Banana Heart Summer Read online

  I found this recitation in my head more soothing than “Lamb of God who takes away the sins of the world” while I applied Colgate to my blisters.

  My father Gable, so baptized in honor of the Clark Gable and Carole Lombard love-team, quickly handed me the toothpaste after Mother had finished with me. “You’ll be okay, Nining,” he whispered, eyes averted as if he were the one who had just meted out the punishment.

  Nining, not Nenita, for when I was loved again.

  five

  Lengua para diablo (The devil ate my words)

  I suspected that my father sold his tongue to the devil. He had little say in our house. Whenever he felt like disagreeing with my mother, he murmured, “The devil ate my words.” This meant he forgot what he was about to say and Mother was often appeased. There was more need for appeasement after he lost his job.

  The devil ate his words, the devil ate his capacity for words, the devil ate his tongue. But perhaps only after prior negotiation with its owner, what with Mother always complaining, “I’m already taking a peek at hell!” when it got too hot and stuffy in our tiny house. She seemed to sweat more that summer, and miserably. She made it sound like Father’s fault, so he cajoled her with kisses and promises of an electric fan, bigger windows, a bigger house, but she pushed him away, saying, “Get off me, I’m hot, ay, this hellish life!” Again he was ready to pledge relief, but something in my mother’s eyes made him mutter only the usual excuse, “The devil ate my words,” before he shut his mouth. Then he ran to the tap to get her more water.

  Lengua para diablo: tongue for the devil. Surely he sold his tongue in exchange for those promises to my mother: comfort, a full stomach, life without our wretched want…But the devil never delivered his side of the bargain. The devil was alien to want. He lived in a Spanish house and owned several stores in the city. This Spanish mestizo was my father’s employer, but only for a very short while. He sacked him and our neighbor Tiyo Anding, also a mason, after he found a cheaper hand to complete the extension of his house.

  We never knew the devil’s name. Father was incapable of speaking it, more so after he came home and sat in the darkest corner of the house and stared at his hands. It took him two days of silent staring before he told my mother about his fate.

  I wondered how the devil ate my father’s tongue. Perhaps he cooked it in mushroom sauce, in that special Spanish way that they do ox tongue. First, it was scrupulously cleaned, rubbed with salt and vinegar, blanched in boiling water, then scraped of its white coating—now, imagine words scraped off the tongue, and even taste, our capacity for pleasure. In those two days of silent staring, Father hardly ate. He said he had lost his taste for food, he was not hungry. Junior and Nilo were more than happy to demolish his share of gruel with fish sauce.

  After the thorough clean, the tongue was pricked with a fork to allow the flavors of all the spices and condiments to penetrate the flesh. Then it was browned in olive oil. How I wished we could prick my father’s tongue back to speech and even hunger, but of course we couldn’t, because it had disappeared. It had been served on the devil’s platter with garlic, onion, tomatoes, bay leaf, clove, peppercorns, soy sauce, even sherry, butter, and grated Edam cheese, with that aroma of something rich and foreign.

  His silent tongue was already luxuriating in a multitude of essences, pampered into a piquant delight.

  Perhaps next he should sell his esophagus, then his stomach. I would if I had the chance to be that pampered. To know for once what I would never taste. I would be soaked, steamed, sautéed, basted, baked, boiled, fried and feted with only the perfect seasonings. I would become an epicure. On a rich man’s plate, I would be initiated to flavors of the finest quality. In his stomach, I would be inducted to secrets. I would be the inside girl, and I could tell you the true nature of sated affluence.

  six

  Floating faith

  Satiation. This was the heart of my business venture that afternoon.

  I licked the last traces of turon sweetness from my fingers, then proceeded to Miss Violeta “VV” Valenzuela’s garden of tomatoes, lemons and hibiscus.

  Believe me, there are things that you can’t eat, but that feed you anyway. Like VV’s red hibiscus hedge. Or like her playing guitar and singing “Yellow Bird Up High in Banana Tree” in her matching pink blouse, shorts and headband, against the red hibiscus. Eighteen-year-old Miss VV was always perfectly tuned in to the most significant event of her Sunday afternoon: the visiting hour of the deep-voiced radio man Basilio Profundo, who read all the letters of request for mostly “croony” love songs in the DZGB dedication program. He especially liked Patsy Cline, Roy Orbison, Paul Anka and Frank Sinatra, playing their songs over and over again so the airwaves threatened a conflagration.

  Lovingly Yours was the most popular radio program on our street, not just because of the host’s voice made for swooning—everyone was a fan—but for the “uhuum-uhuuumm” that might be brewing between the owner of the voice and the woman of the yellow bird. So, by a stretch of kinship, everyone who lived on our street was related to the radio man. He was, after all, our neighbor’s probable “uhuum-uhuuumm.” Regularly he brought her twenty pieces of special palitaw, still so hot they cooked even their banana leaf wrapping. This always made the air smell like a real Sunday after a long siesta, when Remedios Street steamed, boiled, fried or pounded their own afternoon snacks. When Nana Dora rested.

  Unlike the other love-gossip aficionados, my interest in his visit was purely gustatory. I knew too well the banana wrapping that sat on a plate of woven rattan. Basilio Profundo held this plate reverently, like an acolyte bearing the Body of Christ. The palitaw was, of course, twenty pieces at least: ten for Miss VV’s family and ten for visitors, if she had any. Basilio’s mother Tiya Coring, chef of these wooing accoutrements, believed it was shameful not to invite visitors, even sudden arrivals, to share a repast.

  Palitaw, the floated one: Tiya Coring’s floating faith of pounded sticky rice shaped into tongues and sunk into a pot of boiling water. When they float, they’re cooked. This you take on faith. Then you retrieve the tongue-cakes from the water and sprinkle them with coconut cream toasted into crisp, brown granules and, of course, shreds of freshly grated coconut, sugar and sesame seeds. Ay, the scent alone was enough for anyone to take on faith Tiya Coring’s claim that hers was the best palitaw in the world! And who could argue against her faith in this wooing dish meant to turn not just the heart but the stomach of the doubtful family of Miss VV towards her unico hijo, her only son? True, the Valenzuelas doubted whether this man from peasant stock (even if he was a radio man now and perhaps would keep his future wife’s feet unsoiled by rice paddies) was suitable for their youngest who was studying to be a nurse. So, twenty sweet, sticky tongues to profess his ardor and honorable intentions.

  Ay, to win the beloved on the strength of a tongue. Is this possible?

  Faith always floats, keeps us afloat. As it is in swimming, so it is in cooking, so it is in falling in love. We always believe we’ll rise to the surface. None of Tiya Coring’s palitaw stayed down. None remained intimate with the pot’s bottom. Faith is too light to stay down, and it smells. We can’t hide it.

  One day its aroma floated towards our house where myself, Junior (well, Gable Junior actually), Claro, Nilo, Lydia and my baby brother Elvis peeked out of a window about three o’clock. Time to act! I quickly pushed my little brother out the door. Newly bathed and generously Johnson’s Baby Powdered by scheming me, Elvis advanced on cue. Go, go quickly, now, I waved to him. Also egged on by four other aspirants, he toddled up to Miss VV while flashing “three” with his fingers: I’m three or may I have three? From the window, we protested with frantic hand signs, gnashing our teeth over the impending loss of a perfect opportunity, or its full realization. Not three, not three, stupid! We are six! But three it was, apportioned with much fighting and tears.

  Floating faith made us brave, made us endure the consequences. Before our last mouthful, of cours
e Mother found out. Thus the interrogation, then justice. I, the shameless eldest who should have known better, got the belt. Bum, back, arms, face. “We are not beggars, you hear? We are not beggars!”

  Dignity may be lean, but more filling than faith.

  seven

  Seaweed salad and the Calcium Man (With pili nut husk on the side)

  So with faith in my impending business, I walked along Remedios Street, now ringing with the perennial cry of the oldest hawker of clams, mussels and seaweed. “Calcium, vitamins!” Always in English, mind you, like the basic food groups that he lectured his clients about. He knew his wares, perhaps made more pricey in the foreign tongue, and he understood nutrition by heart. My family could not afford him.

  It was easy to spot the Calcium Man. He was ancient, stringy and dark like dried fish, and he smelled like dried fish. His hair was a dirty white and he looked as if he had just walked through the eye of a storm. His shirt was torn, his hair stood on end, he had a limp, and he wore no slippers and little flesh. He had no real name. “Perhaps the storm took it too,” Nilo or Lydia or Claro once said.

  Like Nana Dora, the old man simply materialized on our street one morning, armed with a basket and a temper under his sleeve. He was famous for this temper and for the freshest seaweed, and the clams and mussels that shone like polished stones. He was always early, too early in fact. We surmised that he was a fisherman who gathered his wares before dawn, since he began hawking them by four-thirty, inserting his gruff “Calcium, vitamins!” into our dreams. Or perhaps he was the father of fishermen. But how could those sons bear to have their father slave in his old age? Who would know and who would care? Perhaps the street gossips or the children who still honored their fathers.

  I was convinced that his business was flavored by his temperament of the day. If he stuck to his price and haggled with his clients, he would still be hawking dead clams at four in the afternoon. If he allowed a bargain, he would be having lunch by eleven, with an empty basket. He ate under Nana Dora’s hut, but always before she arrived.

  That afternoon, he was at his hard-hearted best. He believed he was selling a king’s ransom. I found him at Tiyo Anding’s door, arguing with his wife Tiya Asun or, more aptly, lecturing her on a balanced diet. He perorated about how much protein and carbohydrates the body needed and how indispensable if not lifesaving was his feast of calcium and vitamins.

  Tiya Asun had no breasts or hips. Her large eyes had that stunned look of a fish. She had no brows and little hair, perhaps because she combed it too roughly too many times a day, I thought. Her skin was the sallow tint of cornmeal gone off. She always leaned on things, as if they must catch or hold her, but her eyes were vividly alive, “to-ing and fro-ing,” her husband used to say.

  “Ay, of course you pay a price to save your life, woman—my calcium and vitamins can save your life!”

  “I’m not buying, no, not at all. Your price is highway robbery!”

  “You calling me a thief?”

  “I only speak the truth!”

  “Truth! My God, woman! Which truth, whose truth?” The old man shook his fist. He turned to his left then his right, not quite sure which to invoke, the volcano or the church.

  At this juncture, I must produce a rough map of Remedios Street, so you can appreciate his gesture.

  You see, we lived between the volcano and the church, between two gods. The smoking peak and the soaring cross faced each other in a perpetual standoff, as if blocked for a duel. Not that anyone, other than me, saw it this way at that time, of course. Not that I even breathed this vision to any ear, lest I got burnt at the stake or sentenced to recite the rosary for the rest of my life and afterlife.

  “I swear by the volcano that my calcium and vitamins will save you, woman!”

  “Ay, Dios ko,” she shuddered, crossing herself, “how sinful to swear!”

  “I swear by God then!”

  “Ay, santisima, how blasphemous!”

  So the fight went on, with the towering onlookers silently judging this earthly duel. How puny, how sadly mortal are hunger and the feeble attempts to hide it in the name of pride. At one end of our street, the volcano rallied for public outburst; at the other, the cross blessed peacekeepers, the silent sufferers.

  Sadly it was a fight that could never be resolved, because Tiya Asun’s pocket was empty. But she bargained and wrangled with her usual fervor anyhow, and her eyes roved, as fish eyes would, into the basket of the old man, thus making him believe her intention to buy. Ay, such ridiculous futility of desperate pride, no, dignity actually. Mother said pride is a sin, but dignity is a savior.

  Tiya Asun’s family was the poorest in our street. I wondered what they ate; their house hardly smelled of cooking. We had been eating more-water-than-rice gruel for a week after my father’s and, of course, her husband’s sacking. I wondered what non-smelling thing boiled in Tiya Asun’s pots. In my heart I knew that her family felt it too—the esophagus lengthening, I mean. And as they were poorer than us, perhaps even other parts inevitably followed suit—the tongue, the cheeks and the eyes perhaps stretching towards the earth, as if they were already being pulled into their graves. The twins, Chi-chi and Bebet, were thinner than me and wore their mother’s fish eyes. We went to the same school. They were always absent from class.

  “Go away, you blasphemous highway robbery old man!”

  “May your pots and pans break their friendship with protein and carbohydrates and calcium and vitamins and minerals!”

  He did not have to curse her. Tiya Asun had never been friends with the basic food groups. He walked off, still cursing; she leaned against her door. Meanwhile, the volcano smoked, the cross soared, and life went on.

  With my burnt toes I limped behind the limping Calcium Man. I imagined I was his sidekick, his Calcium Girl who could also go through the eye of the storm and come out with the beatific vision of the basic food groups. I checked his wares: tired-looking seaweed, clams and mussels, dead by now, and, surprise, something not of the water—pili nuts, all black and shiny, and just right for boiling. I looked up to the smoking peak. What if the Calcium Man and I limped to the crater and threw in the nuts to boil? And we could add the mussels and clams that refused all offers for a bargain from the lady who would return to her kitchen to boil air for dinner.

  The four o’clock sun was merciless. I could hear him panting and fuming, his limp even more pronounced, making him tilt deeply to the left, as if anytime he would tip over from the weight of his hard, hard heart.

  I tagged along, carefully preparing his wares for a meal in my head. First, the seaweed, those beads of jade clustered around their stems. Shiny, firm and a little slimy, they would pop in my mouth like vegetarian caviar. This I would flavor with green lemon and serve as partner to the fibrous pili nut husk, dunked in fish sauce. Then I would save the nuts, crisp and with a milky aftertaste, for honeyed crackling or marzipan or palm-sugared sticky delights.

  eight

  Halo-halo: mix-mix

  The Calcium Man did not come too close to his next stop, perhaps because of its vicious menagerie. Four dragons were perpetually breathing fire from its terra-cotta awnings. Any moment now, they could slither down to the main door guarded by a pair of stone lions that never slept, mouths gaping as if flashing their fangs for regular inspection. Then both lions and dragons could advance as a pack through the driveway, past the gardens, to join the company of five live dogs growling behind the red iron gate. And the poor passerby would have to still the shudder in her heart. Well, I did, making sure I kept my distance from the Chings’ almost mansion.

  Mr. Alexander Ching always refuted any “mansion talk” or speculations that he was the richest man in town, richer than the mayor himself. The businessman was humble or coy, whichever way you looked at it. He went around town in his plain white shirt and faded blue trousers, on foot or in the public buses. He hardly rode in his chauffeured Mercedes and he spoke to everyone. He was always “networking” before t
he term was even invented.

  His almost mansion was an intimidating three-story house in red, gold and shades of emerald green, built in solid stone. Perhaps it was a fortress that mistook itself for a pagoda. It bisected heaven with a red Chinese turret. The garden, however, was another story. As if in protest rather than contrast, it bloomed in delicate pink—pink roses, a pond of pink lotuses and pink frangipanis that lined the gold wall, which locked in the house from the real world.

  “Calcium, vitamins, calcium, vitamins!” The old man had been crying out for a good few seconds now, but was drowned out by the hysteria of the dogs barking and rushing about, snapping at him, fangs bared. They smelled his wares, his heart, its allegiance to the basic food groups. “Calcium, vitamins, calcium, vitamins!”

  The sun was right behind the red turret, making it burn like a second, angular sun or some golden talisman that opened briefly and closed again. Shortly a maid came running towards us.

  “The señora wants to know whether you have mussels today,” she said, holding on to the iron gate to keep the dogs from overturning her.

  She was new, soft-spoken, perhaps my age. Her white uniform was too big for her and she was shuffling her red rubber slippers, also oversized. The maid before her had definitely been of generous proportions. She spoke to the Calcium Man while looking at me, perhaps understanding, with my limp, that I was his sidekick, the Calcium Girl who would also go through the eye of the storm.

  “Ay, plenty of mussels here, girl, so fresh, so rich in calcium and vitamins, your señora’s teeth and bones will be strong forever and ever.”

  She giggled shyly at the strange speech, she was new indeed, and studied his wares, then shook her head, saying, “Dead,” firmly, then, “No, thank you, not today, sir.” Then she walked away, flip-flopping her slippers on the pavement.