The Tesseract (10 page)

“So,” said Lita. “How was it at the hospital, Mother?”

“Oh…fine.”

“Did you save anyone’s life?”

Rosa shook her head. “Not today, Lita, no.”

Lita was disappointed. The previous month, Corazon had
taken the kids to pick up their mother from work. They had entered the hospital via the emergency ward, arriving at the same time as a number of casualties from a bad jeepney accident on Edsa. Fatalities had been lying on the floor, and there had been a lot of blood. Thankfully, they were both levelheaded kids, and, unlike their grandmother, had no nightmares or sleepless nights afterward. But the incident had left Lita with a profoundly inaccurate understanding of her mother’s day-to-day work, which Rosa’s patient explanations failed to redress.

“Are you
sure
you didn’t save any lives?”

“Quite sure. Though I did diagnose a case of appendicitis.”

“Appendicitis,” said Lita, brightening. “Can it kill you?”

“Only in the hands of an incompetent doctor.”

“Incompetent?”

“A bad doctor.”

“Like Eduardo.”

“Where did you get the idea that Eduardo was a bad doctor?”

“You.”

“Really?”

“I heard you say it to Dad last week.”

“Ah. Well, you have big ears,” said Rosa, and pinched them. Lita giggled. “What about you, anyway? Tell me about school. Save any lives there?”

But Lita didn’t answer. She was distracted by something her brother was doing.

Rosa turned around. Raphael had picked up the duck and
was holding the split above his face, squeezing a soapy-water fountain over his mouth and chin.

“Are you drinking that, Raffy?”

“A little,” he spluttered.

“I’ve told you, the bathwater is not the same as the drinking water from the kitchen tap. It isn’t clean.”

“Of course it’s clean! We’ve just had a bath in it! Look at all this soap floating around!”

“No,” said Rosa firmly, pulling the crushed duck from his fingers. “It is not clean. But you are, so come on out, both of you. Let’s get you dried off and into bed.”

Rosa, watching Raphael slip into his bedtime shorts, held out a T-shirt for him. She wished she could hold it in one hand, casually, by her side—but she couldn’t. It had to be both hands. She also wished she didn’t have to hold it at all—but she didn’t feel she had a choice. The T-shirt had to be there, anonymous and available, should he want to wear it. Sometimes he did, when the weather and nights were cooler. Rosa preferred the cooler months.

The irony was that his sister Lita always wore a T-shirt to bed. She was aware, even if she didn’t
know
she was aware, that it was proper to cover her as-yet-unformed chest. Lita hid her unformed chest, and Raphael didn’t hide the chest that would
never be formed. Moreover, Lita didn’t need to hide her chest, whereas Raphael…

“Raphael doesn’t need to either,” Rosa muttered to herself, and he looked up.

“I don’t need to what?”

“Nothing,” replied Rosa, through a yawn she engineered unconsciously. “You want this T-shirt?”

Raphael unflipped a twist in the elastic waistband of his shorts. “No.”

“You sure?” said Rosa, and immediately answered herself. “No. Okay. Fine.”

“We’ll go and say good night to Grandma,” said Lita.

“Yes,” said Raphael.

“Yes,” said Rosa. And that was the whole point. Rosa couldn’t have cared less what Raphael wore to bed, once he was
in
bed. But every evening, last thing before being tucked in, the kids would go and say good night to Corazon.

Rosa sighed. Then she folded the T-shirt and laid it back in the cupboard, where, in any normal family with any normal grandmother, it would have belonged.

Corazon sat
on the sofa with her interrupted book by her side. Lita sat on her lap, and Raphael stood on tiptoe, clinging with his arms to her knee. Rosa stood in the living room doorway, leaning against the frame, feeling blank and hoping to stay that way.

“Do you know what I was thinking today?” asked Corazon.

“Unh-uh,” said Lita. Raphael didn’t bother to answer, because
he knew where the question was directed. But still, he stood a little farther up on tiptoe, and tried to pull himself higher up his grandmother’s knee.

Corazon brushed her fingers through Lita’s still-damp hair. “I was thinking what we will be able to do with this in a few years’ time. Really, so many options we’ll have. And so much fun, deciding the different ways you will wear it. We’ll look at magazines together, and choose only the best styles.”

“Hmm,” said Lita. “Actually, it isn’t long enough for many different styles.” She pulled her bangs to the side. “You see, I can put it to the side like this, or to the other side, but…”

“Ah well.” Corazon lowered her voice to a stage whisper. “Perhaps in a few years’ time, your mother will stop cutting it so short.” Then she laughed. “Such
beau
tiful hair. I can imagine it long and silky, hanging to your waist. Or we could tie it back with a band, and maybe put a flower in there. Of course…” back to the stage whisper “…only the prettiest girls can get away with wearing a flower.”

Lita looked thoughtful. “I’m not
sure
I’d want to wear a flower.”

“We’ll see! We’ll see if you want to wear a flower, when you want to start catching boys! But listen to me. I can tell you, my angel, you will be catching boys even with no flower at all. You will be the flower!”

“Flower…”

“Yes,” said Corazon. “Flower. In the sweetest way, you will break hearts.”

“And what about me?” Raphael chipped in, frustrated,
unable to contain himself any longer. “Am
I
going to break hearts,
Lola
?”

Rosa closed
her eyes. It was the only way she would be able to avoid seeing Corazon’s expression. If her eyes were open, she would have to look.

A thin smile, the measure of Corazon’s genuine affection for the boy as it tried to break through the suddenly dead mask of her face. A perfunctory stroke of Raphael’s cheek. A helpless glance at his bare torso.

“Of course you will break hearts, darling. Many. You will be a playboy.”

“I’ll be a playboy, and Lita will break hearts.”

“Yes.”

“And we’ll both be rich.”

“I hope so.”

“Good. We’ll both be rich, with fantastically big houses. And I’ll be a playboy basketball player.”

Corazon coughed. “A basketball player, darling?”

“Yes, a basketball player. I’m fairly sure. I’ve been thinking about it, and I think I’d be good.”

“Well, well. That certainly is a very nice idea. But darling, what about being something grander, like a lawyer? After all, basketball players need to be…”

“Right!” interrupted Rosa, opening her eyes with a snap. “Bedtime.”

Refusing to meet Corazon’s gaze, Rosa clapped her hands and preempted the inevitable protest.

“Daddy’s going to be late home from work tonight, so you can’t wait up for him. So come on. No complaints.”

There were none. The brother and sister kissed their grandmother and padded out of the room. Good kids.

It wasn’t going to be too long before the kids would outgrow their small bedroom. Come to that, it wasn’t going to be too long before they would need separate bedrooms. Which was a problem, because there were only three bedrooms to divide up—two adjoining, and one at the far end of the house.

Corazon’s was at the far end, and it was the largest. When she’d moved in, she had asked to swap with one of the smaller rooms, but Rosa had insisted she stay put, despite her husband’s grumbles. At the time, there had been an unformed thought in the back of Rosa’s mind—that perhaps by the time the kids needed their own space, Corazon would have passed on. In more recent years, particularly since the troubles with Raphael, the thought was still buried but had become a little more clarified.

“Open,” said Lita.

“Closed,” said Raphael.

“Open!”

“
Closed!
”

Rosa frowned. “It can’t be both open and closed. Raphael,
why can’t it be open? You’ll boil like a couple of eggs if I leave it closed.”

“It
can’t
be open. There’s a hole in the mosquito netting. The mosquitoes fly in and get me.”

“Well…your sister doesn’t seem to mind.”

“I know she doesn’t! The mosquitoes don’t get
her
. They leave her alone.”

“That’s a mosquito’s compliment. They bite you because you taste so sweet.”

“No. They bite me because I sleep beside the window, but mainly because I don’t drink beer.”

“Beer?” said Lita, and sat up in bed.

“Lie back down, honey.”

“If I drank beer,” Raphael continued airily, and also sat up, “they’d leave me alone too.”

“I do not drink
beer
!”

“Of course you do. You sneak it from the fridge. It’s completely obvious.”

“I do
not!
”

“Then why don’t the mosquitoes bite you? Everybody knows that if you drink beer, you don’t get bitten by…”

“They bite you,” interrupted Lita, “because of the smell when you wet the bed.”

“Wet the bed?” Raphael threw his arms up into the air. “That’s the stupidest thing I ever heard! I haven’t wet the bed for months!”

“You wet the bed last week.”

“What!”

“Every night, actually.”

“How would you know? With all that San Miguel, you’re too drunk to remember!”

“I do
not
drink
beer
!”

“Enough!” said Rosa. “Raffy, Lita does not drink beer. Lita, Raffy has stopped wetting the bed. Now, lie back down and show me this hole in the netting.”

Raphael sank back on his pillow. “It’s up there.”

“Here?”

“Higher.”

“Oh. Yes, I see it…So how did this happen?” Rosa winced. “No, on second thought, I don’t want to know.”

“It was Raffy.”

“Lita did it with a knife.”

Lita’s eyes bulged. “A
knife
?”

“When she was reeling around one night.”

“Irrelevant. I said I didn’t want to know. Okay, how about I cover the hole up with a bit of newspaper, and then you can sleep with the window open.”

“Hmm,” said Raffy. “Yes, that’s a good idea. As long as the newspaper doesn’t blow away.”

“Well, sweetheart…” Rosa rubbed a hand on the back of her sweat-slick neck. “I don’t think there’s much chance of that tonight. There hasn’t been a breeze through Manila for days.”

Rosa snuck down the stairs. In the hallway, by the living room, she nodded gratefully at the sound of the television, and walked briskly past the open doorway, eyes forward. Then she continued down the hallway, giving a thumbs-up to the slightly frayed Christ on their Last Supper wall hanging, and went into the kitchen. She planned to read the
Manila Times
over a cup of black coffee, maybe complemented by some Magnolia ice cream.

Corazon was standing by the sink, busily rearranging the clean dishes that Rosa had stacked half an hour before.

“Dearest,” said Corazon. “I’ve been telling you since you were Lita’s age. If you don’t pile the dishes in order of size, they’ll get chipped.”

“
Because he doesn’t
want to be a fucking
lawyer
! He wants to be a
basketball
player!”

Corazon chose to ignore the bad language. “Rosa, he is never
going
to be a basketball player. You know it, his father knows it, and I know it. Why let him dream of something he can never have? It’s nothing but cruelty.”

“He’s
six
years old! Two weeks ago he wanted to be an astronaut, until you managed to talk him out of it!”

“An astronaut was unrealistic. Astronauts need to be in peak physical condition. A lawyer is realistic.”

“But right now he doesn’t
want
to be a lawyer, he
wants
to
be a basketball player! And who knows, by the time he’s
seven
he might have completely changed his mind!”

Corazon sniffed. “I don’t believe I brought you up to use that tone of voice with me.”

“You didn’t bring me up to be a doctor either,” snapped Rosa.

“Excuse me?”

“Nothing.”

“What did you say?”

“I didn’t say anything.”

“I distinctly heard you say something about the way I brought you up.”

Rosa exhaled. “I said you didn’t bring me up to be a doctor.”

“Well, what a thing to say! May I ask you, who paid for you to go through college?”

“Uncle Rey.”

“Yes! And who had to go to Uncle Rey,
four
times a year, asking for yet more money?”

“Yes! And
why
did it suddenly become so important to put me through college?
Why
was it suddenly so important to get me out of Barrio Sarap?”

“So, you would rather have stayed in Sarap.”

“I would rather have had a choice.”

Corazon let out a short, vicious laugh. “A choice in Barrio Sarap! That’s a fine thing to say. A choice between being the wife of a sawmill laborer or the wife of a fisherman. Oh, the choices I had!”

“Right! The choices
you
had!”

“They weren’t
choices
!”

“You had
choices
between men!”

“My God,” said Corazon, and crossed herself. “You understand so little. You are a trained doctor in a Manilan hospital, and you understand nothing.”

“Jesus,” said Rosa, and didn’t cross herself. “Can we stick to the point? Can we agree that if a six-year-old wants to be a…”

What was it
with the streetside blossom? The sun was gone now, burned away during the kids’ bathtime, but Rosa was sure she could still make out the greens and yellows and blues. What was it about the colors that made them so durable?

“I’m going to watch TV,” said Corazon. “The hospital program, it’s on tonight.” Her voice was stiff and hurt, but somewhere in it was a softness. The same softness that lay in her expression when she’d talked to Raffy earlier, smile struggling with her dead face.

“
ER
,” said Rosa, without turning from the window. “I’ll…”