When I was child, my mother would sometimes take me to sing at strangers’ funerals. She would pick me up after school or from choir practice, saying nothing as we sped past the exit ramp that would lead us home, and instead we would head north on the Skyway towards the city. In Manila traffic, the thirty mile drive would take no less than two hours. But at thirty-two years old, my mother was only just learning how to drive, which meant that it often took twice as long to get to our destination. Those first few nights, I would turn in my seat to watch the landscape of home retreat into the concrete of the city, and ask her where we were going. But it wasn’t long until I learned my questions would be met only with a stern expression; that it was better to allow my body to be propelled through traffic and wait until my mother told me that we had arrived. Instead, I learned to prepare for what I knew might come: how to do my hair in the reflection of a darkened car window, how to whip mascara over my lashes as quickly as a stoplight changes from red to green. To be prepared, always, to look beautiful. And any time I got to sit in the passenger seat, whether I knew where we were going or not, I’d pull my shoulders back, lift my chest, and do breathing exercises to steel my diaphragm: In, out out out. In, out out out.
Eventually, as we neared our destination, her expression would soften and she would say, “Your Lolo Peter has passed,” or “We’re laying your Tito Ed to rest.” Always, the name would be one I did not recognize. Though it was always at a different church with a different group of people, each time, my mother would stride straight through the room to the row of seats that was reserved for family. The matron sitting closest to the altar would stand and allow me to raise her hand to my forehead to show my respects. And as she and my mother spoke in hushed tones I would step away from the casket, holding my breath. Often another relative would offer me food that I knew well enough to politely decline. It was bad luck to eat anything at a funeral.
These were the rules I had made to keep me safe from the spirits of the dead. Fearing nightmares, I had created these rituals to ensure that their faces would never follow me into sleep; or worse, into the darkness over my bed as I waited for sleep to arrive. Never look inside the casket. Before stepping into your house, make the sign of the cross so that the spirits cannot follow you over the threshold. And never, ever bring anything home, be it flowers, papers, tissues, or food— not even by accident.
My cousin Carlotta’s wake was the only night I ever remember breaking these rules. The service was held in a new building inside the Manila North Cemetery, in a room that still smelled of paint and cement; though to get there, one still had to drive past the informal settlement which had, for decades, mushroomed within the walls of the cemetery itself— generations of families making homes out of mausoleums, sleeping and eating with the dead. “This is what happens when you let the world forget you,” my mother had said that night, keeping her eyes on the road as children began to knock on the window, leaving greasy imprints on the dark glass even after they were gone.
Though I did not remember meeting Carlotta, I was told that she often babysat me in the year that my mother had kept her job as a ticket agent for Philippine Airlines, only to quit at the insistence of my father as soon as I turned two. One day, at twenty years old, Carlotta had passed away in her sleep, though no one would say why or how, except that for a long time she had been living at home to be cared for by her family. In the grip of this story, the crucial details of which I felt were being kept away from me, I found myself inching closer and closer to the open casket. There, instead of fear, I found myself in admiration of a woman’s serene face: her smooth lips, sharp cheekbones, the thin hair which fell so smoothly along the side of her resting, unmoving head. She had been so beautiful, her family told us, that if she had lived they were certain she could have been a movie star. Her arms, lean and covered in a fine layer of hair, were so slim that my young hand could have easily wrapped all the way around. Her black dress, cinched tight at the waist, made her look like Audrey Hepburn.
Later, during the service, I sang Amazing Grace as the mourners waited patiently in a line that wrapped around the room, to view her resting body. From where I stood at the podium, I could hear my own voice echoing back to me from the domed ceiling; I could see Carlotta’s family beaming at me, some with tears in their eyes, as I sang those same words that had soothed so many families before them. How precious did that grace appear, the hour I first believed. On the last syllable, I held that note above my head until it faded, gently, with my breath. Then I stepped off the podium and rushed into my mother’s lap, beaming. I was eight years old— small enough to still rest my head comfortably under her chin, letting my feet drape over her own, though my toes at that point were just beginning to touch the ground.
“You skipped a verse,” my mother had said to me, smoothing my dress as the service continued in the background. My ear pressed to her chest, I could feel her words vibrating through me.
“But was I still good? Did anyone notice?” I replied. I remember thinking then that sitting on her lap was a mistake, wishing that I could move away from her, or make myself small. I settled for becoming very still, my breath hardening inside of me.
“I noticed,” she said then.
It was only after I had been living in the U.S. for many years, oceans and years between us, that I would realize that offering my services as a singer was my mother’s secret way of making money on the side, cash that my father would never see. Many times, after such a performance, I would see a small stack of bills in her purse, but it would not occur to me until much later that I had been the one to help her get it, that I was her unwilling, unknowing partner in crime. Yet for a long time, I could only remember the performance at the wake, and instead of fear, the rush of pride and relief when I turned towards the crowd and saw my mother there, watching. As though I knew, even then, that those memories needed to be ones worth savoring.
Still, in bed that night, there was one thing of which I was certain: that one way or another, Carlotta’s spirit would find me. I had broken a rule, and as punishment, I would spend the rest of the night praying Holy Maries for as long as I was awake. And if, in the morning, I found that I had made it through the night without any sign of a spectre, I would credit my own vigilance, and feel safe in the knowledge that all the fear I had felt in the past had been worth it.
◆
The house I live in now has a mulberry tree that taps on the window during a storm. On windy nights, it beckons me to think of home and the trees that, though they bore a different fruit, had made the same noise I often feared as a child: of spirits demanding to be let inside. I hear it now, and together, my husband and I wake and look beyond the trees to the city of Boston, watching the sun’s reflection travel over all of its sharp edges. Our morning routine: brew the coffee, burn the toast. Feed the cat. Pal jumps up on the windowsill, her tabby stripes disappearing into shadow against the winter light, and my husband pulls the fabric of sleep off his body and disappears into the hallway. But where once I would have quickly followed, I shut my eyes again in hope that sleep will ferry me faster through time. “Meow,” Pal protests, even though we both know that there is no reason for me to wake up with the sun.
I get out of bed and go into the pantry where Pal’s bowl sits in front of a pyramid of cans: every iteration of tuna. Chunks. Shreds. Paté. Bisque. But when I bend to fill it I find that it is full. And already, I can hear my husband in the kitchen: the bubble of the coffee machine, hiss of oil, the smell of bacon on a hot pan.
“Good morning,” he says when I enter. He hands me a plate, and I try not to look like I am holding my breath as I count the slices of bacon in front of me. Pushing his own plate aside on the table, he powers up his laptop and scrolls through the morning’s headlines. Still, I can tell that he is watching me.
“What will you do today?” he says, feigning lightness. “I was thinking we could get lunch near my office if you’re willing to come downtown.” But it is the waver underneath that I soften against, so that making sure he sees me, I bring a piece of bacon to my lips and take a crisp bite.
“Some of the old grad students are getting lunch at our old spot today,” I lie, chewing loudly. “I might join them.” The words stick to the roof of my mouth.
“That’s great,” he says. “I’m glad you’re getting out.”
Happily, he mimics my actions. He slides a tongue of bacon between his teeth, chews, and swallows. “You ready?” he says, turning his laptop towards me.
“I’m ready.” It takes just three clicks to begin our new routine: a bookmark saved, a receipt number the system has memorized, as we have. At the top of the page, the familiar sigil of the U.S. Department of Homeland Security winks blue and white above the case status tracker. Use this tool to track the status of an immigration application, petition, or request, says the screen, and we do as it says. Today, the numbers spit “Application Received” as it did yesterday, and the day before; as it has for the nine months that we have been married. My husband reaches for another slice of bacon as I dab my lips with my napkin. And when his eyes fall back to the computer, I let the chewed up residue fall from my own mouth into the white puckered sheet, which I will tuck deep into the trash later, after he is gone.
Before coming to America almost a decade ago, I had an interview with a customs officer to get final approval on my student visa. America chose you for your excellence, he had said from behind a glass window. Are you up to the task? In response, I’d shown him the bank statements, pay stubs, and letters of support which would prove that I could afford to live in the U.S., as well as leave when the time came. But preparing for this had been easy– his question one I had been answering since childhood; my reaction to it made only sharper and more efficient each time I turned to a crowd to sing. And as he flipped through the stack of papers slowly, fingering each paper clip as he pried it away, the sound of the thin metal hitting the desk felt no different from the sound of applause. I would live in the U.S. for almost a decade, pursuing first a Bachelor’s and then a Master’s degree, but I had always intended to return home. Had even told my husband on our third date: this will not last.
And then, suddenly: a proposal, a home. Instead of leaving, we scheduled a consultation with an immigration lawyer in Boston the week after I received my diploma. I hadn’t even planned on staying for the graduation ceremony, and yet that day, my husband left work early to meet me at a high-rise building near Downtown Crossing, where a dark-haired woman who looked to be in her fifties met us in the first floor lobby. Her flowy, biscuit-colored dress smelled of jasmine. In the elevator, she congratulated us on our upcoming wedding, asking questions, gushing about our plan to ride away from the ceremony on a tandem bicycle. I pulled out my phone to show her a photo of my wedding dress, and her hands, when she cupped them over mine, were warm.
But as soon as we sat at her desk, her back straightened, her voice sharpened. Smoothing open a folder marked with our names, she told me and my husband that because we had waited until after I had completed my degree to marry (we had refused to rush, wanting to be sure; desiring, always, more time, more time), the beginning of our marriage would have to be a period of waiting. We were lucky, she said. In some places, an adjustment of status — going from student visa to green card– could take over a year, but because we were filing from Massachusetts, our wait could be a few months less than that. And you’re here. You can wait together. Other people don’t have that option.
Still, she said to me, to go through with the process of uniting our lives, I would need to be prepared to give up some of my freedom. That means no travel, and no work– at least until you get your work authorization. And whatever your arrangement is, what kind of relationship you have, it doesn’t matter. You’ll have to live together– no roommates.
Turning to my husband, she barked, How much money do you make? Even as I began to protest, he told her and she nodded. Good, she said. You’ll have to be the provider now, even though I was still insisting on splitting the bill on dates; even though, just a few weeks ago, the Dean of my college had met me after class one morning to casually mention that they were looking for someone to teach a class for which I had already served as a teaching assistant before. Now, the lawyer was telling me that I could not even apply. My husband smiled meekly and took my hand. Guess we’ll have to wait a little before we can go on our honeymoon.
But it wasn’t our honeymoon that had first come to my mind. Sitting there, I could not help but think of my mother, who had stopped working simply because my father had asked; despite the fact that ours was not a story of struggle– as long as I can remember we’d had a live-in cook, a weekly house cleaner, laundry service. Yet growing up, so accustomed was I to her inert presence in our household that some weeks I would see her barely at all, hearing her voice only in those moments when the knob on her bedroom door would turn and she would call out for a plate of food to eat in bed, while my father, sister, and I took our meals in the kitchen together.
Once, we were driving to another funeral home near the Ninoy Aquino International Airport, when suddenly, the sky darkened, and from above us roared the sound of the heavens, splitting in two. I had seen the plane approaching from my window, flying so low that I cried out as we slid beneath its gleaming belly, but when I turned to my mother I saw that she was laughing. She told me then that she’d once had dreams of becoming a flight attendant, of a life in which her feet barely touched the ground; had even once sent in her resume, but at the time the airline had said they had no need for her. Then, she continued, she became a wife, and a mother, and everyone said that should be enough. She never tried again.
Even after learning this, I did not think much about how she filled those hours between me coming and going from school, nor of how she planned to support herself if my father, for one reason or another, went away.
But as my husband and I waited in that office for the lawyer to fetch the application forms to take home with us, I told myself that already, I had done so much, traveled so far, just to make my life different from my mother’s. I would not allow myself to be taken away from the things that I wanted. I would not be like her.
Now, at our breakfast table, my husband looks at his watch, and realizing that he is late to work, he forgets about my plate, the food I have or have not eaten. After all, though we have shared this morning’s routine for the past nine months of our marriage, the rest of life, for him, has stayed the same.
“Will you give Pal her breakfast?” he says, grabbing his keys and throwing his coat on by the door.
I pause. “I thought you already did that?” But his mind is already where his body needs to go.
When he leaves, I empty Pal’s bowl and fill it with fresh bisque, her favorite. But when I return to the kitchen she is staring at me from the counter, where she knows she shouldn’t sit. I shoo her off, and though she looks at me as if I’ve insulted her, she follows me back into the bedroom, where I take a sleeping pill and lay back on the bed, pull the covers up around me. She curls up against my arm and I stroke her and I wait for sleep. I don’t think about the long stretch of today. I think only about what I can control.
◆
In truth, I loved my mother most when there were other people in the room. In some moments, it would seem that she had been in bed for so long that I’d forget the way she looked when she smiled, and then a morning would come when I would find her in the kitchen making pancakes, rosy-lipped, hair washed and impeccable. On those days, I would often come home from school to find her drinking cocktails with guests in the garden, or with plans to go out to dinner that night. Always, she invited me to join her, and always I would gladly accept. I liked feeling like I was part of her inner circle, people could confide in, speak freely with. Most of all, I liked to see her laugh.
Sometimes, she even hosted her own dinner parties, inviting family, neighbors, and strangers who seemed captivated by her. She would hire caterers with my father’s money, and before the guests arrived, I would watch as she deployed them all over the house, calling out instructions from the dining room table as the staff scrambled to keep up without burning their fingers. I’d go into the kitchen and sneak pinches of parmesan cheese meant for the grilled mussels or spaghetti bolognese. Right before the guests arrived, I’d sit at her vanity and put on some of her makeup, taking care to use things that I knew she no longer cared for. Then I’d put on my dress and shoes, preening in the mirror until the doorbell rang.
It was the magic she desired– the idea that, with the right preparation, an evening could be so perfect that you never thought of how it was made. So if a light had yet to be switched on, or if a batch of mussels had made it late to the fire, she would find whoever was responsible and make her dissatisfaction known in the privacy of the kitchen. I alone knew when she had been yelling at someone by the color in her cheeks and the way her nostrils flared. To our guests, she would beckon, “Eat, eat!” and they would all get up at once to fill their plates.
After dinner, I would stay at the table while my sister and the rest of the kids left to go play upstairs. I liked listening in on the adults’ conversations, their subjects growing increasingly racy as they slowly forgot I was even there. Eventually, my father too would retire to the bedroom, citing the next day’s early run. I’d sit with my mother until the last of the guests had left, and then later, lying restless in bed, I would place myself in all their stories.
There is one night that I remember. I was twelve, and it was December– a time of year when the skies were cool and clear, ripe with celebration; months removed from the hot, wet mourning that blew in with each monsoon season. We had set the table out in the gazebo so that we could see the stars as we ate. Earlier, I’d watched two men with ladders hook lanterns onto the trees that fenced our yard, and now they hung from the branches like glowing fruit, waiting to be picked and swallowed.
My mother had invited her friends over for a holiday celebration, and it was time for us to have dessert. A cake had been placed in the center of the table, so dense that it made a soft thunk as one of the caterers lowered it gently from their hands. But I knew that I could not have any until I had sung a song for our guests: a young couple from America who had just moved into the house next door; a man named Seamus who had already attended two other dinners; and my mother’s three amigas: friends she had known since high school and who came to lunch every Sunday still, after the late mass.
“Oh, I’m sure none of us minds waiting until she’s had her dessert,” one of the neighbors said when, as I reached for a fork, my mother reminded me of what I needed to do. I looked at this woman, her honey-colored hair and big, wet eyes, and then I looked back at my mother. When she spoke, her voice was light as a bell. “She doesn’t mind. Do you, dear?” I said nothing, only let the fork fall out of my hands. The neighbor shifted in her seat.
As my mother cut the cake, I helped by passing out plates, balancing the stack on one arm. With the other, I handed out forks with delicate, sweeping movements. I wanted to feel as graceful as my mother who, even as the cake’s icing began to melt, had spilled not a crumb on the rented table cloth. But as I set down the last plate, it slipped out of my fingers, rolling onto the table on its side. Then, tumbling over the edge, it landed hard on the gazebo’s concrete floor and shattered. Shards glanced off the table and skittered onto the grass, and I couldn’t help it– I began to cry, my breath pushed out of me against my will, a high keening sound filling my ears. And my mother, forgetting herself, dropped the cake-cutter, smearing icing onto the white tablecloth. She grabbed me by the hair and whispered: “What is wrong with you?”
What could I say? Only that I was sorry, over and over again, until a breeze rustled the leaves on the trees and I realized the entire table was silent. I raised my head, straining against my mother’s grip. I locked eyes with the woman who had spoken before, and then when it was clear she would do nothing to intervene, I looked at everyone else. Please, I thought. But I didn’t know how to say it out loud, and in the end, nobody moved. Releasing me, my mother commanded me to my room, and for the rest of the night, I was forced to listen to what little laughter and conversation bubbled up the stairs and under my bedroom door.
It was past midnight by the time all the guests finally left. I was in bed, but still awake, and when I saw the last pair of headlights disappear down our street I waited for the sound of my mother’s footsteps ascending the stairs. I sat up but did not turn around when the door opened, did not move even when I saw her silhouette approach the side of my bed. And when she finally slapped me, her heavy rings grazing my ear, I knew better than to make a sound. I waited to see if she would slap me again, but her breathing had become heavy and slow. She must be very tired, I thought. It had been a long night, and when she left, I was simply grateful that we would both finally be able to get some sleep.
◆
For two days, I check Pal’s bowl every morning and night, cleaning it out and filling it up only to empty its untouched contents into the trash each time, the dried up crust of old shreds or pate flaking onto my hands. Today, I find Pal sitting by the window and give her sun-warmed head a little scratch, placing a treat on the sill next to her. She sniffs it and nothing more. “Will you tell me what’s wrong? Use your words,” I say, but her eyes are already closed, her head already resting upon one white-tipped paw. I notice the crust that has formed at the corner of her left eye, the one black whisker nestled among all the others, and her ribs– I see her ribs now, and suddenly all my memories of her clawing away at my leg as I open a can of her food, her nails ripping my dresses and fraying my jeans, are tinged with sweetness. I press my ear to her side and feel her purr.
I leave her in the bedroom, and though it feels futile, I fill her bowl with more paté and then sprinkle some treats on top. I try to count the number of days since the last time I saw her eat– was it two nights ago? Three? I Google why won’t my cat eat on the laptop while my husband eats breakfast and read search result after search result until I am nauseated and the words go furry in front of my eyes.
I turn the computer back towards him, and once again he asks me if I am ready. I nod, even though the answer is not quite yes. Two clicks, submit. But when he tilts the screen so that we can both see the case status tracker, the page stays frozen before us. On the top-left corner, next to the search bar, the little wheel turns and turns.
But by the time my husband has to go to work nothing has changed. He leaves, and I am alone again. Only this time, the idea of getting back into bed makes me want to tear my own skin off. He is barely out the door before I am drawn to the fridge. I pull an oily tupperware out, remove the lid, and microwave the leftover short ribs I made the night before, waiting until I can smell the burnt sweetness of fat and sugary marinade.
Stomach clenching, I forced myself to grab a fork, a knife, and a napkin, before putting the food on a plate and taking a seat at the kitchen table. I am ravenous. I want to do away with my fork and sink my nails into the glistening flesh. I want to rip meat from the bone and feel the oil drip down my fingers. But the more I sit with my hunger, the more it feels like a triumph, like something to tame and overcome. The muscles in my jaw clench with the anticipated sweetness, and I swallow the satisfaction of knowing I am able to deny the things that my body wants. Bringing the plate to the sink, I tear at the meat with my fork so that it slides easily into the drain.
When my husband first proposed, it took me two weeks to say yes– even as the thought of leaving him hollowed me out, even as I could tell by the look on his face that it was doing the same to him. Disbelieving, I tested him constantly in the weeks before our wedding: I cancelled plans with him to eat alone at my favorite restaurants; I farted and cried with abandon. I grew selfish, allowing my wants and emotions to move me as they saw fit. I was preparing him for the day that my strength would leave me and I ceased to be the person he had decided was worth keeping.
And I was right. After only two months of marriage, already I began to feel the pull of my bed, the pull of the fridge, desires of a body that, according to America was now just a body and nothing more. Finding little reason to leave the house, I began to spend most of the day in pajamas, showering only before my husband arrived from work, waking only to see him off, taking care all the while to never reveal the feeling that would overtake me each time he left– as though a hand had been wrapped loosely around my neck, and I was simply waiting for it to tighten. I began to clean obsessively, starting from one corner of a room or closet, drawing out every inch so that a single cupboard could hold the span of an entire day. When that was done, I started getting rid of things: clothes, old linens, photo albums I had brought with me to the U.S. but hadn’t looked at since.
One afternoon, after I had cleaned every inch of our home and disposed of half my wardrobe, I had spent almost an entire day contemplating a furniture-free lifestyle when I received an email from an old professor, for whom I’d served as teaching assistant not long ago. In it, he told me how the literary magazine he ran on campus was short on readers, and he wondered if I would be interested in returning on a volunteer basis. So that you’re not breaking any rules, the email said. It’s not a job if you’re not getting paid, right?
That night, for the first time in weeks, I asked my husband to meet me at my favorite tapas restaurant after work. I told him the news and we gorged ourselves on wine and tiny cubes of cheese, stuffed olives, hot meats served on sizzling plates sprinkled with garlic and oil. We each ordered a slice of cake and I ate half of his. The waiter took our plates away and I told him how happy I was that my craving had been satisfied.
But when I went to consult with our immigration lawyer the next day, before I could even finish describing the work I would be doing, she shook her head.
Let me be clear, she had said. Because this professor was your former employer, and because you have been paid in this role before, accepting this position may put your green card application at risk.
For a moment, we both sat there, silent. Could he sign an affidavit? Something to make everyone’s intentions clear? I said, eventually. But her words were lost to the rushing noise that had begun to grow, louder and louder, inside my head.
I took the train home. Falling onto the bed, I lay on top of the sheets, shoes still on, and closed my eyes. I had just fallen asleep when Pal jumped onto my chest and I woke unable to breathe. Ears ringing, I shot up, clutching my chest, beating at my own diaphragm to do what it needed so that I would not have to call an ambulance, or worse, call my husband home from work.
For half an hour, I rubbed my stomach and coaxed myself to breathe– the same movements I had used as a child waking up to the sound of my mother’s voice. Growing up, I had learned quickly to anticipate whether or not her attention would press down on me by her tone, by the quality of her footsteps or the way she rustled a packet of instant coffee. On days that our cook was late to bring her hot water, or if she and my father had gotten into an argument, I learned to stay in my room until I heard her footsteps recede back into the master bedroom. On bad days, she took things from me— things I valued, like a gift from a friend, or she would demand that I surrender my cell phone or diary for inspection. I’m not sure what she expected to learn about me, or what she gained from this. Still, I got good at keeping secrets.
And then there were the good days. Days when she would leave her door open, and I knew that if I slipped in quietly, I could sit in bed and watch TV with her. I would speak only to say things that would make her laugh or smile. In turn, she would tell me stories, grown-up stories about her friends or her past, and I would react in the ways I thought her amigas would. I knew that I wasn’t exactly ideal company. But I would become a chameleon for her, even if it only meant seeing her eyes grow wide and animated, watching her head escape the pull of sleep and her lipstick-stained pillow.
That night, when my husband came home from work and I realized I’d eaten nothing all day, I told myself that I had simply forgotten: something that had happened often enough during grad school, when lunch hours were spent grading papers and working on my thesis meant I was coming home long after dinner. The next morning, I woke expecting my body to be ravenous. Instead, what I found was a familiar sort of satisfaction: similar to the kind that comes from finding something you thought you’d long lost.
The second day was harder. On the third day, I ate a grilled cheese sandwich for lunch, but to feel so full after such strict emptiness— my body quickly expelled it in a rivulet of yellow bile that I spat into the sink, which I cleaned up before my husband came home that night. Only later, when my limbs began to feel like loose weights hanging from my torso, did I try again, this time with half an apple and a teaspoon of peanut butter. I felt nauseous, but the food stuck, and with it came new knowledge of the limits of my body. There were things, still, that I could control.
At six o’clock, my husband comes home from work, and we eat the food I made while he was gone: the pot of rice (enough for days), the chicken glistening brown with vinegar and pepper and soy. “You don’t have to do this alone,” he says. “I love cooking with you. And I miss eating with you.” We’ve had this conversation before.
But this time, vulnerable to the wine I had allowed myself to drink and the warmth it had brought, I leave my old excuses behind. When my husband asks if I have eaten, I tell him the truth: that in taming the animal of my body I had found, finally, something that I could control, a way to make the waiting that much more bearable. And what, truly, was so wrong with that? After all, though it pained me to disappoint him, it was his unwavering conviction, his willingness to believe the best in me, that had become my reason to stay.
He has finished his meal, but there is still enough on the table for both of us. “Please eat,” he says. He grabs a plate from the cupboard, a new fork and knife, and places it all in front of me. When I do not move, he spoons a mound of rice out of the pot and carves out a piece of chicken. “Please.” But it is all he can do.
From below me, I hear Pal’s heavy breathing as she rubs against my leg. It takes her two tries, but she hops onto the dining table and I do not stop her. I lift my hand and she rises to meet it, pushing against my palm.
◆
I take her to the vet the next morning. At check-in, the vet tech hands me a form that all new patients must fill out. Under Pet Insurance ID, I write N/A. I fill out the blanks for Microchip Serial Number, Address, Phone Number. The doctor who meets us in the waiting room is a man who offers his hand for Pal to sniff before stroking her head but does not make eye contact with me when he speaks. He pokes and prods at Pal with various instruments even though the vet tech already did these things, even took some blood. Finally, he turns his chair so that his knees are facing me. “There doesn’t seem to be anything wrong here,” he says, and I almost slap him. But when I try to draw his attention to the cavern of her ribs, to the way she sits quietly on his lap instead of hissing, as she usually would, at this stranger who has brought upon her all manner of indignity, he waves his hand in the air until I stop speaking.
“We’ve taken some samples,” he says. “And we can run more tests. But she’s a normal weight for a cat her age, and she doesn’t have a UTI or respiratory infection. We’ll call you if the tests show anything abnormal.”
I am at the counter paying the hundred-dollar check-up fee for nothing when Pal’s doctor emerges from a back room and catches my eye once more. “One more thing before you go,” he says. “Has there been a change in routine? Cats rely on routine to remind them that they are safe and cared for.” I thank him as I go, but by the time I get to the car my vision is blurry with tears, and I sit in the parking lot and weep and weep with guilt before driving away. Through the bars of her crate, Pal licks the salty tears from my fingers.
On my way home, I take her with me into the grocery store, tucking her carrier into a shopping cart and covering her with my coat. On a weekday afternoon like this, the aisles are almost empty, and I take my time going through each one, lingering to read ingredients or feel the weight of something in my hands. I pick up a whole raw chicken, asparagus, potatoes for mashing, half of an apple pie for dessert. I pluck a lemon from its pile, consider it, then offer it to Pal for a sniff. She wrinkles her nose and side-eyes me. “I’m sorry,” I say, and put the lemon back where I found it.
I pick up an apple. Pressing the red flesh to my lips, I inhale deeply, and my mind goes to a place I rarely permit it to go. It is a world that looks just like this one: the same house, same husband, same Pal even. Except that I am gone. I try to imagine where they would be without me, but instead of their bodies, I can only picture empty rooms. I open my mouth and take a bite of the apple, and by the time I make it to the register only the core is left. I try to pay for it but the cashier waves my extra dollar away. You’re not the first one, she says. Not even today.
I was a senior in high school when my choir teacher invited me to participate in a nation-wide singing contest. Twelve schools from all over the country had been asked to send their most talented singers to compete, and I, out of hundreds of students, had been chosen to audition. That day, I didn’t wait until I got home to tell my mother— in the bathroom, mid-class, I whispered the news to her over my cell phone, not caring that I could get in trouble. I knew her reaction would be worth it. True enough, not only did she sign the permission slip I needed to audition, she vowed that we would spend the next month preparing, doing whatever it took to win.
Each day after school, she would prompt me to sing scales and run through my chosen song ten times over, and on weekends we browsed the aisles of department stores and beauty boutiques to scope out ideas for my dress and makeup. One Saturday, she took me to the salon for a treatment that left my hair silky yet unrecognizable. When we got home, she surprised me by pulling a shimmering gold dress out of her closet— knee-length, with a sweetheart neckline, and fabric that was meant to wrapt tight against my skin. Too tight. It felt perfect, looked perfect, but when I put it on, neither of us had been able to get the zipper to close.
After that, she added a regimen of running around our village in the late afternoons when the air had cooled. She began eating with us in the kitchen— if only to tell me when I had eaten too much.
The Sunday before the competition, we waited once again until the air had cooled to go out for our nightly run, only this time we were out for much longer than usual. The sun had set completely, and yet we were still running. In the dark I recalled the folk tales often told in school, about the spirits that lived in trees, and suddenly I was aware of how old this village was, how our homes had been carved into land that was once a mango grove, some of it surviving still. We ran, and beneath our feet the carcasses of overripe mangoes which had fallen onto the hot street had grown rancid, attracting flies. I tried to avoid them but it was getting harder and harder to see and my legs had begun to cramp. I stopped, but my mother simply ran on, and without her, I did not know how to find my way home. I begged her to wait and let me walk the rest of the way.
“Don’t stop,” she’d said, though she herself was panting. “Don’t be lazy.”
“I’m tired. Why can’t I just get a new dress?”
“Do you think that you deserve to win? Do you think that you can do nothing, and then expect them to see you, to respect you?” She grabbed me by the arm, digging her nails in, breaking skin. She began to run. But as much as I tried, I could not stop my legs from collapsing beneath me. The grip on my arm tightened. And though I cried out as my knees scraped the asphalt, still warm from the sun, my mother did not stop. “Show me you deserve to win. Show me. Show me,” she said, and continued to drag me with her, until she too could go no further, my weight bringing her down, both of us falling into the gutter together.
When I went to school the next morning, I told my teachers that I had gotten into a bike accident, but that I could still sing. They took one look at me and told me that I should rest instead. It would not be appropriate for me to get on stage looking the way I did. They could always find someone else to take my place.
That afternoon, I stood in front of my mirror and put on the gold dress once more. I pulled the zipper and it slid closed with ease. And then I threw it away, cutting the fabric in half with a pair of scissors, so that I would never have to wear it again. I thought then that no matter how many dresses I fit into, no matter how many contests I won, it would not stop what had happened from happening again. I left home, came to the U.S. for college, and stopped praying. Then I stopped singing. And as the rules I had created to keep myself from harm slowly unraveled, and the rest of my life stayed the same, for a while, it seemed as though I had shaken off all the specters of my past for good.
She did send me a message during my last summer in Manila, but only once, and I never did reply. This was the summer before my final year of school, a year from what I did not yet know would be my wedding day. Though I did not recognize the number, I knew it was her because linked to the message was a grainy video of a little girl singing on a low, white platform. But as many times as I replayed it, I would never be able to tell if the girl in the video was me, or someone else’s daughter.
By the time my husband gets home the chicken is in the oven, the mashed potatoes are in a bowl, and I have set the table. He comes into the kitchen with his eyes wide. “Is someone joining us?” he gestures to the extra plate.
“Me,” I say.
The timer goes off. But as soon as I set the steaming pan on the stove, the smell hits me and I recoil. I hover away from the hot flesh, though the knife is in my hand and he is standing there, watching. “Will you help me?” I say, and taking the knife away from me, he does what I cannot. He lets a slick slice of chicken fall onto his plate, then mine, and when I ask, he puts a smaller slice on the third plate without protest. Next are the mashed potatoes piled high, and finally the spears of asparagus peppered with cheese. I tell him about the apple pie, waiting now in our fridge. We bring it all with us to the table.
He sits, but before I join him, I hoist Pal over one arm and settle her between us in front of her plate, and then I sit and stare at my own. The floor of my stomach drops with need, but instead of falling, I begin to fill it. I lift a piece of chicken into my own mouth and try to remember how to love its flavor. And as I chew, Pal lowers her face to her food to take a bite. My husband and I stifle our cheers so that we don’t spook her. The three of us eat together.