21stcentlittv

[21stcentlittv]

BANANA HEART SUMMER - THE HEART OF THE MATTER

CHAPTER EIGHT

HALO-HALO: MIX-MIX

The Calcium Man did not come too close to his next stop, perhaps because of its vicious menagerie. Four dragons were perpetually breathing fire from its terra-cotta awnings. Any moment now, they could slither down to the main door guarded by a pair of stone lions that never slept, mouths gaping as if flashing their fangs for regular inspection. Then both lions and dragons could advance as a pack through the driveway, past the gardens, to join the company of five live dogs growling behind the red iron gate. And the poor passerby would have to still the shudder in her heart. Well, I did, making sure I kept my distance from the Chings’ almost mansion.

Mr. Alexander Ching always refuted any “mansion talk” or speculations that he was the richest man in town, richer than the mayor himself. The businessman was humble or coy, whichever way you looked at it. He went around town in his plain white shirt and faded blue trousers, on foot or in the public buses. He hardly rode in his chauffeured Mercedes and he spoke to everyone. He was always “networking” before the term was even invented.

His almost mansion was an intimidating three-story house in red, gold and shades of emerald green, built in solid stone. Perhaps it was a fortress that mistook itself for a pagoda. It bisected heaven with a red Chinese turret. The garden, however, was another story. As if in protest rather than contrast, it bloomed in delicate pink—pink roses, a pond of pink lotuses and pink frangipanis that lined the gold wall, which locked in the house from the real world.

“Calcium, vitamins, calcium, vitamins!” The old man had been crying out for a good few seconds now, but was drowned out by the hysteria of the dogs barking and rushing about, snapping at him, fangs bared. They smelled his wares, his heart, its allegiance to the basic food groups. “Calcium, vitamins, calcium, vitamins!”

The sun was right behind the red turret, making it burn like a second, angular sun or some golden talisman that opened briefly and closed again. Shortly a maid came running towards us.

“The señora wants to know whether you have mussels today,” she said, holding on to the iron gate to keep the dogs from overturning her.

She was new, soft-spoken, perhaps my age. Her white uniform was too big for her and she was shuffling her red rubber slippers, also oversized. The maid before her had definitely been of generous proportions. She spoke to the Calcium Man while looking at me, perhaps understanding, with my limp, that I was his sidekick, the Calcium Girl who would also go through the eye of the storm.

“Ay, plenty of mussels here, girl, so fresh, so rich in calcium and vitamins, your señora’s teeth and bones will be strong forever and ever.”

She giggled shyly at the strange speech, she was new indeed, and studied his wares, then shook her head, saying, “Dead,” firmly, then, “No, thank you, not today, sir.” Then she walked away, flip-flopping her slippers on the pavement.

The Calcium Man was speechless. What insult, what insufferable offense! Dead! This was the first time in his two years of peddling that he had been rejected by the almost mansion. Of course, he was never rejected before because he always came here first, when his wares were freshest, before he haggled with the rest of the neighborhood and the other streets. For some reason, today he left the almost mansion for last. But dead? How dare you? His usually sharp tongue knotted in his mouth. He could not bring himself to curse the maid, lest his richest customer overheard him. He looked up; the turret was closed. The sun had moved on.

His limp dragged him down and he finally tipped over, falling on his butt beside his basket. The dogs were almost quiet, perhaps commiserating with the old man’s bad business day. I imagined the dragons would have swallowed back their fire, if they could, and the stone lions would have turned away. I did, I was embarrassed for him. The Calcium Man looked so despondent, as though he had gone through the eye of the storm the second time around and it had stolen his spirit.

I was sorry for him, though part of me thought, serves you right for being mean to Tiya Asun. But what contrast—the sheer arrogance and even bellicose attitude towards Tiya Asun versus this cowed response to Señora Ching’s rejection. Surely I was witnessing the way of the world that afternoon. The poorest are whipped by the poor, and the poor are whipped by the rich, even without them lifting a finger.

What I didn’t know then was that the day’s bad business went beyond the eighty-year-old’s basket, straight to his heart. And that there were other stories which would eventually end under Nana Dora’s hut. But I must not get ahead of myself.

I needed to simply proceed to Miss VV’s. I refused to have my own bad business day.

“Pssst!” I heard someone call.

“Hoy, it’s too hot to be standing on that baking pavement, you’ll melt. Come in and have some refreshment—you live across the road, don’t you?” The voice had emerged from behind some rosebushes.

I could not believe my eyes and ears, and the Calcium Man was as impressed. It was the only son of the house, Manolito Ching, inviting me in—me, me! Manoling of the tall nose and the long lashes that curved like a girl’s and the very thick hair with golden highlights. The Spanish-Chinese mestizo (the señora was a full-blooded Spaniard, she even wore a mantilla to church) was the heartthrob of my friends Chi-chi and Bebet—and me, if I owned up to it. He went to the exclusive boys’ school in the city. He was the heir to the fortunes of the richest businessman in town. He lived in an almost mansion.

He grew up with dragons and lions and delicate pink roses. His father was constructing the first four-story building in our street. The Chings were going to defy the sky. What more could a girl want?

“Come in.”

He had never spoken to me before. He always looked distant inside the chauffeured Mercedes. He barely left the house when he was in town and he was hardly in town. The Chings owned several houses in the city.

“I said, come in.”

My mouth kept dropping. I sort of shivered, stammered.

“Good afternoon, Señorito Manoling. I see you so tall and handsome now.” The Calcium Man spoke for me, in English. But he was excluded from the invitation, perhaps because he added, “I make you taller with my calcium and vitamins, etc., etc.—wanna buy?” He was hopeless, reducing everything to possible pesos, even this boy’s act of graciousness which, of course, kept me from concluding sooner my true business of the day. So it came to pass that I found myself sitting in the Chings’ enormous kitchen surrounded by hovering maids who were shooed away by their master, hell-bent on impressing me with a new gadget. It was a silver ice shaver that one turned with the hand.

He was the most well-groomed boy that I ever saw in my whole young life. It seemed as if everything about him was new: the cream shirt with the maroon basketball print, the brown trousers with their meticulously ironed crease, the cream socks and brown shoes (he wore shoes at home!), even the Beatles haircut which I thought looked like a shiny mop on his head.

“I’m making myself some halo-halo. Would you like some? Perfect for this hot day—isn’t it just so hot?” He turned on the ceiling fan. His Beatles fringe flew this way and that.

Why me, why me? I felt shabby, ugly and miserably poor. I had to work furiously in my head. I imagined that my dress was deepening into its original blue, whipped into newness by the circling coolness in the room, that my shoulder-length hair was flying softly around my face and my burns and bruises were fading, that I was coming through some storm, much as I had come through the bared fangs of the five dogs at the gate, then the lions at the door while the dragons breathed down on me. Yes, I came through, didn’t I, though with much somersaulting in my chest—I was now reborn to a family who would never know how an esophagus lengthened!

“Don’t you ever speak?” He was laughing at me.

“Why are you not in school?” For the life of me, I couldn’t tell where that stupid question came from.

“School is boring,” he whispered with a conspiratorial wink, then opened a cupboard.

I must have sighed too loudly because he looked at me in a strange way.

My heart, with my stomach in hot pursuit, went out to the neat row of colorful jars of preserves that would go into the halo-halo, the “mix-mix”: orange sweetcorn, red and green gelatin cubes, red and white sweetened beans, purple sticky yam, opaque white coconut balls, raisins, diced sugar bananas and other substances with a psychedelic glaze, which I could not recognize. I was sure I smelled them, in all their competing sweetness, even from the tightly closed jars.

“So do you know how to make halo-halo?”

I nodded and went straight for the preserves.

“I’ll shave the ice—no, come, I’ll show you how to do it.”

Reluctantly, I abandoned my original desire and meekly took my place before the silver ice shaver. He guided my hand on the intricately wrought handle, and we began to turn it together. I felt his breath on my nape, and I must have blushed. I was ambushed by the strangest sensations, sweeter than all the preserves in the cupboard combined. Perhaps it was the special detergent of the household: whatever it was, he smelled freshly laundered, with just a touch of something musky. And his breath was sweet mint. I shivered.

“Keep turning,” he said, releasing my hand.

Soft frost tumbled from the bottom of the shaver into a crystal bowl. I worked with such industry, I hardly noticed Manoling’s preoccupation, or original intent perhaps.

I screamed. Shaved ice was sliding down my back. The devil had slipped it into my dress. “To cool you down,” he said, laughing wickedly. “Ta-da-da-da-dah!”

I stopped screaming, uncertain whether I should protest, scold, call him names, walk out, but I laughed with him instead. It was just a harmless prank, a gesture of fraternity to make me feel at home. I laughed louder than the cleanest boy in the world.

“Manolitoooo! Manolitoooo!”

“Aw, Mother-bother!” he said, heeding the call from wherever in the almost mansion, how could I tell, perhaps the red turret bisecting the sky. “Don’t leave, I’ll be back.” He winked one more time.

I was left alone with endless possibilities.

[21stcentlittv]

BANANA HEART SUMMER - THE HEART OF THE MATTER

CHAPTER SEVEN

SEAWEED SALAD AND THE CALCIUM MAN (WITH PILI NUT HUSK ON THE SIDE)

So with faith in my impending business, I walked along Remedios Street, now ringing with the perennial cry of the oldest hawker of clams, mussels and seaweed. “Calcium, vitamins!” Always in English, mind you, like the basic food groups that he lectured his clients about. He knew his wares, perhaps made more pricey in the foreign tongue, and he understood nutrition by heart. My family could not afford him.

It was easy to spot the Calcium Man. He was ancient, stringy and dark like dried fish, and he smelled like dried fish. His hair was a dirty white and he looked as if he had just walked through the eye of a storm. His shirt was torn, his hair stood on end, he had a limp, and he wore no slippers and little flesh. He had no real name. “Perhaps the storm took it too,” Nilo or Lydia or Claro once said.

Like Nana Dora, the old man simply materialized on our street one morning, armed with a basket and a temper under his sleeve. He was famous for this temper and for the freshest seaweed, and the clams and mussels that shone like polished stones. He was always early, too early in fact. We surmised that he was a fisherman who gathered his wares before dawn, since he began hawking them by four-thirty, inserting his gruff “Calcium, vitamins!” into our dreams. Or perhaps he was the father of fishermen. But how could those sons bear to have their father slave in his old age? Who would know and who would care? Perhaps the street gossips or the children who still honored their fathers.

I was convinced that his business was flavored by his temperament of the day. If he stuck to his price and haggled with his clients, he would still be hawking dead clams at four in the afternoon. If he allowed a bargain, he would be having lunch by eleven, with an empty basket. He ate under Nana Dora’s hut, but always before she arrived.

That afternoon, he was at his hard-hearted best. He believed he was selling a king’s ransom. I found him at Tiyo Anding’s door, arguing with his wife Tiya Asun or, more aptly, lecturing her on a balanced diet. He perorated about how much protein and carbohydrates the body needed and how indispensable if not lifesaving was his feast of calcium and vitamins.

Tiya Asun had no breasts or hips. Her large eyes had that stunned look of a fish. She had no brows and little hair, perhaps because she combed it too roughly too many times a day, I thought. Her skin was the sallow tint of cornmeal gone off. She always leaned on things, as if they must catch or hold her, but her eyes were vividly alive, “to-ing and fro-ing,” her husband used to say.

“Ay, of course you pay a price to save your life, woman—my calcium and vitamins can save your life!”

“I’m not buying, no, not at all. Your price is highway robbery!”

“You calling me a thief?”

“I only speak the truth!”

“Truth! My God, woman! Which truth, whose truth?” The old man shook his fist. He turned to his left then his right, not quite sure which to invoke, the volcano or the church.

At this juncture, I must produce a rough map of Remedios Street, so you can appreciate his gesture.

You see, we lived between the volcano and the church, between two gods. The smoking peak and the soaring cross faced each other in a perpetual standoff, as if blocked for a duel. Not that anyone, other than me, saw it this way at that time, of course. Not that I even breathed this vision to any ear, lest I got burnt at the stake or sentenced to recite the rosary for the rest of my life and afterlife.

“I swear by the volcano that my calcium and vitamins will save you, woman!”

“Ay, Dios ko,” she shuddered, crossing herself, “how sinful to swear!”

“I swear by God then!”

“Ay, santisima, how blasphemous!”

So the fight went on, with the towering onlookers silently judging this earthly duel. How puny, how sadly mortal are hunger and the feeble attempts to hide it in the name of pride. At one end of our street, the volcano rallied for public outburst; at the other, the cross blessed peacekeepers, the silent sufferers.

Sadly it was a fight that could never be resolved, because Tiya Asun’s pocket was empty. But she bargained and wrangled with her usual fervor anyhow, and her eyes roved, as fish eyes would, into the basket of the oldman, thus making him believe her intention to buy. Ay, such ridiculous futility of desperate pride, no, dignity actually. Mother said pride is a sin, but dignity is a savior.

Tiya Asun’s family was the poorest in our street. I wondered what they ate; their house hardly smelled of cooking. We had been eating more-water-than-rice gruel for a week after my father’s and, of course, her husband’s sacking. I wondered what non-smelling thing boiled in Tiya Asun’s pots. In my heart I knew that her family felt it too—the esophagus lengthening, I mean. And as they were poorer than us, perhaps even other parts inevitably followed suit—the tongue, the cheeks and the eyes perhaps stretching towards the earth, as if they were already being pulled into their graves. The twins, Chi-chi and Bebet, were thinner than me and wore their mother’s fish eyes. We went to the same school. They were always absent from class.

“Go away, you blasphemous highway robbery old man!”

“May your pots and pans break their friendship with protein and carbohydrates and calcium and vitamins and minerals!”

He did not have to curse her. Tiya Asun had never been friends with the basic food groups. He walked off, still cursing; she leaned against her door. Meanwhile, the volcano smoked, the cross soared, and life went on.

With my burnt toes I limped behind the limping Calcium Man. I imagined I was his sidekick, his Calcium Girl who could also go through the eye of the storm and come out with the beatific vision of the basic food groups. I checked his wares: tired-looking seaweed, clams and mussels, dead by now, and, surprise, something not of the water—pili nuts, all black and shiny, and just right for boiling. I looked up to the smoking peak. What if the Calcium Man and I limped to the crater and threw in the nuts to boil? And we could add the mussels and clams that refused all offers for a bargain from the lady who would return to her kitchen to boil air for dinner.

The four o’clock sun was merciless. I could hear him panting and fuming, his limp even more pronounced, making him tilt deeply to the left, as if anytime he would tip over from the weight of his hard, hard heart.

I tagged along, carefully preparing his wares for a meal in my head. First, the seaweed, those beads of jade clustered around their stems. Shiny, firm and a little slimy, they would pop in my mouth like vegetarian caviar. This, I would flavor with green lemon and serve as partner to the fibrous pili nut husk, dunked in fish sauce. Then I would save the nuts, crisp and with a milky aftertaste, for honeyed crackling or marzipan or palm-sugared sticky delights.

[21stcentlittv]

BANANA HEART SUMMER - THE HEART OF THE MATTER

CHAPTER SIX

FLOATING FAITH

Satiation. This was the heart of my business venture that afternoon.

I licked the last traces of turon sweetness from my fingers, then proceeded to Miss Violeta “VV” Valenzuela’s garden of tomatoes, lemons and hibiscus.

Believe me, there are things that you can’t eat, but that feed you anyway. Like VV’s red hibiscus hedge. Or like her playing guitar and singing “Yellow Bird Up High in Banana Tree” in her matching pink blouse, shorts and headband, against the red hibiscus. Eighteen-year-old Miss VV was always perfectly tuned in to the most significant event of her Sunday afternoon: the visiting hour of the deep-voiced radio man Basilio Profundo, who read all the letters of request for mostly “croony” love songs in the DZGB dedication program. He especially liked Patsy Cline, Roy Orbison, Paul Anka and Frank Sinatra, playing their songs over and over again so the airwaves threatened a conflagration.

Lovingly Yours was the most popular radio program on our street, not just because of the host’s voice made for swooning—everyone was a fan—but for the “uhuum-uhuuumm” that might be brewing between the owner of the voice and the woman of the yellow bird. So, by a stretch of kinship, everyone who lived on our street was related to the radio man. He was, after all, our neighbor’s probable “uhuum-uhuuumm.” Regularly he brought her twenty pieces of special palitaw, still so hot they cooked even their banana leaf wrapping. This always made the air smell like a real Sunday after a long siesta, when Remedios Street steamed, boiled, fried or pounded their own afternoon snacks. When Nana Dora rested.

Unlike the other love-gossip aficionados, my interest in his visit was purely gustatory. I knew too well the banana wrapping that sat on a plate of woven rattan. Basilio Profundo held this plate reverently, like an acolyte bearing the Body of Christ. The palitaw was, of course, twenty pieces at least: ten for Miss VV’s family and ten for visitors, if she had any. Basilio’s mother Tiya Coring, chef of these wooing accoutrements, believed it was shameful not to invite visitors, even sudden arrivals, to share a repast.

Palitaw, the floated one: Tiya Coring’s floating faith of pounded sticky rice shaped into tongues and sunk into a pot of boiling water. When they float, they’re cooked. This you take on faith. Then you retrieve the tongue-cakes from the water and sprinkle them with coconut cream toasted into crisp, brown granules and, of course, shreds of freshly grated coconut, sugar and sesame seeds. Ay, the scent alone was enough for anyone to take on faith Tiya Coring’s claim that hers was the best palitaw in the world! And who could argue against her faith in this wooing dish meant to turn not just the heart but the stomach of the doubtful family of Miss VV towards her unico hijo, her only son? True, the Valenzuelas doubted whether this man from peasant stock (even if he was a radio man now and perhaps would keep his future wife’s feet unsoiled by rice paddies) was suitable for their youngest who was studying to be a nurse. So, twenty sweet, sticky tongues to profess his ardor and honorable intentions.

Ay, to win the beloved on the strength of a tongue. Is this possible?

Faith always floats, keeps us afloat. As it is in swimming, so it is in cooking, so it is in falling in love. We always believe we’ll rise to the surface. None of Tiya Coring’s palitaw stayed down. None remained intimate with the pot’s bottom. Faith is too light to stay down, and it smells. We can’t hide it.

One day its aroma floated towards our house where myself, Junior (well, Gable Junior actually), Claro, Nilo, Lydia and my baby brother Elvis peeked out of a window about three o’clock. Time to act! I quickly pushed my little brother out the door. Newly bathed and generously Johnson’s Baby Powdered by scheming me, Elvis advanced on cue. Go, go quickly, now, Iwaved to him. Also egged on by four other aspirants, he toddled up to Miss VV while flashing “three” with his fingers: I’m three or may I have three? From the window, we protested with frantic hand signs, gnashing our teeth over the impending loss of a perfect opportunity, or its full realization. Not three, not three, stupid! We are six! But three it was, apportioned with much fighting and tears.

Floating faith made us brave, made us endure the consequences. Before our last mouthful, of course Mother found out. Thus the interrogation, then justice. I, the shameless eldest who should have known better, got the belt. Bum, back, arms, face. “We are not beggars, you hear? We are not beggars!”

Dignity may be lean, but more filling than faith.

[21stcentlittv]

BANANA HEART SUMMER - THE HEART OF THE MATTER

CHAPTER FIVE

LENGUA PARA DIABLO (THE DEVIL ATE MY WORDS)

I suspected that my father sold his tongue to the devil. He had little say in our house. Whenever he felt like disagreeing with my mother, he murmured, “The devil ate my words.” This meant he forgot what he was about to say and Mother was often appeased. There was more need for appeasement after he lost his job.

The devil ate his words, the devil ate his capacity for words, the devil ate his tongue. But perhaps only after prior negotiation with its owner, what with Mother always complaining, “I’m already taking a peek at hell!” when it got too hot and stuffy in our tiny house. She seemed to sweat more that summer, and miserably. She made it sound like Father’s fault, so he cajoled her with kisses and promises of an electric fan, bigger windows, a bigger house, but she pushed him away, saying, “Get off me, I’m hot, ay, this hellish life!” Again he was ready to pledge relief, but something in my mother’s eyes made him mutter only the usual excuse, “The devil ate my words,” before he shut his mouth. Then he ran to the tap to get her more water.

Lengua para diablo: tongue for the devil. Surely he sold his tongue in exchange for those promises to my mother: comfort, a full stomach, life without our wretched want…But the devil never delivered his side of the bargain. The devil was alien to want. He lived in a Spanish house and owned several stores in the city. This Spanish mestizo was my father’s employer, but only for a very short while. He sacked him and our neighbor Tiyo Anding, also a mason, after he found a cheaper hand to complete the extension of his house.

We never knew the devil’s name. Father was incapable of speaking it, more so after he came home and sat in the darkest corner of the house and stared at his hands. It took him two days of silent staring before he told my mother about his fate.

I wondered how the devil ate my father’s tongue. Perhaps he cooked it in mushroom sauce, in that special Spanish way that they do ox tongue. First, it was scrupulously cleaned, rubbed with salt and vinegar, blanched in boiling water, then scraped of its white coating—now, imagine words scraped off the tongue, and even taste, our capacity for pleasure. In those two days of silent staring, Father hardly ate. He said he had lost his taste for food, he was not hungry. Junior and Nilo were more than happy to demolish his share of gruel with fish sauce.

After the thorough clean, the tongue was pricked with a fork to allow the flavors of all the spices and condiments to penetrate the flesh. Then it was browned in olive oil. How I wished we could prick my father’s tongue back to speech and even hunger, but of course we couldn’t, because it had disappeared. It had been served on the devil’s platter with garlic, onion, tomatoes, bay leaf, clove, peppercorns, soy sauce, even sherry, butter, and grated Edam cheese, with that aroma of something rich and foreign.

His silent tongue was already luxuriating in a multitude of essences, pampered into a piquant delight.

Perhaps next he should sell his esophagus, then his stomach. I would if I had the chance to be that pampered. To know for once what I would never taste. I would be soaked, steamed, sautéed, basted, baked, boiled, fried and feted with only the perfect seasonings. I would become an epicure. On a rich man’s plate, I would be initiated to flavors of the finest quality. In his stomach, I would be inducted to secrets. I would be the inside girl, and I could tell you the true nature of sated affluence.

[21stcentlittv]

BANANA HEART SUMMER - THE HEART OF THE MATTER

CHAPTER FOUR

TOMATO-LEMON CARP WITH HIBISCUS

I never told Nana Dora that I burnt the fish, that Mother beat me as if she were separating the rice chaff from the grain. Ginik. What Mother called this kind of beating. Under the ancient two-burner stove, I prodded the welts on my arms and wondered if the skin would come off.

“Only on the bum, Maring, only on the bum, please,” Father pleaded. He always pleaded on occasions like this when Mother couldn’t see perhaps where to land whatever object she had laid her hands on—his belt, the broom or the large soup ladle dented not from its usual chore, but from carrying out her idea of justice. Anything would do, anywhere would do—bum, back, arms, face.

Under the stove, I gritted my teeth—one is not supposed to cry—after Mother threw the wok at me, burnt fish and all. Spots of oil hit my arms and the fish was like a black hole stuck on my chest, but it was my left foot that suffered most. The oil caught my toes. Only the left foot, only the left, I consoled myself, and not that hot really, compared to Mother’s rage. It was always silent but full of fire, like a house burning down. Burnt fish, burnt house. Later, as always, Mother scavenged through the ruins for something “saveable.” She sat me down and talked to me as if I were her favorite child. “You know why we hit you? Because we love you. Parents must do this, because they want their children to be good.”

But I always want to be good. Do you? I was tempted to return the want to my mother on occasions like this. But before her big blow-up, I’d only managed to explain, in my absentminded way, “I wanted to cook good, Mama, but it was the fault of the fish.” Instantly the house lost its oldest window shutter when Mother grabbed the loose peg that held it together, the closest thing at hand, and began beating me.

Mother’s was a poker-faced fury. Her face could have been someone else’s, a handsome woman meditating over her laundry or ironing. It was a patrician face: broad forehead, high cheekbones, thin nose and lips, always in appealing repose. Fury occurred only in her hands, as if the callused fingers could not be appeased until they had exhausted themselves. Throwing the wok was more of an afterthought really, a late flick of the wrist.

But why blame the fish? Because its eyes were no longer clear, because its gills were a grey-pink rather than red, because its scales were falling off, but I bought it anyway. It was the only one I could afford with the three pesos (the rice and oil cost two) that Father handed me after he was sacked from his mason’s job. After all those salary advances, his last wage was so light on my palm.

It was a weary-looking, passed-over carp, the size of my two palms held together, for a family of eight. Not enough, so I decided to improvise. I sneaked out of the house while the fish was frying (so now you know why I burnt it) to steal one green lemon, one not-so-large tomato and, in a sudden inspiration, one hibiscus half-bloom from Miss VV’s garden next door. I felt no remorse. I took extra care to recite mea culpa, while beating my chest as we did at church during the Lamb of God supplications, each time I plucked a needed ingredient.

I only wanted to cook good, I only wanted to delishusize the thing. Delishusize: to make delicious. I was given to improvisations even then. But how to make delicious a passed-over carp? Scale and clean to immaculateness, rid of all signs of being passed over, the muddy eyes and smelly gills, then rub with salt and fry in coconut oil, fry to a crispness that would surely be percussive in the mouth. Set aside. Now core the tomato. Mash core and save with juice. Slice tomato into thin rings, then lay slices on the browned body. Lay tenderly, like babies on a cot. Then add tomato mixture to the lemon, this sharp-sour fragrance that will hide the passed-oversmell of the fish. Only one little green lemon, thumb-sized, so its juice should be extracted to the last drop. Now pour tomato-lemon sauce on the fish. Then grace the dish with the hibiscus, at the right spot where it will curve with the tail. It must only be a half-bloom, it must not be bigger than the fish.

Nothing must be bigger than the fish, especially not the stomach. When this aberrant proportion occurs, then we have a problem. But don’t we always have a problem anyway? Because desire is bigger than anything that can fill it. Desire is a house with infinite extensions, even renovations, like my little prayer of want after that household conflagration:

“I only want to cook good, I only want to eat good, I only want to be good.”

I found this recitation in my head more soothing than “Lamb of God who takes away the sins of the world” while I applied Colgate to my blisters.

My father Gable, so baptized in honor of the Clark Gable and Carole Lombard love-team, quickly handed me the toothpaste after Mother had finished with me. “You’ll be okay, Nining,” he whispered, eyes averted as if he were the one who had just meted out the punishment.

Nining, not Nenita, for when I was loved again.

[21stcentlittv]

BANANA HEART SUMMER - THE HEART OF THE MATTER

CHAPTER THREE

SHREDDED HEART IN COCONUT MILK

“I’m as barren as soup without water, so don’t ask me that question again!”

Nana Dora shut me up with this retort when I asked, “Why don’t you have children?”

The customers in the queue had heard. Their ears perked up for more juicy details beyond soup and they shuffled closer. Their bodies leaned slightly towards the bristling woman and their faces glowed with the heat from her stove, while the turones in the wok performed with more earnestness, believing that they were the object of everyone’s curiosity, if not desire.

Her lips thinned. I could see she regretted her little outburst. She tossed more turones too emphatically into the wok—the oil leapt and nearly caught my arm. I stepped back, everyone stepped back. I hugged my body to myself, I remembered last night’s disaster, I cowered. Fuming, she wiped her hands on her oil-splattered skirt.

“I’m sorry,” I said without knowing why.

“Humph,” she answered. I was dismissed.

How did we come to talk about soup and stuff? First she asked me why in the world would I stop school and I wanted to say, because of last night, then she said, there’s too many of you that’s why, and I argued, but we’re only six and anyway Father said it’s always cheaper by the dozen, and she shook her head savagely so I said, what about you, Nana Dora, how many do you have, and she said, none, and I asked why, and she talked about soup, spitting her words.

Nana Dora was like jackfruit. Too prickly outside but sweet inside, though only if she was ripe enough to entertain your intrusions. She rarely smiled. Every day she cooked the best and cheapest snacks, except on Sundays. Little was known of her; she did not live in our street or our town. All that was told, again and again, was the story of one early afternoon in the summer during the big drought, when the strange woman arrived and built a makeshift hut on an empty cul-de-sac in our street, then set up stove and wok and pot. She worked with incredible speed. The story went that by five o’clock she had finished building the hut and was grating coconuts, then shredding banana hearts while frying some fish to go with the hearts, then serving her first customers by six-thirty. Why she changed from dinner to afternoon snacks, or from savories to sweets, no one knew.

It must have been the shredded heart, some of those first customers would later surmise. “It was too hot, too salty, too coconuty, ay, too high-pitched in all respects.” Even the savories had their place in the musical scale.

“And she didn’t know how to shred a heart properly, so we all had the shits.”

How to shred a heart.

It must be the right heart, it must be the soft core of the right heart, it must be the yellowish part of the soft core of the right heart. It is this that must be thinly sliced, or shredded if you will, then crushed to let the water out, to bleed it. But how do you flavor a shredded heart? How do you get the pitch right? With a bit of dried fish, a bit of shrimp paste, a bit of little red chili, a bit of garlic, a bit of onion and the milk of one or two mature coconuts. A bit of, just right, not too much, enough to induce that perfect chemistry on the palate. But how can you tell or taste perfect chemistry? When you desire a second helping before you have even finished your first. When the second helping inspires a third. When you don’t get the shits after too much inspiration.

So, close to midnight, when the heart is sweet with herbs and spices, it bows from its stem. Wait for its first dew. It will drop like a gem. Catch it with your tongue. When you eat the heart of the matter, you’ll never get the shits again—ay, yes, that’s more like it. Much later, this state of affairs was revealed to me with unequivocal conviction, or more specifically to my stomach, or to my own heart, or maybe to the space between the stomach and the heart which often suffers that condition called heartburn.

[21stcentlittv]

BANANA HEART SUMMER - THE HEART OF THE MATTER

CHAPTER TWO

TURON: THE MELODY

The sound of deep frying was a delectable melody. Instantly loud and aggressive when the turon hit the pool of boiling coconut oil, then pulling back. The percussion was inspired to be subtle.

“Ay, it sounds and smells like happiness,” I said, nose and ears as primed as my sweetened tongue. Happiness that is not subtle at all, I could have added. Such is the fact about the turon, which is half a slice of sugar banana and a strip of jackfruit rolled in paper-thin rice wrapping, then dusted with palm sugar and fried to a crisp brown. How could such fragrance be subtle?

My nose twitched, my mouth watered, my stomach said, buy, buy.

“So you’re an expert on happiness?” Nana Dora asked. Her face glowed with more than sweat and the fire from her stove.

“Believe me, your cooking is music, Nana Dora.”

“Hoy, don’t flatter me, Nenita.” She made a face. But I could see the flush

deepening on her cheeks, the hand patting wisps of hair in place and the coy turning of the neck, as if a lover had just whispered sweet nothings to her ear.

I hovered closer, bent towards the wok, no, bowed, paying obeisance to its melody: mi-fa-so-la…no, definitely a high “do.” There were about five turones harmonizing in the deep wok. The aroma climbed the scales, happiness from rung to rung. Can I get one on credit? I wanted to ask, but only managed, “Can I help you roll, Nana Dora?”

“So you want to burn your nose or flavor my turon with your grease?” she scolded.

I withdrew the endangered appendage from the wok’s edge, along with my grease, or sweat, which I imagined was what she meant. She stared at me, sizing me up in my dress that was once blue.

“I’m just saying hello, Nana Dora,” I explained. “If you must know, I’m actually off to a…a business venture.” And I’ll be earning soon, so can I get one on credit? But the question drowned in the pool in my mouth. I swallowed, but another wave washed over my tongue, my belly made fainting cries, like little notes plummeting, and my esophagus lengthened. “When you feel it lengthen, you know it’s really, really bad.” Who said that first? Nilo, my fourth sibling, or Junior, the second, maybe Claro, the third one, or perhaps Lydia? There were six of us, so it was difficult to tell who said or felt it first. Not that we called it esophagus then. We just said “it” and motioned with our hands from the throat to sometimes beyond the stomach. Then we squatted for a long time, “to arrest the lengthening.” Better than saying we were feeling too faint with hunger to keep on our feet.

“Business venture, hah!” Nana Dora snapped.

Of course she meant, leave business to me, girl, as she wrapped a turon in a banana leaf and handed it to a customer right under my nose. I kept my hand in my pocket.

“Hoy, aren’t you supposed to be in school?” Of course she meant, school is your business and don’t you forget that! But I was unfazed as I listened to the sweet noises behind me—the “ow-ow-so-hot!” then the blowing, then the first crunch, then the customer’s masticating. This was how the melody culminated.

“I…um…stopped school—”

“Stopped school?” Her huge frying paddle—I called it a paddle—froze in midair.

“I’m on my way to some…er, business, that’s why, but all’s well—so can I get one on credit?” My last words were too soft to get me anywhere, but of course she was not meant to hear them.

“Stopped school in its last month, santisima!”

It was early March, supposedly the end of my sixth grade and the beginning of a very hot summer. “Yes, stopped school,” I said. “I’ll be a working girl soon, you know.” I pushed out my chest to proclaim my upgraded status. Not that I had anything to show for it yet underneath my blouse.

“How old are you?”

“Twelve.”

She stepped back, hands on hips, and squinted at me. “And what happened to your arms and foot?”

I didn’t think she would notice. “Accident—cooking…”

Nana Dora said something under her breath, then curtly, “Hoy, sit down and help me roll,” while the paddle waved about. She looked angry, but I didn’t know why and didn’t care as she handed me the hottest, crispiest, sweetest turon that I ever had in my life. And it was not on credit.

My nose twitched with pleasure, my hand burned, my lips cooked. I heard the paper-thin wrapping shatter against my teeth as my mouth pooled and pooled.

[21stcentlittv]

BANANA HEART SUMMER - THE HEART OF THE MATTER

CHAPTER ONE

FOR THOSE WHO LOVE TO LOVE AND EAT, FOR THOSE WHO LONG TO LOVE AND EAT

When we laid my baby sister in a shoebox, when all the banana hearts in ourstreet were stolen, when Tiyo Anding stepped out of a window perhaps tofly, when I saw guavas peeking from Manolito’s shorts and felt I’d die ofshame, when Roy Orbison went as crazy as Patsy Cline and lovers eloped, sparking a scandal so fiery that even the volcano erupted and, as a consequence, my siblings tasted their first American corned beef, then Mother looked at me again, that was the summer I ate the heart of the matter.

So how did it all begin?

With this lesson about the banana heart from Nana Dora, the chef of all thesweet snacks that flavored our street every afternoon, except Sundays.

“Close to midnight, when the heart bows from its stem, wait for its firstdew. It will drop like a gem. Catch it with your tongue. When you eat theheart of the mater, you’ll never grow hungry again.”

From the site of her remark, I will take you through a tour of our street andI will tell you its stories. Ay, my street of wishful sweets and spices. Allthose wishes to appease stomachs and make hearts fat with pleasure. And perhaps sweeten tempers or even spice up a storyteller’s tongue.

Let’s begin with appeasement, my first serious business venture long ago. Let’s begin with a makeshift kitchen, a hut with no walls, under banana treesin bloom. Here, Nana Dora parked her fragrant wok at two in the afternoon. By three, the hungry queue began.