Banana Heart Summer Read online

The Calcium Man was speechless. What insult, what insufferable offense! Dead! This was the first time in his two years of peddling that he had been rejected by the almost mansion. Of course, he was never rejected before because he always came here first, when his wares were freshest, before he haggled with the rest of the neighborhood and the other streets. For some reason, today he left the almost mansion for last. But dead? How dare you? His usually sharp tongue knotted in his mouth. He could not bring himself to curse the maid, lest his richest customer overheard him. He looked up; the turret was closed. The sun had moved on.

  His limp dragged him down and he finally tipped over, falling on his butt beside his basket. The dogs were almost quiet, perhaps commiserating with the old man’s bad business day. I imagined the dragons would have swallowed back their fire, if they could, and the stone lions would have turned away. I did, I was embarrassed for him. The Calcium Man looked so despondent, as though he had gone through the eye of the storm the second time around and it had stolen his spirit.

  I was sorry for him, though part of me thought, serves you right for being mean to Tiya Asun. But what contrast—the sheer arrogance and even bellicose attitude towards Tiya Asun versus this cowed response to Señora Ching’s rejection. Surely I was witnessing the way of the world that afternoon. The poorest are whipped by the poor, and the poor are whipped by the rich, even without them lifting a finger.

  What I didn’t know then was that the day’s bad business went beyond the eighty-year-old’s basket, straight to his heart. And that there were other stories which would eventually end under Nana Dora’s hut. But I must not get ahead of myself.

  I needed to simply proceed to Miss VV’s. I refused to have my own bad business day.

  “Pssst!” I heard someone call.

  “Hoy, it’s too hot to be standing on that baking pavement, you’ll melt. Come in and have some refreshment—you live across the road, don’t you?” The voice had emerged from behind some rosebushes.

  I could not believe my eyes and ears, and the Calcium Man was as impressed. It was the only son of the house, Manolito Ching, inviting me in—me, me! Manoling of the tall nose and the long lashes that curved like a girl’s and the very thick hair with golden highlights. The Spanish-Chinese mestizo (the señora was a full-blooded Spaniard, she even wore a mantilla to church) was the heartthrob of my friends Chi-chi and Bebet—and me, if I owned up to it. He went to the exclusive boys’ school in the city. He was the heir to the fortunes of the richest businessman in town. He lived in an almost mansion. He grew up with dragons and lions and delicate pink roses. His father was constructing the first four-story building in our street. The Chings were going to defy the sky. What more could a girl want?

  “Come in.”

  He had never spoken to me before. He always looked distant inside the chauffeured Mercedes. He barely left the house when he was in town and he was hardly in town. The Chings owned several houses in the city.

  “I said, come in.”

  My mouth kept dropping. I sort of shivered, stammered.

  “Good afternoon, Señorito Manoling. I see you so tall and handsome now.” The Calcium Man spoke for me, in English. But he was excluded from the invitation, perhaps because he added, “I make you taller with my calcium and vitamins, etc., etc.—wanna buy?” He was hopeless, reducing everything to possible pesos, even this boy’s act of graciousness which, of course, kept me from concluding sooner my true business of the day.

  So it came to pass that I found myself sitting in the Chings’ enormous kitchen surrounded by hovering maids who were shooed away by their master, hell-bent on impressing me with a new gadget. It was a silver ice shaver that one turned with the hand.

  He was the most well-groomed boy that I ever saw in my whole young life. It seemed as if everything about him was new: the cream shirt with the maroon basketball print, the brown trousers with their meticulously ironed crease, the cream socks and brown shoes (he wore shoes at home!), even the Beatles haircut which I thought looked like a shiny mop on his head.

  “I’m making myself some halo-halo. Would you like some? Perfect for this hot day—isn’t it just so hot?” He turned on the ceiling fan. His Beatles fringe flew this way and that.

  Why me, why me? I felt shabby, ugly and miserably poor. I had to work furiously in my head. I imagined that my dress was deepening into its original blue, whipped into newness by the circling coolness in the room, that my shoulder-length hair was flying softly around my face and my burns and bruises were fading, that I was coming through some storm, much as I had come through the bared fangs of the five dogs at the gate, then the lions at the door while the dragons breathed down on me. Yes, I came through, didn’t I, though with much somersaulting in my chest—I was now reborn to a family who would never know how an esophagus lengthened!

  “Don’t you ever speak?” He was laughing at me.

  “Why are you not in school?” For the life of me, I couldn’t tell where that stupid question came from.

  “School is boring,” he whispered with a conspiratorial wink, then opened a cupboard.

  I must have sighed too loudly because he looked at me in a strange way.

  My heart, with my stomach in hot pursuit, went out to the neat row of colorful jars of preserves that would go into the halo-halo, the “mix-mix”: orange sweetcorn, red and green gelatin cubes, red and white sweetened beans, purple sticky yam, opaque white coconut balls, raisins, diced sugar bananas and other substances with a psychedelic glaze, which I could not recognize. I was sure I smelled them, in all their competing sweetness, even from the tightly closed jars.

  “So do you know how to make halo-halo?”

  I nodded and went straight for the preserves.

  “I’ll shave the ice—no, come, I’ll show you how to do it.”

  Reluctantly, I abandoned my original desire and meekly took my place before the silver ice shaver. He guided my hand on the intricately wrought handle, and we began to turn it together. I felt his breath on my nape, and I must have blushed. I was ambushed by the strangest sensations, sweeter than all the preserves in the cupboard combined. Perhaps it was the special detergent of the household: whatever it was, he smelled freshly laundered, with just a touch of something musky. And his breath was sweet mint. I shivered.

  “Keep turning,” he said, releasing my hand.

  Soft frost tumbled from the bottom of the shaver into a crystal bowl. I worked with such industry, I hardly noticed Manoling’s preoccupation, or original intent perhaps.

  I screamed. Shaved ice was sliding down my back. The devil had slipped it into my dress. “To cool you down,” he said, laughing wickedly. “Ta-da-da-da-dah!”

  I stopped screaming, uncertain whether I should protest, scold, call him names, walk out, but I laughed with him instead. It was just a harmless prank, a gesture of fraternity to make me feel at home. I laughed louder than the cleanest boy in the world.

  “Manolitoooo! Manolitoooo!”

  “Aw, Mother-bother!” he said, heeding the call from wherever in the almost mansion, how could I tell, perhaps the red turret bisecting the sky. “Don’t leave, I’ll be back.” He winked one more time.

  I was left alone with endless possibilities.

  nine

  Not quite mixed

  Salt, the cheapest of condiments, wakes up the taste of a prime cut of beef. Sugar, up there in status with milk, hops into bed with the humblest tubers. And salt and sugar have been known to conspire, to concoct dishes of the most seductive ambivalence. It’s like being neither here nor there; the journey of the palate is tricky.

  The journey of life is not any easier. Should I stick to my planned business or stray towards this urgent calling? Should I uphold my mother’s dignity or surrender to my mouth’s desire? Should I wait like a good guest or should I start discreetly without my host? But the stomach has no pride, and I was left alone with the sweets that had lined up against my soul. I plotted, I argued against the plot, I suddenly felt smaller, diminished. I b
ecame my mother’s daughter again. Just turn the silver handle, girl, and keep your back to the cupboard, like a true stoic. Or better still, run for your life, made purer by self-denial.

  Quickly I was shamed to greater industry by my covetous mouth that pooled in its sticky plots. I made sure I faced in the direction of the church and imagined that I was flagellating my stomach, so it could recover its dignity like a devout Catholic. Pride is a sin, dignity is salvation. I am my mother’s daughter.

  More soft frost tumbled into the crystal bowl, and above me the eye of the storm turned and turned. But still no Manoling. The frost began to melt; a pool was rising in the crystal bowl, threatening to spill onto the table. And still no Manoling. The almost mansion had grown so quiet.

  I stopped turning the ice shaver. I gave in. I went to the cupboard, I examined the brightly colored jars, I examined my conscience. I decided that downfall goeth before pride, forget dignity, and I could live with that. Just one jar, only one anyway, but we’ll make it the brightest of all: red gelatin. And only a taste, a little red cube, just one, something that won’t ever be missed.

  On my palm it shone, it made prisms under the kitchen light. I could see the whirling fan in it; it had trapped the eye of the storm. It slid down my throat, my esophagus, and I imagined it had to travel a long, long way, before it settled quite nicely in that little prideless niche called the stomach. And still no Manoling. So I went for the next jar, the macapuno, the opaque coconut balls scooped from the meat of a special variety of small coconuts that have no juice inside, because the meat takes up all the room in the shell. Much like hunger that takes up all the room in our little shells, our stomachs, hearts, limbs, yes, even our souls. And we walk around wearing the sign, “No vacancy,” no matter how high we hold up our chins and smile.

  I chewed, I ruminated over my loss of dignity, my shamelessness and how much belting this would cost me in heaven. Still no Manoling. Next then, the ube, the purple sticky yam. My finger struck and stuck. It was the stickiest yam preserve ever. It was the stickiest situation ever—someone had just walked through the kitchen door!

  She wore an emerald silk robe with red dragons—she had a penchant for fire-breathing things—and the most beautiful tortoiseshell comb with gold studs, angled gracefully on the side of her low chignon.

  She screamed, I screamed, the purple jar broke on the floor.

  “Thief, thief!” Was that what she was screaming? “No, no, Señora, I’m your neighbor”—“Thief, thief!”—“Your neighbor, Señora, from across the road”—“Wretched thief!”—“Nenita, daughter of Gable and Marina, Señora”—“Thief!”

  She grabbed my shoulders, she shook me, she was scared of no thief, she was scared of no thieving neighbor, she was scared of no daughter of Gable and Marina, whoever they were. She kept shaking me. The prismed red gelatin that trapped the eye of the storm, the opaque coconut balls that came from a roomless shell and the purple jam that was almost sinful in its stickiness blended inside me, mixed-mixed with the greatest humiliation of my young life.

  The other and real mix-mix, the halo-halo, was never served that afternoon. All of life’s enduring moments that could be sealed in little jars, all the sweetest preserves mixed with shaved ice and sugar and milk, then topped with ice cream, were a mere melted wish now, brimming from the crystal bowl and messing up the Chings’ kitchen floor.

  Finally he walked in, muttering, “Aw, Mother-bother!” He looked so clean, so new, so unruffled as he suggested that it was time for me to go home.

  ten

  Clear clam soup

  Nothing could ever hurt me enough to exhaust me. True, that vicious shaking mixed up the comings and goings in my heart, but I walked through the fire of the dragons, the claws of the lions, the bared fangs of the dogs, almost unscathed. Through the eye of the storm and straight to the Chings’ construction site, just beside their mansion. It was close to six, I could tell. The volcano was turning mauve, the sky was flaunting dabs of pink and peach. I was almost there. All I had to do was cross the street and head towards Miss VV’s house, and my business would come to a close.

  I could still hear the dogs barking a parting shot. I should have known better. You don’t mix with those above you, you keep to your kind. Culinary tricks, especially the more adventurous ones, never apply to human relationships. My salt with his sugar? Impossible. I thought then that perhaps the rich perspired sweetly and they did not smell.

  The Calcium Man smelled even more. I found him squatting under the shadow of the Chings’ construction. He wore that end-of-a-bad-business-day look which often came with the salty smell of futility. His head hung like a white-bearded coconut. He was tired and wondering who would buy the dead in his basket. He was picking at his bunions.

  “If I had some money, I’d buy them.”

  He looked up at me and tried to smile. “Ah, you.” He knew me as the eldest of the biggest family on Remedios Street. From twelve years old to three: “like glorious steps and stairs,” he once said.

  “Or I can help you sell them, it’s not yet too late.”

  “Ay, lots of spirit.”

  The six o’clock bell began to toll. Angelus. A calm descended on both of us, our cares were hushed. He stood up, I straightened myself. We both turned towards the church, then bowed and crossed ourselves. All passersby did the same.

  The angel of the Lord declared unto Mary. And she conceived by the power of the Holy Spirit. Behold the handmaid of the Lord…

  Before us the cross soared, now black against the deepening blue, perhaps like the color of my dress before it was handed down to me by a cousin. The volcano gazed at my back and quietly smoked her understanding. And she conceived strange ideas, which she would spit at us much later, near the end of that hot, hot summer.

  The final toll sounded, echoing through our momentarily hallowed limbs, unfreezing us from our prayers. Up and down the street, everyone greeted each other—“Good evening.” I took the Calcium Man’s hand and touched it to my brow, as was the custom after the Angelus: pay respect to all old people, even strangers, even those whose names we’ll never know. All elders are our mothers and fathers, and we must honor them.

  I felt slightly breathless, overcome by a deep sense of kinship. The first stars were coming out. In the after Angelus, the world was always kindest. Hearts were repaired, as well as other parts like the stomach and the esophagus.

  “Calcium, vitamins!” I hawked through my cupped hands, aiming for the men on the construction’s second floor, which sprouted metal bars and scaffolding. Up there, I saw the glimmer of the first fire of the evening.

  “May I?” I took the basket from the old man’s hand. He did not resist, simply sighed. So, at night, he loses his defenses. I climbed the makeshift ladder. Behold the handmaid of the Calcium Man.

  Around a blackened pot, three men gathered. They were cooking rice. I thought of my father and Tiyo Anding before they were sacked. They too would have stared at the communal pot in the growing dark.

  “Calcium, vitamins, very cheap and very good for bones and teeth,” I heard myself say.

  The men chuckled. I noted none were from our street or our town. They were imported workers, cheap labor, perhaps from the barrios.

  None of the men could see the state of the basket’s contents, nor could the stars up there. In the dark everything could be fresh and alive, if you said so. And I said so. “And you can steam these clams on top of the cooking rice after it boils.” To add to your fish, three tiny dried pieces sitting on half a brick.

  Money and clams changed hands. Even the dead had a price.

  However, on a good and generous business day, these clams would still be alive, sold earlier and without the haggling. They would be perfect for a clear soup, garlicky, gingered, with floating chili leaves and a dash of fish sauce. A bubbly, fragrant concoction that made mothers hum before the stove, that made their faces warm, that opened their tight little pores to allow kindness to seep out and find its way in
to the pot, onto the table and into the stomach, so it won’t ever collapse like our breaking little hearts.

  eleven

  Smoky coconut chicken in green papayas

  At dusk in summer, she always took our breath away, as if to fuel her fire or to help her smoke get to heaven. My brother Nilo, or was it Junior, once said that the volcano’s smoke is all our breaths collected, our wish to get to heaven.

  When the sky turned peach and pink, the perfect cone changed clothes like a woman not quite sure what to wear for the evening. Blue-grey-green in the day, she became lilac around five, then turned mauve, then a deeper blue-grey, then blue-black, and finally, when the sky was all dark, she stayed blacker than the night. So even on the darkest nights, we could not miss her.

  Sometimes stars hovered around her slope. Once she wore the full moon like polished opal, perfectly balanced on her peak. Or perhaps the moon, like a giant head, wore her like a sloping black skirt. It was a spectacle that branded our eyes. We could leave Remedios forever, but we would never leave that momentary twinning of the volcano and the moon. We only had to close our eyes and we’d see it again, a vision that made us believe there is a God.

  Against the clear summer night, the perfect cone rose to heaven, guided by a clump of stars.

  A JCM bus trundled down the street.

  I cut across the asphalt, the pili nuts weighing my pockets down. Earned from playing the Calcium Girl, from disposing of the dead. I felt holy, I was happy, I had purpose. I was going to wrap up my business, I was going to be my mother’s best girl. I quickly skirted the hibiscus hedge and the tomato patch of the Valenzuelas’ garden, the memory of yesterday’s crime and retribution marked on my skin. And my thieving soul that inspired a burning.

  I could hear Miss VV strumming her guitar and singing about her yellow bird.

  The first lines staked her claim to being as bereft as the “bird up high in banana tree.” I hesitated—she had a lovely voice. But why must she sing the same awful song over and over again?