Monstress (6 page)

“That's not how it works. Flora Ramirez has a process.” I reminded Charma that it might be months, maybe longer, until I could send for her; though Flora Ramirez had connections with people who could help find me work and a place to sleep, it would take time to begin a life. “Have faith,” I said.

“Always. What about the old man?”

“He doesn't know anything. And once I get my papers, there's nothing he can do.”

Then she said, “How will you go?”

There was static, silence, then an awkward moment when I caught the driver's eyes in the rearview mirror. He seemed dubious, though I was speaking Tagalog. “Are you there?” Charma said, but I had no answer, not yet, despite the exit scenarios playing in my head: I imagined going to the airport with Papa Felix, then backing away into the crowds as soon as he crossed through security. Or I would take my seat on our return flight and then, minutes before takeoff, tell Papa Felix I'd forgotten something in the terminal bathroom, and make my escape from there. Sometimes I didn't even imagine the airport; I simply left in the middle of the night.

“How will you go?” Charma repeated.

“I'll leave a note,” I finally said, a good enough answer for now.

B
ack at the hotel, Papa Felix was sitting on a chair in the bathroom staring at the mirror, a paper cup in his hands and a bottle of Cutty Sark by his feet. “You forgot me,” he said. “I've been waiting.” He was wearing a white trash bag like a poncho, and a box of hair dye was on the edge of the sink. At home, I colored his hair twice a month; here, once a week. “A good healer should look ageless,” he always said, “like Jesus or Dick Clark.”

I hung my windbreaker and backpack in the closet, stepped into the bathroom. “Long lines at the bank.”

“Cut in line next time. Receipt?”

From my pocket I pulled out an ATM receipt I'd found on the sidewalk a week before. He squinted at the small paper, as though his old eyes could actually make out the tiny numbers. “Good work, good money,” he said. “And just think: What did we come with? Nothing. Now look at us.” He finished his whiskey, poured another. “Maybe we'll come back another year. New York next time. Maybe Canada. Where are the Filipinos in Canada?” He named other countries and continents we might visit; the way he talked, the whole planet was full of ailing Filipinos far from home, waiting for us to heal them.

“Someday,” I said, “maybe.” In the mirror, there was an odd, faraway look in Papa Felix's eyes, like he was trying to remember something long forgotten. I realized he was watching me. I reached for the box of dye and tore it open, pulled out the bottle and latex gloves, and I found him still watching, like he was studying my face for a twitch or new expression I'd adopted, some clue to who I really was and what I was planning to do.

“When we're home,” he finally said, “you're on your own.”

“My own.” I didn't understand.

“You're nineteen now. A man. Your father was sixteen when he first extracted on his own. It's your time.” He emptied and refilled his drink, then set a paper cup on the counter and poured one for me. “Two of us working, side by side. Double Felix Starro, double business.” He lifted his cup, toasting a future that would never happen.

There was only one thing to do. I took the whiskey, drank it in a single gulp. I felt its warmth, then its sting.

He nodded, drank his whiskey, poured another. He settled back in his chair and looked at his reflection almost admiringly, then pointed to his roots. “All this silver,” he said, “make it black.”

F
our cups of whiskey made Papa Felix drowsy. I poured a fifth that put him to sleep. It was barely eight o'clock when I tucked him into bed, but he snored thunderously—someone from the next room pounded on the wall, as if that could quiet him down. “Are you awake?” I whispered. I crossed the room and spoke again. “Can you hear me? Wake up!” But his snoring only grew louder, and I knew it was safe.

I went into the closet, unlocked my suitcase and opened it, unzipped the lining. The money was there, paper-clipped in flimsy stacks. It was almost a disappointment, how little twenty-five thousand American dollars could look; it seemed mathematically impossible that so small an amount could guarantee my next life. But back home, it could keep a family stable for several generations, or get an entire village through a difficult year. Half asleep on the plane from home to here, I'd dreamed that I'd refunded every person Papa Felix had ever touched; in that same dream my father told me,
Go, go
.

I took two stacks of cash and put them in my backpack for my second visit to Flora Ramirez. I locked my suitcase, closed the closet.

I went into the bathroom to prepare for the next day. I made the blood first—I poured corn syrup into a plastic jug, mixed in water, then thirty drops of red dye. But the lid to the jug was missing, so instead of shaking the jug to make the mix, I rolled up my sleeve and stirred it with my hand. Long ago, Papa Felix made it the same way; because my hands were small, my job was to squirt the liquid into tiny bags and knot them up. We'd stay up all night, diligent and silent, as though our work was truly blessed and holy.

I finished making the bags of blood and liver, tied them shut and stashed them in the foam cooler beneath the sink. There were streaks of blood along the counter and faucet, red fingerprints on the doorknob and toilet seat. Our nightly crime scene, but not for long, not for me. I cleaned up fast, then showered, and under near-scalding water I scratched dried blood from my wrists and fingers, the backs of my hands, my knuckles and the skin in between.

Back in the room, Papa Felix was still snoring. I walked over, sat on the edge of my bed, an arm's reach away. The Cutty Sark was on the nightstand, so I unscrewed the cap and drank from the bottle, thinking of the note I told Charma I'd leave behind, all the things that could be said—a quick apology maybe, the hope he would understand, a promise that we would both be okay. The more I drank, the more the note went on—it would have been pages, had I truly written it. But then the pounding on the wall started again, so I pounded back and told whoever it was to let my grandfather sleep.

W
e performed twelve Extractions the next day. Most who came were elderly, complaining of arthritis, swollen joints, unending fatigue. But the last patient, a woman named Maribel, was just thirty-two years old. She'd come with her little boy, who sat on a pillow in the corner. Despite his video game, he watched us the whole time, the fear plain on his round face.

After, as Maribel got to her feet and buttoned up her blouse, I noticed that her right breast was gone. She caught me looking. “If only you'd come sooner,” she said, blinking back tears. She gave me the money, and I took it.

“I'm sorry,” I said, and then I heard giggling. I turned and saw Papa Felix sitting on the edge of his bed, entertaining the boy with a vanishing coin trick. He'd done the same with me when I was that age, making random objects disappear and reappear in his hands—a spool of thread, a mango pit, even a newborn chick. Then he would say, “Tell me how I did that,” his voice heavy and grave, as though sleight of hand could save a life instead of deceive one. But I couldn't explain it; all I could think about was the time and space between the vanish and return, where a small thing went in its moment of absence—I pictured some dead, barren planet without weather or sound, and I'd lie awake at night, determined not to dream of it.

I took the boy's hand, pulled him gently toward his mother, and saw them out. Then I gathered the day's cash, grabbed my things. Papa Felix was about to say something—I heard him call my name—but I left without saying goodbye: it was the best way, I decided, to go.

I
arrived at Buhay Bulaklak at 6
P.M.
exactly. I was about to step in when a family stepped out, a Filipino couple and their baby. They looked tremendously pleased; even the baby seemed to smile. I moved aside to let them pass, watched them until they turned the corner.

Inside, Flora Ramirez was alone. She was sitting at the table behind the cash register, a thick, long-stemmed tropical flower in each hand, staring at a vase. “Birds-of-paradise,” she said. “Beautiful, eh?” I nodded, but I felt anxious, thinking about the family I saw and the ways she might have helped them.

“I have the money.” I could feel my heart speeding up. “I want to stay here and I have the money.”

She put down her flowers. She pulled a wooden stool from beneath the table and told me to sit. I joined her at the table, handed her the envelope of cash. She slipped it into the pocket of her blazer without counting it.

She reviewed the terms of our agreement, the obligations met so far. I'd made the first two payments (“Nonrefundable,” she said, in both English and Tagalog) and would bring the remaining twenty thousand dollars two days from now, plus an extra thousand to cover unexpected costs. This would guarantee a California ID, a Social Security card, various documents like school diplomas, recent utility bills, a birth certificate. “What you need to start a life. And you're ready for it? If not, you're wasting my time.” She was speaking Tagalog now, her voice louder than before. “Like the old people who come to me,” she said. “They want to stay, to be with their children, collect Social Security. Then what: they're suddenly scared to spend their last years away from home. They say, ‘We are old, we cannot die away from home, blah blah blah.' What's wrong with dying here? The cemeteries aren't good enough?” She reached into a pile of random flowers, grabbed a handful and jammed them into the vase. “In the end, your land is just the dirt you're buried in.”

I looked at Flora Ramirez. “I don't care where I'm buried,” I said.

She stared at me for a moment, and I knew she believed me.

“You need a picture,” she said. She got up from her stool and stepped into a tiny office, pointed at a bare, blue wall, and had me stand against it. Then she reached into her desk for a digital camera and told me to be still.

She took my picture. “Why did you come?”

She had never asked the question before. Our months of correspondence were all business; she'd needed to know only my age and gender.

“For a happy life.” That was my answer.

She took a second picture, then the last. “Then it's good you came to me.”

We stepped out of the office. We arranged to meet two days later, this time at her home. On the back of a business card she wrote
La Playa @ Lincoln,
but not her actual address. “Count seventeen houses down,” she said. “I live there.” Then she took some flowers, wrapped them in cellophane, tied them with black ribbon.

I thanked her, exited the shop. People on the street seemed to watch me again; I told myself it was the flowers. But sweat was dripping down my neck, soaking my collar, and my heart was beating so fast I swore I could hear it—if Felix Starro powers were real, I would have reached inside myself and pulled it out.

O
n the ride back to the hotel, I couldn't get hold of Charma. My signal faded in and out, even stuck in traffic. A text message that said
ALL PERFECT
was the best I could do.

The driver let me off two blocks from the hotel. I walked the rest of the way, and when I crossed the street I spotted the Filipino maid sitting at a crowded bus stop. I didn't intend eye contact, but it was the first time in America that I knew a face among the hundreds of strangers I passed every day.

She smiled meekly. “Beautiful flowers,” she said.

I'd almost forgotten the bouquet in my hand—I'd meant to leave them on a trash can again—so I offered them to her, but she was shy to accept. “They'll die in that room,” I said.

She took the bouquet, sniffed the single rose.

Then she grabbed my hand. “Your grandfather,” she said, “he helps people?” She'd noticed all our come-and-go visitors, how despondent they looked when they arrived, how peaceful when they left. “I have money. I can pay.” I told her she was mistaking us for other people, but she said there was no need for me to lie. “I know he can help me,” she whispered in Tagalog. “I know who Felix Starro is.” Her grip tightened, her thumb pressing on my inner wrist like she was desperate to find a pulse.

“Stay away from him,” I said. I stepped back, slipped into the crowd, and hurried off.

In the hotel room, I found Papa Felix staring out the window. “You were talking to the maid.”

I locked the door behind me. “You were watching me?”

“Does she know who we are?” I told him no, but he rambled on with paranoid scenarios of the police discovering us, confiscating our client list, robbing us of our hard-earned money. “One mistake and we're finished.”

“She was just talking about home,” I said, and made up a story about distant relatives she had in Batangas City, former teachers at my old elementary school. Then I poured him a cup of Cutty Sark and assured him once more: “She doesn't know anything.”

“She'd better not. Because if she does, and if she talks, then our time here means nothing.” He picked up the fading, wrinkled ATM receipt and held it to my face. “This is our future. Don't forget that.”

I gave him the whiskey and stepped toward the window, looked down at the street. The bus stop was at least two long blocks west of the hotel—I had to press against the glass just to see it. From where I was, the people standing there were faceless, blurry bodies. How Papa Felix could spot me with his old, bad eyes was beyond me, and a familiar feeling returned: that he possessed a real kind of power after all, some extra sense that could lead him to me, wherever I was.

H
e was standing over me when I woke the next morning. “I'm going with you,” he said.

He meant the butcher shop in Chinatown. The chicken livers I bought were too fresh, he said, therefore fake-looking. With one day left, there was no time for my mistakes.