The Tesseract (14 page)

“What did she say?”

“She took me straight to the padre, and he blessed me. Then she made him do it again, to make sure. Then she made me promise never to skip that chant again.”

“Mmm. Quite a strong reaction.”

“She said that when she was a girl, she met two Visayans who had seen Black Dog with their own eyes. And they were new to Luzon, so they didn’t know the story yet.”

“But you must have skipped it again after that. We were always skipping that chant.”

“Yes, I did.” Rosa laughed a little shyly. “Actually, I’d deliberately trip on the chickens. Who cares about a few chickens?”

Leesha nodded. “True.”

“We didn’t have any chickens, anyway…”

At that moment, the ball from the boys’ game rolled to where the two girls sat and hit against Leesha’s leg. With one apologetic arm raised, the oldest boy, Sison, trotted over.

“Sorry,” he said.

Leesha kicked the ball away, planning to send it toward the rope skippers, but it hit the side of her foot and ended up spinning back toward him. She gave a little snort of annoyance.

“I suppose you think we’ve been impressed with the way you’ve been playing. You think we’ve been watching you out of the corners of our eyes, and that’s why we’re sitting here on this wall. To watch you.”

Sison scratched his head.

“But you know, we aren’t at all interested in seeing you show off.”

“Well,” he said, as he picked up the ball and began walking back to his friends. “We know you aren’t, Leesha, because you’ll be married soon.” Then, somewhat bravely, he glanced back at Rosa. “But not everyone will be married soon.”

“To be fair, he has a point,” Leesha whispered when Sison broke into a jog. The ball bounced loyally by his side, snapping upward as if the Earth’s gravity had temporarily relocated itself to the palm of his hand. “You don’t have a boyfriend, and…” she gave a businesslike sigh “…Sison
is
fantastically handsome.”

Rosa looked surprised. “Leesha, you can’t say things like that! What about Turing?”

“I’m only stating what’s obvious. He’s gorgeous.”

“Lee
sha
!”

“It’s for your sake I’m pointing this out, Rosie. I couldn’t care less about his dreamy lips. I mean, don’t you find him attractive?”

“No.”

“Why not?”

“Disco hair,” said Rosa briefly. Then added, “Although I think disco hair looks
very
good on Turing.”

Leesha chuckled. “I don’t. Turing doesn’t know it yet, but the first thing I’m going to do after our wedding day is get out my scissors and cut it off.”

They looked at each other.

“And I might give him a haircut, too,” Leesha added a beat later, and Rosa collapsed into giggles.

Orange schoolyard dirt
collected on the basketball players’ feet and calves. A trio of men and their machetes appeared on the jungle fringe, then disappeared back inside. Clouds found new formations and rolled across the sky at a deceptive speed.

“Anyway,” said Rosa, a little louder and less casually than she had intended. When she tried again, she had dropped her voice. “Anyway, perhaps I don’t find Sison attractive because I have a boyfriend already.”

“Ssst!” said Leesha immediately, and put a finger to her lips. Then she scanned the playground, lifted up both feet and checked beneath them, and made a cursory inspection of the long grass on the road side of the wall. Finally, she lifted the neck of her T-shirt and peeked inside. “Okay, Ella is nowhere to be seen. Who is he?”

“I only said per
haps.
”

“Oh, I know exactly what you said.”

“No, really.”

“No really, I know exactly what you said.”

This time, Rosa’s giggles were pure nerves and ended as abruptly as they had begun. She took a deep breath, realizing as she did so that this was the first time she had spoken his name outside of his company.

“Lito…” Leesha echoed, furrowing her brow as she tried to put a face to the name. “Lito, Lito…He doesn’t go to school.”

“No.”

“He’s not the boy from the Infanta chemist? The Ilocano?”

“No no. The Lito from the next barrio. He has his own boat. In the morning, he’s always fishing on the beach near the Abiawin church.”

“
That
Lito?”

“Yes. His boat is the one with the painted…”

“I know who you’re talking about,” Leesha interrupted, her expression becoming unambiguously serious. “Tata Vin’s son.”

“Did you know Tata Vin?”

“I think my father knew him, but…” The sentence was cut short as Leesha raised a hand to her cheek. “You and Lito…You’ve, what, fallen in love already?”

“Leesha, I now understand
everything
about how you feel for Turing.”

“You’ve slept with him.”

“We’ll get married.”

“Your parents don’t know.”

“I love him completely!”

“Completely.”

“Aren’t…aren’t you pleased for me? You don’t seem…very pleased for me.”

“Rosie,” said Leesha absently, more to herself. Then she appeared to refocus. “Of course I’m pleased for you. I was surprised, that’s all. I had no idea you’d found someone, and…”

“And?”

But the focus slipped again. “And I think you’re so
pretty.
You’re one of the…No, you’re
the
prettiest girl in the whole Infanta area. My God, probably the whole of Luzon. All of these boys, they would swim to Polilio for you. Sison would climb the Sierra Madres on his hands and—”

“Sison?”

“—knees.”

“Leesha, what are you saying? I don’t understand at
all.
”

“I…I’m not saying anything. I’m being stupid.” She shook her head. “Rosie.”

“Yes?”

“I’m being
stupid.
” Leesha smiled. “Falling in love. It is amazing, isn’t it?”

“Yes it is!” said Rosa, wondering why the smile made sweat prick between her shoulderblades.

“It’s amazing, and I’m so pleased for you, of course.”

The sudden downpour that evening was as unexpected as a fist-fight in a church and was strong enough to tear branches from palm trees. But even the power of the rain, and the crack and brightness of the lightning, seemed a desultory warning of the winds that followed. By nightfall, it had become the kind of typhoon that could lift a house and spin it across a paddy.

Sitting in a pool of oil-lamp light, held securely in Corazon’s arms, Rosa could feel her mother’s lips moving against her ear, but over the sound of the storm she couldn’t hear the words. “
Dios mío
,” Rosa imagined. Corazon would be using a Spanish prayer, because where God was concerned, she believed Spanish was the language most likely to produce results. “
Por favor, de su protección a ésta casita y ésta familia.
”

A fresh peal of thunder, which sounded as if the entire structure of the sky were breaking away from its horizon seam, made Corazon’s hold tighten. Rosa dared to open her eyes for a moment and saw a strobe of white slashes against the dark walls of her home. The typhoon was peering through the gaps in the
nipa
matting. Nestling further into her mother’s embrace, Rosa decided not to open her eyes again until the slashes were caused by daylight.

But daylight never really came. Hours later, the only indication of sunup was Doming’s waking. He had slept better than his wife and daughter, untroubled by the shattering noise. As he stretched his muscles, Corazon gently extricated herself
from her daughter’s curled form and walked over to the kitchen area to fix some breakfast.

Rosa watched her father gauge the storm by leaning against the front door and feeling it vibrate through his shoulders. A flick of his eyebrows conceded that they were locked in for the day. After a few minutes of drumming his fingers on his belly, he sat down at their small, wobbly table, frowning at his stubby fingers. Fish hooks were lined up to his left, strips of blue thread were lined up to his right, and threaded fish hooks were rapidly lining up in front of him.

Rosa helped Doming thread fish hooks until midmorning. Then she helped him sharpen some of his knives. Then some of Corazon’s. In the afternoon, Doming fixed the wobbly table, and the family spent the rest of the day playing
pusoy dos
, even though the pack was short the two of diamonds.

The next twenty-four hours were much the same, the only variety being the nature of the chores. And so were the next. The only difference to the fourth day was Rosa’s realization that if she didn’t see Lito soon, she was going to go crazy.

“It’s out of the question. You’ll be brained by a coconut.”

“There won’t be any coconuts left on the trees, and the winds have died down.”

“Died down?” Corazon cupped a hand to her ear. “Died
down
? You’re as deaf as your father. Are you telling me you can’t hear that…that
jet airplane
outside our front door?”

“What I can hear is you talking, so the winds must have died down.”

“Don’t be smart. It isn’t clever to be smart.”

“But…”

“No! If Leesha wants her schoolbooks, she must come and get them herself.”

“
I
borrowed them from
her.
I was supposed to give them back the next morning. That was
days
ago.”

“So?”

“So she’ll be extremely behind in her work,” said Rosa, using the mystery of modern schooling to throw her mother. “And she won’t be able to pass her exams.”

“She doesn’t need ‘exams’ if she’s marrying Turing.”

“She’s going to be a schoolteacher.”

“She doesn’t
need
to be a schoolteacher.”

“Turing
wants
her to be a schoolteacher. It’s important to him and…”

“I doubt that very much,” Corazon interrupted, but Rosa could hear the doubt creeping into her voice. She was aware of how nervous Corazon would be of causing any difficulty for such a locally celebrated marriage arrangement. “But if Leesha needs her precious books so badly, your father can take them around.”

“I see,” said Rosa confidently. “And can you mime ‘Take these books to Leesha’?”

“Of course I can mime it.”

“Good. How?”

“Well now. It’s perfectly simple. He knows Leesha’s name and where she lives.”

“Ah. But he doesn’t know that while Leesha’s parents are in Cardona to make wedding preparations, Leesha is staying with her aunt’s friend’s brother. Who lives in Infanta.”

“Aunt’s friend’s
brother
? Who on earth is that?”

“Just the brother of a friend of…”

“Her aunt’s.”

Rosa nodded. “He had enough room to take in all the kids.”

For a couple of moments, Corazon looked at her husband, who was biting his lower lip and painstakingly drawing two diamonds on a small rectangle of cardboard. “God,” she muttered. “Why did I marry someone who can’t read?”

In truth
, the winds had died down a good deal since the typhoon had been at its strongest—otherwise Corazon would never have let Rosa go. But they were still strong enough to make walking difficult, especially with her wet skirt acting as a sail. The material would alternately balloon and jerk her sideways, or empty of air and whip around her legs.

She ditched the schoolbooks a few hundred feet from her house, hiding them under a flat stone. They were soaked, but the pencil marks would survive. Anyway, Leesha had about as much interest in passing exams as in becoming a schoolteacher—which was to say, no interest at all. Rosa had only taken the books because otherwise they would have been thrown away or used by Leesha’s grandfather for cigarette
papers, and it would have been a pity to waste the unused pages. Now they were being put to a better use than she could have possibly imagined, so it all had worked out very well.

Her single worry was how, once she got to Lito’s house, she would manage to let him know that she was there. Knocking on his front door would mean meeting his family and ending the clandestine nature of their relationship. She didn’t feel ready for that yet. For no reasons beyond instinct, she suspected that Corazon would need some groundwork before any declarations were made. Leesha’s reaction had confirmed as much.

In any case, she needn’t have worried. As she neared the point of the beach where they always met, she spotted a slim figure through the driving rain, with an immediately recognizable lopsided stance.

Rosa never found out how Lito had known the exact moment to wait for her. She hoped he might have been waiting since the typhoon had broken, or that they shared a special lovers’ telepathy. But the opportunity to ask didn’t arise, locked and lost in his embrace and kiss.

Doming had walked into the house with blood streaming out of his ears and mouth, and bright red eyes. Glass from the bottle that had held the dynamite was peppered in his chest and
forehead. It was a miracle he hadn’t been blinded. The expression on his face said plainly that he had absolutely no idea what had just happened to him. He must have found his way back home on autopilot. The expression, and the autopilot, had remained for months after. The shock had been very great. Dynamite exploding three feet in front of him—a very great shock.

Rosa saw Ella over Lito’s shoulder. Almost hidden through the leaves, Coke-bottle glasses with rain running down the lenses, mouth in a perfect O. She was squatting with her dress hiked up around her thighs, as if she were going to the toilet. But she couldn’t have been. Her house was at least ten minutes’ walk away. She must have seen Rosa pass by, and followed. She must have realized that Rosa’s excursion into the tail end of the typhoon had a motive behind it, the kind worth spying on.
Chismis
ladies understood these things.

Ella fled, even before Rosa managed to cry out and roll Lito off her. Ella and her knowledge, out of reach.

Rosa burst out of the tree line onto the cold wet sand of the beach. Standing in the downpour, she shook her fists at the already distant figure and shouted, “Thief!” Then, more desperate than angry, “Come back!” The figure hesitated for a moment to look back over its shoulder, then picked up its pace.