Tita Elena poured herself a Coke and sat down heavily in a chair. She raised her eyebrows in a meaningful way.
“Elena, both your sisters are here, so who could you possibly be talking to?” asked Tita Baby.
“Ching called.”
“Ching?” said my mother. “What did she want?”
“There was a home invasion last night. Or at least an invader.” Tita Elena rattled her ice cubes. “Someone tried to break into the neighbor’s house.”
“Which neighbors?” asked my mother. “Not the Buenaventuras?”
“No, the other side. The de Castros.”
“Ay, Dios mío,” said Tita Baby. “Was anyone hurt?”
“Was anything taken?”
“Actually, no one was hurt, and nothing was stolen,” said Tita Elena. “That’s what’s so strange. Whoever it was disappeared.”
“Oh,” replied Tita Baby and my mother in chorus.
“It happened like this,” started Tita Elena. “Babylon fell asleep on duty, which is no surprise.” Babylon was my aunt’s security guard. “He’s a drunk, you know.” I knew well. “He awoke to find himself face-to-face with the invader, a knife pointed straight at his throat.” She paused here and looked at me. “Are you sure little Angela should be listening to this? It might give her bad dreams.”
“If she can listen to stories of Cherry and her twenty-year-old yoga instructor, she can listen to this,” said my mother.
“Well, anyway,” Tita Elena continued, “this invader has his knife straight at Babylon’s throat and is demanding his gun. Luckily, although Babylon is a tomador, he’s no idiot. He tells the invader his gun has no bullets. Babylon says that I won’t allow him to have a loaded gun because he drinks so much. Remember that night he shot all the chickens?”
“Yes, yes,” said Tita Baby impatiently.
“The invader believes him. I mean, if you had any intelligence, you wouldn’t be robbing houses, you know.”
“You would have a job,” said my mother, who has never had a job.
“The second thing Babylon tells him is that the neighbors are far wealthier than we are, which is ridiculous, and that the invader should climb the wall and rob their house instead.”
“How on earth can anyone climb that wall?” asked Tita Baby.
“Babylon had to help him.”
“That’s crazy,” said my mother.
“Yes, beyond a doubt, it is,” Tita Elena shrugged. “So the invader — at one point standing on Babylon’s shoulders — scales the wall and makes it to the top.” My tita took a leisurely gulp from her drink. “Once he was at the top, Babylon shot him in the back.”
The fan moved slowly from side to side, rustling papers, lifting the bangs off my face. I slapped my leg beneath the table, killing a mosquito. The fan stopped.
“Needs to be fixed,” said Tita Elena. “Bebeng,” she yelled to the maid, “’yung bentilador!”
Bebeng, the head maid, ran out of the kitchen, broom in hand. She hit the fan a few times and it came back to life, grinding a breeze out across the room. The conversation resumed.
“Well, I guess Babylon is worth more than we thought he was,” said my mother. “Did you give him the day off?”
My aunt nodded. “I keep thinking that I should call the police, but what’s the point? One crook’s wearing a uniform, the other crook’s dead—”
“But what happened to the burglar?” I asked. “Where is he?”
“You see, that’s the mystery,” said Tita Elena. “It was so dark that Babylon couldn’t make out where the body fell. He was drunk, I’m sure, but he swears he shot him.”
“Did you ask the de Castros?” asked my mother.
“Yes, eliminating some of the details of the story. They heard the gunshot, but have no idea what happened to the invader. None whatsoever.”
“Very strange,” said my mother. “Manila’s going to hell. Murders, home invasions, carjackings, all those glue-huffing beggars, and the sosyal kids with their — what is it, shabu? Yeah, even in our crowd things are getting ugly. Did I tell you why Rocky and her husband are getting separated?” She looked at me thoughtfully. “Angela, go out and play. You’re inside all the time. It isn’t healthy.”
“Do I have to?”
“Yes. Now.”
I stood up dutifully and kissed my mother and my titas and crossed the dark wood floorboards, out of the gloom and smoke of the dining room and into the vestibule. The sun outside was shining fiercely, splashing red from the stained-glass doors onto the floor. The invader was bleeding somewhere, or was dead. I heard Tita Baby’s voice filtering out of the dining room.
“Rocky’s husband couldn’t have expected that. It’s just not Catholic.”
I pushed open the door and stepped onto the front porch. The sun hit my face and every part of my body instantly warmed. Tita Elena’s house had an enormous garden. There was a huge wall around it, like a castle. Someone from Spain had come to put it together right after the war, and once, a long time ago, there had been pet deer wandering around because my Uncle Chuck had liked the look of them. But the deer were gone, along with my uncle, who had died of cancer ten years earlier. Tita Elena was a widow and good at it — still in black and ready for death. The wall was taller than anyone could see over and when we were waiting in the car for Babylon to open the gate, the dirty children would gather around to sneak a look at the lawns and fountains and statues until Babylon shooed them away.
I walked down the tiled steps to the garden. How organized and symmetrical everything looked. Fountain in center, statue in the fountain, a pine tree on the right to match the one on the left, and perfect rows of red and white roses reaching with graceful arms around the lawn. Ligaya was sitting on the bottom step washing clothes. Her muscled arms dipped in and out of the basin, shiny and brown. She was wearing a red bandanna, and her kinky black hair sprung out about her ears. I stepped around to face her. At first, she didn’t notice me, she was so intent on her washing, but then she looked up, her lower arms covered in suds.
“Ah, it’s you,” she said. She smiled at me slyly. Her face was very broad, very dark, and she had the look of a wild animal that had just dropped from a tree. “You’ve come out to play in the garden.”
I nodded solemnly. I was scared of Ligaya.
“Such a pretty dress,” she said, grabbing the skirt with a wet hand. “Can I borrow it?”
“I don’t think it would fit you,” I answered. This sent her into a fit of rich laughter, which echoed across the lawns. The garden seemed strangely deserted.
“Such lovely hair. Almost brown.” She reached out and took my braid in her hand, turning it over thoughtfully. “You could give me some of your hair. It’s such beautiful hair.”
“My mother said never to give anyone your hair,” I responded.
“And why not? Are you scared? Do you think I would put a spell on you? Maybe one day you would wake up and find that I had given you the body and face of an old woman.” She smiled, her perfect white teeth standing out against her dark skin. “You know, they shot a man last night. He was on the wall. They shot him and he came tumbling down. He was a bird caught in the tree, but he had no wings to fly away.”
I looked up at the wall, to the top, where the broken glass glittered in the sun.
“Listen,” said Ligaya, “what do you hear?”
“I hear crickets.”
“Crickets and other insects, and birds and the frogs in the fountain,” said Ligaya. “And do you know what they’re saying?”
I shook my head.
She howled at this, laughing so hard that some of the water sloshed out of the basin. “Maybe they’re calling your name, or mine.” She squinted to listen better. “No, it’s not your name.”