Monsoon Mansion: A Memoir(71)
When she received news about my pregnancy: “Well, you’ll get fat!”
When I told her I decided to breastfeed: “Your breasts will sag!”
When I told her we were buying our first home: “You don’t want a home. Send me your savings instead.”
When I told her I was writing a book: “Well, it better make me some money because I taught you how to read and write. You get your smarts from me. You owe me everything.”
My answer to Mama’s declarations and direction: I pledge to never become you.
Never.
I tell Anika Louise that my mother is like the mansion: once opulent, strong, and handsome but crumbled over time. Her weeping was the mansion’s very voice.
And Anika Louise, although young, knows to change the subject when necessary. Like Mary, she senses the shift in my tone or manner when I begin to get sad about my parents, my siblings, or the mansion.
This is when she asks, “Can we go to the pool?”
I say yes because the answer to this question is always yes.
It is the season of the sun.
We arrive at the neighborhood pool at a time when nobody is there. All the neighbors are at work and their children attend school full-time. We have the figure-eight-shaped pool all to ourselves. We peel down and jump in.
And she tells me, “I think today is the day.”
And I know exactly what she means. She means that because her daddy and I allow her room to self-lead, when she gives the cue, we follow. And these are today’s cues: goggles over eyes, hands on waist, and feet straddled to hip width. “Watch me, Mama!” She brings her arms overhead and rockets off the steps.
“I’m watching, my sunshine!”
She swims toward me, and I am breathing in her courage, for her courage is my joy. She swims, stroking away the water between us with her butterfly arms. She tips her chin up once for air and gulps. She drinks in oxygen and looks up at the sky. I am watching, watching, waiting. She can see my legs underwater and I can see her form from up top. Her figure is a diamond in the water—two points—diver hands and mermaid tail. And she is shining, sparkling, gliding underneath the hot sun.
I receive her with open arms. I pull her out of the water and into me. Exhausted from her lap, she lays her head on my shoulder. I wrap us in a floral towel and walk us to the cabana, and I sing to her.
I sing her my song of gray skies going, of promise and prayer. I sing to her, for she’ll never know just how much I love her.
My girl, my sweetness.
The diamond in my palm.
Of stars, of sun.
She has touched the dark waters ebbing from my past.
With light. Of light.
ACKNOWLEDGMENTS
I thank God for surrounding me with such loving, caring, generous people:
My agent, Noah Ballard, whose faith in my work and story propelled me through the laborious writing and publishing of this book. He is a smart, meticulous, and devoted “agent who edits,” and a friend to lean on during times of doubt and struggle. A superstar.
My editor at Little A, Vivian Lee, for her vision, encouragement, and precision. I wished for an editor who could appreciate the mayhem and magic of my childhood and understand the politics of being a female immigrant—and I got exactly what I wanted and needed. She was quick to compliment, but just as quick to demand that I flex my writing muscle—the perfect coach for what felt like a marathon for my heart and brain.
The team (made up of many teams) at Little A that has given this book so much care, so much thought, so much trust. I am thankful to be working with a publishing imprint that celebrates women, writers of color, immigrants, artists, and all sorts of hybrid identities and writing styles.
Mentors and teachers from my undergraduate, graduate, and writing-intensive programs: Catherine Oriani, Vicki Moss, Harry Bruinius, Lauren Rule Maxwell, Rick Mulkey, Susan Tekulve, Jim Minick, Dan Wakefield, Richard Tillinghast, Bob Olmstead, Denise Duhamel, Leslie Pietrzyk, Suzanne Cleary, Marlin Barton, Ava Chin, Hua Hsu, M. Evelina Galang, and Elmaz Abinader. You have shepherded my voice and story into something that I thought could only happen in dreams. Thank you for giving of yourselves.
Workshop sisters and brothers: the creative nonfiction group (“the love mafia”) at Converse College, local writers in Charleston, my students and clients, and my tribes at Kundiman and VONA/Voices. Two things we all know are true: creating is a communal act and writing can be lonesome. You carved a safe and joyful place for me to learn my craft and tell my story. You are C. S. Lewis’s definition of friendship: What! You, too? Yes, me, too.
Friends—they know who they are—who made the process of writing and healing possible: giving rides, offering child care, listening and praying, attending a reading, donating to my Kickstarter, donating airline miles, asking the right questions, lending wisdom and courage and insight, referring me to a counselor, buying me bottles of wine, buying my family groceries, sending texts and emails and handwritten messages, watching me happy-cry or ugly-cry, and reminding me who I am and to whom I belong. You are the true champions.
My extended family in the Philippines, the United States (my mother-in-law and Aunt Franca, especially), and elsewhere who supported me through my education, early adulthood, and new motherhood. It takes great patience and faith to raise someone like me, and I owe an extraordinary debt to your grace and kindness.
My siblings, who each played a parental role when they should’ve been enjoying their growing-up years or their own children. My brothers and sister provided me with all that I lacked as a child: food, shelter, safety, and family. I somehow got them to answer questions and recall painful details to help me write this book. It was not easy, but we all learned from the process and were restored by it.