When the Elephants Dance (32 page)

Nene smiled. “Well, that is kind of sweet, don’t you think?”

I could not answer her, because a young man walked into the courtyard and I stopped breathing. “Who is that?” I shouted, then clapped a hand immediately over my mouth. My father walked by the room with a look of disapproval.

A boy strode in. He didn’t walk but strutted like a rooster. Even the other boys could not help but stare. He had a beautiful smile and eyes so wonderfully bright. He was comfortable among the others, who stood fidgeting and checking their clothes.

“That,” she said proudly, “is Jamie Bautista.” She smiled. “Is he not gorgeous?”

“Ay, what a horrible name, that is a girl’s name.”

“No, it’s not, it is short for James. He has three elder sisters, and they have called him Jamie since he was little. I think it is sweet.”

“Let us go down now. I want to test out my new dress.”

“Anna, not before you are announced,” Nene gasped. “Your mother will be furious.”

I didn’t care. The more I thought about it, the more I liked the idea. I would make a grand entrance by rushing down myself. So I did. Nene watched from my bedroom window, her mouth turned down in disapproval. I could feel my heart thumping with excitement through my body. I took a deep breath, steadied myself against the door frame, and then strode into the courtyard full of young men.

My mother was across the courtyard, instructing the servants on where to put the basket of tiny chicken legs and the honey dipping sauce. She was dripping more of the sweet sauce onto the large grilled fish baked with tomatoes, and onions stuffed into its belly. She turned, still speaking to someone with a smile on her face, when she saw me approach. I heard a plate crash, I heard the servants scramble around to make order once again, but I paid no attention. Someone told the band to strike up the music, and “the band,” a group of three guitarists and a singer, began to play.

The man had a sweet voice. He sang about a young girl who had grown out of a field of wheat and grew into a precious field flower, a
dalagang bukid
, and
how a young widowed farmer had picked her from the stalk and rescued her from her ladder of thorns.

I walked into the courtyard and felt powerful. The boys were looking at me with admiration and confusion. I smiled, walking among them, not really stopping anywhere. I turned and saw Jamie Bautista grinning openly at me. I lifted my chin and looked away. I let myself get lost in the music, swaying from side to side, pretending I was the precious flower in the song.

I told you Jamie Bautista was bold, but I didn’t realize how charming he was as well. For what he did next, a normal boy would have been reprimanded for. An ordinary boy would have been labeled as coarse or inappropriate, but not Jamie. He wooed the crowd, he made a game of it. He strolled next to me with his hands behind his back, and every now and then his feet skipped a little to the music. He walked around me, playing to the music as if he were the farmer somehow, studying the rose. Our eyes followed one another, and he bowed and somehow managed to look like the humble farmer asking the flower for a dance. I could not help but laugh and the crowd clapped and I gave him my hand.

He was so charming, he received a dance from the debutante without asking for one. He made up for it by taking my hand and kissing the back of it. He knelt with one leg on the ground and let me walk around him once, as if letting me contemplate his modest proposition. I was in heaven. What were the names of the other two boys I had chosen from my bedroom window? I could no longer remember.

Again Corazón managed to outshine me, and I had helped her. By coming down first, instead of side by side with her, I had allowed myself a small show of glory. But it was nothing, you understand, to how it left her the only one to come down the staircase announced as “the daughter,” and as if that were not enough, her dress was magnificent. It was a rose gossamer over a simple design of raw silk. She had left one shoulder bare, and from the other shoulder diagonally across her body she had embroidered sequins and mother-of-pearl beads in swirls that fused into the small train of her dress. I hadn’t noticed her in weeks because she had worked so hard at the gown. She would often sit out in the garden as she sewed, with the sun blanketing her. Her skin that night was a gorgeous brown. The highlights in her hair were streaks of gold. The only makeup she had was the red lipstick that seemed to glow against her skin. Her hair was clasped with a single pearl clip and the rest left to fall long down her back. People sighed when she walked down the stairs.

“Wow,” was all Jamie said. “Two beautiful daughters, your family is lucky.
I’m glad I noticed you first.” You see how he was? He paid her that one painful compliment, like when taking a blood test. One simple stab of the needle and then it is over. I hardly felt it. But that was it.

He did not get in line when all the boys surrounded her. He did not do so later when all the others had had their first dance with her. He stayed by my side all night, and when Corazón was brought over by Jamie’s mother and introduced to him, he took her hand and bowed to her. “Sister,” he called her, as if he and I were already promised to each other.

But then his mother insisted they dance and that she and I talk. I became excited, already a proposition from an interested mother. It was so difficult to take my eyes from Corazón and Jamie dancing, they were such a striking couple. He with his straight back and graceful stride, she with her blushing innocence.

“Anna, tell me about yourself.” Jamie’s mother smiled. I could see she was studying my hair; she even reached out and combed a few strays into place. I smiled graciously. She had Jamie’s eyes, or rather he had hers. The long eyelashes, the color a lighter brown, unusual in a full-blooded Filipino. Their family was middle class like ours, meaning we were poor but not homeless. We had a few luxuries, if you could call them that, such as furniture and a little extra money to gamble with, Corazón’s.

“I am seventeen today. I like to sing and I take voice lessons.”

“Ah, for how long?”

“I’ve taken lessons for ten years now.”

“Oh, very long time. You are so lucky that your family can afford this.”

I nodded. “Mhmm,” I said.

“This is a very beautiful dress, did you make this?”

“Oh, no. I worked very hard to save for it. I had it sent from the United States.”

“This is a lovely party. Did you help to cook any of these dishes?”

“Oh no. I only know how to make a few things.”

“Yes, yes, of course. You are young yet. All fun right now. Enjoy yourself now, right?” She laughed encouragingly.

I laughed with her.

“Look at Jamie dance. I was a good dancer when I was young. He gets that from me,” she whispered with her hand held to one side of her mouth, as if her words were only for my ears, and then she winked.

I was so overjoyed. His mother was so easy to get along with. And then I realized; it hit me on the head like guava falling from a tree. When I get married, I will also get a new mother. A mother-in-law, of course, but just the same.
She would love me as her own daughter. My heart had wings. I could have spun around in a circle, but instead I stayed in place, showing Jamie’s mother how mature I was. She told me how she loved to cook; she confided, in fact, that she was an excellent cook. I became encouraged, I thought of all the dishes we could create together. When she excused herself and walked away to speak to my mother, I bit my lip and waited for Jamie to come back.

I was so happy that I congratulated Corazón on the beautiful dress she had sewn. She glowed and thanked me.

She hugged me. “Happy birthday, sister,” she said. I could see in her eyes there was still hope that we could be close. “Perhaps later we can open our presents together,” she suggested.

“Sure, sure.” I nodded, pulling away from her embrace, but I was too excited about Jamie to listen to her at that moment. I took Jamie’s arm and we excused ourselves. I left Corazón standing alone.

She did not stay that way for long. I saw the boys get in line again to ask her to dance. Oh, there were boys interested in dancing with me as well, but I would not leave Jamie’s side, and after a while they saw how I was about him.

A young man came into our party late. He was very handsome. I saw that Corazón was immediately attracted to him.

I remember asking Nene, “Who is that man?”

“Matthew Parris. Corazón talks about him endlessly.”

Something possessed me at her words. I was only curious about him until that moment, but I knew when to pay attention to valuable information. I looked at Nene keenly. “I want to meet him later.”

As I studied our new guest, I saw that he and Corazón were alike. He was half French. But they looked the same with their fair golden skin and high brow. He had lighter hair than she did. A dark gold and, in fact, you could not tell he was half Filipino until you saw how his blue eyes turned up a little at the ends and you looked closer at his lips, which were fuller. He had very sensual lips, that one, and oh, how he made the other girls swoon.

He had been brought up in Puerto Princesa, and his father was a well-known lawyer who traveled much. He was a real, as they say, ladies’ man. I saw how his gaze strayed from Corazón to the other girls at the party even as he stood before her engaged in conversation and despite the fact that she was the prettiest one there. He looked at me many times, until Jamie stared him down. Corazón did not seem to notice any of this. Or perhaps she did not mind. Maybe she was just happy to have found someone like herself. This man is not so good, I thought to myself.

If I were a good sister, I would have warned Corazón about this before she
fell in love with him. But you already know what kind of sister I was back then. Instead, Jamie and I, we sat in the shadows, away from the twinkle of the stars. And I forgot for the moment my interest with Corazón’s admirer.

“How is it I never crossed paths with you all this time? You live just three kilometers from me.” He shook his head.

“What makes you think I would have been free then?” I teased.

He liked that, I could tell, my boldness. And that night, I was bolder than ever. I felt as if I owned the stars. As if I were the one who had filled the moon with crushed pearls just for my own party. I stood. “Well, I had better get to the other guests now.”

He looked up in confusion. “What do you mean?”

“Well, I’ve already wasted enough time on you, and you haven’t tried to kiss me once. By the time you decide to, I could have danced with every boy in this room. So I might as well start now.” Really, I do not know what came over me that night, to talk that way. I think I felt that since he did not know me, I could be the kind of girl I had always wanted to be, the kind of girl in the romance books my aunts read.

He laughed, throwing his head back, and grabbed my wrist and swayed our hands to the side and back while he studied his shoes. He took my hand and silently led me to the back of a large
narra
tree. “May I kiss you, Anna?” he asked with those wonderful eyes.

I nodded, too breathless to speak. But before he could kiss me, we were interrupted by that man, Matthew Parris. I was not sure where he came from. But he pretended not to see Jamie.

“Anna, isn’t it time you gave me that dance you promised me the other night?”

I was in such shock that I couldn’t speak. We had not even been introduced, yet he knew my name. How inappropriate, to suggest I had been alone with him, and during the night at that. I was so stunned, I didn’t know if I should slap him or laugh at the ridiculousness of it all. My silence made it appear that I had been caught in a lie. I turned to explain to Jamie that I didn’t even know him, when Jamie walked off with a small curse.

I watched as Jamie crossed the dance floor, straight to Corazón, and asked her to dance. My head swam with how fast it had happened, and here was Matthew waiting with that smile. I wanted to run to Jamie and explain, but my pride would not let me do that. It would also have been inappropriate, chasing a man I had just met in front of our guests. I nervously took Matthew’s hand and headed for the dance floor. I was angry, jealous, confused, and flattered. Yes, flattered that the two best-looking men were vying for my attention.

What I should have done was turn and walk away. What I should have done was run. Matthew led me out to the dance floor next to Corazón and Jamie. She would not look our way. It is funny how youth can block out instincts and a handsome face can block all thought. I forgot about how I had decided this Matthew Parris was a bad man, for the minute he turned on his charming ways to me, I too fell for his charms. His eyes were so blue. I felt as if they were the sky and I were a single cloud sitting in all that great expanse. It turned my thoughts upside down to be looked at the way he looked at me. I felt like one of the little monkeys that hang by their tails from the coconut trees.

He was tall, so he had to bend his head to talk to me. “You are so beautiful in that dress,” he whispered in my ear. I laughed nervously and looked over his shoulder. I saw my friend Nene standing in the sidelines, frowning.

“Did you and Corazón have a fight?” I asked, not sure what to say.

He chuckled. “What makes you think Corazón and I have anything?”

“Well, I …” I didn’t know what to say, so I looked over at Corazón and Jamie dancing. They were talking in whispers. She looked sad, and I almost felt bad for her, until Jamie lifted her chin with his two fingers. My hate rekindled, like a new log thrown into the fire. Why was she always there to catch the goodness that filtered through me? Why was I always left with the dregs of jealousy and hate? How had she managed to look the victim, when I was the one innocently minding my own business with Jamie Bautista? I did not want this blue-eyed man who dripped honeyed words from his lips. Though I didn’t exactly think that when I looked at him.

I was furious; our night was coming to a close. The evening was supposed to represent our futures, and look what bad luck was already showing. Me with my feelings all in confusion, and Corazón dancing with the man I had just found and was not ready to let go of. But most of all, I was angry at all the bitterness in my heart. I didn’t want it. I felt she had brought it there. She always did that, brought me bad luck. I told myself if my sister, Janna, were around, this would never have happened.