NINA EVANGELISTA


 PHONE CALLS

        I told my mother what my father had done the same afternoon the geese had chosen to fly home.  I heard them honking from a distance as I walked home from class.   It struck me at the time that they could not have picked a worse day for their trip.  It was snowing and had been snowing for three days straight.  If they hadn't been honking so loudly and if I hadn't heard the beating of their wings over the wind, I ouldn't have realized that the vague black shapes moving across the overcast sky were geese and not just the shadows of passing clouds.

        In my dorm room, lying beneath the comforter my grandmother had died under, I felt worlds away from my mother, who was crying back in Tin-tin's old bedroom in Manila.

        I like to say that I told her because it was the right thing to do, the fair thing to do. Because I honestly believe that no one should have to live with someone like my father.
 

       "Why the hell did you tell her?" Tin-tin wailed to me over the phone, "now she's going to go and tell him what you said, and I won't get any more money out of him!"

       My sister is in art school-- not headed for business school and slated to take over the family corporation like me-- so my parents don't feel she deserves much for her education.  For some reason, my parents think that the making of paper products-- which is what my father originally made his fortune on-- and the money you get from selling it are more worthwhile than anything you might possibly choose to draw on the paper itself.

        Tin-tin's been living on a meal a day over in Rhode Island, working on her painting, even though my father could easily afford to send her more money.  But he's punishing her for dropping out of law school by barely giving her enough to clear the rent check.  It's been two years, and he still hasn't gotten over that.

        "It's tainted money," I said to her, "he can keep it.  I certainly don't want it."

        "Yes," she said, "but I do!"

        She was laughing as she said it, trying to make it seem like she was joking, but I know her.

        Tin-tin thinks I suffer from a misguided urge to rescue our mother from her own bad decisions.

         Tin-tin was seven when I was born.  My parents like to tell me how jealous she was when all my cousins and aunts stopped paying as much attention to her because they all wanted to hold me instead.  My parents laugh as they tell how Tin-tin used to throw temper tantrums at family gatherings and how she used to want to climb up into their laps with me.They say she used to ask, "Do you think Rowie is cuter than me?"

        Whenever they start telling these stories, Tin-tin just shakes her head and whispers to me, "They're making this up."

        And honestly, over the years my parents' stories have changed. Details have been added and dropped as they were recalled or forgotten, so I'm not entirely sure how much of their stories I should believe.

        But by the time I was old enough to notice such things, Tin-tin seemed to have accepted my entry into the family.  She was the one who first taught me how to read by making me books with pictures she drew herself in magic marker.  The text was always neatly printed in inch-high letters.  The books were drawn on old typing paper from my dad's factory that Tin-tin folded in half and then stapled together before she presented the finished books to me.  She made a whole series of books about a little girl named Rowena as she grew from a baby to a ten-year-old.  The main characters were Rowena, her parents, an older sister, and a few random cousins thrown in here and there.  Tin-tin made one for me about Rowena's first day of school when I was all scared about having to start nursery school.  There was one about Rowena getting a new kitten, and Tin-tin had drawn a Siamese cat to look like the one we had just gotten.

        There were maybe fifteen or twenty books in the series and I eventually memorized all the stories.  After a while I learned to read the letters and words that made up the stories, and then it was only a matter of time until I could read stories that people other than Tin-tin had written, stories that had nothing to do with me or my life.

        I've forgotten most of Tin-tin's stories by now, and we've lost the books  themselves.  My mom threw out the collection a couple of years back when she was cleaning out the attic.
 

        My mother was already crying when she called.  She has this bad habit of calling at whatever time she pleases.  This time she surprised me by actually calling at a reasonable hour.  It was four o'clock in the afternoon.  Which means that with the twelve-hour time difference, it was four a.m. in Manila.

        "Rowie, Rowie, I don't know what to do." Her voice crackled and echoed over the line so that I had to strain to hear her words.

        "I know, Mom," I said.  I had been doing some calculus homework before she called.  My textbook lay on my bed, on top of my comforter, along with some looseleaf sheets and a pen.  I dumped all of the stuff on the floor and stretched my legs out under the comforter.

        My mother had been calling me every day for a week at various hours of the day and night.  She had learned that my father was having an affair with one of the secretaries at the office again.  He told her himself this time, more because he had to than because of any special need to be honest with my mother.  The secretary was threatening to sue my father for sexual harrassment.

        My dad had been quick to reassure my mother that he would take care of the problem, pay the secretary some money to leave quietly.

        I wasn't terribly surprised to hear that my father had been having an affair.  I was surprised at how my mother got.  I thought she would act all smug and self-righteous that he had been caught at last.  I was mistaken.

        "I just feel so trapped," she moaned, "all those times he denied it, told me I was imagining things, telling me I was going crazy for even thinking he could be having an affair.  All this time, he's been going around with that puta, giving her money, buying her clothes.  Rowie, what should I do?"

        "Mom, we told you.  Years ago.  Just leave him.  Walk out now."

        "I know.  I know that's what I should do.  But I'm so old, Rowie. What will I do all alone by myself with you and Tin-tin in the States?"

        My mother is fifty-two years old with a B.A. in history and no marketable skills.  "You're not old, Mom.  I told you about my roommate's mother, right?"

        "Yes, but that's different.  I'm not like that."

       My roommate's dad died when she was in junior high, and she and her mother had to go on welfare.  Her mother was forty five years old at the time, but she went back to college and got a degree in electrical engineering.  I couldn't believe it when my roommate told me.  Forty-five years old, and she was able to re-learn the algebra and everything.

        "You can get a job if you want to," I told my mother, "or you can live on the money that your parents left you.  You get some interest on it. You just won't be living in the manner you're accustomed to."

        "I know, I know.  I wasn't always rich," she said, "it's your father that's made me so addicted to money, to buying things, to his way of life. Do you remember that?"

        She wasn't really trying to remind me, but I said anyway, "I know, Mom.  You told me before."

        I glanced outside my window and noticed that it was still snowing. A group of students were walking across the parking lot to the doughnut shop across the street.  Their feet kept slipping on the snow and they had their scarves wrapped tight around their necks.  One of them wiped his nose with a mittened hand before shoving it deep back into his coat pocket.

        I had seen snow before in movies and pictures, but until I got to the States and lived through my first winter, I don't htink I realized how truly cold snow was.  Once I told my mom about how I went grocery shopping with a friend and we left the stuff in the trunk of the car while we watched a movie.  My mother couldn't believe that it was cold enough so that the ice cream didn't melt and the milk didn't spoil.  The next time she came to visit me, in mid-spring, she complained the whole time about how cold she was and insisted on buying me a new coat from Saks Fifth. 

        Sometimes I have to wonder if my mother just likes to blame my dad for everything that's wrong with us and our lives.  But then, I guess all of us do that.
 

        One time, when I was just a kid, Tin-tin came home from school and found me crying on my bed.

        "Baby, what's the matter?" She sat down on the bed beside me.

        I didn't answer and kept on crying.

        "Did Mom or Dad get mad at you?"

        I nodded my head.  Dad had yelled at me when he came home and found out I'd decided not to go to class that morning.  I hid from the maids when they were supposed to bring me to school and didn't come out of the closet--my usual hiding place-- until noon.  The maids had pretended they couldn't find me.  I think they felt bad having to leave me at school after I'd cried all the way there.  I didn't like my elementary school.  I'd just transferred there and I was having a hard time making friends.  Mom had been angry with me herself when the maids had told her about it, since my truancy was fast becoming routine.  But Dad was the one who had blown up and hit me this time.

         "Was it Mom, or Dad?" Tin-tin asked.

         I was too busy sobbing and hiccupping to answer.

         "Rowie, answer me.  Was it Mom or Dad?"

         I rubbed my eyes with my fists.  "Dad," I said.

         "Did he touch you?"  There was a sense of urgency to her voice that I didn't quite catch at first.

         I nodded my head.  "He slapped me."

         "No, Rowie," Tin-tin said slowly.  "I meant, did he touch you?"

         I looked into my sister's eyes and swallowed a hiccup.  "No," I told her.

        And he hadn't touched me in the way that Tin-tin meant.  Not that afternoon, at least. That was when I first knew that my dad had done the same things to my sister that he was doing to me.  It was shortly after that that the vague sense of unease I'd had in the back of my head for as long as I could remember crystallized, solidified, and could finally be named.
 

         "So, whad did you say to her?" my sister asked over the phone.  She had calmed down a little bit and was making herself some dinner.  I could hear the water boiling and splashing on the hot stovetop on the other end of the line.  "Whoops," she said, "gotta turn the heat down."  Tin-tin was cooking some ramen.  It was her first meal of the day.

         "I just told her.  You know."

         "No, actually, I don't know.  You told her what?"

         My sister always likes detailed answers to her questions.  You should see her grill me about a new boyfriend:  What's his name?  Where'd you meet him?  What kind of music does he listen to?  What kind of books does he read?  What were his SAT scores?  What does his bedroom look like? Does he work out?  Well, how much can he press?  Is he pro-choice?  Does he believe in God?  What does he think about granting refugee status to women who come to the United States to escape female genital mutilation?   Each time, she forces an answer out of me, or tells me to go ask and report back to her.

        I answered Tin-tin, "I told Mom that Dad sexually abused us when we were younger." I could hear people walking past my door, probably headed for the dining halls.  It was dinner time, but I had told my friends that I needed to make a phone call and would join them later.

        "You told her that?  'Sexually abused us?'  Those exact words?"

        "Yes."

        "You said 'us?'  As in, you and me?  The two of us?"

        "Yes."

        A pause.  "And what did she say?"

        "She said she suspected it was happening to you, but she never dreamed he was doing it to me too."

        My sister for once in her life shut up.  I can't imagine she had any more idea what to say to that than I did.
 
 

        My father never actually fucked me.  As far as I know from what Tin-tin's told me, he never fucked her either.  It was a lot less straightforward than that.  Sometimes what he'd do is he'd come into one of our rooms at night, usually after he and my mother had been fighting, and he'd crawl into bed with us.  Those times he'd actually take off my underwear.  Most of the time it would happen in their bed, though, with my mother right beside us.

        My parents had a street lamp outside their bedroom, so light would enter their room at night.  My mother, who always claimed she was sensitive to light and took a Valium every night before bed, had to sleep with a pillow over her eyes.  I would usually sleep between them, rolled over on my side to face my mother.  When he thought both my mom and I were asleep, my dad would put his hand up my shirt or down my underpants and start copping a feel real slowly, breathing down the back of my neck like some horny teenager getting some for the first time in his life.  When it would happen, I would think about those public service ads I'd read in some Archie magazines, where they have Spiderman in his old, tacky red and blue costume telling you that if a grown-up touches you in a way you don't like or don't think is right, you should tell them to stop.  Then you should tell another grown-up you trust about it afterwards to make sure that it never has to happen to you or anybody else again.  While my dad was feeling me up, I could hear him jacking off behind me, feel his hand moving quickly between his legs, occassionally bumping my ass accidentally.  When I think about it now, I just remember the light streaming through the window, spilling cold and blue over my mother's sleeping body, as if she were drowned.  I get angry at myself, thinking how I should have shaken her, screamed at her, Hey wake up, get a clue, don't you see what he's doing?  But I just lay there, like some helpless idiot, wondering if this was what Spiderman had been trying to warn me about.
 

        "Oh my God," my mother said, "oh, Rowie, I had no idea."

         Those were my mother's first words after I told her.

        "I mean," she said, "I mean, there were times with Tin-tin, that I suspected.  He liked to give her a bath until she was thirteen years old.  I told him one time that he shouldn't, that Tin-tin was too old and it just wasn't right any more.  I never thought twice about it afterwards.  I mean, it's not the sort of thing you want to even think about your husband.  I thought he stopped after I talked to him."

        "Well," I said, "I guess he didn't."

        "Oh, Rowie, I feel so bad.  I thought you at least were safe.  That he wasn't doing anything to you because he was having affairs with all those women.  Rowie, I'm so sorry."

        She actually sounded like she meant it.
 

        Sundays in Manila were a big family day.  Tin-tin and I would get woken up at nine o'clock in the morning so we could get ready for the ten-thirty mass.  We'd go into church and sit in the front aisle, because my father would read the First Reading at the morning masses, and sometimes he'd even get to help the priest give out Communion to the other parishoners.  After mass we'd go out to lunch.  My father would ask me and Tin-tin what we wanted to eat, and we would almost always say Japanese food. My mother would go without any complaint, even though Japanese food gave her an upset stomach for the rest of the day, especially the sushi we all loved.Afterwards we would go to a bookstore or a record store, and my dad would let us browse as long as we wanted.  Sometimes I'd come up to him with three or four books or CD's, not knowing which one to get and he'd smile and say, "Get them all."

        When we got home, he would put on some old fifties and sixties music-- some Chubby Checker or maybe the Platters-- and my mom would fix Tin-tin and me some ice cream.  Then she would kick off her heels and the two of them would start dancing on the big Persian rug in the living room while Tin-tin and I watched, licking our ice cream cones.  After a jitterbug or swing, my mom would shake her head and laugh, wanting to sit down.  She would tell my dad to dance with one of us.  He would yank me up to my feet, but I never learned anything more than the twist, so he'd eventually end up dancing the rest of the afternoon with Tin-tin.  He and Tin-tin looked really good dancing together.  I never saw my dad teaching Tin-tin how to dance, but she knew every single one of the dance steps my dad did:  the jitterbug, the twist, the swing, the tango, the boogie.  The boogie was her favorite, and she liked to dance it to Elvis music.  I asked her once how she learned to dance, and she shrugged and said just from watching Mom and Dad do it.  No big deal.  I could never do that, learn how to dance just from watching other people do it.

        I was riding in a bus with my roommate last week, and Blue Suede Shoes came on on the radio.  Then I thought of Dad and Tin-tin, dancing together in our living room on Sunday afternoons, and I started to cry.  My roommate noticed and asked me what was wrong, but I just shook my head and looked out the window.

        It didn't seem to be the sort of thing I could explain.
 

        "Rowie, I haven't been able to get in touch with Tin-tin."

        After I'd talked to her, my mother had tried to call Tin-tin numerous times.  I knew this because Tin-tin had complained to me about all the messages my mother had left on her machine.

        "Why hasn't she called me back?" my mother asked me, "I've been leaving her messages."

        "I don't think she wants to talk about it, Mom."

        My roommate whispered something to her friend-- we had been doing some homework together before the phone rang-- and both of them picked up their books and left the room.

        "Why not?" said my mother over the line, "I just want to hear it from her.  I want to find out if it's true it happened to her too."

        "I don't think it's something she feels comfortable talking about."

        "She doesn't have to tell me what happened."  I could imagine my mother rolling her eyes on the other end, as if I were the one being difficult.  "She just has to give me a simple yes or no.  Is it true, or isn't it?"

        "What for?  Don't you believe me when I tell you it's true?"

        My mother must have heard the edge to my voice, because hers suddenly became reassuring.  "Yes, I do, but of course I want to hear it from her as well.  Because, you know, I've been talking to some of the priests here.  You remember Father Cruz?"

        He was our parish priest.  "Of course I do."

        "Well, he's on the Marriage Tribunal now.  They're the ones who decide if a marriage gets annulled.  And you know what?  When I told him, he said that if both you and Tin-tin testified before the whole Tribunal, we could get the marriage annulled immediately.  But it's got to be both you and Tin-tin."

        "Why the both of us?"

        "Because you were too young when it happened.  He said they might not believe you if it's just you who talks.  It'll be your word against your father's.  But if Tin-tin also steps forward, then they'll have to believe us.  And just think, Rowie, if we get the annullment, we won't need your father anymore.  We can get a settlement from him, and you and me and Tin-tin can all live together without that demonyo."

        I was surprised that my mother had actually taken the initiative to talk to the priest.  "Well, okay.  I'll see what I can do."

        "Good girl," my mother said.
 

       "Hah!" Tin-tin said to me over the phone after I described my last conversation with our mother, "so, makikisakay na naman siya?  She's going to exploit what happened to us so that she can finally get Manila society's permission to leave this guy?  I don't think so.  No way."

        I hadn't anticipated that she would be so angry.  "But Tin-tin," I said, "if she gets the settlement, then you and I can go on with school without ever having to ask him for money again.  You might even be able to eat more than a pack of ramen a day, for crying out loud."

        "A settlement?  A settlement!  What makes you think she's going to get any sort of a settlement out of Dad?  She might get the annullment, but she's not going to get any money out of him, I'll guarantee it," Tin-tin said, "As far as I'm concerned, she can just rot the rest of her life away, married to that man.  I'm getting enough money out of him now to go to school and pay rent.  That's all I need."

        "Tin-tin, how much can you blame her for what happened?  She didn't know about any of it."

        "I can't believe you're buying her story."

        "She was asleep!  You remember all those Valiums she had to take."

        "Why do you think she had to take those Valiums?  Obviously, so she could stay doped out and ignore what was happening, right in her very bed!"

        "You're not being fair."

        "I'm not being fair?" she said, "Let me tell you something, kiddo.Life's not fair."

        "Thanks for the update."  Trust Tin-tin to spout off irrelevant cliches at the height of an argument.

        "Since when did you think she was on our side?  If she didn't already hate him so much herself, she would never have believed you.  You know she doesn't give a shit about us, certainly not enough of a shit to have done anything when it would have mattered.  You know that, don't you?"

        "Yeah," I said.  I know that.

         Tin-tin was quiet.

        "Tin," I said, "she's been sick."

        I heard her sigh on the other end.  "Fine, fine.  I'll think about it.  I'll call you back when I've decided."
 

        When my mother had her operation a few years back, Tin-tin and I were called into her doctor's office for counselling.  Our mother had had a total hysterectomy that included the removal of her ovaries.

        "In the case of cancer of the uterus," the doctor told us, "it's always best to remove the ovaries as well.  Their secretions tend to make the cancer reoccur."

        We were told since all the women in our family had suffered from endometrial cancer, from my great-grandmother down to my mother today, the chances of me and Tin-tin getting it were pretty good.

        "Which is why," the doctor said, "I wanted to stress to both of you the importance of visiting your gynecologist once a year for a Pap and breast exam.  Other than that, though, there isn't much you can do to prevent the cancer from developing.  If it develops at all."

        When we got out of the office, Tin-tin said to me, "So basically if we have all our body parts intact by the time we're fifty, we're lucky."

        Here we were being told that doctors fully expected our wombs to eat us from the inside out one day, and this is what Tin-tin comes up with to say.

        We went to visit my mother in her hospital room after that.  Her curtains were drawn and the room was cold and dark.

        "Come closer," she said, when she saw that it was us.

        We stepped nearer to her bed.  Tin-tin stood close beside me, her hand on my forearm.  My mother's face looked pale and tear-streaked even in the darkness.  Her lips were visibly chapped and every now and then she licked them to keep them moist.  She looked like she was in pain.

        "My grandmother died of cancer of the uterus," she said, "so did my mother.  My grandmother was in her sixties.  My mother was fifty five.  I'm not even fifty yet."

        "But you're not dead, Mom," I blurted out.  Tin-tin dug her fingers into my arm.

        My mother appeared not to have heard what I'd said.  "When the doctor told me he'd have to take out everything, I said okay.  And it was okay, because I've already had two children.  Two beautiful daughters."  She smiled as she said this.  "You don't know how glad I was when he said that that I'd started a family young.  It's coming earlier and earlier to the women in our family.  We're younger and younger as we get it.  You two should think about starting families soon, too."

        Tin-tin let go of my arm and tossed her hair behind her shoulder. "That's okay, Mom," she said.  Her voice was slightly mocking.  "I'm never going to have kids anyway."

        My mother looked like she had been struck.  She stared at her lap, her hands smoothing imaginary wrinkles from her bedsheet.  The rest of the visit was spent in awkward silence, but in a way, I was relieved.
 

        Tin-tin called me last night.  "Well, I've thought about what you were saying."

        "And?"

        "And...  I won't do it.  There's no point.  She's never going to get the money, and if she did, she'd spend it all on one of her shopping trips and then it would all have been for nothing."

        "I don't care about the money.  This isn't about the money."

        "Then what's it about?  What do you want from him anyway?"

         "I want him to admit that what he did was wrong."

        "To who?"

        "To you, to me, to God, to everybody."

        "What for?"

        "I don't know," I said, "just because."

        "Well, that doesn't make any sense, does it?"  Then her voice became gentler, coaxing me.  "Rowie, come on.  We've got to stand together on this."

        "Look, you want me to shut up about this, and I'm not going to do that."

        "Why not?"

        "Because I can't."  I sounded frantic even to myself.

        "Calm down--"

        "So what are you going to tell them when they ask you if what I'm saying is true?  Deny it?  Say nothing?  Make me look like the one who's lying?"

        Tin-tin didn't say anything to that.  "Look, if you expected me to do this for Mom, you've got to stop kidding yourself.  She let us down big time, Row, and we don't owe her jack.  As for the cancer, you can stop feeling guilty about that.  Her life ended as soon as she married that man. She made her choice.  She's the one who's got to live with it. You are not responsible for her.  Neither am I."

        "This wasn't something I expected you to do for her," I said.

        There was a pause.  When Tin-tin spoke, her voice was calm and deliberate.

        "Rowie, I'm sorry.  No."

        I didn't want her to know I was crying so I didn't say anything.

        "Rowie--"

        I needed to get off the phone.  "Look," I said, "I have to go."

        She hesitated.  "Okay," she said, "okay.  Bye."

        I didn't wait to hear her hang up before hanging up myself.  The phone was warm as I put it down on its cradle.  I pulled the curtain aside to take a look out the window.  The cars in the parking lot were covered with a thick layer of snow.  Snow was still falling and it didn't look like it would ever stop.  I slid the window open.  The outside air was frigid as it blew against my face.  Every once in a while, I could still hear the geese honking overhead.

        When I used to pick up the phone when Tin-tin's friends would call, they sometimes would mistake me for her.  I used to play around with them and try to see how long it would take them to realize that I wasn't Tin-tin. Eventually I could go for as long as fifteen minutes before they would recognize me.  "God," they would say, laughing once they'd caught on, "Rowie, you sound just like her!"

        I was fourteen when they began saying this to me.  At the time, I thought it was the best compliment I had ever received.
 
 
 
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