Banana Heart Summer Read online

  Intention, longing, aspiration, yearning, need, dream, wish, hope, hunger. Most novenas spring from these, which we prayed to the Mother of Perpetual Succor, the Sacred Heart of Jesus, Saint Jude, Saint Anthony, Saint Lucy, Saint Christopher, Saint Peregrine, Saint Martin de Porres, depending upon the nature of our intentions. Each specific personage seemed to have been assigned to an area of specialization. Saint Jude for desperate cases, i.e., to cure lovesickness, Saint Anthony to find lost articles, Saint Lucy against sore eyes and throats, Saint Christopher for a safe journey, Saint Peregrine for those who suffer from life-threatening diseases, Saint Martin de Porres for the poor, and for all other intentions without a specific patron, the Mother of Perpetual Succor and even the Sacred Heart. It seemed we never went straight to God the Father. I used to marvel at His managerial skills. He delegated tasks, all properly categorized in petition forms: the novena.

  Why Junior called a severe dressing-down “a novena” was beyond me. Perhaps because novenas had repetitive invocations that could go on for a while, well, for nine days.

  “I’ll work like you, Papa.”

  “What?”

  “I’ll bring home money like you.”

  “What?”

  “And it will be all right.”

  “What?”

  The unlikely invocation went on for a while, until I counted the P3.90 into his hands.

  I saw my father shrink, his face cave in, grow shadowed, and my heart nearly escaped from my chest. I shut my eyes tight, waiting for another blow. Nothing, my cheek remained untouched, safe. I was quite confused—true, our hopes and hungers crossed lines if we went straight to God the Father.

  By now the Lab-yus had fully melted in my mouth. By now my mother was grabbing me by the shoulder, while my siblings crouched in a corner, horror in their eyes. I did not hear her walk in.

  “Ay, Mama, Mama, I can explain, I was—”

  Two slaps, one on each cheek, sent me reeling. I hit the table, fell to the floor. Lab-yu, Fat & Thin and pili nuts scattered around the room. All the kids scrambled to grab what they could. She seized me again by the shoulders, dragged me towards the wall and slammed me there. Breath knocked out of me, I slid to the floor. She kicked me again and again, then she searched the room for the proverbial rod. I crawled out of her way, but she was quicker. She grabbed the stack of plates and hurled them at me, catching me on the back. I heard the shattering and my chest hitting the floor, then the rain of shards. I couldn’t get up, I couldn’t breathe, I couldn’t cry.

  Is it possible that God the Father sometimes hears too late, because of too many crossed lines?

  “Why don’t you just kill her?” He finally spoke.

  She stopped and stared at her husband of twelve years. Still she did not open her mouth. Even now, it is silent fury that I fear most. I felt a strange heat spread at my crotch, seep to my chest and thighs. I had peed in my pants. She left the room.

  Father picked up her silence. His words of comfort were devoured by the devil. I felt his hands pressing my back, then lifting my shoulders, trying to raise me. I must have been too heavy, I couldn’t get up, as if my chest had tons of lead dragging me down to a bottomless pit that was my stomach.

  When I was finally up, I couldn’t walk. My legs gave way and he had to lift me to a chair. I couldn’t see the trail of blood. I heard Elvis begin to wail and Lydia followed suit. The two youngest wailed out the tons of lead in my chest.

  Next door, Carmen flaunted the artfulness of grief. As always, we kept ours simple; we had none of her style. My parents hit me, then fed me, and loved me again.

  My father bandaged my back, my mother heated some pork adobo for me from the large jar that Aunt Rosario had packed for her in the city. I half understood the origin of the greasy plates. The bay-leaf-flavored stew floated in and out of my daze. My eyes were closed, but I could see the aroma rising to heaven, sending our earthly intentions, all spiced and garlicky, to the God the Father. But who was taking them up to Him? What saint should we assign for this task that we couldn’t even begin to grasp? What was it that we actually needed? What was it that we should wish for?

  What on earth was this business of supplication?

  She made rice gruel to go with the adobo. “Eat, eat, it’s good for you,” she said, spooning my second dinner into my bruised mouth. I heard Father whispering to her my day’s expeditions as they went through the rudiments of affection.

  In the next house, Carmen had finally expired.

  fourteen

  The rice conspiracy

  Loving and unloving are old conspiracies. As old as cooking. And the secret lies in the collusion of ingredients and the attention of the scheming cook. Every dish is a scheme to appease desire, even rice. Especially rice, this staple that can also conspire against a lesser or less attentive cook. But we have rice-cookers now and their efficient certainty can’t be outwitted by the white grains. These will always be cooked just right.

  I can do “just right” with my eyes closed, so I have never used those electric things. I can’t bear to let a staple sit inside a timed pot that can be left alone. I’m afraid to leave any scheme alone, lest it turns out undercooked or overcooked, or worse, burnt. Lest desire is betrayed, lest the palate falls out of love. I am an earnest cook, especially when it comes to rice.

  When I was nine years old, Mother ensured this commitment in her firstborn.

  I remember it was the birthday of Aunt Rosario, her only sister. She was our rich relation in the city. She had a big house always smelling of jasmine, except the kitchen. The house had large, airy rooms with barely any clutter. That day in the kitchen, amidst the chopping of every imaginable meat, I learned that all my mother’s family were rich relations. “Buena familia,” the cooks nodded to each other then shook their heads at me as if I had missed the truth. But how could I know this? I had never met any of Mother’s “good family,” except sad Aunt Rosario who never married.

  On the few occasions when Mother had dressed me carefully in my least faded frock, Aunt Rosario stared at me and sighed, then crossed herself in a sorrowful way as if someone had just died. Always Mother looked away, but with head held higher and chin thrust out. She looked angry when she did this, so I made sure to smooth my hair, then my dress, and to smile up at them. But by then, they had already forgotten me, whispering little secrets in the furthest corner of the room. Strange, in all this intimacy, they never touched. Arms were always crossed against chests, as if something had to be barricaded there. Perhaps the heart of the matter was so precious, it could be uttered only in hushed tones. It was Aunt Rosario who ended up wiping her eyes.

  Then to the business of a very busy day.

  My aunt smiled at me, saying, “Of course, Nenita can stay till the afternoon, and you should stay too—they won’t come till tonight for the party.”

  They were the other rich relations. My mother’s parents. So I understood, but only years later.

  “Can’t stay, but don’t worry, I’ll come back for her.” My mother nodded towards me, mocking her older sibling.

  “But what about lunch?”

  “I brought something.”

  But you’re lying, I wanted to protest. Let’s both stay, let’s have a big lunch, there’s always a big lunch here—

  “I said they won’t come till later, Marina,” my aunt insisted, sounding even more dolorous.

  “Be good, Nining—and help in the kitchen,” my mother ordered before she left.

  When it was just me and Mother visiting, the sisters tucked me away in the kitchen. I was meant to help cook, but I convinced myself that really I was meant to graze to my heart’s content in the kitchen which always smelled as if God were having a big party in heaven, and the angels in their replete holiness had forgotten to close the doors so the mouths of the whole neighborhood, even on earth, watered.

  I still love the indiscreet fragrance of kitchens. They reek with appetite and all its attendant wickedness. Kitchens don’t know temper
ance. They are contagiously improper, well, only the real ones that are able to appease desire, like Aunt Rosario’s kitchen. You walk into it and find your flesh afflicted. You leave oiled and spiced, as if you had been marinated in the stew about to simmer in the pot.

  That day Aunt Rosario’s kitchen had legs of smoked ham hanging like bunting among wreaths of garlic and onion, and sprigs of oregano and bay leaves. And all sorts of meat freshly butchered everywhere, still bleeding and smelling gloriously animal. Then the longest table, surrounded by chattering cooks, spilled with every fruit and vegetable in season, their colors loudly arguing among pounded ginger, chopped onions, garlic, chilies and other spices so strong they made the cooks cry in between morsels of gossip. I listened, I watched, I memorized, I grazed. And of course, I helped cook.

  “That greedy girl—always one for the pot, one for the mouth.” The portly cook, the grimmest of them all, nudged another, eyeing me.

  I pretended not to hear. Of course, cooks must taste their cooking all the time to make sure it works. And I only taste when there’s more than enough for tasting to go around. There were five cooks and me intent on preparing the birthday feast for that night.

  “But she’s getting in the way. Tell her to watch over the rice then, over there, to keep her from trouble.” She meant, from troubling them.

  “Much trouble for the mother, didn’t you know?” And everyone giggled.

  As the gossip brewed, getting spicier at each rejoinder, I willed my ear to make sense of my mother’s story, but it was all confusing, and painfully so. I was growing more furious by the minute, so I forgot the rice. It boiled and spilled and lost all its water, but by that time my attention was elsewhere. I found it hard to breathe, the kitchen had turned foul and stuffy, and the smell of raw meat rose and rose, fighting all other aromas. One milky eye of a goat’s head stared knowingly.

  “Rice cooked too soon!” At this, everyone laughed and slapped their thighs. What an original joke.

  “She was only fourteen…”

  “Disowned…”

  “Harsh family…”

  “Poor thing…”

  “Takes her children here for a feed sometimes. Always hungry, the lot.”

  “Husband a mere mason…”

  “Worthless!” the grimmest cook said, chopping off a chicken’s head.

  That did it! I sneaked behind her and bit where it was fleshiest. She howled, skipping around in pain and rubbing her bottom, and yelling that I was my mother’s shame and sorrow and I stood there under the wreaths of hams and spices, fists to my side like the wrong angel in the wrong party, with God wondering perhaps how on earth a child could afflict a mother so.

  Of course, all those little white grains had conspired against me. The rice came out badly cooked, and to my mind at the time, this was why Mother never took me to her sister’s again.

  “Rice cooked too soon.” A curse in my mother’s history. Or worse, rice not cooked properly. An unforgivable aberration in the kitchen.

  Remember, we have to cook rice in a just right way. First it needs to be thoroughly cleaned. So rid it of stray husks or grit, or toss it around in a winnower to sift out the impurities. Now pour the grains into a pot. Add water, measuring it with the length of the fingers in a just right way. It must be “just right” water. If it’s not enough, the rice gets undercooked and hard: malagtok. Bad for digestion. If it’s too much, rice gets overcooked and gluggy: marugi. Bad for the temper.

  So like shame and sorrow. Shame comes from being wanting. Shame is thirsty. And sorrow? Well, sorrow is runny, always painfully wet.

  fifteen

  The soup of stones

  “Babies come from the armpit.”

  Was it Nilo, the third, or Claro, the fourth, who made that stupid prognosis? Ay, I always forget. Perhaps I need some point of reference, a clarification of our steps and stairs. Me, twelve; Gable Junior, eleven; Claro, nine; Nilo, seven; Lydia, four; Elvis, three.

  And my mother was not even thirty.

  Mother ate like a rich woman, of course. She hardly opened her mouth, she chewed delicately, took small helpings, held the spoon and fork lightly. I gripped and clunked my cutlery, ate with my hands. I slurped, I spilled, I chomped and spoke even when my mouth was full. Sometimes she looked at me as if I belonged to someone else. I did not have her graces. Was this the cause of her shame? I often wondered then.

  Grace is twofold, you see: a given and a later gift. First, the given, that genetic boon, like Mother’s very fair skin, and her high cheekbones and fine nose which I sometimes traced with my fingers in my dreams. Mother is a beautiful woman. Imagine planes and angles that make dramatic shadows before the stove. Mine are rounded, uninteresting. Facially, I am my father’s daughter, moon-faced and snub-nosed. I am dark and all inadequate and uneven roundness, something like a heart, something that never comes gracefully full circle. I can never make her happy.

  And grace as a gift? Ah, those little manners that are bestowed on us as a child, if we are bright enough to learn them. Manners evident in our most basic preoccupations like eating, where I have always betrayed myself, exhibiting my hunger. Have you? Don’t you, in whatever consuming gesture you choose to put on? When you pick, stab, shovel, masticate daintily or audibly, lick lips and fingers or dab them on a napkin, look or not look at your food and proceed with the machinery of ingesting as a matter of course? Do you know your betrayal? Do you know hunger?

  Forgive me. The last question is out of order. I should know better. Hunger we all experience. Hunger is the greatest leveler of humankind, if it wishes to be leveled. But how and whether we appease it always restores the social order.

  My mother’s marriage to my father had collapsed the social order beyond restoration. The rich relations in the city, except her only sister, did not wish to know about their kin who ran away with a mason during her first year at high school. Much later, it was Aunt Rosario she’d run to, but only when the more-water-than-rice gruel became our staple for weeks.

  It took a long time before Mother gathered enough humility to beg for help. Humility was like those scraps of rice that she picked from the bottom of the pot and saved for the next pot of gruel. Don’t get me wrong. Humility was not about loss of dignity, she told me once. Her kind of humility, which saw her running away to the city with her brood (which never included me after the rice disaster), earned them wonderful meals which they boasted about for days. Of course I knew these meals and how I missed them.

  During those seasons of humility, reserved only for her sister, Mother’s rage ran away from her hands into territories that, perhaps, even she had never imagined. My father, the once dashing Gable, got lost in her rage. First he lost his words, the devil ate them. Then he lost his footing, walking on eggs around the house, an impotent man whose only recourse was to clean up after her rage, to bring her stolen flowers from someone’s garden or to hold her tightly at night, whispering over and over again, “I love you, Maring, I love you.”

  Then a baby always arrived from the armpit.

  But I shouldn’t promote my siblings’ silly speculations. I should tell you more about my father. What he did on that night which shattered on my back.

  Aquamarine, ocher, white, grey, magenta and a red one with black ridges. All beautifully smooth stones, except for the last one. He found them after he ended up on the beach just outside our town, after a futile afternoon of job hunting. He brought them home. He said they reminded him of his six children. Aquamarine for Lydia, because she had the gracefulness of sirens. Ocher for Nilo, because he was like the earth when it caught the sun. White for Elvis, because his laughter was clear and pure. Grey for Claro, because he was as somber as a stormy sky. Magenta for Junior, because he was like blood with wicked secrets. And the unsmooth red with its black ridges was me, because I had fire with the promise of burning.

  Maybe this was why Mother ran away with the mason and his threadbare clothes: he looked at things closely, tenderly. He tried to know them b
y heart. Thus exposed, this strange organ must have fascinated her once, having been born to a family that never hugged. I heard her parents were scarily formal, a couple of staunch believers in unbending discipline, which meant withholding all traces of warmth. Discipline was like rice, the staple of their children and served cold. Always refrigerated and thus preserved. Never retrieved from the cold lest it went off and punished their own stomachs for the rest of their lives.

  Father knew his wife by heart, “with its soft, soft core.” “Putty,” Mother often replied, especially after their third child, when Father ambled through each crisis in that perplexed, helpless way.

  Putty. Each time Mother spat out the word, I remembered the grimmest cook’s summation. Worthless. Echoed by a knife falling, severing the chicken neck.

  “Come home with flowers, come home with stones? Your children can’t eat them!” And Mother always pulled out of his embrace.

  In my family, we never hugged. We loved each other in our own way. He bandaged my back, she fed me adobo, and that settled the evening, then we all went up to the ceiling. I didn’t know about ceilings then. I just thought we had a special bedroom where no one could stand except Elvis.

  It was past midnight. Mother confiscated what was left of Fat & Thin, but Elvis would not let go of the last Lab-yu. “Eat it tomorrow,” she said. “Now you must sleep. Today was too long.” Then she rolled out the mat from end to end of the ceiling and opened a little vent. It was a very hot summer. Our sweats commingled.

  “Prayers now,” she said.

  We never hugged, we did things together. We called out to God as one. We lay our bodies as one. We closed our eyes in unison or some of us pretended to. Maybe we even dreamt as one.

  Prayers over, he kissed us good night, handing each of us our special stone.

  Strange how a little thing like that has stayed with me for a long time. To this day, I have not forgotten our sleeping arrangement, because I cannot forget the order of stones.