While she washes the breakfast dishes, Delia thinks about what to do with the drafty windows in the bedroom where Mama and Papa are going to stay when they arrive in two months. It will be the middle of November by then, with winter right on their doorstep. Even the fall months here feel colder than any “winter” she’d ever experienced in Naga, so she plans on buying cellophane tape and plastic sheets for the windows and more warm blankets (they are on sale right now at Bargain Harolds) so her parents won’t do a U-turn and immediately decide to go back to the Philippines after the first cold gust of wind off the lake hits them.
She momentarily considers delaying their arrival to the summertime so the cold shock won’t be so extreme but immediately dismisses the thought. Enough time has passed. Three years. And now the immigration paperwork is approved, the plane tickets reserved, and they will be reunited in two months. Papa will walk Jun-Jun to school and help him with his studies, Mama will cook sotanghon, and gulay natong, and Bikol express (and all the foods she is craving in her mother’s signature style), and they will both babysit Joy so she can work full-time to help Junior with the ever-growing expenses for the very small two-bedroom semi-detached house they have just bought in the east end of Toronto.
Two months! It seems like a dream. A happy dream that could almost make her laugh, shout, cry for joy. The first three years here in Canada have been so lonely. Of course, she has her young family and they are her world, and Junior’s Ma and several of his brothers and sisters are also here in Toronto with them, but beyond her second cousin Odette, there isn’t anyone here for her, with her. No one to share and confide how difficult it is to settle into a new country, to build a new home from scratch.
When they first arrived in Toronto with their two children — four-year-old son Jun-Jun and ten-month-old daughter Joy — they stayed with Junior’s sister (and her very makulit three-year-old son) in a small one-bedroom apartment in St. James Town. All their worldly belongings were stacked in one corner of that sparsely furnished fifteenth-floor unit. The kids slept with Delia on a small pullout bed while Junior slept on the parquet wood floor.
In the rare quiet moments of those early days, when her husband was out papering the city with his resumés and the kids were napping while their meagre savings melted away, she would sit on the cement and rust balcony, look out over the city, and allow herself to cry a little, despair a little, wondering if they had made the right decision.
At the time, Junior was making good money in the Philippines. His family owned and operated a printing press and a small newspaper in Manila, but with all the gulo happening, with Marcos declaring Martial Law, everything was starting to look so unstable. When Junior, Manny, the newspaper’s city editor, and other several writers were taken in for questioning with no explanation other than “public security” following the bombings at the candidates’ debate, the decision was made. They were going to Toronto to start a new life with greater opportunity — for themselves, for their children.
Speaking of which, where is that boy?
“Jun-Junnn! It’s already eight o’clock! If you don’t hurry up you’re going to be late again!”
No response. Hay naku, that boy always has his head in the clouds, always daydreaming! Only two weeks into grade one and she has already received three late notices from the school office. He is very bright and imaginative but that often results in a glacial pace as he observes the world around him and comes up with all sorts of stories, both real and fantastic. She also guesses that the feet dragging is due to the awkwardness of still trying to fit in at school.
She still remembers accompanying him on his first day. When they introduced him to his new class and he was asked to tell everyone what his name was, he enthusiastically replied, “Jun-Jun!” and was welcomed by the many giggles and quizzical looks from his new schoolmates. Her stomach tightened as she saw him recoil a little bit at their innocent but not so encouraging response.
“You’re in Canada now, anak,” she told him as they walked home that day. “In Canada, you’re no longer Jun-Jun, your real name is Joseph.”
He looked down at the pavement, contemplating this new reality suddenly presented to him.
“If you want, we can call you Joe?” she said, trying to be helpful and also break the silence.
After a few quiet seconds, he looked up.
“It’s okay, Mama. I like Joseph better than Joe. I will be Joseph now,” he said with a faint hint of sadness.
He was always proud of the fact that he shared the same name as his Lolo and his Papa, but she could also see the distant mourning in his eyes for the person he once was, for the life they were leaving behind. She held his hand a little tighter and joined him in that feeling as they stepped forward into this new life together, carrying a Star Wars backpack and a little bit of hope for the future.
“Joseph! Finish brushing your teeth and come down now! I still have to bring your sister to Tita Lucy’s and you’re going to make me late for work! Naku, this boy, hurry up!”
No reply. What is he doing up there? She puts the last of the cereal bowls in the dish rack (Cap’n Crunch is on sale at Bargain Harolds — remember to pick up three boxes), hurriedly dries her hands, looks over to check that Joy is securely in her booster chair and finishing up the last of her apple slices at the kitchen table, then walks over to the bottom of the stairs leading to the second floor.
“Ssst! Where are you now! Come on, you don’t want Mrs. Sanderson to call you to the office again!”
Still no answer. The silence is slightly uncomfortable as sunlight shines onto the narrow stairway with faux-wood-panelled walls on either side of it. Glimmers of dust dance in the sunbeam lighting the stairs, which are covered with a dark burnt orange shag carpet left by the previous owners. Her mind races, shifting from irritation at the thought that he may have crawled back into bed and gone back to sleep, to panic that he might have somehow injured himself.
“Jun-Jun? Don’t make me come up there!”
Glancing over to confirm that Joy’s still okay, she quickly goes up the stairs, making sure to stomp loudly enough so her son understands the gravity of the situation he’s putting himself in by dawdling like this.
Above the upstairs landing, there’s a big poster of The Thirty-Nine Presidents of the United States of America, featuring portraits from George Washington all the way to Jimmy Carter. Another remnant, a curiosity from the previous residents that she just hasn’t had the time or energy to replace yet. The blank stares of these white-wigged white men, most of them unknown to her, are a disconcerting welcome at the top of the stairs that she’s been meaning to get rid of since day one. But when you have house payments, and grocery bills, and hydro bills, and a two-year-old and a six-year-old, and a (feels like) hundred-year-old Chevy Nova, and a second language to wrestle with, and a new job as a sales associate in a downtown furniture shop, and a tired, sometimes cranky, husband who works alternating day and night shifts at the city filtration plant,
and,
and,
and,
some things you just have to let slip.
But she’ll make sure to change it before Mama arrives to save herself from any commentary. She can already hear her:
“Hay, Delia. Why do you leave this ugly painting up here? It’s so panget! And don’t you remember what the Americanos did to our country?”
Her Mama isn’t a fan of the Americans, or the Japanese, or simply the Second World War that took her first husband. She met her second husband (Delia’s Papa), who was also a widower, a year after the war. In addition to the two sons and one daughter her Mama had from her first marriage, they had three more boys and two girls. She was the youngest and, no one would argue, the favourite. Mama and Papa could hardly speak when she told them of her plans to immigrate to Canada. She could hardly believe it herself. So they barely spoke about it until it was time to go and they suddenly found an ocean and a continent between them.
Upstairs, to the left of the landing, is the bathroom and the kids’ bedroom. Strangely, it doesn’t look like Jun-Jun is in either room. She quickly checks under his small twin bed and Joy’s crib just to make sure he’s not hiding. Jun-Jun has decorated the teal-blue walls of the room with stickers of the Superfriends and pictures he’s drawn of G-Force, the Flintstones, and a handful of sci-fi and fantasy beings of his own creation. As she enters the bathroom, a light breeze blows in from the partly open window that looks out into the backyard. The faucet is still slightly running, and his toothbrush is oddly on the counter instead of being returned to the toothbrush holder. She rinses the toothbrush that still has toothpaste residue on it before returning it to the holder and tightening the faucet.
What’s going on here?
“Anak, come on. This isn’t funny. Come out now. We don’t have time for this.”
She crosses over the small landing to their bedroom. The drawn curtains have made the room slightly darker and her eyes have to adjust a bit as she scans the room. It’s so quiet that at first it also appears to be empty. But then she sees it. Really you couldn’t miss it, and she’s startled just a little bit by the sight.
There’s a small mound in the middle of their bed. It doesn’t move, but it’s about the size of a six-year-old boy. It’s comical and creepy at the same time. Curled up under a forest green woollen blanket, he looks like a small creature or maybe more like a hill, like one of those green rolling hills you often see back home. This one though, a lone solitary hill.
“Hay naku, Jun-Jun, you scared me. Come out from under there!”
He doesn’t move. Impatient to make sure he’s okay and also because they’re running even later now, she pulls the blanket off. He’s curled up in a ball — thankfully he looks uninjured and is breathing. He’s covering his ears with his hands, his eyes are tightly shut, and he’s frozen like a statue — well, not quite; she notices he’s shaking.
“Oh my God, what’s going on? Are you okay?”
He whimpers then mumbles something.
“Is it gone?”
“What are you talking about? What’s gone?”
Slightly unnerved, Delia sits on the bed beside her son and scans the room for whatever he might be talking about. A squirrel? A cat? Oh, please don’t be a raccoon or a mouse.
“Smmk!”
“What?”
“Like a cloud!”
“What!?”
“Smoke, smoke. Mama, a grey cloud!” he says, eyes still tightly shut. She checks his forehead for any trace of a fever. The poor boy looks pale and afraid. It looks like he’s seen a —
The thought is interrupted by seeing the time on the bedside alarm clock and her concern for her other child who’s been left alone for far too long now downstairs. She chooses to be practical and irritated rather than be carried away by this flight of imagination. Fighting back the urge to get angry, she pulls him up and into her arms.
“Oh my God, Jun-Jun. It’s nothing. There’s nothing here. Open your eyes. Look around. Mama’s here and you’re safe, na. Look. Come on, we have to go. Your sister is alone by herself downstairs.”
The boy is warm and perspiring in her arms as he cautiously opens his eyes and looks around. She feels the tension relax in his body as he rests his chin on her shoulder, still cautiously scanning the room.
It’s that imagination of his again, she figures. He spooked himself. Like when he said the Child Catcher from the movie Chitty Chitty Bang Bang was creeping around the back alley. Or when King Kong was peeking in through the basement window. Or when the ghost lady from Fiddler on the Roof —
“It came in from the window, Mama! While I was brushing my teeth. At first it was just some grey smoke, then it started getting bigger, like a cloud, then it started taking the shape of a face and it was looking at me and coming toward me and — and I ran and it followed me! And its mouth was moving! It was saying something!”
A chill runs through her, but she shrugs it off with the practicality of the fact that he is definitely going to be late for school again, and she can’t afford to be late for the job she just started two weeks ago. Now Joy is crying downstairs.
“Okay, that’s enough.”
“But Mama, it was really —”
“Tama na, Jun-Jun! That’s enough stories from you. Your imagination, talaga! I’m going to tell your Papa about this when he gets home and you’re not going to have TV or comic books for a week! Let’s go!”
“I don’t want to go.”
“Jun-Jun!”
“I don’t want to!”
“Okay fine, you can stay here with the ghost.”
She gets up and pretends to go. Jun-Jun’s face crumples, tears glistening on his cheeks, and she immediately regrets the mean impulse brought on by her own stress and disquiet. She rushes back to the bed and embraces him, his warm tears dampening her shirt.
If her father were here right now, he would surely be angry with her. He served in the military during the war and was notorious for being incredibly strict and disciplined. However, when it came to his apo, his “Little Jeprox,” he melted like butter in the sun and showed a fanciful side that no one ever knew existed. He had a soft spot for Jun-Jun and was the one that encouraged the boy’s flights of fancy in their earliest stages.
While seated on the kudkuran ng niyog — the coconut grating bench — he would have Jun-Jun ride behind him on their magical horse, Silver, and they would travel to faraway lands in search of a magical anting-anting. “Heigh ho Silver!” they would yell in unison, over the sound of grating that doubled as hoofbeats. Sometimes, in the early morning, he would take the boy for walks by the river and tell him stories of the duendes that watched them from the trees.
She remembers how tightly they embraced one another at the departure gate and how his eyes shone with sadness and his voice wavered as he tried to comfort the boy clinging to his neck. Delia feels her cheeks warmly flush and she holds her son a little tighter. She can almost hear her father’s voice now, hanging alongside the specks of dust, dancing on the sunbeam.
“We will see each other again, anak. Do not worry, okay? You have to be brave, anak. Lolo loves you, okay? Your Lolo loves you.”
Two months. They’ll all be together again soon. Things will get better. Things will be easier.
“I’m sorry, anak. That was not kind of me. Mama’s just tired and in a hurry, okay? Look around. Whatever was here is gone and I would never let it hurt you. Mama and Papa are here for you and your sister and we will always protect you. And remember, soon your Lolo and Lola will be here too! Now, can you be a brave big brother and come with me so we can take care of your sister?”
“Okay, Mama. I will.”
The rest of the morning is pretty uneventful. Thankfully, Joy is still secure in her booster chair, and after two cups of milk and several chocolate chip cookies, both children are placated. By the time they do the drop-off at the babysitter’s and finally arrive at the schoolyard, Jun-Jun is carefree and at ease as if nothing even happened this morning. He stops and turns to her as he reaches the front doors of the school.
“Love you!”
She smiles and waves back, watching him skip down the hall and around the corner. Finding herself standing alone in the empty schoolyard, she suddenly feels very alone. The unease of what her son said he saw creeps back into her thoughts. Did he really see something? What was it? Who was it?
“Tama na, Delia. Stop scaring yourself. Now it’s just my imagination. It’s nothing,” she reassures herself.
On the slow, rumbling streetcar ride to work, she says a few Hail Marys and Our Fathers to calm her disquiet.
She also reminds herself to buy the wool blankets and cereal at Bargain Harolds after work.
At dinner, Junior is tired from his first day shift after three consecutive nights at the water filtration plant, and they continue their debate about making the move to Mississauga in a few years. They can sell this house and get a much bigger one for less money, she tells him. Everyone can have their own room and they’ll have a big yard for the kids to play in. He argues that the suburb is barely a city, mostly just farmland, joking that he doesn’t want cows for neighbours. Jun-Jun excitedly talks about what he wants to be for Halloween, either Luke Skywalker or Bruce Lee. The latter, he decides, might be too cold for trick-or-treating if he goes Enter the Dragon shirtless with red claw marks on his body. In the midst of all the chatter, Joy happily enjoys the evening’s pork adobo and ginisang monggo with rice.
Not wanting to dim the warm glow that surrounds the family dinner table, Delia opts to stay quiet about the morning’s excitement and the ensuing unease that followed her around for the rest of the day.
Grey smoke … turning into a face … following me … saying something.
It’s Jun-Jun’s and my own overactive imagination. It’s my excitement, my anxiousness to see Mama and Papa again soon. That’s all. Don’t spend any more time giving thought to it, giving life to it.
It was saying something.
“Everything okay?” Junior sees the tension on her face.
“Yeah, we were just late again this morning. Was late for work. But it’s okay na.”
She offers him a vague smile that she hardly believes herself, pushing away the doubt and fear by busying herself with the kids’ bath time, with the preparations for tomorrow’s lunches, with the taking down of the Presidents poster, with the washing of the new blankets she bought for her Mama and Papa. With the busy-ness of making this new life a better one.
The harsh, metallic ringing cuts through the blackness and immediately fills Delia with dread. The dimly lit plastic flip numbers on the alarm clock read 02:51. She’s frozen in place as the urgent ringing continues but can only lie there and wait for Junior to groggily shuffle out of bed to answer the phone downstairs. She can’t, doesn’t want to. It’s a wrong number. It’s not connected with anything. She frantically fights back a torrent of irrational fears. It couldn’t be. It’s not. No-No-No. She can hear Junior walking down the stairs. Please God. It’s nothing. The ringing stops, he’s picked up the phone. Please don’t let it be. His voice sounds tired and distant. Who is he talking to? No. It’s not. Hail Mary full of Grace …
“What!?!”
That’s all she hears. All she needs to hear. It’s the shock, the pain, the sadness in it. Her husband’s voice slices through the air right into her heart and everything goes cold.
* * *
There’s a soft knock at the door come in it’s Jun-Jun what time is it what day is it the doctor said these meds would help ease the pain why why his heart I’ve stopped crying the tickets were refunded exchanged must of been the excitement how many days have passed Mama doesn’t think she can go without him why no one coming I have to get myself together for Papa for the flight Junior says he can manage with the kids his sisters will help we can’t afford to all go why it was only just two more months why there’s no reason why he was old they said don’t worry about it his heart my job will be there when I get back there’s not enough money I have to return those blankets I can’t bear to —
“Mama?”
She can’t do this right now. So tired. Sad. Hopeless.
You have to be brave, anak.
She takes a deep breath and braces herself. Be strong for your son.
“Yes? Jun-Jun? Come in.”
He stands by the bed. Hesitant. Holding a piece of paper in his hand.
“It’s okay, come here, sit beside me. What do you have there?”
“I … I made this for Lolo. Can you please bring it to him for me?”
It’s a drawing in crayon of the Philippine flag. At the top he’s written “PHILIPPPINES” and just below the flag is a man, a boy, and a silvery-white horse. In the careful scrawl of a six-year-old, it’s signed: “I love you I will miss you always Lolo. Jun-Jun.”
“It’s beautiful, anak. Thank you.”
He moves closer into her and settles into her embrace. They sit in silence. He smells like Johnson & Johnson baby shampoo and sunlight. She feels better with him here.
“Mama?”
“Yes?”
“He said … he said he was sorry. He told me to be brave. And that we have to take care of each other now.”
“We will, anak. We will.”