“Yeah, how ya feeling? Any fever?”
“No. I’m fine. I mean, my body’s back to normal. The doctor said it would take longer, but—”
“Did you tell Koji?”
“No.”
“Is he there?”
“No. I told him to get a hotel. I don’t want to see him.”
“You have to tell Koji.”
“I know.”
Coral hung up, but she didn’t call Koji. She got into bed and tried to sleep. The next night, he rang the doorbell, and when he came in, when he took her in his arms, when she started to cry, when he started to cry without even knowing what had happened, she told him the story.
And then she said, “I think we should break up. I love you, Koji. I always will. But I don’t want to do this. This isn’t the life I want.”
Koji looked at her, shocked.
“It’s just not what I want. I thought it was okay. But it’s not. It’s not okay.”
“What do you want?”
“I don’t know. But it isn’t this.”
“You’re mad at me because I was in Tokyo?”
“Yes.”
“You didn’t call me. You didn’t give me a chance.”
“What difference would it make?”
“I would’ve come.”
Coral almost started to cry but steeled herself. “And that wouldn’t have made any difference.”
Koji didn’t answer her then. He looked down at his hands, for a long while. Coral said nothing. She was thinking that she might never see him again, and that she had never loved anyone more than she loved him, and still, that she could not do it. She could not have a lover one week of the month; she couldn’t keep living this way. She would not.
Finally, he spoke.
“I don’t know what you want. But I do know what I want. I want you. I’ll leave Japan. If you’ll marry me, I’ll marry you. We can live right in this house. I can get a job here in a week. And we can have another baby. That’s what I want. That’s what I’ve always wanted. Please. Say yes.”
24
“Everyone plays soccer! Ashley, Brittany, Divya. They all get to play, Ina.”
“Why do you want to play this game? It’s a boy’s game.”
“It’s not for boys! It’s for girls.”
“You’ll get very dirty. And kicked. People will kick you.”
“I like to be dirty.”
This was true, to Honorata’s chagrin.
“I don’t like you to be dirty, Malaya. And I don’t like soccer. You could take another dance class. You could try ballet again.”
“No! No, no, no! I hate ballet!”
“Don’t yell. You didn’t hate it last year. You loved your pink leotard.”
“No, I didn’t. I don’t want to take ballet. I don’t want to take tap. I don’t want to take any dance class.”
“You can’t just quit your dance classes because your friends are playing soccer.”
“Why not?”
Honorata didn’t know why not. She knew she wanted Malaya to stop arguing. She was only in second grade, but already she fought so hard against her mother. It was these American schools. But Nanay was no help. When Honorata asked her what she thought she should do about Malaya, Nanay said, “Well, she’s an American. She should do American things.”
What did that mean?
Why didn’t Malaya like the dance classes Honorata paid for? She had taken ballet and tap, and each year, there were at least four beautiful costumes for the spring show. Last year, Honorata had bought the largest and most expensive photo of Malaya in the package deal. It showed her daughter, right hip jutted out, hair pulled tight across her scalp, a red flower over her ear, and a little red-and-black costume with a short swirl of skirt and a rhinestone belt. Malaya’s lips were red and her cheeks pink and her lashes so full they looked as if they were fake; the teacher had let all the mothers use her theater makeup to get the children ready. What little girl would not love that costume? That photo?
Honorata had the photo framed at Swisher’s Frame Shop, with a little gold plaque that said “Malaya Age 6,” and it hung over the dresser in her bedroom. When Honorata looked at it each morning, she felt pleased with her daughter, and with herself, for giving that daughter a childhood with dance recitals and lessons and all the things a little girl living in the mountains in the Philippines could not even imagine.
But soccer? Why did Malaya want to do something like this? The specter of Malaya’s father, the one who was a secret, flickered in Honorata’s mind. She didn’t want Malaya to be anything like this man. At times she asked herself, Who is this little girl? When Malaya wanted to play a boy’s game; when she jumped in the puddles in her brand-new shoes and got mud straight up the back of her pressed white blouse right before she was to go to school; when she sat rigid and screaming in the shopping cart at two years old, furious because Honorata would not buy her a tray of Jell-O chocolate pudding cups (how did she even know what they were?); when the school office called and said Honorata would have to come in, that Malaya had called another child a word the woman could not repeat on the phone; when these things happened, Honorata wondered where Malaya got these qualities. Why did she do these things?
And this is why it was so good that her mother lived with them, and it was right that Honorata send her daughter to Catholic schools, even if it meant she would have to ride a school bus, and why it was so important that she watch what Malaya did, and the choices her daughter might make without knowing what it was inside her that made her choose them.
Even when Honorata had betrayed her family and run away to Manila with Kidlat, an act far more horrible than anything she could imagine Malaya ever doing, even then, Honorata had not been like Malaya. She had been in love with Kidlat—madly in love. But Malaya? Malaya was willful when there was no particular reason to be so. Malaya was not submissive as Honorata had been, Malaya did not want to please Honorata the way that Honorata had wanted to please Nanay and Tatay. Malaya had a wildness that came to her from somewhere else—that came to her from the man. That was Honorata’s fault. But she would do what she could, she would protect her as much as she could, and maybe Malaya would change; maybe she would grow up. This did happen. Some wild children became serious adults.