Diaspora Ad Astra (9 page)

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’.”