In the Country (21 page)

You panicked. Turned away from the screen and started dusting, anything—a file cabinet, even the wall, then looked over your shoulder, like a fugitive. You wish you'd knocked his coffee down, the picture frame, instead. Those things could go back to their places. But this screen, this window—you couldn't put it back. You heard the words inside your brain, even when you shut your eyes. Embarrassment, a slippery disgust slid through you, as if you'd seen a naked photograph he meant to hide. Or found some private trash inside his bin. You sprayed the screens and wiped, as if Windexing the words away.

And the screens did darken; the little windows floated back. It worked!

When John returned, you made sure to be far from his computer.

“Es!” he cried. You could have fainted.

Confusion, like an illness, tied you up inside. You vowed never to come near the lip of his desk again. Seeing your name, yourself, in his words, as he saw you—
froufrou, dirt floor, cleaning lady, of all people
—you winced. And yet, these words too:
happy, air and light, the best part of the day.
For weeks you couldn't clean his office without flushing at the cheeks, feeling a mist above your lip. What kind of schoolgirl silliness was this? You cursed him for it. Called up every dirty word you'd ever learned from fights or movies, here or in the Philippines.
Fuckshitjerkoffthedevilsonofawhore!

You started to save him for last, hoping he might have left by the time you came to his door. But he was there, almost always. Calling out, “There she is!” Calling you Es.

Along the empty bridge, the driver turns his sirens off. You've taken the third seat, next to a woman wearing scrubs. The man to her right wears your clogs, in black. You sit Manila jeepney-style, six knees in a row—as if you're riding home from Nepa-Q-Mart once again, your cousins' children on your lap, the week's meat thawing at your feet, while strangers pass their fare through you up to the driver. Except there's a neat, unoccupied gurney in front of you. Static and the voice of a dispatcher come through the driver's radio, but you can't listen.

You twist the chaplet on your thumb, catching your finger on the first knob.
I believe in God, the Father Almighty…
You close your eyes and move your lips. On any other morning, traffic might have taken you through all fifty Hail Marys, but the streets are empty now. You've just begun the third Sorrowful Mystery when you open your eyes to the back windows of the van, which is already racing south past the courthouse where you took your oath.

Doris had told you of an amnesty five years before, signed by the President. And though you feared it was a hoax, a way to smoke illegals from their hiding holes, she helped you fill out the forms and get your card.
REGISTERED ALIEN.
Five years later, you rolled all ten of your fingers through black ink and filled ten squares with your ten prints. The lines that cut across the rings told you how many years had passed since you arrived from Manila with the Guzmans. The oath itself took five minutes. Your mind, so trained by prayer, has held on to every word.

I absolutely and entirely renounce and abjure all allegiance and fidelity to any foreign prince.

I will support and defend the Constitution.

I will bear true faith and allegiance to the same.

Afterward, some students at a table outside the clerk's door registered you, right then, to vote.

A couple, coming out of City Hall, asked you to photograph them. They weren't young, but the white daisies that the bride clutched in her hand were. A few of them she'd plucked and pinned into her hair. The air had dust and August grit in it, but on that day to you it was confetti. Every pigeon in the park looked like a dove.

“Our witness had to get back to the office,” said the bride. “Will
you
celebrate with us?”

You'd barely answered when she took your hand. “I found our wedding party, hon!” she told the groom, and ran. Your other hand grabbed Doris's. Cars honked, but in a friendly way, at the jaywalking four of you. “Congratulations,” people on the sidewalk slowed to say.

At a bar close to the water, the newlyweds ordered lemon pound cake—
the icing's white,
they said with a shrug—and champagne.

“Which one of you's the bride?” flirted the bartender, popping the cork.

“I am.” She pointed at herself. “But pour Esmeralda's first. Today she's an American.”

The golden fizz filled your glass to the lip. He poured the bride's, then Doris's, and then the groom's. The newlyweds insisted he, the bartender, drink too.

“Cheers,” said Doris.

“To love,” said the groom, winking at his bride.

“Mabuhay,”
said the bartender, winking at you. “Merlita taught me that. She cleans this place at night.”

It went, as they say, straight to your head: cold bubbles starbursting from your tongue and throat to your brain and your eyes, ringing the room with light.

“Now tell me it's still ‘a piece of paper,' ” said the bride to her groom. “Tell me you don't feel different.”

“I do,” he said. “It feels like…solid ground, where there was water. Right?” He put an arm around her.

“Drink to that,” said Doris, so you did.

“And you,” the groom asked, “what will you do first, as a full-fledged Yankee?”

The bride: “Besides get drunk with three other Americans.”

“She's looking for a real job,” Doris said.

“In an office,” you said.

You meant the kind of job you did get, nine weeks later, cleaning offices in a city building where thousands worked. But the husband said, “Trust me. It's overrated.”

“I want to send a postcard home and write an arrow,” you said.
“See that building? That's where Esmeralda works.”

They drank to you.

The newlyweds stood halfway through the second bottle and settled the bill. “We need to relieve the babysitter,” they said. “But will you stay and finish this for us? Promise you will.”

“No need to ask me twice,” said Doris.

“All the best to you two,” said the bride. Her eyes glassed up with tears. She squeezed your hand, and Doris's.

Doris swiveled her barstool to you. “You know they think we are a
we,
don't you?”

You swiveled back to where the newlyweds had gone. You didn't get it. Then you got it, blushed, and thought you ought to chase the bride and let her know the truth. But you'd drank more that afternoon than ever, couldn't feel your feet to stand. You opened your mouth to protest, but all that came out was a hiccup.

Doris giggled. So did you; you couldn't stop. You raised your glasses, clinked, and sipped again.

“Congratulations, Esmeralda,” Doris said. “Now you'll get jury duty like the rest of us.” But she beamed with pride.

You hiccuped, laughed some more, and then you kissed her, on the lips, just long enough to smell the powdery perfume and see the feather-colored down along her cheek. You thought of angels. Thanks to Doris, you were here. She was wearing lipstick for the occasion, and when you turned back to the bar mirror, so were you. The kiss was brief and sweet and overpuckered, like the one between two Dutch boys in a Delft figurine you dusted once. A souvenir. It said, below the boys' feet,
AMSTERDAM.

“America!” you shouted at the mirror. That set you both off giggling again.

Today, seeing the park outside of City Hall get smaller from the ambulance, you think that when you see John next, you'll tell him this story. You will insist on what that bride insisted on. Demand that you and he stop hiding, walk out into the sunlight and the traffic and the pigeons and the parks together. “I am good at oaths,” you will tell him.
So help me God.

For weeks his smile, his chirpy greetings, shamed you.
There she is!
One day you'd had it. Maybe the piece of paper had turned you more American after all. Americans loved bringing secrets out. Discomfort didn't kill them. One day you turned to him, hands on your hips.

“It's wrong no matter what.”

“I beg your pardon?”

“It's wrong no matter what. No need to ask your cousin who's a priest, because you know already.”

You had heard, in many houses, wives beg their husbands for the truth after seeing something they weren't supposed to see. You must have sounded like them now, confronting him.

“I don't know what you mean,” said John. His eyes jumped sideways to the screen. The husbands in those houses gave themselves away like this, too.

“You made a vow; that means always.”

“Es,” said John, “I really have no clue what you are saying.” He stared at you.

You could have said,
Oh never mind;
or said something in broken English. You once wrote off a week's pay from Helen Miller, because you couldn't bear to shame her for her slipping mind. With your own money you replaced the Ronsons' crystal tray, to keep their clumsy daughter out of trouble. And yet, something stopped you from protecting John.

“I saw my name on your computer.”

“You had no right to look there,” he said, sounding like those caught husbands again, “but I have nothing to hide. Please, be my guest.” He rolled his chair wheels back. “Show me what you saw.”

“I know it's not there now.” You went to him, cloth and Windex still in hand. “I was here, doing my job.” You mimed dusting around his files and keyboard. “I moved this thing by accident.”

He didn't deny it then.

“It's wrong no matter what, John.”

He'd said your name so often. This, your first time saying his, felt like stepping off a high ledge without looking.

He placed his long fingers on the keyboard. “I know that,” he said. “I agree.”

“It's wrong no matter what.” Your voice had lowered into someone else's.

He looked so sad, so tortured by what he knew to be the right thing. Would Doris, Pepe, anyone you knew—even yourself, a day before—have ever guessed you'd be the one to touch him first? You remembered sitting in the church, years before, not knowing what came next but hoping for some kindness. You placed a hand on his shoulder. You felt a shaking from inside him—not a lot, not a “tremor,” but enough to make you think he needed more warmth, another hand, which you then placed on his other shoulder. You waited, then stepped forward. His hands descended on your hips. He dropped his forehead to the highest button on your dress, above your breasts—bone against flat bone. His short breaths blew the fabric back and forth.

And yes, if you'd stopped there, it might have been a hug, no more—an awkward hug, between two people, not quite friends. If either of you had moved any faster, any sooner, you'd have fled the scene, spooked like a horse. But John's hand went so slowly from your hip, down to your knee, under your skirt. Any rougher and you might believe it all happened against your will. You looked through the window at squares of light in other buildings, tiny other people, tiny desks and chairs. His hand shifted against you, inches up and inches down, till sounds came out of your throat. You leaned back, seeing pores in the foam ceiling tiles before you closed your eyes.

Next to the churchyard, where he parks, the driver of the ambulance stops you. “Hey wait.”

You almost run, prepared to force your way into the building before he can ask for your ID. He doesn't. He just tosses you a hard hat and paper mask before he walks off, putting on his own.

You smell, right then, the burning. Sharper than all other fires you have known. You put the hat and mask on and keep walking. Flames crackle from a broken car window, its alarm whooping. You haven't seen a car aflame since Manila in the early eighties, the riot town the Guzmans were escaping. Two nurses pass, a coughing man outstretched between them, his big arms hanging on their small shoulders. The cops and firefighters move so fast. You realize you're searching for a pair of blue eyes, wondering if John's brothers are here too, working, trying to find him. If this had happened late at night, would John search the faces of these nurses in blue? Their pale uniforms really do match yours. Only the skirt sets you apart. You couldn't sit down on the curb, as one nurse does now in her blue scrub pants, and weep into your knees.

The worst typhoon your village ever saw began while you were in a tree. The tallest one on the plantation (Mahentoy, you called it, after the giant in a folktale) let you see as far as the bay on one side and the next village on the other. You were looking for your father. You didn't know that he had hitched his way already to Manila, where the taxis needed drivers and cafés needed busboys regardless of the weather; or that you would not see him again. You thought there was still time to tell him that a Red Cross tent inland had food and water.

“Come down, Esme,” you heard your mother say. Pepe wasn't with her.

You shimmied down. The water, when you landed, reached your knees.

“Where's the baby?”

“Darna brought him to the tent this morning.”

But you'd already seen Darna, your neighbor, from high up in the tree, head inland with
her
children—three of them, all her own, and no more. Your mother trusted people who had never wished her well.

“All right.” You walked her to the flooded main road and put her on a rescue boat. Then you turned, the water thigh-high now, and ran back to the house.

“Esme!” your mother called. “You'll drown.”

The wind whipped at your face; the water slowed your legs down like a dream of running. The house was far enough away you had a chance to look at it, still standing, and feel proud of your papa, whose own hands built it, while scraps of other houses were sailing through the storm. One tin sheet could have sliced you clear in half, but missed. Falling coconuts hit the water with louder splatters than their sound on soil. You ducked. And underwater, it was dark and quiet. You could move faster. You swam until your fingers touched the door.