There was a reception after the show, and Koji had been invited. Coral was uncomfortable there. She hadn’t realized Koji would know so many people, and she felt conspicuous; not Coral out on a date with the friend of a friend, but a young black woman on the arm of a Japanese businessman. It made her self-conscious. She excused herself to find a restroom, and coming back, she saw Marshall Dibb.
She knew who he was, of course. He was running the El Capitan now, with his mother. She tried to ignore the presence of the Dibbs in Las Vegas; told herself she had no reason to know anything about June or Marshall. From time to time, a story ran in the paper. The El Capitan was a classic, and the Dibbs kept it up even though the big casinos were corporations now, and everyone said the small resorts were on their way out.
Odell Dibb had been dead a long time.
Still, technically, this was her brother.
Marshall was fair and tall, and Coral was slight and dark. He looked like his father. Which meant that she probably looked like her mother, and even now, this thought hurt. But Coral had seen Marshall on the local news, she had studied him once when they were in the same restaurant. And as before, she saw herself in the way he moved, in something about how he was jointed, in the shape of his ears, in the way his hair lifted off his forehead. It wasn’t a resemblance a stranger would remark on, but it was unmistakable if one knew.
Marshall Dibb looked her way and smiled. He must have noticed her staring. She smiled back awkwardly and turned abruptly, looking for Koji. He was nearby, watching her.
“You’re not having fun?”
“Of course I am. It was an amazing show. The music, the drums, they were incredible.”
“But now, here, you’re not having fun.”
“I’m ready to go home.”
“I’ll call the car.”
“Thank you.”
In bed that night, Coral pulled a pillow over her head and tried not to think about Marshall Dibb.
How could he be her brother?
She felt no connection to him. He didn’t know she existed. And here they were, in the same small town if you were a local, and she might be running into him for the rest of her life.
Seeing Marshall made her feel like she didn’t have a home. Las Vegas was his town. He was practically royalty. Son of a casino family. Still, it was her town too. She’d grown up here. Where else would be home?
And that old feeling, that deep pressing emptiness, rushed back. The sense that she didn’t have a place, that she didn’t belong, that she had somehow been cut adrift when she was four days old, and also that, somewhere, someone wanted something from her.
“I’m a Jackson. I’m a Jackson as much as Ada and Althea and Ray Junior. Augusta Jackson is my mother.” It was ridiculous to say these things aloud, and yet doing so made her feel better.
Would she ever tell Marshall Dibb her story?
Would she ever sit down with him and say, “I think you’re my brother”?
And what would be his reply? Would he see the proof in her walk, in her ears, in the rise of her hair?
Could he know that she might exist? Could someone have told him?
That was the thing. She didn’t care if Marshall Dibb ever knew who she was. She didn’t want him for a brother. She didn’t want to live in Las Vegas as the bastard black child of a casino pioneer. She had thought through this scenario before, and while Althea and Ray Junior and Ada now knew everything that she and Augusta did, nobody else knew. Augusta had kept her secret for her, and if she could have a life in Las Vegas—a life separate from the mystery of her birth; a life that was hers and had nothing to do with the Dibbs; with all the people that would find her birth fascinating, a story worth telling, even a story about Vegas—if she had any chance to live free of that, it was possible because Augusta had kept this secret so well. Augusta and Odell.
But what if Marshall did know she existed? Or knew she might?
What if Marshall was the one person in the world who might know who she was?
Over the years, Coral had come close to contacting Marshall. She knew odd bits of information about him: the telephone number at his office, that he had bought a home the year after she bought hers, that he wasn’t married, that he played in a recreational baseball league. She didn’t want to know these things about him—didn’t want to think of Marshall Dibb at all—but each time she had considered reaching out to him, each time she had prepared herself for what he might say, she had learned a little more. And every time, she had changed her mind. There was more to lose than there was to win. Why would Del Dibb have told Marshall about her, if he had worked so hard to keep her a secret all these years?
Still, the desire to know something about the woman who had given birth to her never quite went away, and remembering Marshall Dibb’s casual smile in her direction made her scrunch the pillow down on her head and kick her feet, and finally stand up and find a movie and slip it into the VHS. There was the whir of the tape being pulled into the machine, and the clicking sound of it dropping into place, and then the film started: North by Northwest. It would be as good as anything else right now.
20
Going home was not as Honorata had imagined it would be. It took two days to get to Manila, and when she arrived, the airport smelled of gumamela, which made her think of Jimbo’s house instead of the bubble paste that she and the other children had once made from its flowers. She panicked in the airport—tired and dehydrated, of course—but more and more, she found she couldn’t settle down, she couldn’t rest still, she was stricken with moments of coursing emotion, when she felt she had to bolt, or scream, or twist the neck away from the head of an animal. These moments were terrifying in their suddenness and in their violence, but nothing she tried made them easier. Honorata found an empty room down a long hallway, and there she put her head between her knees.
From Manila, she took a jeepney to Mayoyao. When it stopped to pick up passengers in San Jose City, she got out and threw up in the bushes. She shuddered there until the driver honked, and then she wiped her mouth with some leaves and stumbled back onto the jeepney. It smelled of sweat and lumpia and cassava and garlic. Some children at the back argued about who was sitting by the window, and a group of young girls experimented with lipstick in purple and magenta and black.