Wanda Martina Albano is a 21 year old university graduate with a degree in Interdisciplinary Studies and a passion for writing. “It’s the only thing I can really picture myself doing”, she says. Wanda lives in the Philippines, an archipelago of 7,107 islands in the Southeast Asian region, and enjoys scuba diving and kayaking, and also volunteers at a pre-school in her spare time. Another Angel is her first short story in Nuvein. Look for her poetry in this issue of Nuvein.
The sun was at the level of the water. Its lower body abandoned itself to the blanket of ocean. Everyone on shore scrambled to get a good shot of the postcard sunset with their cameras. Lovers cuddled together with their sweet smiles. Groups of college kids, probably on their school breaks, gathered loudly for another picture. Blonde and blue-eyed children ran around the powder-soft sand. And the orange sky melted into the dark blue sea.
Tricia peeled of the oversized shirt she wore over her swimsuit and ran to meet the waves. She swam a few laps towards the ocean, enjoying the roughness of the water. It was some time before she took a look around her and noticed how far she had gone. Her friends were like an abstract painting worlds away. Her muscles were already a bit painful, so she decided to flip on her back and just float around for a while. A drowsy breeze blew in. The undercurrents caught her as she fell asleep.
She woke up with a burning clearness of vision. Her eyes were on fire. Everything around her was coming alive, defining themselves against the blurriness. The air seemed wet around her. She realized she was struggling for breath. Her lungs were about to explode, but she felt no pain. She felt her legs kicking, as instinct tried to get her body upward, but it was if a hand held her beneath the surface. Stop struggling. A voice in the water said.
She was a mermaid, a fish, a goddess.
Be at peace. The voice whispered.
She closed her eyes and she succumbed.
A hand above her jerked her back to consciousness.
“Trish!” “Tricia!” She could her voices around her, grating her ears.
She opened her eyes to faces peering at her, so many heads above her own, watching her.
***
It is unnerving how one can look in the mirror and see a face one did not expect to see. Not a stranger’s face, it is your own. Except that perhaps, to you, it is unfamiliar – strange. I found myself staring at the image that was staring back from the slowly decaying mirror in the public toilet.
I am not a pretty girl. Looking at my reflection always reminded me of that, no matter how hazy the rest of the world became.
“Let’s go Trish!” Karla called impatiently from outside.
“Fine, fine.” I answered, as I stepped out of the dingy room and into the faded light of the bar.
“Ang tagal mo!” Karla complained.
“Sorry.” I frowned, stumbling on a chair in my way. “Karl, I think I’m set to go home.” It was hard to get the words out because my mind couldn’t focus on any one thought. Everything just swam in my head.
“Oh, yeah, okay.” Karla smiled, patting my back. “Rij, Trish wants to go home na,” she called across the table.
We walked to the parking lot, my hand in his. I vaguely remembered to pretend I was sober.
I pressed the end button on my phone. My mother’s cell phone had been turned off and she wasn’t at home. No one was. I wondered why I had bothered to call in the first place.
It was my father who had always kept us together.
“I got you a CD, Trish.” Dad called to when he got home work, the excitement in his voice.
I ran to him to give him a hug.
“And nothing for me?” My mom whined like a child. “Why do you always give her things anyway? We don’t have the money.” Hands on hips, my mother glared at the two of us.
I looked at my dad, whose hands suddenly fell to his sides. I stepped back, looking at my parents, myself getting sucked into the tension.
“Here, Trish.” Dad said, as he handed a little plastic bag to me. “Why don’t you go to your room,” he smiled. I was only ten.
The acrid smoke danced in my mouth before embedding itself in my tongue. I had sucked every last molecule of nicotine, and there was no more. I laid what was left of the cigarette down on a grave of ash and used up filters on the bedside table. It was the last one, the pack was empty.
He had not moved from his half-lying down, half-sitting position on the messy bed for the last half-hour since he collapsed in it. He tried to haul himself upwards. He quickly fell down again. “Vertigo.”
The world spun around me. The aftermath of vodka, beer, hash and Johnnie. “Fucking shit.” I muttered
It had already been 7:30 when we had finally managed to bring everyone else home. When we entered the condominium unit he shared with his brothers, they were already in their first bites of breakfast. “Rij, may pasok ka.” His kuya said, not even bothering to look up from the newspaper he was reading. The rest of them just stared at Rij, coldness and irritation evident in their eyes.
And so Rij had not even bothered to say hello, which made them seethe all the more. He had simply muttered something unintelligible and had headed straight to his room.
And I, the invisible one, meekly followed. I had been too tired to care, telling myself that they could kill me in the morning.
Forgetting that the sun was already up.
“Trish, I don’t think I can drive you home today.” He told me, as took off his shirt.
“Yeah, I know.”
Sighing, he turned on his side, pulled a pillow on his face, closed his eyes and without another word, proceeded to go to sleep.
I crawled on the bed and touched his face. He looked so innocent lying there on the bed. I tried to cuddle beside him, burrowing my body in his. Rij had been my security blanket when my parents finally separated.
“I love you Tricia”. My father told me, just before he boarded the plane that was to take him across the world. I couldn’t say anything. I turned away and ran.
Rij had been the first one to comfort me. He arrived at my house with a six-pack in his hand. I bent over and kissed him on the cheek. He was why I still got up in the morning.
“Trish, ano ba?” He mumbled, pulling the pillow closer, as he jerked his head away.
I walked across the room and opened the door. One of his three brothers was still there. Marco, the eldest. He was pouring dark liquid into a chipped mug. He looked up as he heard the door creak.
“Coffee?”
I nodded, slipping quietly into the chair across his.
“Is he asleep?” he asked, already knowing the answer.
“Yes.” I answered, in a voice so small I thought it couldn’t be mine.
“Where are you off to?”
“School, I guess.” I glanced at the clock above him.
“I’ll bring you there.” He barked.
I was silent the whole ride, my eyes looking outside the window, my hands folded across my chest. I felt like I was suffocating.
“You look like a caged animal.” Marco said, his plastered smile barely hiding his contempt.
I kept quiet. Nothing I could say mattered to him anyway. Conversation was a battle I would immediately lose, because he didn’t really care
He rounded the bend that signaled the entrance to the college grounds. I unbuckled my seatbelt, and placed a hand on the handle of the seat. I was ready to bolt.
“Bye.” He muttered.
At school, I ran towards the jeepney stop and boarded one just as it was about leave. I got off the dangerous side street, and rang the doorbell of one of the crumbling cement structures that passed for a house. The skinny man who answered knew me by name. I couldn’t remember his.
“Trisha!” He called to me. He quickly let me in, and led me to a dark room near the back. He took a denim bag from under the bed. He opened it, and carefully started unwrapping. A burner, needles and a little vial of powder lay taunting on the bed.
She woke up with a burning clearness of vision. Her eyes were on fire. Everything around her was coming alive, defining themselves against the blurriness. The air seemed wet around her. She realized she was struggling for breath. Her lungs were about to explode, but she felt no pain. She felt her legs kicking, as instinct tried to get her body upward, but it was if a hand held her beneath the surface.
Stop struggling. A voice in the water said.
She was a mermaid, a fish, a goddess.
Be at peace. The voice whispered.
She closed her eyes and she succumbed.
I dreamed of angels falling on the earth like a hailstorm. The place I saw in my dream was unlike any I’ve been to, yet it felt strangely familiar. It seemed to be a deserted provincial road, lined with trees and overgrown grass. Rice paddies lay on each side.
I could see the angels’ shadowy wings scattered on the muddy soil, their bodies stretched out and barely moving, like white blood on red snow. The air was filled with fine down, as if a giant feather pillow had been slit open in the breeze
Some angels landed on their feet, but some lay sprawled on the ground, and some even seemed hurt, or perhaps, asleep. There was a pile of them on the asphalt road as well, angel heads hidden among angel feet. I looked up to see if more would drop from the sky. I felt a sudden, manic desire to run around like a chicken little clucking that sky was falling.
My body lay unraveled between pillows, my legs tangled in the bed’s skin. The air conditioner hummed ever so softly. He was still asleep. He lay on the bed so peacefully it was hard to imagine that anything could ever be wrong.
I remembered how happy he had been just the year before. His black hair was longer then, it had often been in a ponytail. The short spikes now stuck out in tufts from his head. He had been darker then, too, browned by all the hours he put in the soccer field. Now his skin looked like coffee that had been overwhelmed with milk. He was growing up, and he was growing away from me. Just as they all did.
I turned away from him to watch the world from his window, my face pressed to the glass. The promise of a shining sun had already begun to stain the dark sky crimson.
It was cold. I wished he hadn’t insisted on turning down the temperature so low. I hugged the comforter closer to my body. My feet burrowed deeper under the thin blanket. I was silently curling my toes, wishing my whole body could curl itself as well.
“Oh shit,” I muttered under my breath. I had forgotten to tell my flatmate that I wouldn’t be going home today. There was a phone on the bedside table. I picked it up as silently as I could.
“Nix!” I whispered as soon as I heard her drowsy, “Hello?”
“Where the hell have you been?” she asked, irritated. “You didn’t even text back!”
“I couldn’t. Low bat.”
“So where are you?”
“I’ll tell you when I get home. Maybe in an hour.”
“I hope you have your keys because I’m not gonna sit up to wait for you.”
I heard an abrupt click as Nix hung up.
“Come back beside me,” the man on the bed called in a whisper, still half asleep. He woke up just after I had replaced the receiver. His eyes were only half open as he placed a hand on my forearm, caressing it gently in invitation. I smiled, and shook my head. I pushed back the covers and got out of bed. I crouched down the floor, fishing for something to cover my nakedness. He pulled himself up and propped his head on a pillow. He lay on his side, staring at my unsheathed skin. The carpet seemed rough to the touch. Finally my hands came to what felt like last night’s cotton shirt. I pulled it out from under the bed. It was big and light blue.
I went back to the bed and sat down. I kept my gaze away from him even as I felt him move. I heard a zipper travel the metal teeth of his pants. We kept our backs to each other as we hurriedly covered ourselves. Our bodies were suddenly shy of each other’s scrutiny.
His shirt fell almost past my knees.
I stood up and walked across the room. I got a stick from the pack of Winston Lights that lay on top of the TV. The small apartment he was renting seemed to reverberate with the sound of my every move. I sat down on the couch by the door and lit my cigarette. The ashtray on the table beside me had been overturned, and ash had spilled from the glass top and on to the floor. I looked around the room, taking in the red carpet and the paintings on the wall. I knew most of them were his. They were all in bold colors, full of naked angels and other tortured souls. In the midst of the darkness they seemed ready to jump out of the canvas. He hauled himself over to where I was, a cigarette between his fingers, and the whole pack on his other hand. He stood by the door, shirtless. A hint of stubble marked his chin.
“Are you okay?” He asked me, as if he was genuinely concerned.
“Sure,” I replied, a practiced smile breezing through my lips. He sat on the arm of the couch and kissed the top of my head. I looked at him. He grinned and started playing with my hair. “You want to get breakfast or something?”
I shook my head. “I’m not hungry. But I can go with you if want to eat.”
“We can eat later.” He put an arm around my shoulder and kissed me on the cheek, his hand twiddling the silver necklace I always wore. I flicked up off the ash from my cigarette, my arm grazing his thigh.
I noticed a framed picture of a pretty mestiza perched on the table. I had never seen it before.
“Who’s this?” I asked him, studying the girls’ bright eyes and too-white teeth.
“Val.” He replied uneasily, his hand suddenly still.
“Oh.” I answered planting my cigarette on the ashtray. “The girlfriend.”
“Uh, yeah.” He smiled cautiously.
“Hmmm, this is definitely something new,” I teased. “Any special reason you want her here?” I asked, attempting to keep it light, although I felt strangely jealous.
He put down his cigarette and took up the picture instead. He fingered it for a moment before putting it down. I saw his eyes cloud over with all the thoughts he had tried to push out of the way. They now came rushing back, released by the light of the sun that was gently streaming through the windows. The spell was broken. The tenderness in him receded like the darkness. He looked at me again, but this time the affection was gone.
“I just think a lot about her nowadays,” he said.
I was quiet as I remembered that he had picked me up from the apartment that day smelling faintly of cologne. He had never bothered to put cologne for me before.
“He’s frigging neurotic,” Nix had whispered to me when she saw him.
“I know,” I had answered, only half-joking.
“He’s a big boy, you know.” Nix would always say. “And he’s a jerk,” she would sometimes add.
But I would always go with him just the same, because in his own way, he needed me.
The first time we met was in a bar in Makati. Drunk and miserable, he plopped on the chair beside me right after we were introduced.
“So, how are you?” I asked him, bored but trying to be polite.
Undoubtedly, it was the alcohol that had made him go off into a tirade on his pathetic life and his too-conservative family.
“I’m only a senior and they’re already talking about business and heirs!” He had lamented. “Five years from now I’m gonna end up just like my dad.”
Although I had to smile at his melodrama, I also felt moved. It was at that moment that I felt I saw him uncovered. There he was, in all his vulnerability. And at that moment I felt an urge to help him, to let him forget his problems, even for just a little while.
I stepped out of the shelter of the trees once I felt sure that the celestial downpour had stopped. My hysteria was gone, and in its place, a calm sense of purpose. I waded through wings and arms, feet and faces, and through the heap of angels I spotted one with the face of a young man.
He was badly hurt. His wings seemed to have been crushed by the pile of angels around him. I helped him as best as I could, but I knew that soon I would not be enough, and he would have to turn to his own kind.
“Hey, I just need to take a shower, okay?” He said, breaking the silence abruptly, his tone painfully light. I nodded. He stood up and walked to the bedroom. He reappeared holding a towel and was on his way to the shower, when he stopped abruptly, hesitating. “Are you gonna be alright here?”
“Of course.” I answered with all the false assurance I could muster.
I knew he would think of Val as the water from the shower flushed away memories of last night. He would wonder at the pretty angel of a girlfriend he had loved for almost two years. He would think about the hundred sacrifices his parents had made on the altar of his future. He would no longer be unsure, no longer faltering. I had become an exclamation mark to everything I was not, a mere frame to hold the portrait of his angels.
I went back to the bed and collected the clothes I had discarded on the floor. I exhaled the last drag of my dying cigarette. I dressed slowly and took a last peek through the window. I noticed an envelope under the phone. It was addressed to me.
I went to the door and opened it as silently as I could. In the hallway were so many doors just like this one, perhaps housing a thousand other secrets. I stepped out and turned to peer at his studio one last time. Outside was a safer place from which to watch the night uncoil.
The outline of the sun was in the sky now.
“This is the last.” I promised to the empty corridor. I closed his door carefully and hurried to the elevator.
Finally I stepped out into the morning, hearing the fluttering of wings overhead. The maya birds seemed cheerful today. I walked round the bend where the taxis would be waiting, discreetly counting the money in the envelope along the way.
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