Two and Two is Four by Lily Ward

Two and Two is Four

by Lily Ward

In the heat of our living room, Mama tidies my hair. Her attention waxes and wanes to the song of our television. Riots in Manila. A typhoon in Ilocano. Aquino running for president. The brush turns my ringlets into TV fuzz.

Mama has picked my most special dress.

I am wriggling impatiently and I twist to face her in my chair. Mama has a gel-lacquered comb in her teeth. She chooses then to tug my hair into two sections. My scalp strains towards her.

Any flower that blooms at the peak of spring loses its colours and withers into nothing but frail twigs by winter.

Each face imprinted as a memory so present will eventually fade intoAray! I begin to cry. an occasional dream, a spiritual reminder Jusko naman, she laments. You need to behave today. She untangles the two pink hair ties I’d looped over my fingers, tying two fluffy sections of hair. My pigtails drop like an exhale. I rub at the tightness in my middle part. of a past that was once present. It hurts because you turned around, she snaps, using the same breath to call out, Kuya!

So, Our bedroom opens. Kuya scowls and clutches a metallic rectangle to his chest. His wet hair has been brushed back. does “present” really hold that much importance if it is but a speck of dust in the temporal sand? I try loosening a cherry knocker ball in my hair but Mama ushers me off the chair, then points to Kuya’s feet. As each second passes Put shoes on. again and again, life passes Kuya’s scowl deepens. I’m bringing my Game Boy. again and away.No.

Mama!

If you lose it, Daddy won’t buy another.

When he’s far away, Mama doesn’t use Daddy’s name. I don’t remember his name because it isn’t mine. How do names change? Sometimes Mama calls him Kangaroo, like a joke but when there’s not enough for rent or bread, she says it like a bad word.

That bloody Kangaroo.

We leave our house and walk to the main road. Mama shouts down a trike driver, who straightens from his slouch. Ano po, ma’am? The driver’s eyes flash down at us, two pale-skinned children. He demands sixty piso for our fare to Angeles City. Mama shepherds us into the tinny cart attached to his motorbike. She comes last; she is hovering over the carriage opening and not us.

It takes two jeepneys and a bus to reach Manila airport. We don’t find him in the sweep of taxis and hopefuls. Parched and tired, he waits for us inside a tourist bar beside the terminal. We wander directly past him.

He sneaks up behind us and taps Mama on the shoulder. She jumps up, clings to his neck. His grizzled cheeks are warm when I touch them. Tiny thorns spike from the sun-bruised landscape of his chin. They are like the ribs of fish mama guts in the sink.

He takes up two seats to himself. His bags are stacked underneath Kuya’s feet. Kuya’s head is bent. He is frantically pushing buttons and arrows on his Game Boy.

Mama is making conversation with him. She is using all her English words. Only while we’re this small will her English be better than ours.

I sit on her lap and stare at his long nose. All the time he’s with us, I’m awake to the three fingers’ width of seat padding he doesn’t occupy.

My tita tells me lots of stories about a man I don’t know. His name was Jesus and he used to be alive. On our thirty-piso jeepney fare back to Balibago, I look at this man sitting across from me and think of the Jesus man. If Jesus was alive, he would see me clinging to his luggage, his armpits dark and sweaty. He’d pluck me from the ground, sun bearing down on him, like a gilded giant. He’d call me Shirley Temple — an American girl I don’t know. He’d exclaim, “I don’t remember you being this big.” If I touched his pink face, it would be full of thorns.

He sees I’m watching. He reaches over to tickle my sandaled feet. I kick at him. The jeepney sways.

“Hello, little Lily.”

I understand hello and Lily. I kick at him again. Mama grabs my legs, making them still.

He squints playfully. “Did you learn that at school?”

Mama pounces on that recognisable word. “She is in school, yes,” she says loudly, smiling. “Yes. She starting in September.”

He looks pleased. “Already?”

“She very smart in her grade!” Mama puts her face next to my ear. “They both very smart. Show Daddy you are smart.” Nudging me. “Go.”

I say nothing.

She clicks her tongue and nudges again. Sige naman.

Kuya looks up from his pixelated combat. I wish I could rehearse in the reflection of a metal panel above my head.

“One times one equals two,” I imitate, “and two times two equals four. Four times four equals…” I pause for the correct number of beats, “eight!” I’m counting the wrong number of fingers on my hands. I don’t know how to multiply. I only know how to mimic sounds American children make in the DVDs he sends us.

He claps. It startles the other passengers. “What else?”

I think over what else I’ve practiced for this moment — Ariel’s verse from The Little Mermaid. Dialogue from Ren and Stimpy episodes, songs from Barney & Friends. God’s prayer book which Mama tucks under my pillow. I am thinking so many English words that my brain is carsick. I rub the tension in my scalp. Our Father who art in heaven, hallowed be thy name, thy part of your world—

I frown and shake my head.

Daddy snorts. “Lily the cockatoo.”

Cock-a-too sounds like kang-a-roo. His American words are slippery, but I will learn.

“We headed straight to the bahay?” he asks Mama. They are always showing little pebbles they’ve taken from each other’s pockets.

“You rest and shower first.” Mama’s voice sounds like she is being hassled by street beggars. “You want to going somewhere?”

“You need to take shower!” she insists, clutching me. She smells like the sun.

He looks down at himself. “That’s what a swimming pool’s for, isn’t it?”

“Dirty,” she chastises him, but her voice doesn’t sound mean. “You bastos Kangaroo.”

“Go on, Vicky.” Daddy is smiling. “The kids wanna swim.”

I plait my fingers through Mama’s thick hair, confused in the threads of their English. Swimming? I feel Mama not wanting to say yes; it is an itch in my throat. My eyes glaze over. I don’t want to listen to so much talking. I’ve left my floaties at home.

And then I understand: Mama can’t swim and Daddy doesn’t know.

Mama leans her body to the front of the jeepney. ‘Scuse me, po. Anong jeepney papuntang San Fernando? We hop off carrying three suitcases. Daddy carries one bag and holds Kuya’s hand. The taxi men are sprawled out over the streets. They are waiting for my Daddy — all of them. The ride costs three-hundred piso.

When the car stops, Mama is red. The building with the swimming pool inside has a hut dome and the outside walls are painted over with English words.

I am running my hands over its bumpy brick texture andI feel the tacky, sticky give of the blue, red, green words. I sound them out. Swag-man. I trace the next letter. Re-sort. There is a strange symbol beside it; a pregnant cross. Kuya wanders over. Mama is shouting behind us.

“That one means and,” he says.

And. I make it sound correct in my mouth. Ho-tel.

Daddy appears, one hand each on our shoulders. “Go on. Go inside.”

“What is swag-man?” I ask him shyly.

“A roaming old codger like me.”

“American like you?”

“Australian.”

I frown up at him. Sometimes he made no sense.

We enter an outdoor dining room. Daddy’s cold green beers are in the fridges. The other daddies look like mine. They have bushy light eyebrows, round bellies, blue eyes, deep voices.

My eyes find the hyper-blue pool to our right, beyond a cluster of tables. Kuya and I tug at our mama’s clothes. Please? Please, please, please?

One of the daddies lock eyes with mine. His face opens to a pink, gummy smile.

“G’day, Gerry!” He gingerly rises from his seat, spreading his arms. “Why haven’t you unpacked, mate?”

“Where have you bloody been?” Daddy hollers.

Mama’s face is still red from the taxi ride. She drags the suitcases towards a corner table and bends down very close to our faces. I smell fire in her breath.

If you misbehave, she hisses, we go home. If you fight, we go home. You swim in your underwear and don’t get your clothes wet. We’ll use Daddy’s towels.

Kuya and I are beside ourselves. We nod. Up and down, Yes mama, up and down, yes, po.

I swim in tight circles near the steps of the pool, forbidden from going further. Mama sits two arms-width away with her legs crossed.

“How’re the visas coming along, Gerry?”

“Ah, we’ll get there.”

Smiling Daddy and his friend sit beside her, talking their strange English. Mama is silent. The cool, lapping blue over my skin feels like a happy song. I gaze longingly at my kuya’s dark head, bobbing near the deeper end.

I tip the back of my head into the water and grip the edge of the pool with my tippy toes. I am Ariel. My voice is beautiful. Every word comes out with perfect, rounded American vowels.

“Might be easier if you married.”

“Doesn’t matter. Kids are happy.”

I sing with my eyes closed.