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New Year’s Revolution C andy didn’t need a good reason to escape their hut tonight. It was New Year’s Eve. If home was prison, she thought, such a sweet prison it was! Her mother’s garden, with its peppers, radishes, tomatoes, eggplants, mongo beans, corn, squash, papaya, mango trees and bitter melon ampalaya was her special joy too—even the biting ants that made weeding the pepper patch a painful challenge. Bees and butterflies and dragonflies floated above the growing earth. Watching the sprouts leap out of the muddy soil seemed more miraculous than the birth of her new baby brother. It was a joy she could share with her mother too. “Momma, can you soak the papaya seeds so we can plant them tomorrow?” “Sorry, honey. I need to pack this sugar for our store tonight. Can you help me with that? It’s our job to keep the Filipinos sweet at two pesos a package.” “Yes, Momma.” Outside, Candy could hear her uncle pounding together their little store. Up it went in the middle of what used to be their sweet corn patch. There wasn’t room for it anywhere else. Candy’s first memory was falling down the stairs when she climbed over a bicycle that uncle used to block the steps from a toddling two year-old. She cried over the spilled blood, and the needle her father’s friend, the best net maker in the village, used to stitch the wound up. Then her parents brought Candy home to eat their ripe corn, and cuddle her back to sleep. Firecrackers boomed, crackled and popped, scaring away the bad spirits of the old memories. Unless the bad spirits, like a determined enemy in war, thrived on the din of battle. “I’m going to celebrate tonight with my friends—you don’t have to wait for me.” Candy saw the twelve circle fruits on the table that were traditional good luck. There was an orange, grape, mangosteen and nine more. Some years they could only manage a dozen old and hairy coconuts around the rice bowl. “I don’t have to wait up for you, Stretch. But y’know what? I will anyway like a good daddy. Be home by one or your bicycle will turn into a pumpkin, Cinderella.” Whatever a pumpkin was. Peter watched his daughter pedal away through the garden and out the gate, remembering how much she had loved her first wheels. They had gone into debt to the Chinese loan sharks to pay for that, but seeing Candy’s shining black hair brushing the handlebars as she leaned forward to gain speed filled him with much pride mixed with a little fear. “Let go!” she screamed over and over when they had finally removed the training wheels. “Daddy let go, let go, let go!” She tumbled to the ground crying, and then demanded a minute later to be pushed back into the hard landing world again. He vowed to be there when she fell. Candy cycled into the December’s hot and long equatorial afternoon. Her freshly-bathed skin tingled, eyes registering every changing hue under the sun, smelling in each breath the wonderful odors of sweet, white sampaguita flowers and rank burning trash, tasting the delicious anticipation of first love. Her fifth sense exploded in pain when a young boy threw a firecracker into her bike’s path. Candy laid the bike down and chased him down, grabbing him by the shoulders. “What kind of brave soldier shoots at girls?” she demanded before turning him around to see her anger. “Where are you parents so…” When Candy saw his face, she didn’t need to ask that question anymore. “Kuya Lolong! You are my nephew, and it’s no good trying to frighten me. There’s lots of better targets. Besides, aren’t there more fun things to do with girls than scare them?” There was not much to get away with in a small village without everybody knowing quickly. That was why Candy would meet her new friend in the city thirty kilometers away. She was stuffed into an overcrowded jeepney, trying to fold her tall body into a short space. Her colorful party clothes attracted the burning eyes of half the passengers, and the others fought hard not to look. Candy was blissfully unaware of why conversations often stopped when she appeared. She was glad for the moment of quiet, though it ended with loudly useless horns, bells, whistles and sirens of the unpoliced Filipino road. Voices were so seldom raised in this polite culture that it shocked outsiders to hear how machines liberated the tranquil silences. An unmuffled motorcycle roared by, a steel trash can clattering behind it. “Candy!” The excited voice struggled to make itself heard above the terminal’s roar as she lowered her head to step from the jeepney’s low cab. “Happy New Year!” In the city, couples were holding each other tightly, daring the boy to imitate them. “Let’s start it out right, and resolve now that we will pick no more mangoes forever unless they’re for ourselves.” He took her hand to cross the crowded street, feeling its warmth and promise. Not wanting to scare her, he let go when they reached his friends at the corner. “Hey kids, let me introduce you to my friend—Candy was the best singer in the mango warehouse, and prettiest picker of the trees. But you are looking at the fastest mango thief on the islands!” He scampered high up a nearby tree, and out onto a stout branch to grab three green and unripe fruit. “Watch and be amazed by Jessie the juggler keeping these three objects in constant flight. Ladies and gentle germs, I present the mango air force on a combat mission.” The fruit turned into green blurs as he made them dance between his hands, then tossed them higher and higher into the air, Candy had never seen juggling before, and her heart leapt higher than the spheres. Until Uncle Louie sent them the latest check, her family had never owned a television. She would have been happy watching all night, and might have if Jessie didn’t finally drop a mango onto the sidewalk, cracking it in half. “No drinking and juggling, Jessie!” “Practice more!” “Lay off the coconut wine!” “Your air force was shot down!” The group, three couples who had gone to school together plus Jessie and Caroline, walked through the riotous city and up a hill. The city spread out beneath them—tin roofs reflecting the setting sun on the flats leading to the ocean, bigger concrete houses on the foothills, walled mansions at the top looking down. Vendors circulated through the crowds selling peanuts, coconut cakes, bottled water. The girls spread out sheets on the cogon grass and unpacked their dinners—rice as always, chicken adobo, kinilaw fish—raw and soaked in vinegar, salt and ginger, onions, cucumber and tomatoes, pancit noodles—and soft drinks. Nobody except the most isolated mountain tribes went hungry during the holidays. The government made sure prices rose only after New Year’s. “Watch this.” A boy held one of the firecrackers at arm’s length after lighting it, turning his face away from the burst. “Very nice. We’ll call you three fingers next time.” The girls laid out the plates, cups and questions for Candy. “So where did you meet Jessie?” “He’s the craziest of the boys, y’know.” “We call him prince playboy at school.” “Hope you know how to dance.” “And kiss.” They giggled together. There was no sunset. One moment it was there and then lights out. Sparklers lit faces instead in fiery reds and yellows. Jessie took his guitar out of the case and tried inexpertly to play. Caroline slid closer to his strumming hand. She could see a rash running down the back of Jessie’s neck and under his shirt. “What is that?” She gently touched his neck close to the redness. “Maybe from the time your religious boyfriend gave me a bath with those mango-ripening chemicals.” Candy drew back her hand. “Why do they call you prince playboy anyway?” “I’m not a prince—I’m a king.” “King of what?” “Whatever you want.” “To have a happy family.” “King of happily ever after. It doesn’t sound so bad. I want more though.” “Poor man wants to be rich?” “Rich man wants to be king, and the king ain’t satisfied ‘till he’s got everything.” “I didn’t know you liked Bruce Springstine.” “It’s Bruce Springsteen. And I don’t love him. I am him.” “Except you can’t play the guitar yet, you don’t know what a pink Cadillac is, and you weren’t born to run, only climb trees to pick mangoes for two hundred pesos a day.” Jessie brushed hair out of his eyes. Candy thought he did look like Bruce Springsteen. A brown, flat-nosed Bruce who couldn’t play his guitar yet. She touched his neck again and he took her hand. The first primary colors painted the dark skies, decorating their ears half a second later. “Swords might turn into plowshares,” the priest at Candy’s Christmas Mass had sermonized, “but sensation-loving humans can’t resist the bright, shiny lights of explosives that seem to solve problems so easily. The best we can do is make the creative renewal of destruction harmless as possible.” The priest himself was watching the same fireworks, and feeling the same first-time exploding emotions as Jessie and Candy. He was in love too, with one of his parishioners watching the night sky. They were both older and wished age gave immunity to their desires. But not yet, the priest prayed, not yet. Love tasted too sweet. He would let his lips express the overflow of his heart tonight. God—whoever or whatever that was, or was becoming—might understand. Jessie and Candy locked eyes and saw themselves reflected. Tonight at least, King Playboy and Stretch looked beautiful to each other in their hall of mirrors. Sounds of the last bombs bursting in air echoed away, and peace was declared again until next solstice. It was time for them to head home. Jessie helped Candy to her feet and into his arms, dancing in the dark. Candy looked at her cell phone and saw the time. “Oh no! You better let me go. My daddy will be worried if I’m not on time.” She disentangled herself from his long arms. “I can do things your daddy can’t do.” “Hmmm. Where have I heard that before? Good night, Jessie. I had the most wonderful time. Let’s not wait a year to celebrate again.” She headed downhill to catch the jeepney. It was impossible, and yet the seats were even fuller returning to the village. She was jammed in the front, speakers blasting metallic music directly into her ears still ringing from that afternoon’s firecracker. “Could you turn that down, please?” she begged the driver. He ignored her, or perhaps half-deaf from the sounds, couldn’t hear her. She put hands over ears, crouched low on the seat and tried to remember this night through the noise. The song stopped in mid-guitar solo, and the jeepney too. The driver and his assistant were under the hood to diagnose the problem. “Aaargh. It’s the alternator—wasn’t recharging the battery,” the assistant told the driver. “Your stereo drained the juice dry.” The driver laughed. “Good music is worth the suffering, though.” Candy and the rest of the passengers waited while jeepney after jeepney passed them, full of celebrators. It was hard to tell the sound of crickets from their ringing ears. A first drop of rain was followed by its fellows, hard enough to flatten hair to skull and dress to body. Candy began to walk the rest of the way home. The road turned, and dipped into a valley flooded with water. Candy walked across the muddy torrent, sticking in the mud underneath. Her feet came up with a slurping noise, first the left and then the right without its shoe. She crouched down to find it until, faced with having to put her head into the water, she gave up. The rain stopped, and paths unflooded to let her reach home. Peter was waiting by the door, and brought a towel while she sat down. Flickering pictures played on the wall behind the table, unfocused from a projector too close by in the small room. Unripe beans—shells not yet black, small radishes, unripe corn, tiny ampalyas, miniature green peppers, dwarf eggplants covered their table. “What is going on, daddy?” “We got another gift from Uncle Louie—he’s loaning us a video projector for our new business. We’ll be showing movies in the yard at ten pesos per head. That will be fun, right?” “What about all these tiny vegetables?” “We had to harvest the garden today. That’s where the audience will sit. We’ll make popcorn in the rice cooker. It’s going to be great, Stretch.” Candy could recognize now the movie playing on the wall. Cinderella. |
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| Rocky Times |
| January 11, 2008 |
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