"Who influenced my writing style? Is there a way of knowing? Primarily my parents, I think, because I was such a pre-teen pest, they gave me Henry James just so I'd stop hanging around while they played mahjongg. Seriously, they got me into reading while I was a kid, so even before I finished my Nancy Drew checklist at 10, they were already bringing me stuff like The Tower (I briefly fantasized about being Anne Boleyn) and an illustrated Crime and Punishment. My mother made me write down my objections whenever I was up for a spanking because I'd hit some boy with my slingshot or missed my curfew or whatever. I'd give her these tear-stained notes that said something along the lines of, "Are you sure you love me as much as you love my brother?" We're a sappy family. That's my excuse for coming up with drivel.  

     "As to what I read, in no particular order, my favorites are: Jose Saramago, Salman Rushdie, William Faulkner, Ernest Hemingway, John Updike, Karl Shapiro, Denise Levertov, Sylvia Plath, Adrienne Rich, Joyce Carol Oates, Margaret Atwood, Vladimir Nabokov, Michael Ondaatje and Jane Austen (Don't ask). But when I'm stressed out, I pick up a worn copy of Neil Gaiman and Terry Pratchett's Good Omens and read it until I feel better. Thomas Mann isn't high on my must-have list, but he deserves a mention if only for Tristan. And well, kick me, but I still fall for Neruda."  
 

     I am helping babysit two nephews today. Thank God the younger one amuses himself with his plastic toys, happy just sitting by the side of the pool, baking in the sun. It’s the older one who makes me nervous; he’s always grabbing things or poking at them. I don’t like it that he’s got his eye on the diving board.  

     Sarah’s sleeping on the deck chair beside me, her deep breaths whistling through her nose. She looks beat. I’ve given up trying to read, it’s too hot here. The boys’ father is out having breakfast with his friends, who take up four tables each Saturday in what used to be my favorite cake-and-coffee shop. He and Abel, my husband, are picking us up at the end of the day.  

     The younger boy, Danny, waddles over to me with a plastic duck held up for inspection.  

     “What’s wrong?” I ask. My sister would have probably picked the child up and cooed, “Whasswrong, Dannykins?” Children have enough problems trying to grow up trilingual, and we ply them with baby talk.  
     “Kenny stepped on Duckie.” I’m relieved the child doesn’t seem close to tears, he’s just asking for a good reason.  
     “Kenny’s a bad boy, isn’t he?”  
      He nods, then scratches his stomach. “I’m sleepy.”  

     My sister lifts her head an inch, squints at her son and pats the empty space beside her. “Come here, pumpkin. You just need a teeny-weeny nap, that’s all.”  

     Pumpkin? I  mumble something about checking on Kenny. I spot him beside the diving board, swinging his feet in the water. He tilts his head, as though he’s listening to something I can’t even begin to hear.  

     Our relatives are always saying Kenny resembles me more than he does my sister. I’ll take that as a compliment: the boy is tall for his age, bright-eyed and has the kind of smile that makes Johnson & Johnson’s fortunes. He also has my mouth.  

     “Tita, how come you and Tito Abel don’t have babies?”  
     “Uh, I don’t know.”  
     “Aren’t you older than Mama?”  
     “Yeah. So?”  
     “You should have babies na. Your yard is so big and Danny is so boring.”  
    “Why?”  
     “Because married people have babies!”  
     “No, I meant why is Danny boring?”  
     “Because he’s always running to Mama.” He pitches a yellow beach ball into the pool. “He’s a sissy, that’s what he is.” He scampers off before I can tell him he shouldn’t call people names. I’m the adult here, aren’t I?  

     “Had lunch yet, hon?” Before I can answer, he forges on, “Listen, I saw Dr. Mendoza today and he tells me you’ve discussed the tests.”  
     “You went to the clinic again?”  
     “No.” I can always tell when Abel is lying. “Well, I had a client call in the same building so I just dropped by.”  
     “Bel, don’t.”  
     “Don’t what?”  
     “Don’t pester my ob-gyne.”  
     “What do you mean?”  
     And women get the bad rap for being manipulative.  
     “We’ll talk later. Don’t forget you’re picking me up at six at the hospital.”  
     “Another appointment?”  
     “No, mal ward night.” Saturday nights I work with this group that reads to malnourished kids in one government hospital. My ob-gyne had me sign up for volunteer work at the hospital nursery two years ago, perhaps thinking that weekly sessions so close to babies would finally get me pregnant. But on my first night I wandered into the mal ward and decided these kids needed my time more.  
     “Why don’t you beg off, just this once, and we’ll have dinner instead?”  
     “I can’t, hon. I promised. Listen, I’m gonna have to hang up, Sarah needs help feeding the boys. See you later.”  

     My sister’s quit trying to nap and is trying to keep her boys, especially Kenny, from committing homicide. Kenny hops on the deck chair, waves the plastic duck in the air and sticks his tongue out at Danny, whose nose and eyelids are starting to redden.  

     “Give it back, Kenneth, give it back,” Sarah’s ponytail is nearly undone and her face is blotchy. When she’s upset her freckles seem to glower along with the rest of her. “Give it back right now.”  

     Before I can make myself useful, Kenny pitches the duck into the pool, where its splash is barely heard in the din of various pre-schoolers screaming for attention. Sarah smacks his thigh. She was probably going for his hand, but Kenny’s never still.  

     “Owww. Not fair!”  
     “It’s Danny’s toy,” Sarah points out. I think she’s relieved her son didn’t start bawling. Danny, who has somehow managed to postpone his waterworks, wraps up the proceedings with, “Kenny’s a bad boy. Really baaad.”  

     I’m trying to think of something judicious and instructive to say, but first I give Sarah’s chest a pointed look. In the struggle to keep both sons from each other’s hair, her bikini top has nearly worked itself loose. A man on the deck chair across the pool watches my sister, waiting. He looks up and sees that I am on to him. He doesn’t even blink.  

    At lunch, Kenny defiantly plants his elbows on the table, a pint-sized solo Spanish Inquisition delineating his territory. Danny gives his mother a quizzical look, then follows suit. Sarah rolls her eyes at me.  

     “Sometimes the little b-r-a-t-s drive me crazy. I wish their father would spend more time with them. Might be better at discipline than I am.”  
     “You’re doing fine,” I tell her.  
     “And you?” When Sarah’s not too comfortable with the conversation, her eyes get larger than usual.  
     “Me? Fine, fine. What do you mean?”  
     “Any word yet?”  
     “I’ve only been late three weeks, Sar. I don’t want another false alarm.”  
     “There are test kits, you know.” She puts her fork down and looks straight at me. “About time you two got started.”  
     “Not you, too.” At the last Christmas reunion, Sarah’s husband thought it would be funny if he got everyone to give me and Abel a push, and we received baby clothes, books from sex manuals to parenting tips, and a jar of Vaseline. Ho, ho. But at least it was better than sympathy. I get plenty of that too.  

    A pregnant woman trudges to the buffet table. The man from the pool trails her, followed by a young woman, probably a yaya, and two girls. Sarah and I are close enough to hear the woman speak; she asks each child what she wants. “Pancit? Fried rice? Shrimp or chicken?” The man exhales sharply and leans over to tell her something. She balances her plate on her right hand, places her left one at the small of her back.  “One week honey,” the woman says calmly. “Just give me one more week and I can take care of you na.” 
 
     For some reason, she reminds me of when Sarah was pregnant with Kenneth. She must have been 30 then. She kept me posted on the minutest details in which her body surprised her as this new life inside her grew.  

     “Seventeen inches! Can you believe it?” She had  a way of punctuating each report with quick, greedy bites of  chicken asado siopao, fried banana fritters and corn-and-shrimp soup.  
     “Is it true your ankles swell?”  
     “A bit. If your belly stretches 17 inches, you can imagine how all that extra baggage can strain your legs. But my doctor says exercise ought to get me back in shape right away.” My little sister, the expectant mommy. It took some getting used to.  
     “You know what the best part is, though?”  
     “What?”  
     “The sex.”  
     “What?!?”  
     “Well, not at first. But after the fourth month, when I started to show, he couldn’t keep his hands off me. Maybe this proof of my fertility turns him on.” Sarah wiped a milk mustache from her upper lip and grinned. “Well, it kinda works for me too.”  

     I must have smiled or something because the Spanish Inquisition is looking straight at me now, his little fists clutching spoon and fork so firmly he looks ready for combat.  

“What’s so funny?” my nephew asks.  

I give a little shrug and make a face at him. Danny giggles so suddenly he spatters soup and bits of rice on a faded blue bib he has refused to consider outgrown. Sarah frowns at all three of us.  

    “Had a good day?” I love it that he firmly places his hand against the small of my back when he kisses me. I lift the strap of my blouse to show off my new tan lines. He grins. “You look yummy.”  He doesn’t know I know, but he’s paid for a four-day vacation in Palawan for our fifth anniversary next month. The travel agent called for confirmation and I had to tell her to be sure and call him at the office, because I didn’t want to ruin the surprise. That would really disappoint him. And I’m looking forward to having him all to myself for a few days.  

     I worry that he’s been reading all these health books lately. Last year, it was the Mars-Venus series. It’s gotten so that he even freaked Sarah out, and she’s usually such a sucker for sensitive men who know just the right thing to say.  
 
    “Call me,” I tell Sarah on my way out. My brother-in-law waves vaguely; he’s on the phone. The two boys are sprawled on the deck chairs, snoring.  

     Even though there’s no traffic, Abel stays well under 40 and stops for all the red lights. I resist the urge to fiddle with the radio, because that drives him loony. He only listens to one radio station, which plays middle-of-the-road, or he pops in a Carole King or Billie Holiday or Carly Simon CD, these women with suggestive voices. Once I left my Offspring CD in his car and he was intrigued, until he popped it in and realized it was just punk stuff.  

     “I looked it up,” he volunteers from out of the blue. “Amniocentesis. It’s supposed to be painless. Local anesthesia ought to do the trick.”  
    “I know.” I still can’t get used to the idea of discussing every detail of my reproductive prospects with anyone, not even Abel. 
    “Dr. Mendoza told me the particulars last time I saw her.”  
    “So, what do you think?”  

    What’s there to think? Medical skill isn’t the issue here, it sounds simple enough. A hollow needle, surgically inserted through the abdominal wall and into the uterus, draws out fluid from the amniotic sac.  But I wonder how the doctors can tell if  anything’s wrong with a baby by testing that muck---I mean, what if it’s just my body that’s gone haywire?  

     “Hon?” He eases his foot on the gas. Abel has this thing about having serious conversations while at a standstill, and he looks just about ready to pull over.  
     “Just let me think about it a little, okay?” It comes out sharper than I’d intended. I pat his hand.  

     Sometimes I think I don’t deserve this man. I’m not sure I know anyone else who’d run five whole blocks after a couple of thugs who’d made a pass at me.  

     Well, okay, so it wasn’t quite that harmless. I’d been working late that night; that was before I asked for the day shift in graphics. Abel had offered to pick me up but I told him to grab a bite and go home, the poor guy was always so tired, what with putting in eight hours at the bank and taking a full load in law school.  

     I got off the bus about a block from home and started walking. It must have been around 10 or so, because this woman who ran a convenience store at the end of our street was just starting to board up. Five men still sat on the benches outside, so drunk even their wolf whistles were off-key.  

     “Oy, `day,” one of them called out. “Whatchou doin’ out so late?”  

     I kept walking. No sense getting into an argument you can’t win and besides, I hadn’t had any dinner yet. I’d reached the second floor---this was when we agreed to take a third-floor apartment because the rate was cheaper---when I realized that two men from the corner store had followed me. Sometimes, I now think, I should have made a run for it; the gate that sealed off our unit from the stairs was just a flight away. But I was tired, you know, and thought these guys needed to be put in their place.  

     What’s that thing survivors almost always say? It all happened so fast. Before I could say anything, one of them had caught up with me and grabbed one breast, and I must have screamed because Abel was suddenly clattering down the stairs, yelling,  “Hoy!” and I broke into a cold sweat, the kind that leaves you feeling acidic, and I fell. In the movies this is when the slow-mo sequence begins, that pregnant pause before the catastrophe hits home, but I didn’t get that, I didn’t get that at all.  

     “Hey,” Abel prods. “We’re here.”  

     I give him a quick peck on the cheek and promise to meet him in two hours.  

     The mal ward is three floors up. Sometimes, maybe to encourage volunteers to keep visiting, the nurses wave us over to their station and give us doughnuts and juice before we go in to see the kids. They tell us which charities or civic clubs sent over food or toys or clothes each week, which is a good thing, otherwise it would be so easy to give up. Many of the kids here are referrals from social welfare or the police. The few who still have their parents aren’t handled by volunteers. 
 
     Tonight, the nurse assigns me to a one-year-old boy so scrawny  the skin on his chest looks like paper. He hugs a worn grey bear that must have been white once, and since he looks so scared I decide not to get too close.  

     I draw up a chair beside his bed and take a dog-eared Daniel in the Lion’s Den from my bag. It’s Danny’s favorite, but he lets me borrow it. I’m not sure why Sarah bought her kids all these illustrated Bible stories when, really, considering how prominently murder and incest and all these plagues figure in the Old Testament, the kids would be better off with Kermit the Frog.  

     Daniel, though, is not too bad. Like my nephews, every other child I’ve read this to doesn’t go for that bit about Daniel getting stronger and smarter than everyone else because he ate his vegetables. What really gets them---even more than when Daniel survives a night in the lion’s den---is when the king picks Daniel from among all the other boys in the kingdom. I think they like the idea of standing out, of being special, as if parents and other powers that be singled them out for a purpose.  

     I do not know this child’s name. The way things work around here, he won’t be  around when I come back next week. I am here to feed him and to sing or read him to sleep. Lulled by the story, he doesn’t fuss when I pick him up. He’s so tiny I can easily cradle him in my arms, when I couldn’t even keep up with Danny or Ken at this age.  

    Soon, he quiets down and sucks contentedly on his bottle, one tiny pale hand on the swell of my left breast. I gently rock him to sleep, wondering when his mother knew she didn’t want him.  

 

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