We Are Thinking of You
by Patty Enrado
They say he is going to send me back to the Philippines.
I have become useless to my husband after forty years of marriage and thirty years of work packing oranges. Since I suffered my stroke months ago, I’ve become just a voice to Bonafe, one that scolds him; I tell him he must either spend more time with me, or risk having me forget what he looks like -- the black freckles on his chocolate-colored skin, the sea green of his eyes like the color of the salty ocean off San Esteban -- or not recognize the way he rolls his R’s when he calls my name, Cora. I laugh, so he knows I’m only joking. I’ve stopped asking him about his fever; Bonafe likes to gamble a little, but it isn’t a sickness, as everyone in Terra Bella would like to think. I’ve never minded him betting on horses, playing rummy on weekends, or going on overnight trips to Las Vegas with our townmates. These three make up his world of gambling. "It’s my hobby," he explained to me, when we first got married, and I have always come to see it as his pastime, just as my flower garden and my crochet work had once been hobbies of mine before my fingers lost their movement, their touch.
Lately, I’ve been spending time watching my arms and legs wither like tree branches that get no rain deep down in their roots, only I imagine my limbs have the weight of driftwood. If I could lift them, surely they would have that lightness.
The other night Manang Elsie came to feed me dinner when Bonafe went to Las Vegas with Manong Orlino. She whispered that all our townmates were afraid for me. Manang Elsie would have spent the weekend in our house, if I hadn’t told her it was unnecessary. She said she would come over at least every few hours to check up on me. When she came the first evening, she expected to find suitcases and Balikbayan boxes lining the entryway.
I laughed. "I can save Bon the money for the plane fare. He can throw me in the ocean, and I’ll float back to San Esteban, God willing and with a strong wind." Manang Elsie’s face reflected horror. I pointed toward my feet with my chin. "Lift up my leg. I must weigh nothing."
But Manang Elsie didn’t touch me. She clicked her tongue. "This isn’t a joke, Cora. Have you asked Manong Bonafe where your social security checks have gone? Does he show you the bank statements every month?"
"Why should he? My goodness, Bon has taken care of me for more than forty years. The house is paid for. We have no other wants. He hired that pinay nurse to come every other day, even when I told him I don’t need her."
"There is talk," Manang Elsie began, and then lowered her voice. "There is talk Manong Bonafe has sold your car."
This was news to me, but I tried to keep my smile even. "What would I do with a car? If Bon wants to sell it, why can’t he? We don’t need two."
Manang Elsie brushed the gray wisps of hair away from my eyes. "Why did he go to Las Vegas? He should be taking care of you. We are worried for you, Cora."
"Don’t worry over a useless thing. If you must worry, think of Bon."
Manang Elsie’s eyes were moist. "We are only thinking of you," she said.
In my mind, I reached out to pat her hand. I could almost feel the coolness of her skin. It looked like aged onion paper, the kind on which I used to write letters to my sister in San Esteban. I could see the faint blue veins in her arm, and imagining my hand on her wrist, I could almost feel her quickening pulse, its liveliness, and thought it was mine.
It doesn’t bother me that Bonafe sold my car, if it’s really true in the first place. He must have forgotten to tell me. He just turned sixty-nine. Once he forgot to turn off the stove burners. I didn’t smell the leaking gas, and if Manang Miriam hadn’t come to check up on me, she claims I would have died. I made her promise not to tell Bonafe. Even I have forgotten things. Where I misplaced my clipping shears or my watering wand. I can close my eyes and think for hours, but I still can’t remember how many loops my crochet hook stitched to make the star-shaped doilies that decorate the living room tables and sofas. I try to remind myself to ask Bonafe to bring me one of the doilies.
There are some things I don’t forget. My silver Impala. Bonafe could have sold the other car, the one he used to drive to work. It has no meaning for him. It’s an ugly yellow, like that of the half-formed chick inside the shell of the balut. But my silver Impala, the color of champagne, as long as Manong Orlino’s motorboat, but more graceful. It was the first new car we had ever bought in the States. When I returned from San Esteban for my mother’s funeral, Bonafe greeted me with the new car. We couldn’t afford it at the time, especially with the sudden trip to the Philippines, but he said, "Cora, we’ve been in the States for over ten years. We don’t have many things. Always buying what Orlino throws out when he gets something new -- his small house, his old car. I’m tired of it. Okay, I splurge. Fancy thing. I say, every ten years we splurge."
The first few months, we spent our Saturdays driving around the countryside in the new Impala. We pretended we were buying one of the ranch-style houses with the bigger, more colorful gardens in front and a grove of orange trees fanning out on a slope behind it. I packed chicken adobo and rice in Tupperware, and when we found a house we liked, we stopped across the street and ate our lunch in the car. I used to cook a bucketful of chicken, for Bonafe liked to eat. I made sure we had plenty of napkins, for chicken adobo is slippery, greasy, and I didn’t want any stains on the cloth seats. Bonafe isn’t a tidy person, but on our picnic trips he was very good.
I tried to make our driving trips pleasant, but there were times when Bonafe grew melancholy. When we looked at the big farmhouses, he would say it was useless to save for a house with many bedrooms since we couldn’t have children. I never told him what the doctor told me, that he was infertile. I explained to him I was too frail to carry a baby to term. During a game of rummy, Manong Leo questioned the results, and although I scolded him for bringing it up, Bonafe’s thoughts and words reflected Manong Leo’s doubts. We stopped looking at houses after a while. I convinced him we were fine the two of us together. He nodded and patted my hand when I told him we can treat ourselves, like he did by getting the silver Impala.
Sometimes he let me drive the car to the packing house. Most of the Filipinas in Terra Bella packed oranges at Grand View Citrus Heights at the edge of town, and many of us living on the same street carpooled. We were at work by seven in the morning, standing up all day, our hands flying back and forth to fill up crates with oranges. In the summers, we rolled up our pant legs to our knees and draped wet washcloths straight from the lunchroom Frigidaire on our heads. In the winters, we kept our coats on to ward off the unforgiving cold of the Central Valley. It was always like that, every season, every year. But then we got the silver Impala, and I insisted on driving my neighborhood co-workers to Grand View. When I warmed up the car and checked all the needles and numbers on the dashboard while the others stared in awe, Bonafe watched from the kitchen window, smiling at me sitting in the driver’s seat of our "fancy thing."
So our fancy car is old now. Maybe it’s in a junkyard, maybe in somebody else’s garage. I wonder how much it sold for. I try not to think where the money has gone. I keep hearing Manang Elsie’s words. What does it matter if he used the money to go to Las Vegas, or to place a bet on a horse he’s never seen before, hundreds of miles away -- a young horse with swift brown legs that knows the secret of the wind? We didn’t get a fancy thing every decade. Manang Elsie, nor anyone else in Terra Bella, doesn’t know about this agreement between Bonafe and me. Why, he’s just making up for the past twenty years.
Then I think, what if it’s true? That Bonafe is saving money to send me back to San Esteban for good? But why? There is no reason, nothing in the air to suggest discontent. If he were going to get rid of me, why not turn the stove burner on, so just the blue flames are extinguished, but not the invisible gas? Manang Miriam would remember the last time, and everyone would think it was an accident. Bonafe has forgotten to check the stove burners again, they would murmur to one another. Poor Cora!
It’s foolishness. Lying on this bed for hours at a time, alone, could do this to a person, make her think thoughts that make no sense. How could I imagine Bonafe killing me? He isn’t even here to defend himself. What is he doing now? Feeding coins into slot machines? Closing his eyes and muttering incantations silently like the mammoyon when she tells you your fortunes?
He’s only been gone a day, I think, but it seems like weeks. I miss him. True, it seems as if when he’s here his eyes are watching something else. But after forty years, you become used to your mate. You become used to things that would have irritated you years before. The loud television set I can hear all the way from my room. The bland food he serves like tomato soup from a can. The last few weeks, he’s been feeding me rice soaked in soy sauce. He promised he would fill the cupboards before he left. "They’re empty," he said. I wouldn’t have known, except when Manang Elsie had said, "I’ll bring some lumpia I just wrapped. Why, there’s nothing in the cupboards but a sack with only a cup of rice left!"
I grow hungry at times, during the night, but ever since I returned from the hospital after my stroke, Bonafe has slept in the guest bedroom. I can’t yell out in the middle of the night that I’m hungry, and could he please fix me something to eat? To cry out, when it’s so dark and empty, anyway, to disturb him, seems all foolishness. I called him once, and the only answer was his snoring -- agitated, like an injured bear. But it doesn’t frighten me, the sound of his sleep quiets me.
The day I woke up in the hospital, Bonafe couldn’t look me in the eye. There was no reason he should have felt responsible. He went to Delano that Sunday. I brought my crocheting with me and spent the afternoon watching the others play rummy at Manong Leo’s house. I didn’t play. There is no sense trusting chance. Manang Seping plays long enough to break even; if she wins early, she tries to double it but often fails, and if she loses early, she spends the rest of the day, sometimes into the night, trying to make up. Manong Bert only wagers in small amounts. Manong Truelino always takes home a tidy profit.
For Bonafe it’s different. It isn’t a matter of money. It’s true, although not very many of our townmates would agree. He sees gambling as a skill, an opportunity to make the right choices. "Never play games where luck is your only guide. That is blindness," he would always tell me. "You must think and think. It’s like preparing for a test. What is the best answer? What is the right thing to do?" His eyes would glint like polished silver dollars. Through the years, Bonafe has either broken even or lost a little. It has never been much.
That afternoon I left the rummy game early. I felt tired. I wasn’t able to make the neat, spidery stitches with my crochet hook. Everything I looked at was blurry. So I went home. I remembered looking at all the spent roses on our bushes and thinking I had better snip them off. The dahlias in our yard were exploding with buds, making the blooms smaller, less showy, and the stems shorter. It had been hot all week, too hot to garden, but that’s a poor excuse. I told myself I’m feeling like my drooping day lilies, in need of water. When I wake up from my nap, I promised, I’ll pinch back the dahlia buds and water the yard. But when I walked into the house, all at once my blood pounded and roared inside my veins, as if in a typhoon. My arms stuck straight out in front of me, pushed up by imaginary waves. My legs were swept away, so that I lost my balance. Then nothing, nothing.
Bonafe was at my bedside when I awakened. He wept into my shoulder. Ah, but I wasn’t able to feel him there. I couldn’t feel the warmth or the wetness of his tears.
"If I had been at the rummy game, you wouldn’t be like this."
"Nonsense," I told him. "Nobody could have foreseen or stopped it."
He shook his head. "I would have gone home with you, if you weren’t feeling well. The doctor said you lost too much oxygen while you were unconscious. If someone had found you earlier, you would still be able to move."
"But you had to see Manong Domingo. You were going to help him buy some chickens in Delano for his farm."
"No," he said.
"No?"
"Domingo and I went to the cock fights."
I imagined seeing the angry, yellow beads for eyes, sharpened beaks wet with blood, and claws scratching the hard ground. But it was worse imagining Bonafe stamping his feet and raising the dust, along with the rest of the men, whistling, provoking these roosters to kill their own kind.
"You’ve never bet on them before. It’s against the law."
He nodded his head like a penitent boy. "It’s all my fault."
"To hell with my body! I still have my soul, thank God. I can still feel with my heart, if not with my hands. My goodness, that’s enough. But to hear you confess. That’s unspeakable. It’s different, isn’t it, if you were playing rummy or in Las Vegas? But to place bets on animals killing each other . . ." I stopped, unable to finish.
"I’ll never gamble again, as long as I live."
"Do you think it’s your gambling that sickens me? You lied to me. Are they one and the same?"
He couldn’t answer me, and I banished him from my hospital room.
Bonafe moved his things into the guest bedroom. I refused to talk to him when I first returned home. I wanted to teach him a lesson. But I couldn’t stay angry. Everyone in Terra Bella found out he had gone to the cock fights in Delano the day I suffered my stroke. They were unkind in their words, but I couldn’t make them take back what they said. I was the only one who understood him. After all these years, I learned you cannot change a man. If you do, he’ll look weak to you. I had no use for weakness, no use for power. I knew only one thing: he needed me. Together, we would battle against their words, even as they kept telling me, "But Manang Cora, we are thinking of you!"
So they are thinking of me. I am thinking of Bonafe. The worry is divided in half.
The pinay nurse is trying to trick me. As she pulls the sheets from my bed, she asks me if I don’t think she should come every day. She holds up a glass of water from my night stand and breaks apart the layer of dust with a swish of her finger. She dumps out my full bedpan into a plastic-lined bag, pinching her nose for effect. The pinay nurse watches me as I fill my lungs with air. I refuse to acknowledge the stench. I know she just wants more money from us. I tell her I don’t need her, but Bon insists she stays. I tell her I could dismiss her at my whim. The pinay nurse shakes her head, although she doesn’t have the nerve to look me in the eye. She smoothes out the wrinkles on the clean sheets on my bed, and leaves the room with my dirty laundry and bedpan.
Manang Elsie asks me the next day if I don’t think Bonafe has lost weight. It never occurs to me. At first I think it’s another trick. So I answer that he must not like his own cooking now, if he’s gotten thin. Manang Elsie remains silent. Inside, I am shouting. What is she trying to tell me? That he is using the grocery money on gambling? Or better still, that he is hoarding money for my plane fare? If he has lost weight, I’m to blame. Seeing the pity in her eyes makes me want to carve them out with my fingernails. Like gamecocks.
"It’s useless, Cora. Why are you defending him when his sickness is harming you? Manong Bonafe needs help. Now his sickness is affecting his health. When you protect him, all you do is allow him to go on. It’s no good."
She waits for me to talk, but I am a stone wall.
"Forgive me, Cora. We felt we should tell you. Something must be done. By and by, something bad will happen."
She leaves because I still refuse to talk. I pretend sometimes that it’s too painful to move my mouth. She says she’ll come back later in the evening, and then she’s gone. Good. I like to listen to the house creak all by myself. Soon, I’ll fall asleep. Soon Bonafe will come back, and I’ll talk to him about these foolish rumors, Manang Elsie’s poisonous threats.
I think I’m still talking to myself, but I have fallen asleep and am dreaming. It’s been over a week, and Bonafe hasn’t come home. When he appears and I scold him, he laughs and says he’s been home for days. "Are you going blind, too?" he wants to know. He brings me a dusty box of crackers and feeds me. They are soft, almost soggy. Salt and crumbs scatter on the bed sheets and blankets. He pokes cracker after cracker into my parched mouth, although I tell him I’m not hungry. His face, now sunken, his double chin missing, grins in my face. "No one can say I don’t take care of you, Cora," he says. There’s a knock at the front door, and he drops the crackers on the bed and disappears. I don’t recognize the voice; it belongs to another man. I hear the word "Delano," and then the door shuts so hard a wind comes hurtling down the hallway, into my room. There is silence. I call out his name. Bonafe. Nothing. I want to call out again, but I’m afraid he won’t answer. I don’t know how long it’s been since he left with the stranger, but night comes again and again. One morning, I find a trail of ants coming up the side of my bed. They march toward the crackers and carry crumbs away. The little red ants inch closer to my face, for there are still crumbs on my chin and cheeks. I shut my eyes, and I can feel them, like little pin pricks, across my face. I press my lips together, afraid they will pry their way into my mouth, and yet, I can’t scream.
It’s just a nightmare. That’s all. Manang Elsie’s words have taken shape. I’m awake, but it’s still dark outside. Then I see shadows, and I think I’m asleep again. I see the silhouette of a man, but he’s too thin to be Bonafe.
He moves again, and I call out, "Bonafe?"
Nothing.
"Bonafe? Is it you?"
He turns the light on, and I blink in the harshness. He stands before me. "Yes. I forgot the time. Will you forgive me?"
"Thank goodness Manang Elsie was here to look after me."
"That’s what I thought when I was feeling bad about leaving you longer than I had intended," he says.
"Why should I mind? Manang Elsie and the pinay nurse baby-sit me. I can’t stop them. They come out of concern. They tell me things you can’t bring yourself to tell."
"Are you listening to their foolish talk?"
"Who said I believe what they say? I’ll believe what you tell me."
He opens his mouth, as if he will refute everything they have told me. "You make me feel ashamed," he finally says.
"That’s all?"
I can tell he’s trying hard to think of something.
"Bonafe, do you love me?"
He scrambles to the edge of my bed. I watch him take my hand.
"Why do you ask such foolishness? Yes, of course."
"But do you love money more?" I say, and my voice breaks, as if the weight of the words in coins comes crashing down on me.
"No. It’s not the money. I told you that before."
I watch him squeeze my hand, his thumb pressing into the middle of my palm. I can only close my eyes, but still he mumbles, "It’s not the money at all. It’s not what you think."
His hand travels up my arm. It touches the collar of my nightgown. His fingers stop at my throat, then slide to the corner of the bed. I can’t find my breath. Bonafe lowers his head and a sigh escapes from his slackened lips. With a slow heave, he fills out his chest. His eyes meet mine.
"Have I ever struck you? Have I ever been with another woman? We’ve been married for more than forty years, and I‘ve been good, I’ve been faithful. Has my gambling ever put us in debt? If it ever does, I swear, I’ll quit," Bonafe says. He raises his fist midair.
I’m so tired, I almost believe his words are all for show. "Don’t swear." I would have dismissed him, but I hear Manang Elsie’s voice in my head.
"Are you going to send me back to San Esteban?" I blurt out.
Bonafe gives me a startled look, as if it has never occurred to him. "Of course not. That’s abominable. I would never do that to you, Cora. Who’s been telling you these things? I’ll kill them." He stands up, and brandishes his fists.
"Sit down," I say, but my voice is light, buoyant, for I know he’s telling the truth. I’ll tell Manang Elsie what he said. I’ll make her broadcast his announcement to our townmates. No more rumors. No more lies.
"Do you believe me?" he says, and comes close to my face. There is wonder in his voice, wonder in his sea green eyes.
"Yes, yes, I believe you. Because you say so."
Since our talk, Bonafe hasn’t gone to Las Vegas in weeks. He dismissed the pinay nurse, without me telling him to get rid of her. Bonafe bathes me now. He lifts me from my bed, hugging me close to his chest, and lowers me into the bathtub. He dips the washcloth in the water and moistens my face to let me know the water is warm. Then he soaps my body, sliding the washcloth back and forth across my arms and legs. Before, I would look away from my body, from its bed sores I can’t feel, the pools of slackened skin, the places where the hard lines of my bones stick out. But Bonafe makes me feel as if I’m in my twenties again, when we had just been married, and my whole body was fresh and tingled when he touched me. He talks about moving his things back into our bedroom.
He stays home now, except when he goes to town to get groceries. For days, the air is full of the tangy smell of chicken adobo simmering in vinegar, whole black peppers, dried bay leaves. He brings me platters full of pansit, bits of carrot and celery adding color and texture to the long white noodles. He offers me bowls of my favorite dish, kalding. I can smell the goat roasting in the backyard pit, outside the bedroom window. I can hear the skin sizzle, the fire crackle. It makes my mouth water. When he feeds me, he apologies, "The meat is dry. I overcooked. But you eat. If you get grease on your chin, I’ll wipe."
I let the grease dribble down the corner of my lip. If I could only capture the look of concern as he tries to wipe my face before the grease spots the sheets. I can feel the nervousness in his hands. It’s age. We’re growing old together. This is what I imagined us to be like -- of course, not with me in my condition. If someone should ask me, "Cora, if you could choose, which life would you pick: one in which you are healthy again, but without Bonafe, or one in which you are still paralyzed, but being taken care of by Bonafe?" I would look that person in the eye, and say, "Come, watch Bon feed me adobo."
For the longest time, I avoid bringing up gambling to Bonafe. It’s as if I’m afraid the spoken word will drive him back to the cock fights in Delano, the card games in Las Vegas, or the slick racing horses in Santa Ana. He never said he has given it up for good. I would like to think of it as something we have agreed upon in silence.
When he says Manang Elsie wants to visit me, I tell him I don’t want to see her. "Why? Apay?" he wants to know, his voice pricking my ears with its urgency.
"I have you to keep me company."
"You can’t always depend on me, Cora. I’m not so strong. Like an egg over a burner. Ready to crack, right into a hot skillet."
His hands tremble on his lap.
"What are you saying? Look at me," I say, but he will not. "Is there trouble? Is it money?"
"If you should no longer love or trust me again, I’ll lose you for good."
"I’m right here."
He looks at me, but his eyes waver, the beautiful sea green of his eyes are oceans away. "I don’t want you to see me like this."
"Like what?" I say. "As long as I have eyesight, God willing, I’ll see whatever I like."
"No," Bonafe says.
He doesn’t shake his head. We are completely still. Even I know not to ask, "Why not? Apay?"
I’m not used to the mosquito nets. It’s been a few months, I couldn’t say how many. The morning after I returned to San Esteban, I woke up and felt my whole body give a start. A white shroud surrounded me. It hung in stillness, even when a rare breeze escaped past the capiz-shell windows. I couldn’t see beyond the cloudiness. I told my nieces the mosquitoes can bite my arms and legs for all I cared, for I could not feel a thing, not a thing. They fussed over changing the ratty woven mat that stretched across the hard bed. I stopped reminding them it didn’t matter.
Each month, my nieces and nephews wait for the mail, the money Bonafe promises to send. I worry he’ll forget, and they’ll get angry. My nephew Chering brings me downstairs in the afternoons when the heat rises and it’s too hot for me to stay in my room. He props me up in a wooden chair by the window, facing the dirt street. Outside, it’s a dusty, brown world, even with the sky choked with palm trees.
"There’s a letter," Chering begins.
"From Bon?"
"No." In his bare feet, he drags a stool to sit beside me.
I turn my head away.
"Do you want me to read to you or hold the letter up for you?"
"Read," I say. Or go away and leave me to rot.
"It’s from Elsie Gunabe in Terra Bella. She writes," he says, but it’s Manang Elsie’s voice I hear:
"Dear Manang Cora, how are you? You’re lucky to be back in San Esteban. We understand it’s warm there. Here, it’s been raining hard. The big palm tree in front of Orlino’s house fell down, the rain and the wind were so strong. I went to see how Manong Bonafe is doing. He talks to me, although we never see him unless we watch for him. He’s looking better. Perhaps putting a little weight on. He keeps telling me he’ll join you soon. We offered him our spare bedroom once your house is taken away, but he said he’s found a trailer at the edge of town, near Porterville.
"Cora, when he speaks of you, he’s full of sorrow. We understand it was a difficult time for him. We all thought you made the right decision to go back home. When I think of our last conversation, I’m ashamed. How strong and brave you were, knowing what to do all along. If there’s anything we can do to help, please let us know. We are all thinking of you. Love, Manang Elsie."
Chering asks me if I want him to read it again. I shake my head. It’s the same thing she’s been writing since I got here. Some things she writes are new, such as the trailer Bonafe has found.
"When do you think Uncle will come?"
I don’t hear him at first. I’m watching the lazy carabao swat flies from its muddy back with its tail. I look straight up at the colorless sky and wonder when it will relieve the thickness of heat that prickles my scalp. How cruel fate is to leave me with feeling in certain parts of my body and not take everything away. Sometimes my mind will wander, and I’ll think of our happy yellow house, the gleaming silver Impala, my garden -- who will take care of my roses and dahlias? -- the white doilies in the living room, starched, rooted on backrests and armrests of sofas, collecting dust. I scold myself and stare hard at the houses, like old, wooden building blocks, before me.
Chering clears his throat. "When do you think Uncle will join you?"
Stupid, how he can’t see I’ve heard and choose to ignore him. But I must be polite. They are taking care of me. Perhaps they would like to throw me into the ocean, and then we can all see if I’ll float like driftwood. The thought excites me. The salty ocean, where once, long ago in my childhood, it used to make my smooth dark skin itch and turn white. Bonafe taught me how to swim right off the shores of San Esteban. The hard sun. The cooling breeze. Blow me away, away, I entreat the wind I imagine is somewhere out there. But where? In which direction would I float? I am already at my destination.
Patty Enrado is a business and technology journalist. Her fiction has appeared in Many Mountains Moving. She lives in the San Francisco Bay Area, where she is at work on a novel about first- and second-generation Filipinos in California.
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