The Rules of Inheritance (24 page)

BY THE TIME school starts again, in the fall, that day feels far away. The months with Henry are like a strange dream. We avoid each other in the halls, and I press closer to Zoe, until I can feel the wisps of her hair against my shoulder.

 

That fall Zoe and I discover drugs and careless make-out sessions with the boys who supply them. We lean back into the seats of the old red Saab my parents have bought me, and we blow cigarette smoke up through the sunroof while we skip Ms. Cusak's class.

 

My relationship with my mother becomes both closer and more distant. Some nights I wake her in the middle of the night, sitting down softly in the darkness on her side of the bed. She is sleepy and warm and her voice is husky when she asks me what is wrong. It is past two in the morning, but I haven't gone to sleep yet.

 

Nothing, I say. I wanted to read you a poem that I just finished.

 

She clicks on the light and pushes herself up in bed until her back is resting against the headboard.

 

Okay, she says, I'm ready.

 

When I am done reading, she tells me all her favorite parts. She pulls me close to her and then pushes herself back down beneath the covers.

 

Turn off the light, will you?

 

I click it off and sit there next to her in the dark until she is asleep again.

 

In the fall of my senior year her cancer comes back. For months she is in and out of the hospital. Operations and chemo, doctor's appointments and more bills scattered across the dining room table.

 

In the morning, as I get ready for school, I can hear her throwing up in the bathroom. She is pale and gaunt and more careful with her movements. Her hair falls out little by little.

 

We have passed through whatever destructive phase of our relationship we went through. The anger and resentment have softened.

 

I have softened.

 

Henry and I still avoid each other at school, and my friendship with Zoe won't last through junior year, both of us finding circles of friends who aren't as complicated. Sometimes I want to call her and tell her about my mother, but I never do.

 

The day my college acceptance letter comes I open it quietly in the kitchen. Tears fill my eyes as I read the words written across the page.

 

I have only applied to one school. A tiny liberal arts college on a mountain in Vermont, far away from my mother and my father, far away from Atlanta and everything it ever meant to me.

 

I find my mother in her bedroom and hand her the letter. The late afternoon sun skates over the hardwood floors, and we stand near her dresser. She has a pair of earrings in her hand but takes the letter anyway. I watch her read the words, and then she looks up at me, tears brimming in both of our eyes.

 

This is the beginning of the end.

Bargaining

We will do anything not to feel the pain of this loss. We remain in the past, trying to negotiate our way out of the hurt.

2003, I AM TWENTY-FIVE YEARS OLD.

A
TAXI IDLES, waiting for me in the circular driveway of a hotel in the Philippines. I take one last look at my companions, a motley crew of seasoned travel writers with whom I've spent the last seven days, and hand my pack to the driver, who tosses it lightly into the backseat.

 

I'm on assignment for
Student Traveler
magazine in Los Angeles, and I've been part of this group of journalists, all of us guests of the Filipino tourism board. But after seven days of touring Manila and the island of Cebu, I have yet to really generate anything worthy of a story for my publication.

 

While the rest of the writers are getting comfortable in their business-class seats, heading home to LA, I'll be making my way to an island I've only read briefly about in my guidebook: Malapascua.

 

The Philippines is a large and notoriously dangerous country composed of more than seven thousand islands flung carelessly across a corner of the Pacific Ocean. Before I left on this trip my friends and family expressed concern.

 

You could get kidnapped, my aunt said.

 

You could get, like, typhoid or something, my friend Lucy said.

 

You could get kidnapped, Liz said.

 

I've already learned a lot about the Philippines, and while those things are indeed true, they are unlikely. That said: it's been an intense experience. I've never been to Asia, or the third world, and the Philippines is definitely both.

 

There are very few Western travelers in this country, and for days I have been privy to the kind of treatment usually reserved for Hollywood celebrities. At every temple, every open-air market or on every bustling city street I have walked down, local Filipinos have grabbed one another, gesturing wildly at me: the tall white girl in their midst.

 

The cab driver peers at me, with interest, in the rearview mirror.

 

The bus station, please, I say firmly.

 

He puts the car in gear, and we leave the four-star hotel behind.

 

Where are you going?

 

Malapascua.

 

Malapascua?

 

I watch his eyebrows go up in the mirror.

 

According to my guidebook, the island of Malapascua is located in the Visayan Sea, just across a shallow strait from the northernmost tip of Cebu. Traveling there requires an eight-hour bus ride through the jungle, then a boat ride to the island.

 

There are no airports on Malapascua. In fact there are not even any cars. There is hardly much of anything, really. The island is about one mile wide by two miles long. The electricity shuts off at 10:00 p.m., and there is running water for an hour only twice a day.

 

There is really only one reason to go to Malapascua, and that is because it is one of a couple places in the world where you can dive with thresher sharks. I learned this two days ago, while paging through my guidebook, looking for something to do that would be worth writing about.

 

The common thresher shark ranges in size from ten to twenty-five feet and has a tail shaped like a scythe, which it uses to stun its prey. A pelagic species, thresher sharks generally reside at depths too dangerous for divers to reach.

 

Perfect, I thought when I read this. No matter that I haven't been diving in years. No matter that the idea makes my chest tight, my breath short.

 

According to my guidebook, Monad Shoal, off the coast of Malapascua, is one of the only places in the world where there are daily sightings of thresher sharks. The sharks convene there every morning because of their symbiotic relationship with a species of wrasse that lives in the shoal. The small fish rid them of bacteria by eating the dead skin from their bodies and the insides of their mouths.

 

Diving with sharks, a creature I am deathly afraid of, seems like the perfect antidote to the raging desperation I feel inside.

 

My father has been dead for exactly two months.

YES, MALAPASCUA, I say to the cab driver, meeting his eyes in the rearview mirror.

 

Why are you going there?

 

I hear there's good diving.

 

The driver nods, his face serious as he contemplates my answer. A beat passes.

 

Who is going with you?

 

Oh, just me, I answer truthfully.

 

You're going alone?

 

Yup.

 

No husband?

 

Nope.

 

No friends?

 

Nope, just me.

 

I say this last sentence cheerfully, hoping to assuage any concerns the driver might have for my well-being. It doesn't work.

 

Do you know anyone on Malapascua?

 

Nope.

 

You're just going alone?

 

Yes.

 

This is getting tiresome. And it's also making me nervous.

 

When we get to the bus station, I will help you, the driver says then.

 

Um, I say hesitantly, that's very nice, but unnecessary.

 

I want to make sure that you find the right bus.

 

I relent, nodding at him in the mirror. I can tell that I'm not going to win this battle.

 

True to his word, he parks at the bus station and accompanies me inside. The station is hot and humid and crowded with people, all of them Filipino. As we walk through the open-air terminal people turn to stare and even point at me.

 

The driver leads me to a ticket window and leans forward, speaking rapid Tagalog with the clerk. The only word I can discern is “Malapascua.” I watch the clerk make a surprised face and gesture questioningly at me. The taxi driver shrugs and repeats something.

 

Back outside, clutching my ticket in one hand, my backpack in the other, I follow the taxi driver down a long line of brightly colored school buses. I have a nervous feeling in my stomach. I've traveled a lot in my life, but never like this. Never alone. Never so far from home.

 

Each of the buses has been painted in wild streams of colors, and all of them are decorated with fringe and beads, random ornaments, and stuffed animals. We stop in front of one with the name Nikki emblazoned across the front in graffiti-style letters.

 

I try to act casual as the majority of passengers on the bus stop what they are doing and watch me make my way down the row of seats. I take the first open seat I see and scrunch down a bit, hoping to look less conspicuous.

 

The taxi driver stops to speak with the bus driver and then makes his way down the aisle to me.

 

Okay, he says, the ride will take about eight hours. You have to travel all the way to the top of Cebu. Yours will be the last stop. Once you get there you must find a boat willing to take you to Malapascua.

 

I nod. I am almost too stunned to thank him, but I finally manage to eke out a word of gratitude.

 

After he is gone I settle into my seat. Even though I haven't been in a school bus in a long time, the sticky seats and little rectangular windows are achingly familiar.

 

Hardly a minute goes by before the bus rumbles to life and we maneuver slowly out of the terminal. Just before we pass through the gates of the bus station two young Filipino boys in threadbare clothes hop aboard. And then I watch, through the big rearview mirror, as the driver slips on a pair of fluorescent Ray-Bans and pops an eight-track cassette into a player positioned just above the windshield.

 

Suddenly ABBA blares from tiny little speakers strategically placed all over the bus.

 

 

The music is so loud I can barely think, and my back is pulled flush against the seat as the bus lurches forward, gaining momentum with a fierce grinding of the gears. A warm breeze whips down through the top half of my open window and sunlight glances off the pleather seats around me. I close my eyes and lean my head back.

 

I have no idea what it is I'm trying to prove to myself with this trip, but I'm about to find out.