Monsoon Mansion: A Memoir(60)
Monsoon Manifesto
1999
Someone was crying and it wasn’t me. The sobs and sniffs kept coming, rippling from the terrace through the stale upstairs air. At first I thought it was my spirit, that perhaps it finally had departed from my frail body after the cross fire in Abra, and that it was wandering around like a ghost child looking for its mother’s apparition or body. But my bones remained above earth, unhidden, woven still, and able to take shape like a fetus in the womb.
My pulse, her pulse. My pulse, her pulse.
Mama.
I moved. My fingers unfurled once, twice. I uncoiled from the fetal position, found a base for my weight on the elbow touching the mattress, then pushed up, strength by strength, until I sat upright and could swing my legs to the side of the bed. I let my body, hollowed of its purity, ache forward to the weeping at the terrace. I found my mother.
Mama bent over the banister, leaning so far out—a tiptoe away from a forward fall. She wore a shift dress and a robe, the kind she had on at breakfasts of years ago. It certainly didn’t fit the weather predictions for the day—stormy with gusty winds. Her dress whipped against her now-veiny legs, and her robe sleeves billowed out around her arms. Her hair flew around her face, like her hand and gun flailing in the wind at the cross fire.
The sky hung full-bellied above us as strands of light flickered to touch ground. From where we stood, we could see the nuns cart in chairs and potted plants from the convent’s garden. We watched as the farmer and his sons hauled up grains into their shed. Pedicab drivers took on an extra passenger for each route, clearing the sidewalks of people before she came—La Ni?a. The girl.
“Mama?” I said.
She shook in her robe.
“Mama, the storm’s coming. Let’s go inside.” I thought of reaching for her hand.
“We have to go,” she murmured, staring out into a foggy, faraway world.
“Yes, we have to go. Let’s go inside.”
“No, we have to go. Now. Leave. He’s gone. He’s looking at chickens. Now.”
The clouds echoed and urged us, and they thrummed.
“Okay, okay,” I said. “Let’s go. Quick.”
Mama and I each ran to our bedrooms as it began to teem down. We swiped things into bags within reach. I took books, of course, the most dog-eared ones, and slipped a notebook, a pencil, my doll Tiffany, Rollerblade Barbie, pictures of me with Papa and Paolo, and a few skirts, shorts, and shirts, but left my school uniform, thinking that leaving the mansion meant leaving my school. I left the fork under my pillow, as I expected no need for it outside the world that my parents had built. Goodbye, fork. Goodbye, life.
I clutched my duffel bag under my arm and ran out of the bedroom. I slalomed down the corridor, the way Milo and I used to do, avoiding termite holes that had increased in number since our time in Abra.
I met Mama at the main doors, not stopping to take a breath or to look back. We reeled forward in the rain, onward, down the driveway. “The van,” she said, pointing to Paolo’s old ride. She got in the driver’s seat and I in the passenger’s, stowing with us our salvages from Mansion Royale and dripping in our seats—soaked from rainwater and tears.
“Mama, I didn’t know you could drive.”
“We can learn anything just by watching. We can do anything, remember that. Forget everything, but remember that.”
At the turn of the key in the ignition, she became strong again. The weeping stopped and the escape began. I jumped out of the car to unlock the gate, one uunnnkk uunnnkk at a time, just as I used to do before each cab route with Paolo. I hopped back in and we drove off, speeding away at ninety-six kilometers per hour, rushing out through the mansion’s clearing before the Pacific rain flooded again.
Mama gritted her teeth and stepped on the gas, thrusting all her force down her right leg. I buckled in and reached down for the glove compartment, wondering if Norman had trashed Paolo’s joyride treasures. But no, he hadn’t. Perhaps he had never found them. Or he had discovered them and liked them. Under an unloaded gun and gum wrappers hid the soundtrack to glory days shared with my brother: mixtapes. A side, B side, it didn’t matter. I slipped one into the stereo’s mouth and waited for it to give its magical hiss before spewing out songs from happier hip-hop days: “Mo Money Mo Problems,” “Tha Crossroads,” “No Diggity,” “Breakdown,” “The World Is Yours,” “The Most Beautifullest Thing in This World,” and last on the track, “Gangsta’s Paradise.” I fanned out the rest of Paolo’s stash and brought them to my nose and mouth, smelling the smell that captured a richer part of our childhood: plastic and chrome film. I cradled them, holding the weight of emotion and memory spooled around the tape reels. Mama cried while driving, and I cried, heaved, equally blue and blessed, taken by the music—my brother’s soul and his very spirit.
Wherever we’re headed, this is what we take with us, I thought. Love in the memories. And many, many ghosts.
We parked outside Excellz, Mama’s old gym, where she used to take aerobics classes, and waited for a familiar face to walk out. Her old friend, named Linda or Minda or Ming, whose child was kidnapped and blinded by a local syndicate, came out of the building. She stood at the valet, waiting for her driver to pull up. Mama stepped out of the van and ran to her, shocking the woman with her informality and appearance: her thinning hair, chipped teeth, and sodden garments. Mama held her hands in prayer, pleading for something—I couldn’t hear. The woman shook her head, more frantically as Mama continued to plea. Then Mama pointed my way. They looked at me through the rain and the fogged-up windshield, the woman cupping her mouth and nodding. I must have reminded her of her long-lost daughter.