By Isabel Yap
i.
The recording session done, Carmina found herself seated in a swiveling chair in front of a mirror with too many lights, while someone powdered her face and Carlie came by with a long list of things to do. “Don’t forget how we rehearsed the interview.” Carlie glanced at a palette of eye shadow the make-up artist was showing her, and nodded briskly. “Your dad used to be a drunkard, right? He died in a midnight traffic accident?”
“No,” Carmina answered. “He got hit by a sugarcane truck.”
“Oh! Oh yeah. Silly me.” Carlie smiled in her distinct whatever way. “Right. What’s the Filipino word for sugarcane?”
“Tuba, but Miss Carlie, I—” Carmina found her voice softening, as she shut her eyes to let the make-up artist brush shadow over it. “Um, I don’t really want to talk about it. I don’t think my mom would want me to, either.”
“Of course not, dear. Hold on a moment.” Carlie gestured impatiently at an assistant who was standing idly by the door. “God, I really hate working with someone else’s crew. How hard is it to find a blow dryer? Sorry—look, you don’t need to. Only if they ask you about it, okay?”
Carmina made a noncommittal sound.
“More importantly, you have to be ready to close the show. They’ll love the new song!” She sings the first line of the chorus with an exaggerated, gaping mouth. Carmina smiles politely. “Did you practice with the synthesizers?”
Carmina hesitated. “Yes, but—Miss Carlie, I was thinking, um. I can sing all the notes. You don’t have to use the media techs.”
Carlie laughed. “Don’t worry, honey, we’ve got the best engineers. They won’t screw up. It’s national television, after all.” She squeezed Carmina’s shoulder excitedly. “You’re a star now! Isn’t this incredible?”
“Well, I know, but—I think my voice sounds a little weird layered over with synth.” Carmina found that her hand was curling into a fist. “I can hit the notes on my own. Really.”
“I’m sure you can, Carmina, but you don’t have to.” Carlie was scribbling on her clipboard again. She sounded annoyed—or bored. “I’ve told you before, the producers don’t even want you to. It’s not the current sound.” She tapped her pen against her chin. “Anyway, it doesn’t really matter. You can sing it however you want to. The technicians will make it good no matter what.” She looked up, winked at Carmina’s reflection in the mirror, and walked away. Carmina remained in her seat, allowing the make-up artist to paint over her eyes, ignoring the whir of a blow-dryer next to her ear.
She wasn’t going to complain about this. They’d gone over it too many times already. And maybe Mama wouldn’t really care, now that she had a condominium in Serendra and an ad campaign extolling the virtues of flab-removing lasers. She had stayed in Manila for that. “You’ll be fine, anak,” she cooed on the phone last night. Maybe that was true. Maybe Carmina could sing badly, and no one would know the difference. She was fifteen, wide-eyed, and could be the next Whitney/Celine, according to the LA Times and the chatty hosts of Star Talk. That was supposed to be enough. She wasn’t going to start tearing up—if her make-up smeared she’d have to sit here even longer. Instead, she started to sing, under her breath, quiet so that nobody else could hear. Not that anybody would listen. It was too much trouble.
ii.
It was too much trouble for Jennifer to follow the rapid chatter of the boy beside her. He went on and on and just wouldn’t stop. Sandy blonde hair, blue eyes, skin white except for the spray of freckles across his nose. If the girls back home saw her alaga now, they would exclaim, “Ang gwapo-gwapo!” Give him a few years and he’d be so hot, he could go to the Philippines and become a star right away: Bench modelling stints, blockbuster films, three girls to switch love teams with. Right now, though, he was just a six-year-old that she was having trouble feeding lunch to. That was a problem. His mother had said, grave and commanding, that he had to finish his whole lunch. Had to. Or else he would have tummy problems. “Buh-bye, baby,” she had added to Jeremy, wagging her fingers at him before she departed. Jennifer found herself wondering if his mother couldn’t have spared time to have lunch with him herself—or hug him goodbye, at least. Then again, she never really understood foreigners.
“Jeremy,” she said, for the nth time in the past half-hour, “Eat your food.”
“So then the mountain exploded BOOM and the soldiers were like doosh doosh rat-tat-tat and the car was like eeyoh eeyoh eeyooh!” He waved his hands in the air. “And then they all went DOOOOSH and they were all dead. Bleh.” He closed his eyes, stuck his tongue out, and let his hands go limp in the air.
“Is that how it ended?” she asked, twirling the pasta around his fork purposefully. This food seemed genuine, not like medicine at all. It squelched like actual noodles and had an innocent, cheesy-tomato smell. Maybe it was steroids, not medicine. Those weren’t safe to feed kids, and Jeremy seemed perfectly healthy. But how could she tell Madam? The agency would be upset if too opinionated showed up in her record.
Jeremy remained fake-dead for a few moments, then dropped his hands and opened his eyes. “Yeah that’s how it ended,” he said. “You wanna know the next episode?”
He was referring to his latest TV show marathon, which he had completed in their room the previous night, wearing the 3D headgear and multisensory gloves. Jenny had stayed on the couch, reading her email, looking up whenever he cartwheeled and landed with a louder-than-usual thud. Why he had a room separate from his parents, she wasn’t sure – he was only six, after all. The suspicious noises from across the connecting door were a minefield for theories, but she didn’t really want to think about it. And she didn’t have any right to complain—they were the ones missing Jupiter’s big red, the rainbow lights of Saturn’s rings, the eerie, flashing stars. It was a good thing she never got motion sickness. This orbital hotel could get seriously swishy at times.
She made another effort, and said in a solemn voice, “If you don’t eat your food, the mumu will come and punish you.”
“Moo moo?” His eyes rounded with interest. Jeremy was such a cutie pie, though he could sometimes be a handful. His parents needed to spend more time with him. “Is that a cow monster?”
She smiled. “Eat,” she repeated, “And I’ll tell you.”
iii.
“I tell you, this heat, it’s going to kill me.” Nora was in the middle of her rosary, but she couldn’t help saying it. The wind that brushed her face after the last Hail Mary felt like a blast from a broken stovetop. She fingered the next bead, then gave up. She turned to her grandson who was squatting on the floor, playing with marbles. He was staring at her with a little grin on his face, probably because he had never before heard his lola use the word kill.
“Mico, hijo, please go to the sari-sari store and buy me some fresh air. The kind in a plastic bottle with a straw.”
Mico held out his palm expectantly.
She sighed and felt around in the pocket of her blouse. Why was this summer so horrible? If she kept on treating herself to fresh air every day she’d be broke by the end of the month, and there was still awful, humid May to go. But Mico would want a little compensation for his services. She pressed a few crumpled bills and coins into his hand, and told him he could buy himself some ice cream. Or candy. Whatever. He nodded and gleefully shot out the door. Comforted by the idea of the soothing breaths she would soon take, Nora continued her rosary.
She did it every afternoon, all four mysteries, as an act of pious generosity. She was praying not only for her old, aching lungs, but for the whole city – everyone suffocating under the sun. For the little girls she’d seen choking, clutching their mothers’ hands while they peddled shriveled flowers on the street. For their babies with their makeshift, plastic-cup gas masks. For the smell of burnt skin that permeated the market place. Susmaryosep, if Manila wasn’t hell on earth, it was certainly purgatory.
She was already on The Carrying of the Cross when the door burst open. She craned her head in relief, but it wasn’t Mico at the door. It was his father.
“Welcome home, Michael,” she said dutifully.
“Hi, Ma.” He looked at the scattered marbles on the floor. “Where’s Mico?”
“Buying me some fresh air.” She let out a pitiful wheeze. “I simply can’t breathe in this heat. I needed it.”
“I told you, Ma, that whole fresh air thing is fake.” Really, Michael got annoyed too easily. She worried about his blood pressure – his father had the same sickness, after all. “You should stop buying it. You’re encouraging those cheats.” He crossed the room to stand next to her, eyeing her rosary warily. Michael went home so early in the afternoons these days. When was the last time he had held a proper job? Was the job market so awful, or was he just lazy, doing light work while Mico’s mother paid for everything with her teaching job abroad? He wasn’t being a man, and he knew it. Without Maria to push around, Michael got so irritable. He criticized every little thing Nora did.
“If you keep on making Mico buy those things for you, he’ll believe it too!”
She refused to be lectured to. “Well, get some airconditioning then!”
Michael opened his mouth to reply, but at that moment Mico rushed through the door. “Here’s your air, lola,” he panted, handing her the plastic bottle with a straw. She seized it from him and sucked gratefully. The air in the bottle was sweet and cool. She looked at the label, which assured her that it was fresh from Baguio. Made sense. She could hardly remember when Manila’s air tasted like this. She was finishing it too quickly, she realized. She slowed down, breathing more deeply.
Michael sighed and threw up his hands. “Okay, fine,” he grumbled. “If you like it so much. Go ahead. But god, I hope those things don’t get too popular. There’s enough people stealing as it is.” He stalked into the next room, shoulders slumped. Nora turned to face the window, and moved onto the next Hail Mary. She still heard the two angry knocks against the doorframe.
iv.
Two knocks against the doorframe jolted him awake, from where he was dozing in front of his laptop. He realized his mouth was half-open, and closed it, embarrassed. “Yes? Who is it?”
“Dr. Acosta, good afternoon. I’m here to follow up on the research you were supposed to have submitted?”
He squinted at the visitor. “Oh, Adelaide. It’s you. Oh, uh—sorry, didn’t they tell you I wasn’t part of the research team anymore? I—er, I left the project two days ago.”
Adelaide shifted by the doorway, looking slightly uncomfortable. “Yes, I heard about it. But they told me you might still be willing to share your research. Everything you’ve worked on so far, it’s quite valuable, you know.”
He scratched his head. “I went over this with them already. I explained my reasons. Do they want to discuss it again? You can tell them I’m free this afternoon, if they really insist...” He paused, took a sip of coffee. Adelaide looked at the stack of papers on his desk with mild interest. He imagined what they must have told her, how he had backed out of the whole thing, spinelessly, when they had expected so much from him. He heard himself saying, almost defensively: “This whole thing just...makes me uneasy, because I’m not sure what’ll happen, once the report is completed. I mean, haven’t you ever thought that—once they know all the facts, all the how-to’s,” his hands moved protectively over the folder on his desk, “Then there’s no way they won’t act upon what they know? Isn’t it a little scary?”
Adelaide raised her eyebrows, like she meant to disagree. He felt suddenly stupid for telling her exactly what he thought. Nobody ever did that here. But she simply shrugged. Then added, as if on second thought, “We’re only doing our jobs, Richard.” She turned and left the room.
Dr. Acosta stayed where he was, tapping his fingers against the folder, over the bright label that outlined the title of their latest project. “There’s no stopping it, really, is there,” he muttered to himself. He glanced across the room at the images tacked on his wall: Nanay and Tatay back in Cebu, his wife and the twins, his medical diploma in Biochemical Engineering. The Ivy League boy with his incredible fellowships, the award-winning research on gene strands, and because of that—the invitation to participate in this study, which would change the landscape of medicine forever.
He remembered the cold dread in his stomach, as he backed away from the petri dish, the delicately twitching finger inside it. He had thrown up in the restroom afterwards, thinking about the brown skin, the ivory bone. Was it worth it? He bowed his head and muttered, into his palms, “What have we gotten ourselves into?”
v.
“What have we gotten ourselves into? You’d think amping Public Health service is enough, but no, it isn’t. It never is. They want more public toilets. You know, for them to shit in. They want fucking bidets!” The senator across the room was gesticulating wildly, his fingers splayed, his jaw wide. “And I’m like, we’ve already given you the latest urinals, you know. Some of them even have toilet paper. But fucking toilets? They’ve got to be kidding.” He sighs theatrically, raging with disapproval.
“It’s toilets or capsule libraries, ‘di ba? I think libraries would be cool. I mean, isn’t education our main, like, thrust?” The senator seated next to him was tapping something out on her mobile phone as she gave her brilliant reply. The two of them had starred opposite each other in a romantic comedy the previous year. The title of the movie was My Life Has Changed Because Of You and Your Love Thank You For This One Moment Lifetime Chance. The cinemas had decided to stencil it onto the Now Showing Boards as A Love Story, which ultimately became the movie’s nickname (ALS, for those who couldn’t be bothered – and for the diehard fans, who called themselves ALSoholics).
“What do you think, sir?” A reporter asked, suddenly too close to his face, jolly and persistent. His voice seemed almost comical, strangely remote, obscured by the shuffle of clicking mini-keyboards and camera flashes. No doubt the foul mouths of the senators delighted the press. He’d have to call up the periodicals and get those reports fixed before midnight that evening. The Senate President sighed. What was next on their agenda? Resolving the Boracay Banana Boat fiasco? The latest rally against E-VAT? The third proposal for Mall City, which would now only take up a chunk of Mandaluyong and Taguig? (Quezon City was unyielding as usual.) Somehow, this meeting looked like it was going to take a long, long time...
vi.
“A long, long time ago, they used to be real. I still remember how they tasted. Our farm had the best mangoes.” Anna’s voice was steady as she swung onto the tree branch above him. She pulled one knee up, and left the other dangling over the branch. Damien stared up at her through the sharp glare of sunlight in the trees. She looked really tiny that way, even if they were the same age. Anna was very different from the rest of the girls back in California. Well, honestly—his whole family was different from how he’d imagined them. Grandmother smelled his cheeks and rubbed his head, and called him Dam-yen, like she was cursing Japanese money. Kuya Bambam wore an undershirt all day and reeked of smoke, and kept making weird jokes about beer. Leleng, Anna’s baby sister, walked around in just her diaper. And Tito Mario never smiled at him, and never stayed in the same room as his mother.
Mom hated it, he knew; hated the weather and kept scratching her knees, ranting about mosquitoes. It had taken plenty of persuading for her to come and visit, and even then she told Damien’s dad that he needn’t bother. But Grandmother had specially requested for Damien to come, and she sounded so hoarse over the phone that mom actually complied. So they came, bearing more than a decade’s worth of pasalubong, staring in wonder (and horror) at the fried pork knuckles and—was it really cow’s blood? He felt embarrassed staying here, but he didn’t know why. Something about his voice sounding, somehow, pretentious in this air, even if Anna and Kuya Bambam spoke perfect English. Something about the way he had said, thoughtlessly, on his first day: “That’s the bed?”
Anna, at least, didn’t seem to mind too much. She brought her other knee down and swung both legs out. There was a band-aid on the left one, but it didn’t cover the running stitches all over it. There was a lot of greenery here in the Philippines, certainly more than in the concrete city of his homeland (“Ay sus!” Grandma had hissed. “His homeland is right here!”) but there was something strange about this place, that reminded him of concrete just the same. Maybe it was the glittering dome overhead, that tinted everything a sickly aqua, and made the weather about five degrees hotter. Maybe it was the way he could toe the soil and it folded like sheets of paper.
“What did it taste like?” He asked, and thought about the bags and bags of imported dried mangoes back at home. His parents made a fortune shipping them to various supermarket chains, health food shops, drugstores. The fresh version he’d never eaten, although once his mother had actually laid out some beautiful golden ones, in a rattan basket, on their dining table. “Those aren’t safe,” Mom had said. “They’re just for décor.”
Anna continued to look up at the trees. “They tasted like—like, I don’t know. Sugar, and—and yellow. Sweet sunlight. Nothing like the mangoes we have now. Even the trees are different. They weren’t like this.” She stared up at the tree above her, then in a burst of passion suddenly stood up on her branch. It wobbled a little, and he darted beneath her in worry.
“Hey, be careful!” he called out, as she reached up to pick one mango off the tree. He knew what they were: sugar-free, bruise-free, delayed-spoilage yellow things that could be left on the branches for another month without any problems. There was an odourless version, even. Anna threw it down. He caught her face as she did so—her lips were curled in an odd snarl, her eyes were shining. Damien tried to catch the mango, but missed. It smacked against a tree root and rolled, unharmed, on the floor, as perfect as it had always been. Anna remained standing, looking down at it, fuming; but Damien couldn’t understand, or wouldn’t, perhaps. He walked over and picked the mango up. He held it out at her, uncomfortable with the accusation in his voice as he said, “But this is healthier, right? This is more convenient. Everyone says this is better. Right?”
vii.
“This is better, right?” She cupped one hand over the device in her ear and gestured to the porter, that is my bag, yes the one that’s dark blue, please pull it off the belt. “Yes, I know, I know. I said I’d be a day late. Well it turns out class left off one day early—no, not that one, the one next to it! What? Oh sorry. I was talking to the porter. Hold on a minute, okay?” She pointed, feeling extremely harassed; he grabbed the right bag off just before it went around the curve. “That one next,” she said to the porter, indicating one still far away that had an orange ribbon tied to it. “Yes, sorry. What were you saying? No, it’s okay, I can crash on the couch. I just—” something strange crept into her voice then; she swallowed to keep it out. Seriously, her emotions were supposed to be dulled by now. This was ridiculous. “I really wanted to be home already.”
The porter seized the orange-ribbon bag and hoisted it onto her trolley. She thanked him, pushing a bill into his hand—freshly pressed from the money changer. He nodded appreciatively and rushed off to find a new customer. She stood listening for a moment, then cleared her throat again. “It’s okay, I can get a taxi. No, not too many bags. I used my luggage instead of a balikbayan box. Yeah, please, don’t worry about it. See you soon.” She found herself mouthing love you, but it didn’t come out, and the other line had gone dead.
She pressed a button on her collar, checked that her passport was still in her wallet, then rolled the trolley towards the gates, where she pushed her passport against the digital scanner. Was it really only a year ago that she had left? It seemed like ages. If this sudden return was inconvenient for them, then she was a little sorry—surprises tended to bring out the worst of her mother’s obsessive-compulsiveness—but she couldn’t stand the idea of another frosty day in her New York apartment, alone.
The taxi she flagged down was a strange blue. The driver helped her cram the luggage into the trunk—clothes, mostly, but there were also nuts and beauty products for her mom, software and camera accessories for her brother, and a bunch of random things her father had ordered from Amazon that she hadn’t bothered to check. When she finally settled into the back seat she noticed that there was a newspaper tucked into the pocket of the driver’s seat. She unfolded it while he turned on the radio, which was blasting out a strangely familiar tune.
“Katipunan, please,” she said. The driver nodded and turned up the volume. “Is that...” she paused, straining her memory. “The national anthem?” She couldn’t keep the incredulity out of her voice. It was a remix, but still unmistakable: the marching tune came through clear, over a pop star’s voice.
The taxi driver looked back at her with a face that clearly said duh.
She sat back as the car started to drive away, listening to the melody that she hadn’t heard since flag ceremony in high school. No, wait—she did hear it once in a movie premier, in her second year of college. But that was before the move, the degree, the job, the little flat that she shared with a laptop and a bookshelf. Finding her dreams, and wondering when it became impossible to find them here, in the country she loved. She tried not to think about it, really; the reality of how she’d swallowed every morning of the panatang makabayan, the euphoria wearing off quickly, being replaced by a kind of staleness while she waited for things to happen, to change. After a while she didn’t even have time to keep up with the local news, and the calls became less frequent, more superficial.
She looked at the taxi that pulled into the lane beside them and saw that it was decked out like a Philippine flag—painted red one side, and blue the other. Like the one she was riding in. When they came out to the street there were banners lining the lampposts, heralding the beauty of the Philippine Nation, and the Filipino People, their faces beaming at her from an alarming array of billboards.
“What is it, Independence Day?” She was sure he had heard her, but the driver was intent on the road and did not respond.
“And that was the ‘Lupang Hinirang’,” the DJ piped up. “Only on Bayan radio, ninety eight point four. You know when I was a kid I kept thinking the title was Bayang Magiliw? Heh. Anyway, up next we have the latest tunes from the Metro, Carmina’s freshly released single, ‘Will You Remember’.”
Another perky DJ joined in. “Quick trivia for you guys out there, this is actually a cover of the song ‘Maalaala Mo Kaya’. I know, no one remembers the original, really—so the title’s pretty clever, huh?”
She stopped trying to comprehend what was happening and scanned the papers instead. They still had the strange, rubbery feel that other countries had managed to get rid of. It was fairly unusual for people to have physical news, now, but she supposed that not everyone could download it to their phones—not yet. Not here. That was still the same, too. Carmina, our very own STAR on ASAP LIVE! it said on the right dog-ear; then, movement to install more public toilets on the left. GMangOes, updates on stem cell research, fresh air, OFWs in the space hotels, and the revival of national pride, especially now in these troubling times—she skimmed through the front page, wondering just how much had changed—or how little.
Yeah, yeah. So when are times not troubling, she thought, with more than a little mirth—but she turned to that story and started reading, unaware of the snowflake that had drifted down and stuck itself on the car window, of the roads on either side of her that were covered in a paper-thin layer of white.