Banana Heart Summer Read online

  RedwithblackridgesAquamarineGreyMagentaOcherWhiteFatherMother—vent

  I could not lie on my back, it hurt. My siren sister faced me, singing siren songs in her wide, wide eyes. She could not sleep, I could not sleep. In the dark, she touched my cheek with a finger and found it wet. Next to her, the storm shifted uneasily for a while, before it snuggled as close to us as possible. But the blood with wicked secrets kept himself turned away, seeking solace in the earth that caught the sun, who’d rather dream of clear and pure laughter, which clung to the waist of our father, who clung to our mother and whispered, “I love you, I love you,” while she kept her face turned away, breathing precious air from the vent.

  It was a very hot summer. Our sweats commingled, we smelled as one. Into the wee hours of the morning, I fondled all our stones in my head. I looked at them closely, tenderly, and put them together in a magic pot. I imagined we had become the soup of stones.

  sixteen

  Bittermelon graced with eggs

  Once upon a time, the bittermelon was sweet and not frowning. It was a shiny, smooth green of the palest hue, with no creases at all. It was a fruit, not a vegetable. It was served for dessert. It was sweeter than mangoes but less fleshy, and it was lean with character; it did not give in too easily to the teeth. People ate it as they would eat corn, gnawing around and around the elongated green flesh, crunchy and sugary sweet, till it was naked, white and vulnerable-looking: a collection of teeth marks. Thus exposed, it became ashamed of itself. Time and again, it worried that its underbelly, with such a savage imprint, would be seen by human eyes and judged. So it began to flinch each time it came in contact with teeth, any stripping teeth for that matter. And each time it flinched, its smooth skin tightened, creased a bit, like a worried forehead. Then each time it worried, its sweetness diminished and an acrid taste crept in its place. With this shifting flavor came a change in color: it slowly darkened. By the time it turned a deep frowning jade, it was struck out of the dessert list. It had become a bitter vegetable, fallen out of favor with most palates, pushed to the culinary fringe.

  The fringe is probably the best way to tell the story about the last Saturday afternoon of my free life, when I was sporting a bandaged back. Allow me to begin with Boy Hapon’s fringe garden.

  Boy Hapon was and was not part of our street. He had never left his garden during the twelve years that I’d known or heard of him. I think he was afraid of us, and we of him. Our street decided long ago that he was not quite complete in the head. I never saw him, properly that is, only glimpses of him if I climbed the highest branch of a guava tree in the lot next to his garden. On this large lot grew guavas and bananas. Here was our territory, where I came to play with the twins Chi-chi and Bebet, and raid the guavas, of course. Our guavas leaned against the high bamboo fence that closed off Boy Hapon’s world, which was shaded by a huge mango with an unusually long branch. It extended like a bridge towards the guavas, it invited us to trespass. On occasions we tested it and peered down: no sign of habitation, except, on closer look, a hairy green animal crouched in a forest. This was actually Boy Hapon’s hut sprouting vegetables of all kinds, the bittermelon most evident of all. From our roost, we saw how this vine flourished the whole year round, dangling a shiny, frowning fruit from every corner like a testimony of worry.

  And we heard chickens, no, the whole neighborhood heard and believed he had chickens. They crowed through dawn, from about three to seven, and too many times, much to the consternation of our dreams. We never saw them though. Like his hut, they were buried in edible greenery. For years I imagined he was the only one in our street who would never, ever grow hungry should the world come to an end.

  On that Saturday afternoon, for an hour we imagined tales sprouting from Boy Hapon’s vegetables. From the guava trees, my friends and I looked down on his garden, playing “I spy” and “Once upon a time.” The fragrance of lush greenery assailed our noses, it made our toes curl.

  “I spy something with an s—”

  “Sitaw!”

  “Once upon a time, Juan climbed the tallest sitaw vine, so tall it reached the sky where a snoring giant son lived with his snoring giant mother.”

  “I spy something with a b—”

  “Bataw!”

  “Once upon a time, Juan sneaked into a bataw pod, pretending he was a seed, and slept there forever, close to mother and father and brother and sister seeds, well until the world came to an end.”

  “Something with a p—”

  “Patani!”

  “Once upon a time, Juan ate a patani bean and began to speak in patani tongue that no one could understand, not even his mother or father, or brothers—”

  “Ay, so unappetizing!”

  We were bored. We had to spot the least obvious vegetable below and tell a story about it. Both vegetable and tale must whet the appetite. But all we found were beans, those creeping legumes that inspired slow-legged tales of the traditional folk hero, Juan, who never went anywhere beyond the first sentence. Our storytelling powers were arrested too soon. Chi-chi and Bebet, who had been stripping off the fruit (ripe and otherwise) from all the guava trees since lunch, rolled their eyes to heaven and said that they didn’t like beans at all. “Ay, they taste so-so, you know.” I kept myself from retorting, “But how would you know, your house never smells of cooking.” I felt mean that day, my back hurt.

  “What happened to your back?” they had asked the moment they saw me.

  “I fell from the sky.”

  My back hurt, my back was interrogated, my back told a tale in five words, and that was that. The twins knew my tale was going nowhere, even if they sensed that its plot would thread all my obvious bruises and the slow, funny way I conducted my limbs that afternoon. But they commiserated accordingly and felt honored when I allowed them to examine the bandage (Mother’s oldest skirt) and to feel it, but gently, gently. Their awe reeked with guava. Their mouths were forever engaged, munching then whispering their admiration over and over again. “Ay, truly magnificent!”

  A child always wears the mark of disaster with bravado. It feels heroic. In my case, I believed I was an embellished star. Mother’s skirt was floral.

  The true story of my back could have perked up our lethargic afternoon, but my lips were sealed. In that humidity, our boredom ebbed and flowed with halfhearted inventions instead.

  “I spy something with an a—”

  “Amargoso!” Bittermelon.

  “Once upon a time, the bittermelon was sweet and not frowning.”

  So we return to where we began, the bittermelon and our street’s fringe-dweller, which I can no longer evade. I tried to as I took you through a day’s tour from Nana Dora’s hut, thinking I could go home without speaking about Boy Hapon—Boy, the Japanese, who was so pale it seemed he’d been stripped of his first skin, or did I only imagine that? Sometimes I was convinced that the paleness flashed around the greenery, like a dapple of light. I never saw the teeth marks though, well, not then.

  “Imagine not having a mother, a father, and brothers and sisters, and grandfather and grandmother, and cousins and such,” Chi-chi said, plucking the last bunch of unripe guavas.

  “Well, he’s an orphan, what do you expect,” I said. My friends and I decided long ago that he was someone our age, and alone.

  “He is just him, just him and no one else.” Bebet repeated the old line of the street gossips. “He has no surname, no ancestry, he did not come from anyone.”

  How was that? He did not even come from an armpit?

  It was two in the afternoon and our street was having its usual siesta. Earlier I had sneaked out of our bedroom where only Elvis could stand. Not that anyone was standing when I tiptoed out. Everyone was a casualty of last night’s disaster. The shock, perhaps the guilt, and the last of the Lab-yu and Fat & Thin (fought over by my siblings) had all been consumed. My family was tired and spent. Me? I did not need a siesta. I was on top of the world, on top of the guava trees, the summer sun on m
y floral back. Nothing could ever exhaust me.

  A JCM bus with a lone passenger trundled past in its own drowsy way.

  “Hoy, what in the world does he eat?” Chi-chi asked, greedily munching two unripe guavas at a time, with the third on the ready.

  And what do you eat? I bit my tongue, hating to embarrass her—she was making him sound like an alien from some far-flung planet. What does he eat? Hoy, look at his garden, stupid!

  “So what does he eat?” Bebet joined in.

  “Isn’t it obvious?” I snorted.

  “I bet it’s bittermelon for breakfast, lunch, dinner—yuck!” Chi-chi cringed, stuffing the last of the guavas into her mouth.

  “What do you mean, ‘yuck’? At least he has breakfast and lunch and dinner!” I couldn’t help the contempt sneaking from my throat, akin to a burp’s sourish taste. Look here, I wanted to say, Boy Hapon eats, my family eats, I don’t know about yours—and I helped my family eat. I earned and Mother fed me adobo and Father made his soup of stones and all’s sweet again—but I couldn’t tell them that.

  “Bittermelon, yuck!” Bebet persisted.

  “Of course he eats other things or can’t you tell?” I scolded, the sourness sharpening my tongue. “You fools, he has his garden, his chickens—”

  “I think we just dream he has chickens.” Bebet’s response was as sour.

  “And chickens have eggs,” I said, angry now. “And eggs make bittermelons taste good.”

  “Yuck!”

  “Eggs and tomatoes and garlic and a bit of shrimp paste.”

  “Yuck!”

  Want is bitter, graceless. It disparages those who have the power to appease it in themselves. The underbelly of unappeased want is even worse. Envy is twice bitter, and bitterness is an acquired taste.

  seventeen

  Upside-down and inside-out cake

  To sweeten the tongue, we climbed down the guava trees to where only sweetness was conjured—the most cultured house in our street, the house that did not believe in siestas.

  It was Mr. Alano’s Saturday jam session with his band. It was Mrs. Alano’s session of exotic confectioneries (she owned an American cookbook).

  Believe me, that Saturday was their session of all sessions. I realized then that sweetness, at its most insistent, could be as grave an assault as gnawing bitterness. It could as easily cause our faces to tighten, crumple, and the rest of our bodies to follow. Inevitably we could become a walking and breathing frown. This is very bad for digestion.

  By the time my friends and I had ambled to the two-story stone house with carved awnings, it already smelled like caramel, but laced with tobacco. In the kitchen, Mrs. Alano was perhaps browning the sugar, while her husband’s big band primed themselves with cigars. Through the shutters, we could see and smell them, poring over their instruments in the lounge room, getting “tuned up” for the afternoon. And surprise, Basilio Profundo was there too with a radio assistant, both looking anxious among their recording paraphernalia. Outside the crowd grew restless in the summer heat resonant with anticipation.

  No, this crowd did not smell the rumor of caramel. Apparently, the day before, they had tuned in to Basilio’s Lovingly Yours dedication program, and were promised that today’s program would be recorded in our street with singers from Manila. Imported singers! Not exactly heart-stopping, of course, like the presence of the host himself in his official capacity as radio’s “true voice of love.” Truly, everyone was a fan of Basilio Profundo’s baritone, which perused his listeners’ love letters in such perfect timbre, so their ardor became more lofty, their anguish more grave.

  The radio idol could not sit still, repeatedly looking at his watch then at the door. Still no singers or singer, just one, actually. But yesterday he couldn’t resist the plural slip of the tongue to impress his fans. Manila’s finest voices were dying to be on his show.

  The lounge room seemed to expand, roof and walls pushed by large-fisted notes. The clarinet cleared its pipes, the oboe obliged in turn, the saxophone sailed forth a reply and the trumpet traipsed around the double bass busy double-dealing with our hearts, tu-dum-tu-dum-tu-dum, while the drums dropped in and out like some dabbler or doubtful visitor. All the while Mr. Alano, consummate musician that he was, hopped from harmonica to piano to electric guitar, his latest acquisition.

  In the kitchen, Mrs. Alano whisked the eggs.

  Summer was hotter than usual. Outside, fans, hats, cardboard scraps, even rags, waved in and out of conversations.

  “Who are the singers, do you know?”

  “Is it a he or she?”

  “They, stupid!”

  “Isn’t he just so charming, ay, look at him with his microphone.”

  “Wait until he speaks.”

  “Then he’ll teach them the meaning of charm.”

  “Then all those blowing mouths will learn to keep to their place, hah!”

  “Did you see one of them take off his false teeth before blowing?”

  “Lest he swallow them with all that strain.”

  “I hope he reads a love letter.”

  “I doubt it. I suspect this is just singing and blowing those stuff, ay, what a pity.”

  “I hope those singers are good then.”

  “Of course, they’re imported!”

  Basilio Profundo had been clearing his throat and intoning, “Testing, testing, one, two, three,” to his microphone. He was growing extremely nervous. He had sent a friend to pick up the crooner hours ago from her hotel in the city. She had no taste for small towns, and she was already a good hour and a half late. His eyes shuttled from microphone to door. As yet, it only promised a deluge of oglers and hangers-on.

  Mr. Alano was raring to shut the door. He could smell sweat, he could hear the ignorant asides. “How much longer, Basilio?” he asked, playing the first bar of “Rhapsody in Blue” on the harmonica. “Is that singer of yours coming at all?”

  Meanwhile, Mrs. Alano was perhaps pouring the caramel into a cake tin, tipping it here and there so the sweetness could spread evenly. She smiled to herself, she hummed a love song, she imagined a deep voice dipping into this amber lake, burnt just so for that added bite. She was a closet fan of the radio man, her adulation locked in lest her husband mock her pedestrian taste. She was no opera or Gershwin or Cole Porter buff, and she swooned over sticky-sweet declarations of the heart. She liked them as “trickly” as caramel just off the pan. How much longer, Basilio?

  Outside I was asking the same question. I needed proof, the reason for all the talk about a voice that did extreme things to the chest: shortness of breath, accelerated heartbeat, bursts of heat, and all that stuff the ladies spoke about in hushed tones.

  “Ay, like a volcano heaving in your chest!” someone said.

  I looked up. The smoking peak was a shimmering blue-grey-green, grand as ever. No, she would not bend that low, I wanted to retort.

  They were all there, siestas cut short for an urgent cause: Tiya Miling and Tiya Viring (they never missed a single Lovingly Yours program), Tiya Asun (she always listened on Tiya Viring’s radio), other women from other streets, even young, giggly girls my age (but I’m not one to giggle), and of course the twins making guava-breath mists on the windows. But not my mother. Our family did not own a radio.

  “I don’t think she’s coming at all,” Mr. Alano said, puffing his cigar while running the second bar of Gershwin on the piano. He had okayed this music assignation, even if he felt nothing but contempt for Lovingly Yours. He needed “some exposure, the long awaited career break.” He could be discovered in the airwaves, well, why not? He was tired of funerals and weddings and birthdays and such. He had always found them demeaning anyway, what with his prodigious talent. “So are we recording or not? I don’t have forever, you know,” he added, bearing down on the keys with such authority that the band was silenced.

  Mr. Alano’s hair glistened with Three Flowers pomade. The greyish, flat plain was a landing pad for the afternoon sun streaming throug
h the windows. Basilio Profundo was as thickly pomaded, but his hair had natural waves that poured towards his forehead. A thick, slick curlicue of hair, which bounced each time he moved, hid a deepening frown.

  Mrs. Alano was unlike these dandies. Her tight curls were unbound, like a cloud of well-whisked egg whites framing her face. She had white hair and a still-young face. Untouched by the escalating anxiety outside her domain, she was now laying slices of pineapple all over the lake of caramel, including the sides of the tin. This would not only be an upside-down but an inside-out cake as well. She had decided to improvise: the caramel-coated pineapple should be displayed all around the cake. Sweet truth exposed! Ah, but what she would have done to find glazed cherries and walnuts. But we make do, this is not America. She looked at the glossy picture of the exquisite upside-down confection on her imported cookbook and sighed.

  At this juncture, our poor radio man was saved. Not that the singer from Manila ever arrived (we never knew what happened to her and the supposed escort, though there were rumors that are better left off this page). It was Miss VV who arrived instead, walking into the lounge from her rounds at the hospital, still in her white uniform. She had come to watch her suitor perform.

  All the men stood up, and those who were standing sort of inclined their heads in acknowledgment. She had this effect, you see. Mr. Alano instantly revived Gershwin’s rhapsody on his piano, harmonica, then his electric guitar. Radio man dropped his voice even lower as he whispered, “Lovingly yours, Basilio Profundo” to his microphone. One of the horn players discreetly took out his false teeth. Then the clarinet, the oboe, the saxophone, the trumpet, the double bass and the drums came alive in a thunderous harmony. We had to cover our ears. Tu-dum-tu-dum-tu-dum, the men’s hearts went, in a beat so low it echoed down to somewhere lower than the stomach, circled in that spot which I couldn’t name, tu-dum-tu-dum-tu-dum, before it wandered all the way to their very soles.

  Basilio rose to his feet, suddenly inspired. “Maybe, she could sing?”