"That"s true. But now I"m not limited by a scalpel or by my area of expertise. I cast my net a little wider. As I said, more useful."
"I guess." Larissa shrugged. "Poor Che. So you don"t know what happened to her?"
"I don"t."
"From what I remember, wasn"t she due to give birth?"
"Yes." He didn"t say anymore, waiting for her, while she waited for him and sat in the quiet. There was something undeniably comforting about his composed, non-judgmental silence. It was in this silence that Larissa began to speak, almost like thinking.
"I"m not sure but I might have screwed up my life pretty bad," she said to him because he had kind eyes. "You won"t believe what I"ve done."
"Okay," said Father Emilio. "You"ve messed up your life. I understand."
"You don"t understand."
"Then tell me."
"It"s so bad, I can"t tell even you, Father. I"ve been wicked."
"Okay," he said. "You"ve been wicked."
"I can"t change anything. I can"t make it better. What"s worse is I"m afraid I may have made a fatal error in judgment. I may have subordinated reason to mya" Love? Carnal desire? Was there a difference? She thought there was. Her life with Kai was carnal, but sterile.
"Okay," he said. "That"s very possible."
"Do you know about me?"
"I know about you a little bit, Larissa Stark, nee Connelly," said Father Emilio. "But tell me some things I don"t know."
She told him in staccato words. He sat and listened.
"I can never make it up to my children," she finished. "I will never make it up to my husband."
"Do you want to?"
"I don"t know. Look at me. I don"t know what to do. I came to Manila because my only remaining friend in the world lived here. I have less than two hundred bucks on me, myaboyfriend is sleeping on someone else"s couch for three months. I"ve got no job, no moneya"" Larissa kept crying, weeping, into her hands, her eyes swollen, the raw anguish of her cries echoing through the empty halls. I don"t know what to do. I don"t have any idea how to do anything. I don"t know how to live.
He stared at her calmly, while she carried on. "Stay with us for a little while," he finally said. "See if you can work it out."
She stopped crying. "Stay with you? What are you saying?"
"You can stay with us as a guest of the monastery."
"I thought this was a church, not a monastery?"
"I can give you a tour of our grounds if you like, before you decide," Father Emilio said dryly. "We have the church for the laity, for the parishioners of Moonwalk, which is a district in Paranaque, that is correct. But we also have a small, allfemale Augustinian monastery, twenty-two nuns in all, and attached to that, an orphanage with sixty beds. At the moment they"re all full. Wella" Father Emilio cleared his throat. "Fifty-nine of them are full. We had an eighteen-month-old severely handicapped boy, left on our doorstep at birth, who died three days ago. We"re burying him today." He paused. "So fifty-nine beds full."
"Is that what you want me to do? You want me to stay with the nuns? Or the orphans?"
"Your choice," Father Emilio replied. "But who do you think takes care of the orphans?"
"You"re saying either way I"m with the children?"
"For as long or as little as you need."
"You"re telling me to stay herea"" She broke off. "But I"m afraid I"m losing him, Kai, losing my life, and he is my whole life right now, don"t you understand?"
"You"re sitting in front of me, aren"t you?" said the priest.
"What does that have to do with anything?"
"This is also your life."
"This isn"t my life." She shook her head. "This is a break from my actual life."
"This seems like a break to you? You"re dest.i.tute, your closest friend is in prison, or dead, and the young man you left your husband and children for sent you away to another country."
"He didn"t send me away!" Larissa exclaimed, horrified. "Heawe wereawe had no money, he had to work. No, no, no. You"re mistaken about that. Completely mistaken. We did what we had to do to save ourselves."
"Yes," said Father Emilio, his steady eyes on her. "Sometimes to save ourselves we must do outrageous things."
"Look," Larissa said hurriedly. Was there any way now of asking him for money to return to Australia earlier? d.a.m.n! "I"m in no condition to help with the children. Honest. I"maI"d like to stay for a few days, just to, you know, butaI"m in really bad shape. Iathis isn"t what I envisioned." She was supposed to come visit Che! What in the world was this?
Father Emilio sat motionlessly, fingers pressed together and coolly stared at Larissa without speaking. After a few minutes she glanced at him inquisitively, inquiring mutely about his silence. He opened his hands. "This is G.o.d"s house," he said. "The doors are always open. In and out." He pointed outside. "They"re open right now." He rose out of his chair and extended his hand to her. "It was very nice to meet you, Larissa. If Che ever comes back, I"ll be sure to tell her you came to visit. Now if you"ll excuse me, I must go conduct the noon service and then I have a funeral to prepare for."
"No, Father Emilio," she said, hurriedly standing up. "I didn"t mean I wanted to go. I"d like to stay, like I said. I was merely saying that I"m not used toa"and I"m so upset over things, and Che not being hereathis wasn"t what I had planned, that"s all."
"All right," said Father Emilio. "This isn"t what you planned. Probably life doesn"t look pretty to you at the moment. But come with me. I want to show you something."
Larissa followed him, but she was sure she didn"t want to see. "Father, I don"t want to see the dead child," she whispered.
"Don"t worry," he said, squeezing her hand. "You can"t save him. But I would like to show you a live one."
After walking down a long corridor that led from the rectory to the back of the church, they swung open two gla.s.s French doors and entered an almost empty enclosed courtyard, a stone square enclosure with ferns in pots and the subdued moist sun shining. Through an archway across the yard, Larissa glimpsed a green lawn and trees, but here on a wood bench in the corner, Father Emilio pointed to a wan girl playing with horses made of sticks. A tiny dark girl, with short, pin-straight black hair and deep-set eyes. She was wearing a beige smock, a pinafore too big for her, and her feet were bare. She looked up at the two adults, her eyes smiling familiarly at Father Emilio and then drifting to stare warily at Larissa.
A gasping Larissa put her palm on her heart.
"This is Nalini," said Father Emilio. "Che"s daughter. She has also been with us since birth. Che gave birth to her, and then left her with me and the nuns when she and Lorenzo ran to Mindanao. She said she would be back for her." He lowered his head. "But that was five years ago."
"Oh, don"t worry, Papa Emilio," said Nalini in a high clear voice. "Mama will be back."
Larissa kneeled in front of the girl, kneeled on the stones in front of the bench where the girl who looked like her friend Che, except for the Lorenzo eyes, sat with her sticks, her bobbed black hair. Larissa took several deep breaths before she trusted her voice to speak, to sound bright. "Hi, Nalini." Barely audibly. Not good. Have to try harder, Larissa. "Whatcha doin"?"
"Playing." She stared at Father Emilio. "Is it time for lunch?"
"Yes, child," he replied. "But don"t be impolite to our guest. This is Larissa. Talk to her. You"ll like her. She knew your mother."
Nalini jumped off the bench, the horses dangling in her hands. "Really? You knew my mama?"
"I knew her very well. She was my best friend when we were your age, when we both lived in America."
"My mama lived in America?" Nalini was wide-eyed. She looked up at Father Emilio. "Papa, where is America?"
"Very far away. Now come. You can show Larissa the kitchen, and then you must run to the chapel with the others. Larissa, you must be hungry, too, no?"
The three of them walked at a child"s pace out of the courtyard, which is to say they couldn"t keep up with her skipping through another stone corridor that led to the dining hall in the orphanage with long tables and a galley kitchen at the sunny end.
"What do you like to eat, Nalini?"
"Nalini, stay with us!" Father Emilio called. "Don"t rush so far ahead. Larissa is tired; she can"t run as fast as you."
The girl skipped back. "I love Nutellaa"" she broke off, glancing sheepishly at the priest. "I like Nutella, very very much like. But we don"t have it here anymore. Do you know what it is?"
"I do. It was your mother"s favorite thing to eat. I used to send it to her."
Nodding, Father Emilio smiled. "Occasionally Che would donate one or two of your jars to the nuns. They treated it like a holy relic. It would take them a year to eat one jar."
It made Larissa wish she could buy a boxful of it right now. There had been rows and rows of it at King"s, ye olde market.
The kitchen was splendid and empty except for the two silent nuns in the corner preparing something sour-smelling in a big pot on the stove. The rectangular bright room had three floor-to-ceiling windows that had southwestern exposure and faced the green park-like grounds at the back of the church. Larissa wanted to sleep in this kitchen, wake in the mornings on the long wooden table in front of the sunny windows.
"They have Nutella in America?"
"Oh, yes," Larissa replied. "They"re swimming in Nutella."
Giggling, repeating, "They"re swimming in Nutella!" Nalini peeked at Father Emilio for tacit approval and then took Larissa"s hand, pulling her to the large stainless steel refrigerator. "Sometimes we have cut up mangoes with our lunch, little pieces," Nalini said, taking two large mangoes out of the fridge. "Little pieces because there are so many children here."
"I"ll cut them up for you. Here, let me," said Larissa, taking the mangoes out of the girl"s hands.
"Just disinfect the skin first with vinegar, Larissa," said Nalini. "Before you peel."
Shaking her head in confusion, Larissa carefully put down the mangoes. "Many children are nice," she said. "Noisy." She turned to Father Emilio. "Do you have room for me, Father? Sixty children, twenty nunsa"
"There"s always room. After service and lunch, Nalini will show you to your quarters on the second floor."
"Come, Larissa," Nalini said, pulling her by the hand. "First I show you the chapel. We"re going to be late if we don"t hurry." She nodded. "Children are nice. But so noisy. The little ones won"t keep quiet during service." She smiled up at Larissa. "Are you a mama, too?"
Glancing back at Father Emilio, Larissa took deep breaths, of Australia, and America, and Micronesia, of the Atlantic and the Pacific, of Jindabyne and Madison and now Moonwalk in Paranaque. "I used to be a mother," she said in a voice not hers, yet only hers. "But not anymore."
3.
The Play
The imposition of someone else"s routine, while stifling, was also soothing. Every morning Larissa simply got up and did as she was told. The daily rituals of the nuns and the orphans comforted her by taking the responsibility of decision-making away from her. She got up at six, sat half asleep through lauds; oh, if Maggie could see her now. Helping Sister Mary and Sister Miranda, she cooked oatmeal or shaped together brown rice cakes for the children, and afterwards she washed the floors of the kitchen and the dormitory; on her hands and knees she scrubbed them, and remembered other distant floors, and sneakers, and rubber b.a.l.l.s, pencils and gum wrappers, empty cups, newspapers, and drink holders, and straws, and a napkin of doodles from the blond-curl artist, a drawing of a woman holding a child"s hand, and two arrows. One arrow: "Me." The other arrow: "Mom."
From the get-go, Nalini was a big help to Larissa. "No, Larissa," she would say, "you"re putting too much brown sugar in the rice cakes, and the coconut shavings don"t go inside, they"re sprinkled on after the rice cakes cool."
"No, Larissa, you can"t just freeze the water, you have to boil it first. Freezing won"t take the bad stuff out of it."
"No, we don"t eat raw fish here at San Agustin, we have to cook it, or marinate it in vinegar for like two days. Let me show you where the vinegar is. You can make sinigang for lunch if you want. Boiled sour soup with vegetables."
"How come you don"t cross yourself at Ma.s.s, Larissa? Is it because you don"t know how?"
But Larissa had things of her own to show Nalini when she wasn"t pickling the fish in vats of vinegar. "Do you know how to play hopscotch?" she said to her one early afternoon when they were ambling around the courtyard. Nalini was never much for the imposed siesta.
"No," Nalini said, jumping up and down. "But it has the word hop in it, so I already like it."
"Very good. Also scotch, which means a scratched line. Now where"s my chalk?" Pulling it out of her jeans pocket, she drew the hopscotch court with just six squares, to teach Nalini. They found a centavo, threw it on square 2, and Larissa hopped on the rest of the squares. At first Nalini kept hopping on all the squares, but very soon got the hang of it, so soon that Larissa had to draw another two squares and then two more. They spent the afternoon hopping the course until the flood from the sky came and washed the white chalk away. The next day in the morning, the first thing Nalini said to Larissa after lauds was, "Can we play hopscotch?"
"We can, but first you have to show me how to make halo-halo." Halo-halo was a Filipino fruit salad. "You"re not really supposed to put vegetables in fruit salad, are you?"
"We don"t have anymore pandesal bread, Larissa," Nalini told her. "It"s all been eaten. We should make that first. Then we"ll play hopscotch."
Father Emilio always made a point of coming into the kitchen in the morning to say h.e.l.lo to Larissa and to have a cup of coffee in her presence, and after the noon service, he ate lunch with her and the children in the orphanage dining room. During the siesta, he took a few minutes away from his work to walk with Larissa and Nalini. Sometimes he would sit on the bench and watch them play hopscotch.
If she could"ve, Larissa would"ve lived in that kitchen. The room she had been given to sleep in was spartan, and the only reading material in it was the Bible, and of course she had brought no other books with her. So she spent her days in the large kitchen, marinating the chicken for the adobo stew, cutting pandesal for bread pudding, constantly boiling and cooling water. She volunteered to go to the market in the mornings while the children were having their lessons, to buy the fresh guava and mangoes and bananas from the local vendor. It made her feel closer to Che, remembering her friend"s attachment to the market. She wished she could buy Nalini a floral sundress, something delightful. It was sad to see the child in the beige frock day in and out.
Two days after she had arrived, Larissa asked Father Emilio if she could use the phone. Apparently the only phone was in the rectory. While the priest stood outside the open door to give her an illusion of privacy, Larissa dialed the number Kai had given her for Billy-O. It rang and rang. No one picked up. What time was it there? Plus two and a half hours? Or minus two and a half? It was either early morning or the middle of the day. They were probably working. She"d try again. In the meantime, she asked and was given some stationery and envelopes and wrote Kai a letter. And another. And another. Father Emilio gave her stamps, the postman came, took her mail. After a week had pa.s.sed, she started asking the postman if anything came for her, care of the parish church. She had not been able to reach anyone at Billy"s house. And of course Billy had no answering machine, as though he lived in medieval times. Every night, since there was nothing to do in her room after compline, Larissa wrote Kai long expansive letters about their years together, about Che being gone, about wanting to return earlier; how did Kai feel about that? Was there perhaps more room in Billy"s house than was originally indicated?
Soon her letters became plaintive. Kai, I haven"t heard from you. And I can"t reach you by phone. Please write me. Every morning she waited for the postman outside the narrow side door leading to the street. Anything today, Macario? Not today, Miss Larissa. Who is this child by your side? Oh, that"s Nalini, Che"s daughter. Nalini stood in the mornings with Larissa, holding the stick horses, also waiting for a letter. Anything today? No, Miss Larissa. What about me? Nalini asked brightly. Anything for me today? What are you waiting for? the postman asked. A letter from my mommy, she replied. Not today, Miss Nalini. And Nalini smiled, like a big girl, and the next day stood at the door, looking down the street waiting for the postman.
Che was missing, Lorenzo was dead. Kai was not answering the phone, not replying to her increasingly desperate missives. Only the girl remained. And Nalini followed Larissa around like a puppy. She washed the floor with her and prepared lunch with her; she shadowed her, barely speaking; she crossed herself and showed Larissa how. It"s easy she said, to make the sign of the cross, it"s like this. Nalini looked inside her own drink before taking a sip as if searching for her own answers there. She stood on the church steps in front of Larissa and was now the first one to say, "Anything today, Macario?"
"She"s becoming very attached to you, Larissa," said Father Emilio, holding Nalini"s hand as they walked down the corridor out of the chapel.
"She is a good sweet girl," replied Larissa, touching the back of Nalini"s silky black hair. "Where do you take her in the late afternoons? I notice you"re both gone for a few hours each day."
"For our neighborhood walkabout," said Father Emilio. "There are some people who want to but cannot come to churcha"too sick, or too olda"so Nalini and I go to sit with them for a few minutes. We visit different homes each day. We alternate. Right, Nalini?"
"Right, Papa. I like the beautiful blind lady."
He smiled. "Yes. Dimagiba just turned ninety-seven and is bedridden, and she can"t see through the cataracts, but every time Nalini comes, the old woman somehow sees her." He ruffled the girl"s hair. "You just like her because she gives you chocolate." He continued to Larissa. "We go, we read Scripture to them for a few minutes. I give them the Host. Nalini helps me; she"s my little helper, right, Nalini?"
"I hold your Bible for you, Papa," she said, making galloping motions with her two stick horses. "Soon I will be able to read with you."