“So you can’t,” I say. “Or you won’t.”
To bring her back, you would have to die. And I refuse to trade our living daughter, to bring back only half of the disciple I loved most.
The love and sorrow in the dead god’s hollow voice makes me flinch. “You’re no father to me,” I snarl. “I don’t need your gifts. You’d best leave. Don’t bother coming back.”
The dead god sighs. I’ll see you tomorrow night, it says, and vanishes, leaving me alone with the whispering trees and my abandoned childhood home. This time, it doesn’t take the sampaguita scent with it.
In the next weeks, my mornings are filled with wedding preparations: running to and from the barong-makers’ with measurements from the groom’s party; rushing glasses of ice water to the ma’ams from America, who whine and argue over flower arrangements; and pushing through the tiangge to check on the arrhae’s progress and on the green-eyed jeweler’s son.
I spend the late afternoons with Rodante, sneaking out on the pretext of errands, and meeting him on the walk-up roof above jeweler’s alley, to share cigarettes and snacks. We talk about our families and homes, far, far from Manila. He is from Capiz, a province south of mine. Once, I ask him about family gods.
“We have one, I think,” he says. “Though I’ve never really believed in gods.”
Unusual, I think, in this country full of Catholics and witches. “Not even in spirits?” I ask, tapping our shared cigarette against my finger, and watching the ash flit down onto the concrete, away from the cigarette’s glowing, orange tip.
“No, though my dad said he saw a kapre once. This was back when he was looking for a place to build our home.” Rodante runs his fingers through my hair, and I lean into his touch. “The kapre was up in a tree, watching him wander through a banana grove. He warned my dad that the grove was sacred, and that if he chopped down any of the trees there, the kapre would curse him.”
“So, did he? The kapre, I mean.”
Rodante laughs and shrugs. “Who knows? If my dad really saw him, maybe he did. He ended up building our house in the banana grove anyway.” He takes the cigarette from me and draws in a deep breath, exhaling a thin trail of smoke. “Maybe that’s why my leg’s the way it is.”
“Does it hurt?” I ask, turning to look at his leg.
On the way, he catches my chin and kisses me. His mouth is bitter with tobacco, and sweet from the lychees we’d been eating earlier. Long strands of his hair brush against my bare shoulders, cool and fluid over my sticky skin.
I want to kiss him until we both melt in the summer heat, dissolving into each other in a tangle of limbs and beating hearts. But I’ve learned from my sister, and from the ma’ams’ cold hostility. In our meetings, I never let him touch me for too long, always breaking away from his kisses, before the embers under my skin grow to a full-fanned flame. Unlike Silvia, I have no rich sir to marry; I cannot afford to have a baby and risk being sent away.
But his breath is like sweet spice, and I have never kissed a boy before, especially not one who is so like me. I have yet to ask him if he also hears the strange hum in his skull when we meet, if the dark circles beneath his bright green eyes are products of the same night terrors I’ve had all my life. His mouth moves against me, and I can feel his hands around my waist, sliding up the hem of my shirt.
“I should go,” I mumble, pushing him away. My face burns, and I’ve dropped the cigarette. I stamp it out, avoiding eye contact.
“Okay.” Rodante doesn’t sound disappointed; rather, his tone is shy. “I’m sorry if—I’m sorry about pushing you too hard, if you aren’t ready yet.”
I blush, for shame. I know I am not ready as he means it, but I do enjoy his kisses. “Will you walk me home?”
“I’m sorry. My mother doesn’t like me going out after sunset. It’s hard for me to get around, and she’s afraid I’ll be taken advantage of, with this leg.” He must see my face fall, because he reaches into his pocket and produces a small, black pouch. “But I have something for you, Tin. Here, open it.”
Our fingers touch as he hands it to me, and I open it to find a small, glass-faced locket, on a golden chain. I gasp. It’s worth more money than I’ve ever had, far too expensive for someone like me. “No, Rod, I can’t—”
He kisses my cheek gently, almost chastely. “Please, Tin? Let me help you put it on.”
Rodante limps behind me, and draws the chain over my head. The links are so fine that they slide over my skin, like a thread of woven silk. After he closes the clasp, he brushes my hair away from the necklace. “I hope you like it.”
“I do.” The setting sun catches in the glass, illuminating the small white flower trapped inside. “It’s beautiful,” I murmur. “But are you sure it’s okay to give this to me?”
“I designed it.” He smiles, the corners of his mouth crooked. “It’s almost like you’re keeping a piece of me, wherever you go. Hopefully it’ll keep you safer than I can.”
I kiss him once more before I leave, pressing our lips together and then darting away, for fear that if I stay any longer, I will never be able to leave.
Back home in the maids’ quarters, the other girls gather round to admire the necklace and tease me about my new suitor. “Be careful,” says Vicky, mussing my hair. “You’ll be the next to be married, at this rate!”
My sister, now swollen with the child growing inside her, doesn’t seem jealous of all the attention I’m getting. Instead, she watches beatifically, the entire room gently lit with her presence. Lacing my fingers with hers, I cannot remember a time in the recent past when I have been happier. The hole torn in my heart by Nanay’s death seems smaller, with each passing moment and each beat of my sister’s pulse against mine.
I wake to the Calderone house on fire. Even in the maids’ quarters, the air crackles with flames, searing my skin and catching at my blanket like groping fingers. I shout and try to beat the flames on my bed out, but it’s a lost cause. No one else is in sight.
Snatching the only intact blanket from Jene’s bed, I wrap it tightly around me and barrel toward the exit, hoping and praying to God, to the dead god, to whoever is listening. The flames snarl, as I crash through the doorway, hitting the dirt so hard I forget how to breathe. The roof caves in behind me.
The maids and ma’ams are clustered together on the sidewalk, the closest I’ve ever seen them, in my year and a half of service to the Calderones. Ma’am Loretta hunches over the asphalt, a blanket over her shoulders, rocking silently back and forth, as her childhood home burns.
Over it all is the sound of my sister screaming. But she is nowhere to be seen. Neither is Sir Carlos, her fiancé.
“Where’s Silvia?” I shout, recovering enough to draw in a raspy breath. No one seems to hear me at first, but then I see Vicky point at the house. She’s still inside, I realize with horror. My pregnant sister, trapped inside a burning, collapsing house.
The dissonant hum in my head is so strong, I almost can’t find the strength to walk. But I fight through it, just as I fight through the splintering doorway and follow Silvia’s screams, through the once-great halls.
I find her on the floor of Sir Carlos’s bathroom, crumpled on the floor like a dark-winged bird, lying in a growing pool of blood. Sir Carlos is wrestling with her, and for a moment, I believe he is trying to kill her. Then I hear him shouting, “Stop! Silvia, stop! Please!” and see the panicked tears streaming down his face. My sister is trying to tear her hair out, gripping great fists of it and banging her head against the tile. Sir Carlos catches sight of me and cries, “Help me get her out! Please!”