Short Story By Eduardo Bautista
Cecilia wasn’t much hopeful that life would be better. Fifteen years ago, since her mother died, she decided her daughters, Mary and Alice, would grow up not knowing anything about the secret past that she didn’t even want to remember. But why? She kept on asking. She wanted to curse God and ask why?
Her past had walked away long after another tragedy came and destined to put her battered soul into more toil. Years before this afternoon, while she was sitting into her favorite bamboo chair, life had been dull, quiet, but peaceful.
Every Sunday her two daughters, or al least one of them, visited to do lunch and dinner despite their happy and contended marriage lives. Her husband, Henry, helped into the kitchen doing his grills. And Cecile, while chopping off onions, garlic, and ginger, couldn’t help but to offer a tearful glance towards their direction there in the kitchen at least every once in a while, helping the memoirs of her mother, Feli, turn into dusts and be blown away by the wind and be forgotten. But time had surely passed. She was sitting on her favorite bamboo chair as she watched the orange sun sink across the sky, sharing daily dread that a day again was about to pass; and had she done anything for a change? No. She doesn’t even want to move or breathe. She wanted to drift away, and to dream and never come back. But she can’t even fall asleep. For one, she was alone. She’s scared going to her unlit room and see that her husband wasn’t there.
Last year, as she turned 44, when Mary was still alive, it wasn’t much of a celebration even though Henry, Mary with her 2 daughters, and Alice were there. For one reason, because Mary was arranging her flight for work, and second, she was not much into celebrating the day she was born four decades and four years ago.
Her birthday was filled with casual conversation over lunch. They shared laughter and usual gossips earlier that day or earlier that month, or even that year and anything conversational followed that could easily be forgotten. It didn’t take much time until it fell into a normal exchange of words she hadn’t thought to be something especial.
Forks and spoons cluttered.
“How about Mary?” Henry asked from the other end of the table.
“I will be leaving next week. Monday.” Mary replied, chewing a chunk of poultry away.
Then 6-year-old Lucy, eldest of Alice, asked innocently, “Where’s Haiti? I’ve never heard Haiti before. Is it in America?”
Then everyone just beamed towards her and no one answered. She doesn’t know how to deal from the domestic humiliation so she just jump off her chair and run to play with her brother.
Silverwares cluttered again.
“And where would you leave your son?” Cecile continued. Others surprised by her not calling him by his name.
“I have a friend in Antipolo.”
“A stranger?” Henry asked as he reached out and poked into his third slab of roasted beef.
“We know each other since second grade. I trust her.”
“You can leave him here. We could take care of him.” Cecile said.
“No,” snapped Henry. “She could manage her life without bothering us with her son. It’s her choice to leave. There are consequences to take.” He started to lose his appetite as anger crawled in. It’s visible the way he put down his fork with firm and pride soundlessly against his plate. “It’s either she would take Jason with her or take risk entrusting him to a friend.”
Or she wouldn’t go. The bamboo chair creaked and Cecil started crying. The intoxicating silence radiating from every corner of the house, the remote control unmoved for days, socks on the floor unkempt, and windows that had never been opened for months. Silence emphasized everything. From dusts settling from “Browny” the teddy bear beside the china lampshade to the drawing of a tiny flower by Lucy with a spare pink crayon she used against the lower part of the wall. And worst, though she would never notice was the unattended front door letting in the freezing afternoon breeze and mosquitoes feasting on her skin.
The room had obviously darkened. It was 6 o’clock in the evening and her image could hardly be seen. She was like an abandoned mannequin staring into nowhere.
Last week, as she was cooking their dinner, Henry was from work, news came showing a thumbnail from the upper right of the screen of devastated infrastructures. Below, she started to read the caption and nothing could be read but …Haiti? She even spelled it out. H-A-I-T-I. Pentionville?
She ran from the kitchen to the living room where Henry was sitting. And she’d seen him watching the same channel.
“Pa,” she said with a broken voice, “Can you call Mary?”
She was almost in tears and started to get dizzy. Henry, the father, was in control as he grabbed the phone and dialed. As he stood there looking into her eye’s, waiting for the phone to ring, she get more wicker and wicker as if time was drawing her energy out, until she bends her knees and eventually sat on the floor. Henry redialed, and then redialed again. For the ninth attempt, Henry gave up and his wife finally burst into flood of tears.
They were suddenly both in vulnerable knees for the moment. There was blood trickling from the inside of her fist as she was still holding the kitchen knife with the unconscious image of her daughter in mind. Burnt garlic filled up the house, and water had long been overflowing from the kitchen sink. Their senses of smell and hearing seemed impaired for a moment, or maybe forever.
After an hour, the phone rang. Both tortured parents jump off their feet and bolted back to life, but Henry was to come first. He grabbed the phone and say with a familiar broken voice:
“Hello?”
“Pa, it’s Anna. Have you watched the news… where’s mama… are you okay?”
“Have you called your sister?”
Cecile was pleading for the phone.
“What?” he asked and passed it to her wife.
“Call your sister, please.”
“I’ve tried. I think the line was cut.”
These statements caused to smash the fragile silence of the room that has been growing like a moss.
“No!” she screamed and gave up for the second and last time. “Oh, God. No, please!”
At that moment, Ana was speaking to herself as the phone was left suspended for the rest of the night.
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