“We brought you doughnuts,” she says, and holds out a greasy bag to me.
“Good thing it’s open twenty-four hours,” Uncle Dan says, and pats my shoulder exactly once. “I wanted to rush here, but you know your auntie, she can’t come empty-handed. You okay, kiddo?”
Of course I’m not. I mumble thanks and take the doughnuts.
Bea yawns and covers her mouth.
I hate her. Here with her intact parents, looking forward to bed. Besting me now even in family wholeness.
The ICU doors slide open. My mom looks from her younger sister to me. My mom’s short dark bob is, for the first time, mussed. Long shadows droop under her eyes. She’s been crying in the room without me, I realize, her hands probably gripping her own hair.
She interrupts whatever Tita Baby is about to say.
“Ading. Cory needs to go to school tomorrow,” my mom says, calm.
Tita Baby nods. “Jerome is away at Stanford. Cory can take his room.”
I feel stunned, betrayed, that my mom is sending me away.
Then I feel more tired than I’ve ever been in my life.
My mom says, “When Papa wakes, anak, I’ll call you right away.” She doesn’t say “if.” “The school is just two blocks. You can run. You have your Nokia. Keep it on.”
I think of school, that distant planet.
With the Mary statue. With European History. With Ms. Holden.
Maybe, if I arrive back at school, I can be in a world where none of this happened. Where the brightness I feel in her presence carries me past this horrible night.
The shame of my hope makes my head heavier.
I look at my feet. I nod.
I hand the doughnuts to my mom.
Then I follow my aunt and uncle and cousin into whatever new world this is.
February 13, 2009
Friday the Thirteenth
I lie awake under my cousin Jerome’s Stanford pennant. His lacrosse medals and trophies glint in the dark. His digital clock blinks 2:13 a.m.
My aunt and uncle’s house is just a few miles away from us. But those miles are uphill, in a huge development, and this house is four times the size of our townhome. It’s too quiet and huge. The sheets smell like fresh, flowery, unfamiliar detergent.
My tears pool on one of Jerome’s pillows. I wipe my face.
They brought me back to my house to collect a change of uniform and my homework.
Tita Baby insisted on coming with me inside.
I saw my dad’s flip-flops and the magnets of my parents’ moms on the fridge.
I wondered if my dad would be on a memorial magnet too.
I crossed myself in front of Jesus to hide my tears. Tita Baby rubbed my back, and talked a lot. More sentences I couldn’t hear.
I don’t cross myself now. My emotions crowd out any urge to pray in the dark. I kick Jerome’s sheets into a tangle.
I dream that my dad is a little kid selling candy and cigarettes to drivers along Moorpark Road. He’s ten, maybe, but I can tell he’s my dad. He’s wearing my dad’s paint-splattered shirt. He has my dad’s buzz cut. He’s walking with open wounds all over his bare feet. I try to yell, to warn him in time, but a truck that looks like his truck rushes toward him, the driver faceless, not looking, not caring to look—it’s going so fast, there’ll be nothing left to him—
“Ow! Shit,” a voice cries.
I open my eyes and sit up. My cousin Bea—skinny like a clothes hanger, huge eyes, the planes of her face perfectly symmetrical, like God carved her on one of His best days—clutches her arm and winces.
“You kicked me,” she says. “Were you winning a football game in your sleep or something?”
“Sorry,” I say. My voice is cracked and strangled. I cough.
“Hope this doesn’t bruise,” she says, checking the skin of her arm, and I wonder what she’ll be photographed for next. “My mom’s going to take us to school. We’ll drop you off first.”
Bea goes to Oaks Magnus, the private high school with double the tuition and triple the prestige of Saint Agatha’s. I hear a loud coffee grinder from downstairs. “I’ll just shower,” I say.
Bea points her chin toward a folded clean towel and travel-size body wash from a fancy Manila hotel. My aunt still takes all the available toiletries home from their vacations, even though she clearly doesn’t need the freebies. My dad supports it, though, says it’s good not to waste.
My dad. His absence is still so new. I check my phone. My mom hasn’t texted or called. My dream anxiety sinks into the heavy thought of my dad still there, silent, not responding to my mom’s crying or praying or jokes.
I can’t bring myself to eat anything, so in the buttery-leather back seat of Tita Baby’s Lexus, I hold a brown-bagged bagel with cream cheese and a thermos full of coffee I think is too bitter. My dad hates bagels.
The route is almost the same one as my dad drove yesterday: chilly, with a salt tang somewhere in the air. But Tita Baby glides downhill, past other enormous homes, and lets Uncle Dan’s favorite conservative talk radio channel play.
“Ay, Cory, another challenge for you. I know your parents are struggling right now, the downturn, no? And your mama, freelance, your papa, also freelance—you know I always told your mom, your dad should—”
“Nanay,” Bea says with a bad Tagalog accent, interrupting her.
“My dad is super good at what he does,” I say.
“Of course, dear! He can be good at any job he does, and now—ay, I hope he gets up soon, no? But the head injury, so serious, of course we’ll help any way we can, and then when he’s better he can change career, finally—”
“What about your dad? Will he help?”
This is my secret-weapon interruption.
Anytime I ask about my mysterious grandpa in the Philippines, my aunt gets really quiet and careful. I think I see Bea bite her lip, but then her face goes model-neutral again.
The radio announcer says something about big government and family values. The bass in this car is really strong. I can feel the guy’s anger vibrate through the speakers.
“You know, Cory, your lola Irma was sick a long time before she passed,” she says. “And your lolo Joe—well—he has much to worry about. He’s good at business, calculation. Like your uncle Dan.”
“Uncle Dan is like your dad. Cool,” I say.
“Bea, how are your studies?” Her voice flows toward my cousin, smooth. Then she talks back at me. “Sayang because Bea is bored with the violin na, I wish music would be part of her life always. But she’s so busy with preparing for Stanford, joining her brother, and in between, modeling in Manila. Your schedule is so packed, but exciting, no?” She pinches Bea’s cheek. In the rearview mirror, I see Bea roll her eyes.
“Nice to see Bea thriving,” I mutter.
Tita Baby slows a few blocks away from school.
“This is kinda far from the Saint Agatha campus, Mom,” Bea says.
“Exercise is good, no? Especially when you’re stressed. And the traffic is so bad there.”
That’s her Tita way of saying she’s done dealing with me for the morning. She’s not my mom, after all.
I slam out of the Lexus before she can say anything more, and I walk toward my homeroom classroom without saying thank you.