” another said.
“Does that one even eat? Too skinny. Maybe she lost so much weight because her daughter was kidnapped.”
“Uck. Poor girl. The syndicate scooped her eye out with a spoon!”
“Well, when you flaunt your wealth as if it were the Feast of the Blessed Child Jesus, that’s what you get! Kidnappers scooping out your kid’s eye! Hay naku!”
Hahahahaha.
Downstairs, they cackled their hearts out about the people partying on the main floor. And I did, too.
Everyone had gone. The yayas had given me and Paolo our evening bath—we took two every day—and they combed our hair while we watched Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles. One hundred brushstrokes a night, Mama ordered, no more or no less. My hair was wet and flat and felt cold against my neck and back. The hairbrush bristles rubbed my scalp raw; how well they knew my sensitive spots. It gave me goose bumps on my arms and a ting on the lobes of my ears.
“Yaya, where are Mama and Papa?” I said.
“Hospital,” she said, matter-of-factly, still brushing my hair.
“What? Why?” I said.
“Because Mama’s giving birth, Batchoy,” Paolo said.
“What? But it’s my birthday. Papa said the baby would come during rainy season.”
“Mama started getting tummy aches, so they took her, okay? Now, shh!”
“But it’s my birthday,” I said. “Mine, mine, mine.”
“You’re going to cry because you’re not the baby anymore?” Paolo said. “And because now you and the baby will share a birthday? Boo-ya. Get over it.”
I sobbed until the show was over, protesting to my yaya against sharing my birthday with another kid. She pulled out my bottle from the dresser’s top drawer, tucked me into bed, and lay next to me, patting me on the thigh to help me fall asleep, as she always did. She patted rhythmically and just as slowly as I needed her to and quelled my panic to hiccupy breathing. She stroked my hair and whispered to me that the baby and I were born in different years, which technically meant we didn’t have the same birthday. She said we could have separate birthday parties in the future—mine in the garden and the baby’s in the ballroom, and if I chose to share a party, we could still have two separate cakes. She also said that I was exactly three years older, which was a really big deal—I could use it against her, or him. “I’m three years older, so you have to follow me, little one,” I practiced saying while I fell asleep. “Three years. That means I’m bigger than you, little one. Three big years.”