Ruby Sky (First Chapter)

[miyako73]

I'm currently writing a story--I don't know yet if it is a novel--about an "old rich" family disintegrating after the death of their head, the father. I wonder if this chapter works. I want to introduce snippets of the family's status and dynamics and fragments of the narrator's background and personality. The narrator here ends up a transsexual, a femme fatale, all because of her desire to get back their wealth from his father's business partner, to start a relationship with the man who happens to be the son of the person who scammed them, and to bring back together her family members who succumb to mental illness, drug addiction, and prostitution. She does them all while she struggles to establish her new identity, to get her mother's approval, and restore her father's illustrious name.

I

I know when something bad is about to happen. I can feel intense sadness bubbling in my chest, down to my belly, and all over my rib cage. Fear manifests as a tingle from my head down to my spine. My thoughts run wild, asking if everyone is okay and trying to make sense of what I expect to occur. The same question rages like a bull furious in the recesses of my brain. It nags me to find out who it is this time. My head grows like it struggles to burst. My mind breathes and pulsates at a constant speed as fast as my heartbeat. Then I shiver like I give in to a fever before a headache pounding my forehead and squeezing my nape. I am no clairvoyant, but I just can tell. My skin pushes out the hair it buries and conceals. My hands unleash a tremor they cannot hold still and contain. I can sense the ominous and foreboding. Extreme joy precedes tragedy. Always, it seems. Always.

It has been that way since my paternal grandmother, who doted on me like I was hers to rear and protect, died from an undiagnosed cancer in her stomach area. A lot of talk and doubting ensued when the news about her demise broke. Some questioned her doctor’s expertise, although it was she who avoided seeing him. She did not want to preoccupy herself with what she had, what was rotting inside her body, and why her dark urine smelled. “When death comes knocking, don’t open the door. Don’t welcome him. Avoid meeting him eye to eye. Ignore him. Boredom, if not shame, will make him go away,” she said. Why it was male and human to her sounded interesting to me. Nobody really understood what she meant. Even the elders who were masters of ancient astrology and puzzling metaphors could not interpret.

Others blamed witchcraft after they found a voodoo doll under her bed while cleaning. Colored ball head pins pierced deep its bulging belly. “No wonder it was her stomach that was in pain,” said the old neighbor who interpreted dreams for a quarter. “How could someone hurt her?” My grandmother had always been good even to strangers. She fed and invited them to stay when they had nowhere to go. She had extra rooms built adjacent to her big stone house just for them. My father had told me how a stranger saved her mother, my great grandmother, from the drunk Japanese raping women on the spot during the war. A sort of lore, when a wounded thief showed up one night and stayed at her place to rest and recuperate, the next day he returned all the monies, jewelries, and valuables he took from his victims. My grandmother’s kindness so moved him that he promised her he would be, from then on, a changed man. If she was nice to those strange faces, how much more to people she knew and befriended? Her friends called her: “Mother of Perpetual Help”. They went to see her when they had problems, and she always helped. They sought her advices. They valued her opinions.

Their fictive story about her death and witchcraft, my earliest encounter with magical realism, fascinated my ears and gave me outlandish ideas to write in the future, but I knew that doll. I made it for her using an old shirt and black buttons from the torn skirt her servant used as rag for dusting. I stuffed it with pillow cotton as soft as a newborn’s cheek. It puffed and bulked the rag doll that came out paunchy. Gingerbread man popped up in my head when I drew the pattern on the old newspaper. I used the stitching I learned from her when she hand-hemmed her Sunday dress. My blind stitch looked neat and effortless. She had noticed it. At five, my creative streak had already surfaced, and my grandmother had encouraged it. A creative person herself who loved knitting and embroidery, she actually asked me to make her a pincushion. There was never a witch but a wild superstition. It could be her colon or her uterus. Maybe a wound inside or an infection killed her. It could even be her worst nightmare--we locals call bangungot--that prevented her to breathe and choked her to death while asleep.

Yes, Grandma Azon had lost weight and had become weaker each day, but nobody expected her to die too soon. She could still do some cooking, baking, and light chores. Adamant that she could still do the things that had become her routine, she tended her garden, fed and groomed her long-time pet, a chocolate Labrador named Fudge, and read thick Spanish novels she had collected over the years. She had never spent her last days lying down all day or being gloomy or feeling sorry for herself. She knew she was sick, but she forced herself to be strong and alive. Even the stomach pain that felt like a pinch in her intestine had not really bothered her. “I’m fine,” she told my father, “and it’s still bearable.” She promised to tell him if it was her time to give up, but she never did.

The day before she died, I won a poetry recitation contest. I did Joyce Kilmer’s “Trees”. The nuns showered me with praises, aside from a medal and a handful of fruit candies. I beat the older contestants, and I was not even in the first grade yet. I must have won because there was “God” in my poem, and the Catholic nuns, who ran the school, judged the contest. My eyes beamed with pride, and my smile intimated nothing but joy. Medals were important to me. Even small achievements made my father nod and say nice words. His patting of my shoulder and tousling of my hair made me very happy. I felt I was his child and he was my father.

Not minding her illness, Grandma Azon sent me a congratulatory message she wrote longhand on a cut piece of paper she folded together with the boxed sweets she specially made. It read, “Someday, you’ll be reading your own poems. Have some guava cupcakes.” The jellied cupcakes were sweet, but her encouraging optimism, which I understood as her last wish for me, was sweeter. The next day at three, when my grandmother would have sat by the wooden rail of the veranda sipping coffee, basking in the mid-afternoon sun, and watching her violet cattleyas blooming in June, she passed away peacefully in her usual afternoon nap. She was still warm and smiling when her servant found her dead. They said either my grandfather or her guardian angel fetched her. Thus the smile.

My other grandmother, a very religious woman, died inside the church her rich family built for the Jesuits. She suddenly fell, face down to the marble floor, while kneeling down and making the sign of the cross. They said it was the best way to die because it happened on a Sunday afternoon during Mass. “Jesus died at three o'clock,” said the priest. She must have died from exhaustion. Kneeling repeatedly caused her heart attack. Almost saintly, she prayed too much even when she was in the bathroom. I could hear her mumbled Hail Mary’s undisturbed by the noises, drips, and flushes. Her murmurs were holy. I wondered what sin she had done that asked for a great atonement. Not an exaggeration, rosary beads had never left her fingers. Thick and coarse, the calluses on her fingertips glowed pink as if they wanted to be noticed. Her friends teasingly said they were from counting money. She managed a couple of profitable businesses: giving out loans with high weekly interests and buying and selling household stuff with outrageous profit margins.

A bit less than fanatical, my mother inherited her mother’s rosary beads and religious habits. Her uncritical zeal and enthusiasm appeared like Grandma Adela’s when it came to church and faith. She also had my grandmother’s chic but old-fashioned style, which was all about the hair and soft makeup. They both liked their hair formed into buns as round and plump as medium tangerines. As for lipstick, they preferred dull red. Black dresses and long skirts filled their closets. Like my grandmother, my mother sauntered outside to enjoy summer mornings all dressed up and conservatively covered as if she had a church gathering to attend. Big ribboned hats when the sun was high and tall open-toe wedges to elevate themselves from the powdery ground completed their outdoor looks. Like mother, like daughter, indeed. I did not like their suffocating meddling and snobbish aloofness. My relationship with my mother was no different to what I had with my grandmother. Just too “old rich” and colonial for my open-minded and humble disposition.

I was in high school when Grandma Adela died. The morning it happened, a literary magazine published my very first short story. It was about an old woman, a recluse, who survived on eating roses. They paid me five hundred pesos, and I was the happiest wannabe writer that day. My father had now a reason to invite his friends over for a dinner, I thought. I would hear him say nice things about me again. It did not happen. What I heard from him was his muted crying and eulogy. She wanted a festive funeral, so what happened was not really a doleful mourning. People came to celebrate my grandmother’s burial like an elaborate party complete with food, drinks, lively songs, and jovial dances. They had their fill and more.

I did not know much about my grandfathers. They both died before I was born. I had been told that my mother’s father died due to loneliness. His youngest daughter, the favored among his children, eloped with his penniless farm assistant, who had no desirable breeding and dignified bearing. He refused to eat, even when my grandmother served him his favorite paella, a Spanish rice dish. Not long after, he gave up breathing. My father’s, on the other hand, fell head first from his horse while surveying the vast tract of land he just purchased. His forehead banged onto the protruding rock that was not even large enough to kill. He never woke up again. They said God had His own way of dealing with rich people. They seemed right. Their stories about my grandfathers’ deaths, to me, sounded uncanny and bizarre.

When I got a call from my mother, the spring semester, my final at Boston University, just ended. I got all my grades, and my average seemed good enough for With Honors. I decided to wait for the confirmation letter from the English Department before telling my parents what I had accomplished. I had not wasted their funds, after all. I could finally shut my mother up that my four years in the United States were not an expensive long vacation. In a couple of months, I would graduate and get my degree in Comparative Literature with a minor in Creative Writing. Who would not feel happy?

I had planned to go home and teach full time. If it would not pan out, I could work for my father in his newspaper and publishing business. I would like to think that my father started it years ago for me. He knew I had always wanted to write. I could discern his subtle support from the ironies that peppered his speech. Unlike my mother who had expressed her disapproval early on, he had never imposed his ways and ideas on me. He had learned his lesson when my older brother rebelled and failed him.

I was in grade school when my mother first tried to veer me away from writing. She thought most writers ended up as glorified beggars who could cough up deep words on an empty stomach. She had never encouraged me even a bit. Her put downs had made me not want to talk to her. She did create the wall between us. No matter how I tried, I just could not climb over.

I just finished my dinner when the phone rang. I had steak and pan-fried potato cubes to celebrate my four years of toil. The reduced balsamic sauce I made complemented well with the medium-rare meat I seared. The tiramisu I bought surprisingly tasted like Grandma Azon’s. I was still chewing the last chunk when I checked the caller’s ID. A lot of numbers appeared, an international call. I knew what it was about. I could feel the tingle throbbing on the crown of my head, signaling what was coming.

“Hello… Hello… Ma?” I asked. It must be her. The blows of the nervous breathing I heard sounded familiar. They fizzled on the phone like she did not want to say anything. “Ma, I know it’s you.” My hands shook. “What happened?” Grains of sweat started to form on my brow. “Is it about Papa?”

“Yes,” she said, “he’s in the hospital.” The resignation in her voice worried me. “We need you to come home while he can still speak.” She hung up the phone, or maybe she was disconnected, I thought. Very typical of my mother. Even in an emergency, she came off curt, terse, and telegraphic. I called back.

[hillwalker]

There's a lot to take in from your preamble; so many plot twists and turns and character transformations. I'm not sure how it helps the reader get to grips with the sample chapter but here are a few thoughts:

If this is the opening chapter it's a little slow to get going. Almost 200 words that tell us how the narrator feels when things are about to go wrong. And it's a little muddled as well - focussing on her chest, belly, rib cage, head, spine, brain, head (again), mind, forehead, nape, skin, hair, hands... Can you see why most readers might give up?

The theme of prescience continues as you introduce the history of the MC's grandmother. This is well-written up to a point - until paragraph 5 that repeats most of paragraph 2. Perhaps there's a better way of combining elements from both into a single paragraph. But the rich tapestry of family life is indeed well crafted and brings the characters to life. Which makes me wonder whether you would be better beginning the chapter with the opening line of paragraph 10 then backtracking. Firstly we're introduced to the narrator more naturally - and also there's the rather macabre plot of a child describing matter-of-factly how each of her grandparents died.

I enjoyed reading this. The parallel story of the MC's writing accomplishments and educational progress contrasting with a more unglamorous life back in the village works really well. Whether or not there's a novel in this depends on your stamina presumably, but it's certainly a promising start.

H

[miyako73]

Thanks, Hill. Yeah, I think it needs some trimming. Do you think my prose is juvenile? That's the one that has been bogging me down, how to improve my writing style. Thanks again.

[hillwalker]

Juvenile? Hardly. Your voice is convincing and authoritative without ever suggesting we're not seeing things through the eyes of your young narrator. Stick with it!

H

[miyako73]

Thanks, Hill. I'm still trying to find my voice plus this grammar thing is just tough.

[miyako73]

Hi, Hill. Do you think this paragraph will work as my opening to make the beginning and the end of the chapter congruous? Thanks.

My struggle, my redemption, my story began that night in 2000, on the eve of my father’s fiftieth birthday, in the middle of May, my own Spring of discontent. When my mother called that night, I knew everything—my life, my world— would never be the same.

[hillwalker]

Hi miyako,

If I can be blunt, this reads more like a blurb than the opening to a story although I know some writers favour this melodramatic technique. Priming the reader right at the start so they know what to expect is often the way bodice-ripping block-busters begin but I guess your story fits a different genre.

Personally I would begin with something along the lines of 'When my mother called me on the eve of my father's fiftieth birthday I knew my life was about to change'.
There's none of the fraught repetition for one thing
- my struggle - my redemption - my life - my world -
that comes across as over-dramatizing. It reminded me of the lyrics to 'My Way' - hardly rewarding reading.

Nor do we need to know the exact month just yet - 'my own Spring of discontent' is another one of those 'sound bites' that's ok on the back cover of a book but hardly likely to grab the attention of anyone dipping into page one of the book.
Stick to telling the story rather than trying to summarize it in movie poster clichés. Leave that for when Tinseltown buy the film rights.

H

[miyako73]

Thanks a lot, Hill. That really helped. It gave me an idea where to go with my editing and simplification.

[miyako73]

Is there an improvement in this opening, Hill? Thanks again.


"What God messed up, I fixed them. That was my struggle. That was my redemption. It all began when my mother called that night, on the eve of my father’s fiftieth birthday. She might have called international from a payphone. All her coins must have been just enough for that brief talk. Even before hearing her voice, I knew everything was about to change. I knew I would never be the same."

[miyako73]

Is this duende? I had tried editing and shortening the first chapter of this novel, but my mind would not stop expounding and expanding it. When can you say enough is enough? Thanks for your advice.

Here's what my rewriting has resulted to (so far):



I

What God messed up, I fixed. That was my struggle and also my redemption.

She might have called international from a payphone, and all the coins jingling in the loose pocket of her skirt must have been just enough for that brief talk. When my mother called that night, on the eve of my father’s fiftieth birthday, on the day my final semester at Boston University just ended, I knew everything was about to change. Even before hearing her voice, even before knowing why she called, I felt I would never be the same.

I was never a clairvoyant, nor was I ever a believer of one, but I could tell when something bad was about to happen. Fear manifested as a tingle from my head down to my spine. Sadness, in a slow progression, boiled in my belly and bubbled in my chest. Anxiety nagged more than a gangrenous wound. I could sense the foreboding. My skin pushed out the hair it concealed. My hands unleashed a tremor they could not hold still and contain. My toes curled inwards, struggling to take comfort from my soles. I could sense the ominous.

Then I mumbled the prayer for the dead: Deus veniae largitor et humanae salutis amator, quaesumus clementiam tuam: ut nostrae congregationis fratres, propinquos, et benefactores, qui ex hoc saeculo transierunt, beata Maria semper virgine intercedente cum omnibus sanctis tuis, ad perpetuae beatitudinis consortium pervenire concedas.

When I was in that state of consciousness, my thoughts ran wild, asking if everyone was okay, wondering who it would be this time, deciphering signs and symbols that deprived and disguised meanings, trying to make sense of what I saw in my head that played frame by frame like a strip of negative film raised towards a glare of light revealing traces of ghostly images. Then my mind suddenly went blank, denying, dismissing, and refusing to believe before yielding to the unavoidable and eventual. I noticed this torment would come when I was at my happiest. It seemed extreme joy preceded tragedy. Always.

It had been that way since my paternal grandmother, who doted on me like I was hers to rear and protect, died from an undiagnosed cancer in the abdominal area. A great deal of talk, mostly blaming and doubting, ensued when the news about her demise broke. A few questioned her doctor’s expertise, although it was she who avoided seeing him. She did not want to preoccupy herself with what she had—what was rotting inside her body, where to go for the cure, how it all began, why her urine slightly darker than tea smelled, when to finally give in.

“When death comes knocking, don’t open the door. Don’t welcome him. Avoid meeting him eye to eye. Ignore him. Boredom, if not shame, will make him go away,” Lola Azon was heard to have said. Nobody really understood what she meant. Even the elders who were masters of ancient astrology and folklore could not interpret. Why death was male and human to her sounded interesting to me. It was my first lesson in personification—prosopopeia.

Some pointed their fingers at Tita Cynthia, my father’s only sister, whom they thought had abandoned my sick grandmother. As if in a chorus of a Greek tragedy, complete with wailing, grief, chastisement, and disgust, they all said, “It is the fate of a strong daughter to take care of her weak mother.”

My aunt did not really leave my grandmother just like that. She had her mother’s blessing when she left. It was she who encouraged her daughter to find her place in the police force. She had always pushed Tita Cynthia to break the barriers the cavemen—my grandmother’s word— had imposed on women. I heard Lola Azon express how she wanted my aunt to move on and only come home in a uniform even her brothers would salute.

I was there when my aunt pack her things. I saw her through the hole drilled by the termites the typhoon that year drove indoors. She folded her clothes in between sobs and filled her bag with a heavy set of hands. Both of my eyes I alternately used wet and filled the hole until I could no longer see her. I blew the water the size of a mung bean out of the hole, but it would not move or pop. I left to play with my friends and had never seen my aunt again until she came back to bury her mother. Although too late, she did come home a commissioned officer in crisp cerulean blue.

Others blamed witchcraft after they found a voodoo doll under her bed while cleaning. A bunch of colored ball head pins pierced its belly. “No wonder it was her stomach, her guts, her womb, the cradle of life, that were in pain,” said the old medicine man, whose left eye was cloudy gray from a cataract, as he checked the doll front and back and counted the pins. “These red ones are the most painful, bloody painful, and these black ones, the teeth of the devil, the daggers of the fallen angel, are the deadly.” He did not say what those green, yellow, and orange tiny balls attached onto the pins were.

“How could someone hurt her?” asked his doe-eyed wife who read palms and interpreted dreams for a peso. “This town just lost a spirit mother.” Her voice, hoarse from smoking tobacco through a coned banana leaf, cracked and ululated into a chant. She believed Lola Azon was the living embodiment of Inang Lawa, the lake spirit in our mythology who ripped her chest open with her bare hands, pulled her heart out, and threw it into the sky to become the moon, the mother of the stars. My grandmother was the only one in our town who had this name, Corazon—the Spanish word for heart.

She had always been good even to strangers. She fed and invited them to stay when they had nowhere to go. She had extra rooms built adjacent to her big stone house just for them. “Strangers can be angels, you know,” Lola Azon would say to anyone who listened to her story, how, during the war, a masked stranger riding a horse with no gun or bladed weapon but his latigo del diablo—a long braided whip made of leather, spiked with crocodile teeth, and understood as the tail of the devil—saved her mother from the drunk Japanese who raped women on the spot and slashed them to death with their katanas.

Another incident, during a long drought in the fifties, a blind stranger found and dug out a giant yam that saved my grandmother’s family from hunger. He did not even barter it for something or sell it to them. He knocked on their door, handed the yam, and left without saying who he was. Nobody knew him, and he had never showed up again. He must be an angel, they thought. I could understand why Lola Azon had a soft heart for strangers.

A sort of lore, when a wounded robber showed up one night and stayed at Lola Azon’s place to rest and recuperate, the next day he returned all the monies, jewelries, and valuables he took from his victims. Her kindness so moved him that he promised her he would be a changed man from then on. He had become the village seer’s assistant, whom people paid to find lost persons, animals, and things. If my grandmother was nice to those strange faces, how much more to people she knew and befriended?

Her grateful friends said she was ina ng laging saklolo, a mother of perpetual help like the Holy Virgin. They went to see her when they had problems, and she always helped. They sought her advices. They valued her opinions. The young ones who had held her right hand to take it onto their foreheads out of respect could never forget Ompong Ina, their Old Mother who had always welcomed them to play in her orchard and allowed them to climb the trees when the guavas yellowed and the jackfruits burst and sweetened the air.

Their fictive story about Lola Azon’s death and witchcraft, my earliest encounter with magical realism, fascinated my ears and gave me outlandish ideas to write in the future, but I knew that doll that caused the stir. I made it for her using my old Mickey Mouse shirt and the black buttons from the torn skirt her servant used as rag for dusting. I stuffed it with pillow cotton as soft as a newborn’s cheek. It puffed and bulked the rag doll that came out overfilled and paunchy. Gingerbread man popped up in my head when I drew the pattern on the old newspaper. I used the stitching I learned from her when she hand-hemmed her favorite Sunday dress. My blind stitch looked neat and effortless. She had noticed it. At five, my creative streak had already surfaced, and my grandmother had encouraged it. A creative person herself who loved knitting and embroidery, she actually asked me to make her a pincushion.

There was never a scary witch or a voodoo man but a wild superstition. It could be her colon or her uterus. Maybe a wound in her abdomen or an infection killed her. It could even be her worst nightmare—locally known as bangungot—that suffocated her lungs, prevented her to breathe, and choked her to death while asleep.

Yes, Lola Azon had lost weight and had become weaker each day, but nobody expected her to die so soon. She could still do some cooking, baking, and light chores. Adamant that she could still do the things that had become her routine, she tended her garden, fed and groomed her long-time pet—a chocolate Labrador named Fudge—and read the thick Spanish novels she had collected over the years. She did not spend her last days lying down all day, being gloomy, or feeling sorry for herself. She knew she was sick, but she forced herself to appear strong and sound alive. Even the stomach pain that felt like a pinch in her intestine had not really bothered her. “I’m fine,” she told my father, “and it’s still bearable.” She promised to tell him if it was her time to give up and rest, but she never did.

The day before she died, I won a poetry recitation contest. I did Joyce Kilmer’s “Trees”, but I so wanted Walt Whitman’s “Oh Captain! My Captain!” for its drama as melancholic as the hit novella on the radio about two lovers where one was doomed to die and the other was destined to mourn. I was a sucker for that kind of story.

On the stage, the nuns showered me with praises, aside from a medal and a handful of fruit candies. I beat the older contestants, and I was about eight, still in second grade. I must have won because there was God in my poem, and the Catholic nuns who ran the school judged the contest. My eyes beamed with pride, and my smile intimated nothing but joy. Medals were important to me. Even small achievements made my father, whom I called Papang, nod and say nice words. His patting of my shoulder and tousling of my hair made me very happy. I felt I was his son and he was my father.

Not minding her illness, Lola Azon sent me a congratulatory message she wrote longhand on a cut piece of rice paper together with the boxed sweets she specially made. It read: “Someday, you’ll be reading your own poems. Have some strawberry cupcakes.” The jellied cupcakes were sweet, but her encouraging optimism, which I understood as her last wish for me, was sweeter. The next day at three, when my grandmother would have sat by the wooden rail of the veranda sipping coffee or tea, basking in the mid-afternoon sun, and watching her garden’s July blossoms, she peacefully passed away in her usual afternoon nap. She was still warm and smiling when her servant found her dead. They said either my grandfather or her guardian angel fetched her. Thus the smile. I did not really believe that. Lola Azon had said this to me: “Angels are real people who help.”

My other grandmother, a very religious woman, died in the church her rich family built for the Jesuits. She suddenly fell, face down to the marble floor, while kneeling and making the sign of the cross. They said it was the best way to die because it happened on a Sunday afternoon during Mass. “Jesus breathed his last at three o’clock,” said the town priest.

I was in the church that slow afternoon, but I did not see it happen. So bored and sleepy, I walked around, checking the pews and lifting the saints for lost coins, a weekly habit I had had until the priest prohibited the selling of live swallows the sellers dyed avocado green, banana yellow, and bellfruit red to look like parakeets. Yes, we associated colors to fruits. All day every Sunday outside the church, farmers showed up with wooden cages full of colorful birds that were originally white, brown, and grey. Children would buy and take them home as pets. A promise to St. Francis of Assisi, I would look for coins inside the church during Mass, so I could buy a bird sold for a quarter and set it free afterwards. When I heard a clunk, I thought someone dropped and lost a coin, a big coin enough to buy four birds. I ran towards where the metallic sound was. It was my grandmother’s huge gold medallion earring that first hit the marble floor.

Lola Adela must have died from exhaustion, and prolonged or repetitive kneeling caused her heart attack. She prayed too much even when she was in the bathroom. It took her a couple of hours when she had a bath. I could hear her mumbled Hail Mary’s undisturbed by the noises, drips, and flushes. Her murmurs were holy. I wondered what sin she had done that asked for a great atonement. Not an exaggeration, her rosary beads made of pearls had never left her fingers. Thick and coarse, the calluses on her fingertips glowed pink as if they wanted to be noticed. Her friends teasingly said they were from making and counting too much money. I thought so too. Lola Adela owned a huge store that overpriced everything.

In private, many had suspected that the death of Tito Bernard, my mother’s only brother, had something to do with my grandmother’s fervid penance even the town priest could not rival. On his twentieth birthday, my uncle drank paint thinner and suffocated himself with a plastic grocery bag. He put it over his head and tied so tight around his neck that he asphyxiated. Lola Adela just could not easily forgive herself. She had hoped her endless praying could cleanse her guilt and her son’s transgressions. Tito Bernard dated someone his mother vehemently opposed as if the world would end had he continued seeing him.

The saddest thing I had seen in my life was more intense than Michelangelo’s Pieta. The agony was alive, and the sorrow real. Raul, my uncle’s lover, knelt and squatted on the floor with Tito Bernard’s lifeless body on his unyielding lap and in his embrace that cradled and clasped like a cotton hammock. As still as an altar statue with a forlorn stare, speechless and immobile, crying without sobs and sniffles, his tears slowly falling to linger on his cheeks, he watched the contours of my uncle’s face the plastic bag failed to obscure. I could not really put all the blame on Lola Adela. The word for what my uncle had with Raul that could not speak for itself had not yet existed in our language.

A bit less than fanatical, my mother, whom I called Mamang, inherited her mother’s rosary beads and her religious habits. Her uncritical zeal and passive enthusiasm when it came to church and faith appeared like Lola Adela’s. She knew all the saints and their feast days she celebrated by fasting.

My mother also had my grandmother’s chic but old-fashioned style, which was all about the hair and the matching soft makeup. They both liked their hair formed into buns as round and plump as honey tangerines. As for lipstick, they preferred red but dull to minimize the pouts of their lips. Black dresses and long skirts filled their closets. Like my grandmother, my mother sauntered outside to enjoy summer mornings all dressed up and conservatively covered as if she had a church gathering to attend. Big ribboned straw hats when the sun was high and tall open-toe wedges to elevate themselves from the dry, powdery ground completed their sunny looks and outdoor attires. Everything about my mother had the traces of my grandmother.

Like mother, like daughter, indeed. I did not like their suffocating meddling when they felt their voices were important and their snobbish aloofness when they thought nobody deserved even a syllable from them. My relationship with my mother was no different to what I had with my grandmother. Their personalities and temperaments clashed with mine. Their words pierced like a thousand daggers disemboweling me. Their sarcasms slapped every inch of my face. Their smirks dismissed my existence in their midst. Just too “old rich” and too colonial Spanish for my open-minded taste and humble disposition.

I was in high school when Lola Adela died. The morning it happened, a literary magazine published my very first short story. It was about an old woman, a recluse, who survived on eating roses. They paid me five hundred pesos, and I was the happiest wannabe writer that day. My father had now a reason to invite his friends over for a dinner, I thought. I would hear him say nice things about me again. It did not happen. What I heard from him was his muted crying and eulogy to her mother-in-law, who had expressed before she died that she wanted a festive funeral. So what happened was not really a doleful mourning. People came to celebrate my grandmother’s burial like an elaborate party complete with food, drinks, lively songs, and jovial dances. They had their fill and more.

Someone asked me before what made Lola Adela different from Lola Azon. Without putting much thought, I said, “Lola Adela showed me heaven, and I found no salvation. Lola Azon showed me hell, and I found deliverance.” Pressed to say more, I asked instead, “Hadn’t Lola Azon prepared me for this hell called life?”

I did not know much about my grandfathers. They both died before I was born. I had been told that my mother’s father died due to loneliness. His youngest daughter, the favored among his three children, eloped with his farm assistant, who had no education and breeding—in his household, that meant the man did not come from a rich family or he had no name. My grandfather refused to eat even when my grandmother served him his favorite paella—a Spanish rice dish. Not long after, his lungs gave up, and his heart stopped.

Though regretful in the end, Tita Lorena just wanted to prove that she could survive and succeed without her parents’ influence and money. They had proven, indeed, that anyone could start from nothing. The last time I heard, she and her husband, Tito Eslao, made good in oil and shipping. “My wealth does not make me happy; my family does,” she would write in her letters to remind us how she once made a mistake. Tito Eslao, in the end, supported my grandparents financially when their businesses failed. They had accepted him before they died. Trial and error, it seemed, was a household rule in my mother’s family.

On the other hand, my grandfather, on my father’s side, fell head first from his horse while surveying the vast tract of land he just purchased. His forehead banged onto the protruding rock that was not even large enough to kill. He never woke up again. His family suspected that he must have been rapturously jubilant because he finally got the land he had always eyed to own dirt cheap from a desperate gambler. Others who were not sympathetic pointed out that it was a bad karma that hit him.

They said God had His own way of dealing with rich people. They seemed right. Their stories about my grandfathers’ deaths, to me, sounded uncanny and bizarre. Innocent but not too callow then, I strongly believed they were divine punishments for crafty, greedy people. With that in mind, I had never expressed to anyone that I would be, like them, a smart, successful businessman someday.

I always knew I would be a writer, but I had never thought that one day I would be writing my story that began when I got that call from my mother in May 2000. My final semester at Boston University just ended. Excited like how my father’s farmers were before a harvest, I had been expecting to wear a red gown and a black cap and graduate With Honors in a week or two. I had not wasted my parents’ money, after all. I could now tell my mother that my four-year stay in the United States was not an expensive long vacation. Why would I not feel elated? I could finally show my father a diploma, a degree in Comparative Literature with a minor in Creative Writing. What else would make me happier? Like those same farmers after a successful harvest, I felt I did well.

After four years of changing seasons in New England, I could now go back to where I came from, shatter my bubble, and exist in the real world among the good and the evil. I would now surrender to my fate. My destiny had been to live and survive in the midst of chaos and order. I knew that early on. They said mine was a suhi, a breech birth, where my feet could not wait to feel the air and scratch the surface while my head was still submerged and drowning. Many thought I would end up a doctor because being a child of suhi I could set bones and clear choking throats. Oh, superstition.

Instead, I planned to go home and teach full time. If it would not pan out, I could work for my father in his newspaper and publishing business. I would like to think that my father started it years ago for me. He knew I had always wanted to write. I could discern his subtle support from the ironies that peppered his speech. Unlike my mother who had expressed her disapproval early on, my father had never imposed his ways and ideas on me. He had learned his lesson a long time ago when his younger brother he supported and forced to go to a business college rebelled, ran away, and led a life of a vagabond.

Tito Nick did not want education. All he ever wanted was to play cards—Black Jack, Baccarat, Poker. He was good in odds and probabilities. He would count numbers in his head. He could read faces and sense bluffs. Many years later, he became a professional and finally made it in Nevada. I did not know the real reason though why he had remained single and told his parents never to expect a grandchild from him. He would make money not babies, he said. That hurt his father who valued his sons more than his daughter because of patrilineal continuity my uncle dismissed as nothing but genetic stress. Only Biology, besides Economics, tickled his fancy in high school. He knew some Darwinian concepts he understood using street lingo.

His mother did not really care, for she believed happiness, not procreation, was the sole reason why one had to struggle in life. To her, a nice, happy single man was way better than an irresponsible, cruel married one. My grandfather blamed my grandmother for philosophically castrating my uncle. I thought Tito Nick had his own reason deeper than what he had articulated with an awkward taint of embarrassment. It could be about his last girlfriend who left him for another man or his distrust towards anyone whom he thought would only exploit others or even his penile size that must have been too humiliating to him. He had Peyronie’s Disease that reduced his girth and shortened his length.

My father had lots of nice things to say about his brother. He never stopped telling her younger brother’s story when career choice came up in a conversation. “The lesson here is that if you want to be a beggar, be a damn good one and accept only bills,” he would say with a laugh made loud by pride.

Always on the other side, my mother did not go with the tide. I was in grade school when she first tried to veer me away from writing. She thought most writers ended up as glorified beggars who could cough up deep words on an empty stomach. “Do you know our heroes died because of what they had written?” she would ask me, and that did not scare me at all. Even a bit, she had never encouraged me or checked my writings, not even the shortest among my stories. Her put downs had made me not want to talk to her. She minced minimal words strongly punctuated by her stern hand gestures with an intent to advise, but they hit me like they were long, harsh reprimands. They lingered in my head, hardened my chest, and made me resentful. She did create the wall between us. No matter how I tried, I just could not climb over. I just could not go through.

I just finished my dinner when the phone rang that night. I had New York steak and pan-fried potato cubes to celebrate the end of my four years of toil and my father’s fiftieth birthday the next day. The creamy mushroom sauce that I meticulously made but could not match Lola Adela’s complemented well with the medium-rare meat I seared. The amaretto tiramisu I bought surprisingly tasted like Lola Azon’s. I was still chewing the last chunk that had a cherry on it when I checked the caller’s ID. A lot of numbers unfamiliar to me appeared. It must be an international call, I guessed. I knew what it was about. I could feel the tingle throbbing on the crown of my head, signaling what was coming. In my mind, I still hoped the news would be about my father’s bountiful sugarcane harvest or new building project or latest profitable investment. I still prayed it would be my father calling to inform me that he just wired the money I asked, and that, surely, would not interrupt the mood of the double celebration I prepared and enjoyed alone.

“Hello… Hello… Mang?” I asked. It must be her, I believed. I knew the sighs she let go. The blows of the nervous breathing I heard sounded familiar. They fizzled on the phone like she pressed her lips tight and forced herself to be mute. Her ambivalent silence buzzed like she wanted to say something but she could not. “Mamang, I know it’s you.” My hands shook, and so was the phone that hit my right temple and my trembling chin. “Mang, what happened?” Grains of sweat started to form on my brow. My shoulders lost their strength and drooped. “Is it about Papang?”

She coughed and swallowed the air that dried her spit. I could hear it. Her sniffling did not seem like she had a cold or a nasal discharge. She must have been crying before she dialed my number. “Hello?” Finally, she spoke. She sounded hoarse and stuffy, the usual sound of her voice when she cried her eyes out. My stubbornness had made her cry many times.

“Hello, Mang, breathe or drink some water.” I could hear cars and people passing by and coins clinking.

“Yes… I’m fine” she said. She did not call from the house. It sounded like she stood in the open air and near a busy street.

“Something happened to Papang? Tell me.”

“He is… he’s in the hospital. Very sick.” The resignation in her voice worried me. Her normal self who demanded a lot that she should be heard and listened was gone. As if someone told her to be strong and keep herself together, she regained her composure, and her usual demanding tone came back. “I need you to come home while he can still speak.” She hung up the phone as though she did not want to spend more on that call.

I thought maybe she got disconnected, but it seemed she was done. Very typical of my mother. Even to convey something important, she could not loosen up. Even in an emergency, she came off curt, brusque, and overbearing. I called back.

[hillwalker]

I'm away for a long weekend but I'll get back to this and give it the response it deserves,

H

[hillwalker]

Is this duende?

It has a certain rhythm of life if that's what you mean.

What would I change if I really had to? Remove : I could sense the ominous. You've already told us this in many ways - no need to labour the point.

I saw my aunt pack her things, through the hole drilled by the termites the typhoon that year drove indoors.
I had to re-read this and the paragraph that followed a number of times for it to make sense. To begin with I was trying to picture someone packing a case through a hole in a wall. Perhaps replace 'saw' with 'watched' - and we need to be clearer that the narrator's eyes are tearing up rather than the 'hole' itself.

And this part appearing the way it does 3/4 of the way through looks rather suspect, as if you had lost track of how you began the story so many paragraphs earlier:
I always knew I would be a writer, but I had never thought that one day I would be writing my story that began when I got that call from my mother in May 2000. My final semester at Boston University just ended.

Also, since you follow this by telling more of your family history it makes the sudden authorial intrusion even more jarring. And to tell us a third time in order to bring us up to that point where you receive the telephone call... I'd suggest you look at other ways of leading us to this particular moment.

Finally I'd also suggest you establish the specific setting for this story sooner rather than later. Did the narrator grow up in the Far East in some Spanish-speaking colony? Specifics always add rather than detract in tales where setting is so integral to understanding.

A pleasure to read (despite its length).
Your work shows a depth of feeling for the human condition and the unasked-for legacy of family ties.

H

[miyako73]

Thank you very much, Hill. Do you accept editing work? Maybe in the future I'll need someone to help me edit this one. I need to finish this first. Thanks again.

[hillwalker]

I'm happy to read stuff through for you free of charge - but I'm no editor.

H

[miyako73]

deleted

[miyako73]

I'm not being vain for showing what I've written. My self-confidence is almost nil. I just can't start writing the third chapter. Something in my mind puts down my writing style, vocabulary, and grammar. When I read my stuff, it seems someone annoyingly whispers boringgggg. Do you think I should continue?

II

Barraged with disturbing thoughts about my father’s health and bombarded with morbid images worse than the photos of operated body parts in medical journals, my forehead pulsated as rapid as the pulse of a manic and warmed like I gave in to a fever. My chest felt heavy and agitated as if a weight was dangling and swinging inside like a grandfather clock’s pendulum moving fast and forever from side to side to side. Did he have cancer? Was it his heart again? Did his Marlboro-scorched lungs give up? Was it his prostate? Just too many questions churning in my head like soap bubbles bouncing and popping everywhere.

But I had to continue packing, so I gathered my things on the bed, picked the ones I needed most, and neatly filled the carry-on bag. While taking a break, I cleaned my laptop, a ThinkPad I bought second-hand, and deleted the old files, the corrupted ones, and those that would embarrass me if someone got hold of them. I logged in to AOL, and “You’ve got mail!” sounded off to welcome. It was junk, advertising blue pills for depression. I moved the cursor down and saw the last e-mail I received. It nudged my finger to click on it.

My father wrote: Basta tug kaw, tig ako muhinok sang kanmo kuwarto. Piyamasa ko tanan ing kanmo mga piyanuwat, ing kanmo mga piyanghuna-huna, ing kanmo mga piyamati. Dakuay ing kanak pagtoo kanmo. Ayaw sa pagsayanga. Ayaw sa pagbale-walaa. Ayaw sa pagkalingawi. Musakit gayod ing boot ko.

I forced myself not to cry, but my eyes would not yield to my effete, conflicted will. My constant sniffling sounded like I had a head cold and could not breathe. I let go what were welling along the lines of my lower eyelids and continued sorting out the stuff I scattered on the bed, on the floor, on the table, on the counter, all over my studio-sized apartment. Into the cargo box, I tossed the books I had already read and those I no longer needed, wishing I had enough time to sell them on eBay. I ended up leaving the box bulking outside my door for the tenants who might be interested to rummage. I knew a couple of Emerson students in the building who could reuse my textbooks.

I kept Arundathi Roy’s The God of Small Things and a bilingual poetry collection of Pablo Neruda, so I had something that would keep me awake on the airplane. I just could not close my eyes when I traveled by land, water, or air, always on the watch, in case something would happen all of a sudden. I did not want to die unaware or expire while asleep. So I needed an antidote to boredom. Her witty prose and his sonnets were enough to keep me preoccupied and entertained for the entire thirty-hour travel to Davao, the city far south of Manila.

When I found an old issue of The Boston Globe under the bed, I could not help but remember how my father would pretend that his eyes hurt so I would read the morning paper to him. He would only tell me to stop after he finished two cups of Colombian coffee without cream but with sugar, a lot of brown sugar. At six, I could already read, but most of what I read were just words composed of letters to me. My father would correct me if I mispronounced a word and explain its meaning after seeing me scratch my head. I was never afraid of ghosts and dead people because of him. He had me read crime stories, accident headlines, and morose obituaries. When I encountered news about sex, rape, or abuse, he would tell me to skip them because they were boring. I knew about selling, buying, renting, leasing from the classified ads he included in my reading repertoire. Later I found out that what I had been doing for him was his way of teaching and spending time with me due to his busy schedule. I was glad he did not become a caffeine addict or a diabetic.

I called United Airlines to check their baggage policy. They would only allow two pieces of luggage and a small carry-on bag. I could not take all my clothes with me. Those I had overgrown, the old ones that already shrank and faded, those that had holes and stains, and the ones that were no longer in style went to the donation box, together with the bed sheets, the wool blankets, the pleated curtains, the table linens that were all soiled and unwashed. I had already phoned the Salvation Army for pickup. They would also accept the bed and mattress, the tables and chairs, and the two book shelves I emptied.

I gave all the kitchen stuff—pots, pans, plates, bowls, and the rest in the cupboards and in the drawers—to the Latina woman who cleaned the hallways and the front lobby of the apartment building. Elena had been my friend since I first showed up in the lobby with boxes and bags ready to move in. Her smile that freely glowed on her face welcomed and put me at ease. At that instant, I did not feel foreign in the country that looked strange to me. She told me where to go for used furniture, discounted appliances, and cheap household wares. I had saved a lot because of her, so I invited her to grab slices of pizza with me. From then on, we had trusted each other. She would tell me about her kids, and I would tell her about my father. Once in awhile, she would bring me tamales, salsa fresca, and Mexican wedding cookies, and I would take her out to Chinatown for lunch or dinner.

As her last act of kindness, even though I did not ask for it, when she heard I was moving out, Elena promised to clean the carpet and dust the windows in my studio apartment for free. She did show up early with a vacuum and a feather duster. Done and still not tired, she offered to help me clear the small kitchen and polish the tiny bathroom. She did the microwave first, taking out the glass rotating plate inside for a thorough washing. The dish liquid soap smelled like juices of limes and lemons mixed together, and she loved it. I gave it to her. She liked the dishwashing brush with a stainless steel handle. I gave her that one too. The color of the sponge still wrapped and sealed matched her hairclip. I let her have it.

“Microwave and fridge stay right?” she asked

“Yep, we really need to clean them, so they won’t charge me,” I said.

“You give deposit before move in?”

“Yep, one-month rent. Nine hundred.”

“Maybe you get back seven only. The sink in bathroom broken. One window also not good.”

“I hope they won’t charge me a lot.”

“No worry. Owner very good man.”

“Yes, he is. He gave me a used table lamp when I moved in.” The phone rang. My travel agent, whose office was a block from my place, called to inform me that my ticket was ready.

“When you leaving, Yuri?”

“In two days.”

“Moving to different state?”

“No, I’m going home.”

“No come back here anymore?” Her lower lip pouted, and her face contorted a disappointed frown of a sulking child. Although silly-looking and childish, she had expressed what she felt.

“I don’t know. Maybe someday, I will,” I said.

“No more study? No more schooling?”

“I’m done. My last exam was three days ago.”

“You very good here.” She pointed her forefinger to her head, and the yellow latex glove on her hand dripped. “Me see you reading and reading.” She put her open hands together like she was begging and looked at them as if they held a book. “Always reading.” It seemed, from her smile, that she had been checking on me from time to time to see what I had been doing. “You very nice man also.”

“You’re nice too, Elena. You’ve been very nice to me. I’ll never forget that.”

“You miss Boston when you home?”

“Yes, I surely will. The parks, the subway, the snow during winter, the friendly people, of course, you.” Done with the kitchen counter, I emptied the drawers and pulled the brown-stained plastic liners.

“Almost finish, Yuri.”

“Yep. After this pantry, we’re done.”

She took off the gloves and washed her hands. “All family in Philippine? You alone here? Nobody? ”

“Yes, all of them are back home waiting for me. I’m the only one here in the U.S.”

“Oh! Say to them, your family, me, your friend, say hello to them.” She hugged me and held both of my hands. “Thank you, Yuri, very much.” She must have remembered the four hundred dollars she borrowed that I eventually forgave because she just could not pay. Her kids were all in college, and she had four. She had helped me clean my apartment many times though, and the small favors she had done for me were more than enough.

“Thank you too, Elena.” I helped her carry the bags full of trash. Even though she liked talking while cleaning, the twenty-dollar I ended up giving her was all worth it. I just loved how she acted out what she said almost word for word. In less than an hour, she finished everything, and we ended up having a nice chat. I gave her extra five dollars for her lunch, a dictionary that still looked like new, and a book on English grammar I bought from Amazon.com when I first arrived. She had mentioned it before that she would enroll at Bunker Hill for ESL after she paid all her bills and credit cards.

My friends had asked me why I befriended Elena, who was more than twice my age, slightly obese, a Mexican who could barely speak English, and a cleaning lady. “I see a good mother and a good sister in her,” I said to them.

Besides, I learned it from my father who once said that if he wanted to know the goodness of someone’s heart he closed his eyes. I loved him even just for that. He looked at everyone as his equal. I did not really wonder why his office employees and farm workers liked him. He would give them money on Christmas, and in return they would give him fruits, vegetables, and even chickens as gifts. He would have them cooked for all his employees and workers to share. My father believed that if he gave today, tomorrow he would receive. I heard Elena say the same thing too: Lo que se siembra se cosecha. She meant, “What goes around comes around.”

The trash out, the carpet spotless, the windows dust-free, what were needed to be cleaned and washed dried, everything that had to be taken out gone, my empty apartment looked big and appeared eerily spacious as if its previous occupant just suddenly vanished and left no trace. Only the three pieces of baggage leaning onto the wall remained, reminding me that I was that occupant who would be leaving the next day. I walked around to check if I had forgotten or left out something, a habit I had learned from my father who had a slight case of OCD and would check all the doorknobs at least twice before leaving the house or his office. While I was in the living room checking a dark spot on the white-painted ceiling, a sudden rush of weakness hit me. It felt like a sharp emptiness pulling out my innards, carving my stomach hollow, and making my chest and my throat sour. It seemed my bones and flesh were about to break and collapse, even though I had not exhausted myself.

My feet could not move as if their heavy weight had prevented me to lift them. They hardened like they were all bones and solid stuck onto the floor. Like a planted pole wobbling in the middle of a storm, my body struggled to regain its strength and balance. I had nothing to hold or lean on. Forcing a step would certainly make me fall over. I sat as slow as someone who had a big boil on his bottom and lay down on the carpeted floor, my back flat and relaxed, my hands on top of my belly clasping each other, my tired legs stretched and resting, my eyes to the ceiling. My skin blended into the tan color of the thick wool threads. I stayed there quiet and motionless, ignoring the time and wanting a long, undisturbed repose.

Outside, Spring that year revealed its full bloom, spreading the scent of May all over. The gusts of wind from the north hissed and whistled. The soft breezes welcomed everyone into the gentle warmth of the sun. The streams of cool air lingered on people’s faces and clung on their backs. The swans I saw before, as agile as those ballerinas at the Wang Theater glissading in their grand pas de deux, must have floated on Charles River and glided around the expanding ripples, showing off their whitest plumes.

I lived on Tremont Street, a walking distance to the Public Garden. When I had nothing to do and had time to spare, I would spend my lazy afternoons rambling around the botanical park and would only stop when I found an overgrown tree. I would sit on its long roots peeking like a bench and lean my back on its trunk or lie down under its shade to watch migrating birds and black-spotted butterflies until the dusky gray of five o’clock suffused the landscape.

Inside my apartment, as calm as the winter-ravaged tree still leafless and solitary just outside of Boston Common, my body remained idle on the floor appearing lifeless—almost if not of my faint sighs and slow breathing.

When my father asked me why I chose Boston or New England, I prodded him to read the book he gave me on my fourteenth birthday: The Scarlet Letter. Yes, Nathaniel Hawthorne partially influenced my choice. The quaint charm of the old world tickled my fertile imagination. Maybe I could write a story about a couple holding hands and trudging down the narrow cobblestone street or fighting and crying on each other’s arms under the flickering flame of the gas street lamp, I thought. The brick houses and the old buildings in the photographs I saw evinced untold stories that had to be written. I could write them, I confidently felt. When I arrived, I realized I would be living in the middle of the theater district, where pubs, bars, lounges, and clubs stood open for me to explore. I did not become alcoholic, but I had forgotten the old world I had dreamed so many times.

On the eve of my departure to the States—we called U.S.A that way— my family prepared a despedida, a sendoff dinner, where they greeted me Bon Voyage. How that greeting entered our local vocabulary had baffled me since I first heard it from my father’s mouth when Uncle Nick, his brother, left for Macau. I was four or five then. We could have said Madayaw na Pagpanaw to mean the same thing, but it seemed the foreign one sounded more appealing to those who had valued things imported—such as Nike shoes, Levi’s jeans, Johnnie Walker, and Hershey Bar—like my folks whom I considered both victims and purveyors of colonial mentality and very proud of it.

They said it was the French Catholic missionaries in the early nineteen hundreds who taught good manners and European politeness to our town’s small brown natives, who ran around unabashedly naked and comfortably barefoot, but I could not find anything about those French in our history books. I did, however, read early Spanish ethnographies detailing how my wild ancestors would avoid the ill-boding gazes of the white men’s blue eyes, which they believed could cause death from nosebleed, ulcer, and cholera. It must have been the tall, burly Franciscan friars in brown hooded habits who scared the hell out of them.

I did think of my wild ancestors while at the dining table when my father mentioned how they were exhibited to the public while homesick and semi-naked in the middle of Midwestern winter at the St. Louis World's Fair in 1904. Many generations later, their own flesh and blood would be going to the land of the blue-eyed. I felt as though I was an inexperienced gladiator travelling to the land of the lions. I had many misconceptions about Americans then. I thought Beverly Hills 90210 was America and I would struggle to fit in.

When we celebrated, it was a feast, and that evening was no different. My favorite lechon—a whole pig roasted until its skin fried by its own fat became bright reddish-brown and as crispy as a tortilla chip—occupied the mid-third of the crocheted white lace-covered dining table. The relleno—a broiled boneless chicken stuffed with sweet and savory filling—tasted exquisitely sapid with golden sultana raisins and Vienna sausage. We all liked the caldereta—a goat stew made with tomato sauce, large-cubed potatoes, canned olives, and green peas. The escabeche—a fried big fish simmered in a thick sauce—was neither too sour nor too salty, nor was it too sweet. The picadillo—a dish of ground beef heavily spiced with hot peppers, herbs, and other aromatics—bit our lips, stung our gums, and burnt our tongues. We could not wait for the adobo—a braised pork staple in every celebration my parents hosted—we nibbled with bamboo-steamed red rice. It was la fiesta toda la noche, an all night party, in our house.

My mother baked the sweet empanadas filled with ripe mangoes and the buttered ensaymadas that melted in our mouths without even chewing. What she did surprised me. She usually left everything to our household help. My father served local beer, imported brandy, Cuban rum, and red wine. He wanted me drunk, so I could freely tell him what I had in mind. I did get sloshed, but still I could not open up. I was thankful though that everyone in the family showed up to extend their encouraging wishes I so needed. My first time to be away from home, I had many doubts circling in my head.

Neil, our eldest, took a day off from the seminary. My father named him after Armstrong, the American Astronaut who made "one giant leap for mankind". My brother could already jump, leap, and hop at two. My father thought the name suited him. After Neil’s fifth birthday, he developed a strange disease affecting the muscles, nerves, and bones of his legs and feet, and it was not polio. He could not stand or walk for weeks. His feet could not feel the ground he labored to stand on, and his legs wobbled when he attempted to rise from his bed.

My mother devoted whole nine months of novena to Saint Fina, the patron saint of the disabled. My brother was healed, but she had promised him to the Divine. It was she who pushed Neil into priesthood. My father supported her idea because having a priest or a nun in the family, as widely believed, assured them of God’s graces, and that was good for his unpredictable businesses. Although my brother loved to cook, he opted for a cassock over an apron and a white coat. His only consolation was that a priest could also be chef later.

Eva, two years older than I, showed up with her boyfriend, Maru, the flashy son of a well-known politician. Her name was from the biblical Eve, and our mother stuck to her literal interpretation that she should concentrate on becoming a dutiful wife to her future husband and a doting mother to their future children. My sister could have been a brilliant lawyer, but my mother had her take Home Economics to prepare her for domestic life. Spending four years to learn how to set a table, fix a master bed, or dust off a wall was just a waste of everything, I thought, but my mother would not budge. Yes, my mother had picked Maru for my sister because she and his socialite mother had been close friends since their high school days. I did wonder why she had never questioned our mother’s strict, controlling treatment towards her.

I pitied my sister who read the Supreme Court’s rulings only as a pastime inside her locked room. She did not want anyone to know what she really wanted for herself. I knew because she would ask me to hide the thick, hardbound book when my mother would check her shelves for something she should not have. She would knit and crochet though when my mother was around to make her smile, to make her feel that she was a good mother, and to make her believe that indeed her daughter had become fully domesticated. When it came to Eva, my father had no say. It was his wife who decided what was good for their eldest daughter. To deride my mother and subtly show her disdain, Eva could only say Dura lex, sed lex—“The law is harsh, but it is the law.” My mother would dismiss her as someone speaking in tongues.

Marie, our youngest, still in high school then, joined us, but she was not allowed to drink. My mother, at first, thought of naming her Ave Maria, but Lola Azon, my father’s mother, rabidly protested. She thought her daughter-in-law had gone over-the-top with her overt religiosity. As a compromise, they settled on the more contemporary name that still sounded innocent and virginal. In our household, only Marie had the gall to oppose my mother. She used suicide threat when she forced her to change her mind. My father would just laugh at her childish blackmail. She squirmed at the sight of blood, even a tiny drop from a pinprick; how could she slit her wrists? Nevertheless, he spoiled her to the hilt. My parents gave all what she wanted, I suspected, because she was our bunso—our youngest.

The most fashion-conscious in the family, Marie had her own style, very expensive style. The only one—besides me, of course— who could explain the difference between scarlet and vermillion, she tinged her cheeks and tinted her lips early. My mother just looked the other way, hoping it was an adolescent phase that would soon change. At eight when she made it known that she wanted to do ballet, our mother could not express her disapproving opinion about the tutu and tights being too unchaste and scandalous. She did quit after years of daily practice not because of my mother. She just could not execute jetes and fouettes without hurting and twisting her ankles. She had rested from dance for awhile and found something engrossing in Russian poetry, which my mother again deemed too mature for my sister. Although last-born, she just loved Marina Tsvetaeva’s—“What shall I do, singer and first-born, in a world where the deepest black is grey, and inspiration is kept in a thermos?”

I was glad they were all present that joyous evening and not resentful that our parents would be spending a lot for my studies abroad. Before I retired to my room, they came up to me one by one.

Niel said, “Everything is God’s grace. So go for it.” He prayed over me, his heavy hands on my head. His mumbled blessing that came out from his partially closed mouth, for some reason, allayed the fear I had that I could not understand.

Eva kissed me on my right cheek that was blushing from the red wine. “As long as you’ll come back to write about the injustices in this damn country, that’s fine by me.” She still sounded like someone who went to law school and became an activist. What a wasted talent!

“I want a cell phone that plays music,” Marie said, her lithe arms, the size of a wide belt, around my waist. She promised she would be nice, do well in school, and read more literature.

Their faces appeared and faded in my head one by one when the smell of crisping pepperoni from the pizza place across the street entered through the window I had always left ajar. The tourists must have been queuing up for their thick slices. My empty stomach growled, but I was not hungry. I did not want to move even my pinkie. I cleared my head, but the distant noises from the streets bustling with cars and people droned and buzzed inside my empty apartment like endless hums and whispers. They goaded me to get up and go outside, but I refused to listen and be bothered.

Then the siren of a moving ambulance sounded off, as if its driver turned it on to rouse me up. It was around a quarter past three on my wristwatch. I got up and took a quick shower. The aloe shampoo gone, I used on my hair the half-melted soap I found under the sink. I rolled and pressed the toothpaste that was almost empty, good for one more brushing. All my clothes unwashed, I checked my jeans. No dirt stains and wet spots. No time to go to the Laundromat, I smelled my shirt. Still had the scent of my deodorant. I used a clean towel and wore fresh underwear, of course. All done in ten minutes. “I hope I won’t smell,” I mumbled to myself. I had to pick up my ticket and meet someone from Student Accounting Services at four.

Mrs. Longfield, maybe as old as my mother but tall and slender, came out and called my name. She must have been so busy that she rushed her coffee break. I saw a trace of dark coffee stain the size of a dime on the breast pocket of her beige buttoned blouse. She greeted me, introduced herself, and led me to the chair by her table free of clutter. The confidence in her voice suggested that she had been in her job for quite some time. I found her willing to accommodate the way she moved around. She took out a piece of paper, a computer printout, from her drawer and gave it to me. She checked my account on her computer.

“Mr. Velasco, your balance is six thousand six hundred seventy and fifty-five cents. It has to be paid by the end of this week if you want your application for graduation approved.”

“Mrs. Longfield, I’ll be honest with you. There’s no way I can settle this amount.”

“Why what happened? Your record shows you’ve been paying on time except this spring semester. Tell me. Maybe I can help.”

“I expected my father to send me money last week, but nothing arrived. There must be a problem back home. Can you advise me what to do? What are my options?”

“To be honest, you definitely won’t graduate this May. They won’t approve your application. What you can do is go to the Student Services and see Mr. Ravi. He’s a nice guy. If you want, I’ll give him a call, so you don’t have to schedule an appointment. He’ll advise you what to do. If I were you, I’ll go and see him now.”

“Thank you, Mrs. Longfield. I appreciate it.”

“You’re welcome. I’ll call him now.”

I left her office wondering why my father had forgotten to pay the last installment before he got sick. He had never failed to wire the money for my school fees and personal expenses thrice every semester, almost every two months. It did not make sense to me why it suddenly stopped. I tried calling them many times, but nobody answered. The busy signal of their phone worried me. It could also mean it had been disconnected. They must have kept something from me, something my mother could not tell me. I hoped it was not what I thought. I did close my eyes and pray while walking down the sun-flooded hallway.

After seeing Mr. Ravi and signing the papers he had me fill up, I went straight to Bukowski’s, our usual hangout on Dalton Street, to meet Aden, a good friend who was always around when I needed help. He knew I was leaving and we might not see each other for awhile, so he volunteered to take me out and pay the bill. When I got there, he already occupied our favorite spot—the farthest table from the bathroom. We hated it when someone puked all over the bowl and left without flushing and cleaning it. The pub just could not easily diffuse the stench of someone’s innards.

Aden stood up to hug me the brotherly way, and we shook hands as if one of us had been gone for awhile. It had been three weeks since the last time we saw each other at his girlfriend’s place. We called the middle-aged waitress who already knew what we wanted. We were loyal customers, not alcoholic regulars. She knew us by name, but we could not remember hers. Our food came out quick. She served us bacon cheese burgers and beer—Boston Lager, of course. The two together paired well and delighted our mouths and easily settled in our stomachs. We ordered another round of beer and decided afterwards to go to my place and grab a six-pack along the way. He had a short story he wanted me to read.

My friend Aden was a local who lived in the South End. His parents, who were both doctors, bought him a bachelor pad in one of the brick buildings on West Newton Street. He and I had the same major, but he had a particular focus in his reading and writing. Two of his stories ended up in Penthouse Magazine. It was tough to even guess that he could write. He looked too much of a jock and too all-American to be summoning muses and complaining about writer’s block. He started at Boston University on a football scholarship and then quit in his second year after hurting his back from skateboarding. We first met in Professor Hardy’s erotic fiction class, and it was I who introduced him to Malena, my Brazilian friend who had a killer smile and a body fit for a men’s magazine and who loved writing bleak stories about the environment. Aden came to me when he had problems with his girlfriend and with his plot.

“Dude, if I end up writing for a smut magazine, you’re the person to blame,” I said with a joking half-laugh. I had no aversion towards erotica, but I just thought it would shock my mother if I would become an erotic writer. Sex had always been a taboo in our household.

“You should be thanking me if that happens,” Aden said. His pride in what he was doing appearing like he had the secret to success beamed on his face. His grin, although silly, looked confident. Who would not admire his work ethic? He could spend all day writing and rewriting a paragraph detailing a kissing scene—lip-biting and spit-swallowing included.

“Okay, here you go.”

“Should I brace myself?”

“No, hold onto your balls.”

“I should use that line in one of my stories.” He opened a can of beer and passed it to me. It was Budweiser.
After a long sip, I read the papers he gave me. I was on the third page when I began my critique. “I think your descriptive style is crazy.”

“Which one?”

“The foreplay part.”

“Should I tone it down?”

“If I were you, I wouldn’t let that overshadow their orgasms.”

He asked his papers back to check the part I was talking about. “I think you’re right,” he said as he returned them to me.

I continued reading while he kept silent and waited for my mouth to move and blurt out words again. I could hear his throat gulping. I had another sip and cleared my mouth. “It’s very interesting.”

“Which part?”

“Everything.”

My cell phone's loud ringtone, a European trance beat, interrupted us. Malena called to say her goodbye and best wishes for me. Aden signaled me with his wiggling forefinger; he did not want his girlfriend to know that he was with me at my place. Before she hung up, she promised to visit me in the Philippines someday. I went back to Aden’s story.

“Is the main character strange?” he asked.

“I like strange characters,” I said. “Is he bipolar? Is he bisexual?

“Who? Dave? What do you think?”

“He’s definitely complicated.”

“Exactly.”

“With some minor editing, it’s publishable,” I said. “The complex plot woven together by your cerebral subplots, your relaxed writing style, and the unpredictable ending will definitely excite, if not astound, your readers.” I tried sounding like a real literary critic.

“Dude, you’re the best. Thank you.” He held my shoulders from the back and massaged them, his usual way of showing gratitude every time I read his work.

After we finished all the beer, he got up and went to the bathroom. I heard him wash his face and gargle. I stood up and gave him the fresh towel I used earlier that already dried.

“Should I call a cab?” I asked

“No, I’ll just hail one outside.”

“Hey, thanks a lot. For everything. Tell Malena I said hi.”

“No worries. Come and visit us sometime. If you need a place to stay, you can crash at my pad.” He hugged me and left a trace of Listerine on my neck.

A little tipsy, I closed the door, sat on the floor, and leaned my back and my head onto the wall, muttering to myself. “Dave has a girlfriend, but he wants to be with their friend.” I lay down to avoid throwing up, my squinting eyes to the ceiling--as white as a billowing summer cloud and appearing far and limitless. “Who is John?” I asked.

[hillwalker]

Not Boring - but perhaps 'barraged' and 'bombarded' are a bit much for any sentence let alone an opening one. Also, what a long sentence! It seems to lose its way by the time we pass from 'pulsated' to 'pulse'. Overwritten and ultimately muddled.

The pendulum inside the chest doesn't work that well as a metaphor here, and you add another - soap bubbles? There's too much time spent on trying to come up with new ways of describing inner turmoil - which is neither here nor there since the reader is waiting for the news about your father.

It improves once you start doing something, but there's room for more tightening.

I just could not close my eyes when I traveled by land, water, or air - Is there another way of travelling you're not telling us about?

Her smile that freely glowed on her face welcomed and put me at ease. is needlessly convoluted. Where else would a smile 'glow' except on a face for instance?

And personally I could have done without reading about Elena's cleaning technique in such detail.

My travel agent, whose office was a block from my place, called to inform me that my ticket was ready.
Why are you telling us this?

As far as the structure of the narrative - I was left feeling confused by the timetable of events. We obviously jump back at one point to before the N left home for America - but I couldn't work out at what point the Student Services telephoned regarding his fees or why we needed to be party to the conversation itself?

Still not bored, but I think this lost its momentum once the scene with Aden began. Unless it's critical to what follows (possibly regarding the N's writing career) I'm not sure the scene is strong enough to justify its inclusion.

H