Monsoon Mansion: A Memoir(6)

“Now say your prayers and say good night,” Yaya said, as she patted me to sleep.

I teethed on and sucked the rubber nipple on my baby bottle, mumbling from the corner of my mouth, “Thank you, God, for everything. Good night, fan. Good night, lamp. Good night, bed. Good night, toys. Good night, moon. Good night, Yaya. Good night, Paolo. Good night, baby in Mama’s belly. Good night, mansion.”



I was three years and half-a-night old when Paolo woke me up. He stood next to my bed, holding my arm and shaking it.

“Wake up, Batchoy,” he said with a soft, scratchy voice. Then he took my hand, which he never did, pulled me up, and wiped a tear from his cheek.

“Where are we going?” I said, rubbing my eyes. “Are you crying, Kuya?”

“Mama and Papa want to talk to us and show us something,” he said, sniffing.

By how tightly he held my hand and how his shoulders slumped, I knew it wasn’t the time to be asking too many questions. My right hand clung to Paolo’s, while my left held the baby bottle.

We walked together from my room to the stairs.

The mansion was dark, except for the moonlight coming through the twelve-meter staircase window. It was quiet, with only soft sniffs echoing through the long dark hallway and up to our floor. With every step down, the sniffs became louder and more familiar—they were Mama’s. She walked toward us, and we followed the sound. Papa trailed closely behind her, not rushing to give me a kiss or a hug. We met at the foot of the stairs: a family of not four, but five. A little one cradled in Mama’s shaking arms.

“Ang kapatid niyo.” Your brother, Papa said in Tagalog, which he never used around us or Mama or anybody else from our class. “Eto ang kapatid niyo, pero nasa langit na siya.” Here’s your brother, but he’s in heaven now.

I loved him when I saw him, even though he was already a little heap of cold blue flesh. If love was the feeling you got every time your dad walked through the door after a business trip, or if love was the snugness you felt in your chest every time you saw your parents dance together and laugh. I loved him when I saw him, and my love for him made it hard to talk or breathe or swallow, even though I didn’t quite understand why he was in heaven—why he didn’t stay long enough to meet us. Maybe my whining about our shared birthday scared him away. My yaya did say one time that children were very intuitive, that they always knew what you were thinking, no matter how hard you tried to lie. I guess I was intuitive like him, too. I loved him, I just knew.

Mama said nothing until we put the baby in the box.

“Wait!” she said, clutching him like a football. “Not yet. Let’s give him a name.”

“What should we call him?” Papa said.

“Name him after the food I craved while I was pregnant. Pistachio nuts.”

“Pistachio? Are you sure?” Papa said, asking without protesting.

“Yes. We’ll call him Tachio.”

I thought it was perfect, a name derived from a little wrinkly nut that was green but pale. Just like he was—small and puckered wherever his blood had gone. His body balled up in the white cotton swaddle like a pistachio in its shell.

“Tachio,” Paolo and I whispered together with pleased grins.

“Tachio, my sweet boy,” Papa said with a sigh as he took the baby from Mama’s arms. He kissed his forehead and placed him in a wooden coffin no bigger than a shoe box. It was then that Mama wailed, her chest expanding and collapsing, expanding and collapsing, until she fell on her knees to where the moonlight met the floor. Paolo and I had never seen Mama act that way; she was always put-together and poised. We didn’t move or hug her or hold her hand. We didn’t know what to do. So he and I both turned to our yayas and buried our faces in their stomachs, wetting their shirts with tears.

Papa walked us to the main door and down the grand staircase still draped with a red velvet carpet. Décor from my birthday festivities had not yet been put away. A trail of confetti led us through the garden and to the grotto, where our three-meter sculpture of Our Lady of Peace and Good Voyage stood. She was a sky-blue-cloaked saint with a golden halo for a crown, holding the Baby Jesus in her porcelain-smooth hands. Mestiza, like Mama and Tachio—fair skin, raised nose bridge, thin lips, round doe-shaped eyes. Mestiza, unlike me, Paolo, and Papa. Our Lady stood on a man-made hill at the far corner of the garden, overlooking the highway, the mansion, the convent, and the pond. My parents chose to bury Tachio at the foot of the hill, within arm’s reach of Our Lady, where a mestiza—her sacred power encased in white Castilian skin—could watch over him. We stood in front of that hill as if it were an altar, a consecrated knoll displaying the colonizer’s gifts to the bloodline: Christianity, education, and rank.

The male servants had been digging a hole for my brother’s coffin. Once we got to the site, Papa took over and dug some more. He didn’t cry, but he dug intently and made a hole large enough for him and my baby brother. When he’d finally used up all his strength, Papa called me and Paolo over to say a prayer and one last goodbye. He told us we could kiss Tachio on the cheek if we wanted to, so we did.

“Be a good boy, Tachio. We love you,” Paolo said.

“Yeah, be a good boy, Tachio. We love you,” I said.

“Stop copying me,” Paolo said.

I furrowed my brows and stuck my tongue out at him. Then I turned back to Tachio and gave him my bottle.