Monsoon Mansion: A Memoir(66)
“I’m happy to see you, too,” I said, looking him up and down, and recognizing the tone of his skin, the way he left one side of his shirt untucked, and his well-defined thumbs calloused from playing video games. “Why are you so skinny?”
“Why are you so skinny?” he said.
“You know why,” I whispered so that nobody else could hear.
“Mama told me things were better at home. She said she was taking good care of you and that she could afford to feed you, but not me.”
I shook my head. “We don’t have food, water, electricity. Lots of bad people and strange people come in and out of the house.”
“Why didn’t you tell me?” he said as he gestured why with his cuffed hands.
“How?”
People stared at us, like they were finding out our secret. The room stopped and our onlookers watched. They filled the air with whispers, with speculations. The brawl was no longer the afternoon’s big event.
“I’m sorry.” He started to whimper, wiping his tears on his bloodied sleeve.
“It’s not your fault, Kuya.”
“A long time ago, I gave you my Game Boy. I promised to take care of you.”
“It’s okay, Kuya.”
“It’s not. I will get you out.”
The guards came and unshackled him from the gate. They dragged him to a cop car, and right before they shut the door, Paolo stuck his head out to inform me that he got a soccer scholarship from the university and a night job as a DJ.
“They’re paying for me to play soccer and music! It’s my way out! I will get you out, too!” he said.
I stuck my arm through the gate and waved, standing at the far end of the waiting room, sniffling and blubbering under my breath. My brother was leaving his boyhood and entering a new life, and he was to keep his promise of ushering me into mine.
He will get me out. I know it.
I killed time at the library the last weeks before Christmas break. I did very little reading, as the librarians had grown chatty the week before the bug was supposed to obliterate all. The stocking-wearing women who manned the circulation desk spoke more words at the end of 1999 than they did during my first eight years at the private school. The one who had introduced me to J. D. Salinger became particularly verbose—she cajoled me every afternoon into signing up for the interscholastic writing contest.
“That history teacher of yours, Santiago, sees talent in you. He’s spoken of it before,” the librarian said. “You should have him coach you for the competition. I’ll vouch for you—I know which books you frequently check out. I know you’re well-read. I know.”
I found a sign-up form in my cubby the next day. Paper-clipped to it was a note from Mr. Santiago, telling me to fill out the sheet and to read up on current events—the contest was to focus on new millennium issues. Later that day, I asked the librarian for the paper, which, again, she loaned me “indefinitely.”
“Win that prize money,” she said.
I thought about what I could do with the cash: jeepney fare, a bus ticket, books, coins to telephone Papa with, an investment in Elma’s sari-sari.
That night, I studied the red-and-black pages slipped into my backpack by my fairy bookmother. I read them under candle-and coil-light, praying, “God, forgive me if this is stealing. I need the papers to win the contest. Please help me.”
Every morning a new note appeared in my cubby and with it came a magazine clipping or a photocopy of a book chapter. Each one was about a topic that was already familiar to me: separation of the classes, the Gulf War, natural disasters, political rivalries, childhood hunger, and warfare. I read up. I circled words I didn’t know: ramification, stratification, dysentery. I thought of Mama calling out words to the morning air, expanding our vocabulary while hurling hollowware. I wished that I could ask her to define the words for me, that I could sit next to her in bed or on the armrest of her peacock chair and ask her what the words meant.
The night before the competition, I arranged in my backpack a bouquet of pencils from my friend Bunny and a legal pad the librarian had also indefinitely loaned me. Instead of stuffing my backpack with crumpled paper and Coke bottles, I stashed in it a fat ream of reading material. Before bed, I used an extra centimeter of water for my sponge bath, combed my hair a hundred strokes like my yaya used to do, and slipped under my crunchy, moth-eaten sheets for an early turn-in and a good night’s rest.
The next morning, I got in the Land Cruiser with Norman and Mama, thinking that they hadn’t suspected my mission for the day. I was right. They knew nothing about the writing contest that Mr. Santiago had signed me up for. They detoured from our usual route to school to the opposite side of the metro.
“Wait! Where are we going?” I said, sitting in the cargo space.
“You’re missing school today for a special project,” Mama said.
“No! I don’t want to be part of any of your projects! Take me to school! I have to be at school today!” I said as I slipped my arms through my backpack’s straps and grabbed on to the door handle, forcing open the child-locked hatchback door.
“Hey!” Norman yelled. “You’re gonna break the fuckin’ door! Sit down and calm down! We’re taking you to a fuckin’ job interview—a tryout. Isn’t this what you’ve always wanted to do? Write? You’re always bringing home books and doodling in your fuckin’ notebooks!”