Even Though She Had

My Jeep Cherokee rumbled along I-25. It high-pitched whistled from the tiny hole in its roof that had formed from rust and neglect. I had on my shatter-proof sunglasses, steel-toe boots, and ball cap. I was cruising - gangster rap blaring from my radio, burger and fries warming my lap - when the text snuck in. I didn’t hear either of the announcements: the beep or buzz, but I saw the flashing red-light on my Blackberry.

Your died last night, it said.

 I didn’t see it at first. It had hid behind some work messages: Will you authorize overtime; we finished installing the new cables and released our track warrants; and thanks for lunch boss.

I thumbed my replies: yup; dope; don’t thank me thank the company. I felt good knowing that my piece of the railroad was earning Buffet more billions.

Your died last night, it said.

I had just stuffed a few fries into my mouth when I noticed the text. It had come from a number I had never seen before. I paid little mind to it at first because my phone was sliding through my greasy fingers and they were smearing its glass.

I wondered who the text was from. I wondered if it were a wrong number. Then a minute or so later another text arrived: This is your auntie Cris. It was a Vegas number.

I pulled my Jeep from the 75 mph hustle to the side of the road. Cars whooshed past me on my left and Russian thistle collected to my right, waiting for the best opportunity to tumble onto the highway to be exploded by an unavoidable vehicle.

I shoved a few more fries into my mouth.

For a couple of minutes I filled that gap: Your hamster died last night; your dog died last night; your father died last night. But I knew each of those could not have been what she meant because my hamster had been eaten by its mate when I was seven; Snowball had died of old age when I left for college; and I couldn’t be so lucky for the last one.

Your died last night.

I started to text back: She didn’t die last night! She died May 2nd at 2:15 pm!, but I deleted it. I started to text: How did she die, but the how didn’t matter.

I texted: thank you.

I wiped my Blackberry’s screen on my dusty jeans. Gangster rap clamored through the radio. I reached into my fast food sack and pulled out my burger. I placed it on my right leg. I unfolded it with care: the top right corner, then the lower left corner, and so forth. Cheese clung to the wrapper. Iceberg lettuce had escaped the bun. I took a bite of my lunch.

Texts started to beep and buzz and blink. I ignored them as I looked out at the deserty terrain that surrounded me. I slow chewed my overcooked burger. I took a second and third bite. I mixed in a few fries with each bite. The abundance of salt on my tongue felt satisfying.  

A few years before my mother had returned to the Philippines she could no longer work. She could no longer drive her Volvo. She could no longer hold long conversations. She struggled to walk from her bedroom to her kitchen where she had spent most of my life. She also struggled to pay bills, to feel alive.

“What’d the doctors say?” I had said.

“It figment of imagination.”

I had sat confused with the phone to my ear. She had been living in Oklahoma City. She had just quit her custodial job at the hospital. My Filipina mother had never before used the word figment and I wondered if the doctors had taught her new vocabulary terms in lieu of diagnosing her. I considered other words she could have used: illusion, fabrication, apparition, but she had never said those words either so figment was the best choice.

A tingling sensation had developed at the bottom of my mother’s left foot. Nothing painful. Nothing worrisome. Then the tingle traveled up her leg. Still nothing painful, but its climb had created worry. She had visited doctors at the hospital where she used to work. Those doctors could find nothing in books or on x-rays or on computer screens. So it had to be in her imagination, in her head, which is where the tingle eventually took residence.

“You have vertigo,” I had said. “Can’t they see you stumbling?”

“It okay,” she said, and I knew she heard anger in my voice.

“Don’t,” I said. “Don’t say it.”

“Kumalma ka -”

“Don’t,” I said. “Not now.”

“Ang mama mo Little Angel.”

My whole life my four-foot-eleven mother had called me My Little Angel. When I had tripped onto my face she said: You okay My Little Angel. When I had struck out at baseball she said: You do better next time My Little Angel. When I had graduated from College she said: I so proud of My Little Angel. My mother had called me My Little Angel in front of my boys, my girlfriends, everyone. She used My Little Angel to distract me. She used My Little Angel to encourage me. She too used it to shut me up.

I had called every now and again to check on her. I had asked my sisters: How she doing? They said good and okay and other nonspecific responses. Cindy and Alma were living with her at the time. They had paid bills. Alma had steamed mother’s sticky, whtie rice and had cooked chicken adobo and pancit and spam and eggs. She had learned all mother’s favorite Filipino dishes. Cindy had helped mother to and from the kitchen. She kept mother stable and clean and comfortable. They both had driven her to appointments where no new or comforting information ever presented itself.

“She’s moving to the Philippines,” Cindy had said one late night.

It had been a year and half after mother had quit working.

“What?” I said.

“Aalis na si Nanay.”

I had lay stunned in bed. I had guzzled a few beers that night. I had bought a few drinks for friends and unfamiliar women earlier in the evening. There had been lots of laughs. I had laid there wondering when Cindy had learned Tagalog, had she known it all along and had secretly spoken to mother in Tagalog behind my back when we were children or had she just learned it and now openly communicates with our mother in her native voice.

“I don’t understand,” I said.

“Aalis na si Nanay,” Cindy said.

“I don’t know Tagalog.”

“She’s moving to the Philippines.”

“Who?”

“You’re dumb,” Cindy said then she hung up the phone.

Mother’s moving to the Philippines to die. That’s what Cindy and Alma both had told me when I started to call more often. I had stopped calling so much because - for no real reason really. Mother could still talk but she whispered and spoke in a mix of English and Tagalog: Englog or Taglish. There’s no real term like Spanglish for the mix but I used to like to think it was something similar. Conversations with Alma and Cindy were fine: Alma had learned to cook kare kare and lechon and ukoy; and I could hear Cindy translating our conversations for mother: Mabuti na siya; Wala siyang girlfriend; and Hindi siya pupunta para sa isang pagbisita.

“What’re you telling her,” I had said.

“Just what you say,” Cindy said.

“Speak in English then.”

“Gusto niya akong mag-English,” Cindy said to mother.

“You’re dumb,” I said then I hung up the phone.

Through text is how I found out that mother had left: Her plane landed in the PI.

Whose plane? I had texted back.

I had been eating breakfast: oatmeal with raisins and honey and almonds. I had waited for a reply. Then I waited for a text of my idiocy, something proclaiming my stupidity, as I realized Whose plane, but no text came. I just sat there, staring at my phone and noiselessly spooning calories into my gaping mouth.

I chewed my burger without hurry. I whispered: Your died last night. I whispered it over and over, considering each word. My phone had stopped beeping and buzzing, but it still blinked. I thought about calling Cindy, but I knew she would be balling and I wasn’t in the mood to comfort her or to listen to her whimperings. I didn’t consider calling Alma. I don’t know why, but I knew she was strong enough to handle the news on her own. Besides, she had a family: husband and an eight year old daughter. They could comfort her.

“Hey,” I said to my father when he answered the phone.

“Wow. This is a surprise,” he said. “Your royal highness has called.”

I wanted to hang up. I wanted to ask him: Why’re you always an asshole? We hadn’t talked in years. We hadn’t really talked since I left his house when I was seventeen. He had been cheating on my mother and she found out. She and I had been whispering one evening about her escape plan: divorce, moving to OKC from Indiana, taking half his military pension.

“What the fuck are you two talking about?” he had said from behind us.

We had thought he was asleep. We had thought we were quiet.

“It’s none of your business,” I had said.

He was wearing a white T-shirt and tighty whiteys, which seemed bright against his reddish-white skin.

“This is my house,” he had said.

Then hands started to shove. Names and cuss words were thrown. Then fists landed on shoulders and ears and walls.

My mother had shouted, “You leave. Go My Little Angel.”

“What?”

“Leave now,” she had said. Tears had streamed from her almond eyes and down her round cheeks.         

For the four months that I had slept on my uncle’s, my father’s brother’s, couch before graduating high school, I felt scorned. I felt alone even though my mother visited often. I hadn’t understood why my mother had kicked My Little Angel out. I had withstood the blows of my father for her. I had accepted and agreed with the name calling from him. When I left for college and she moved to OKC, I just balled it all up and allowed the distance between the three of us to assuage my pains. 

“I just called to tell you -” I said.

“I know,” he said.

“You know what?”

“Your mother died last night.”

“Who told you?”

“Your aunt.”

“When?”

“Last night,” my father said.

“Last night?” I said. “She told you last night? Why the fuck would she have texted you last night and wait to text me this afternoon?”

“She called me.”

“What the fuck.” I looked at the phone. My father’s name: Jim, shone in white letters against the black screen. “What the fuck. Who the fuck’re you to get a phone call.”

He didn’t say anything. I wanted to throw my phone. I wanted to put my Jeep in drive and speed away. My aunt, my mother’s sister, had called my father first. She had told him everything, but she had texted me. She had texted my mother out of existence: Your died last night. Who the fuck died last night? No one had died last night because there was no subject of her text. My Filipina aunt had vanished, had dematerialized, had obliterated my mother from this world in one four word message. But I had never heard my aunt use those words so everything felt confusing to me.

“JP,” my father said.

He used my childhood nickname. The name I hadn’t heard anyone use in years.

“JP,” he said again.

I set the phone down. I listened as my father called me: JP, JP, JP. I picked up my burger. I shoved a few fries into my mouth and took a bite of my lunch. Instead of hanging up the phone, I turned up the gangster rap to drown my white father’s voice.

The friend requests had started immediately. My Facebook-friend collection grew as Filipino family members reached out to me. My sisters had shared my profile information. Messages with kuya and tiyo and other respectful terms had shown up in my inbox. Names - Bituin, Sampaguita, Makisig and Jejomar - from the time we had visited my mother’s town, Daet, reminded me of that month we had spent in the PI.

I had been thirteen at the time. I had long hair and my skin was closer to my father’s white skin-tone than my mother’s goldish, olive color. Filipinos called me Rambo as I had reminded them of that old film that seemed to come and go then come back again for some strange reason. I had liked the attention, so I often growled: “They drew first blood,” laughing along with my audience. I had played a lot of basketball, eaten a lot of turon and pandesal bread and halo-halo. But that had been twenty-five years prior and I had not thought about my Filipino family since that time.

Kamusta ka kuya, messages had said.

Nami-miss na namin kayo, messages added.

Kailan ka dadalaw, messages asked.

After a few days of me ignoring them, my Facebook Filipino-family had started to write in English:

How are you brother?

We miss you uncle.

When are you coming for a visit?

Then pictures of my depleting mother started to show up on my profile page. Her forever salt and pepper hair, what was left of it, had turned faded grey. Her round cheeks had sunken. Her mouth had formed into a permanent O-shape like that famous painting The Scream. In fact that was the only vision I could see when Filipino family member after family member shared pictures of her. 

“Can you tell them to stop posting those pics,” I had said to Cindy.

She had been calling them on the regular. She had been the only one of us who could communicate with them in mother’s language.

“They want to keep us updated,” she had said.

“I don’t like seeing her like that.”            

“They’re our family and they’re excited to know us.”

“I don’t care,” I had said. “I don’t want to see her like that.”

“Then learn Tagalog and tell them yourself,” Cindy had said.

I hung up the phone.

Talking to Alma had been no use either. She had liked the pictures even if it chronicled mother’s decline. Alma had been more excited about telling me all the Filipino dishes that she was teaching her daughter to cook. I didn’t care about any of that. I just wanted my Filipino family to stop showing the world mother’s decay.

One day I called mother. Someone had answered the phone and I was shocked by their greeting.

“Hello?” the person said.

“Hello?” I said.

“May I help you?” the person said.

“Um, yes.” I paused for a moment, surprised that the person in the Philippines was speaking English to me. I knew that English was the second national language, but it still felt strange.

I had told the person who I was and that I was calling to talk to my mother. The person on the other end became excited and gathered others around the phone. I answered job related questions, questions regarding my single life, and questions about why I had not and am not coming for a visit. The phone line filled with joy and laughter and excitement. Then I talked to my mother.

“Hey, mom,” I had said.

A prolonged, inarticulate moan resonated.

My mother’s sweet voice had disappeared. I went quiet.

“Hello?” a person said after a couple of minutes.

“Yes,” I said.

“She can hear you. Talk to her.”

“Hey, mom,” I said after a short pause. “I miss you so much.”

A prolonged, inarticulate moan resonated.

I started to cry. Someone in the Philippines started to cry. For a few minutes we cried together.

Then a prolonged, inarticulate moan resonated.

“I’m sorry mom,” I said. “I’m sorry for being angry with you for so long.”

I heard whispers and the sound of movement.

“I want to come see you,” I said.

A prolonged, inarticulate moan resonated. It seemed louder and more forceful. The moan sounded like it was filled with tears and angst. Tears fell from my eyes and my body shuttered.

“I miss you so much,” I said.

A prolonged, inarticulate moan resonated.

“I will always be your My Little Angel,” I said then I hung up the phone.

That night I had sat at my computer staring at my mother’s pictures. I scrolled and scrolled. Then I had come across a posted photo of her from when she had graduated from high school. She had on a blue cap and gown and was holding a diploma. Her hair was jet black and her smile the whitest I had ever seen it. I downloaded that photo. Then I unfriended my Filipino family forever.

I sat there along I-25 with greasy fingers and a lap covered in crumbs and an empty fry box and a burger wrapper with solidified, orange cheese and Iceberg lettuce bits. My father had hung up a while ago and no more messages arrived on my phone. Gangster rap comforted me.

I no longer felt anger toward my father. It wasn’t his fault that my aunt had called him last night. It wasn’t his fault that my mother had died and wasn’t his fault for all the things that I wanted to blame him for in that moment.

Your died last night.

I kept thinking about that text.

Your died last night.

I wanted to continue to feel anger toward Auntie Cris for her removal of my mother. How inconsiderate. How thoughtless could she have been to forget mother? But she was probably in pain too. Mother had been her older sister. They had both left the Philippines around the same time. They had both ensured that their military husbands had been stationed near each other their whole careers. They were best friends.

Your died last night.

It was a mistake. Auntie Cris probably had tears in her eyes when she sent that message.

I felt anger at my mother for dying even though she had been dying for years. I started to cry. “Why did you have to go to the Philippines to die?” I said. I hadn’t seen my mother in ten years at that point. I jerked the burger wrapper and fry box off my lap. I balled them as small as I could. I opened the passenger side window then flung them into the Russian thistle.

I sat there and cried for ten, maybe fifteen, twenty minutes. After I had wiped away my tears, I no longer felt anger toward my mother. I instead felt sad for myself.

I sat in my Jeep with my seatbelt across my chest, my hazards flashing. I felt this newfound emptiness. I realized that Auntie Cris was wrong: Your died last night. It hadn’t died last night. It had died years ago. So, I clicked off my hazards. Turned my left blinker on, making my intentions clear. I bobbed my head to gangster rap as I set my Jeep to drive, then I slowly merged into oncoming traffic.

James Morena earned his MFA in Fiction at Mountain View Grand in Southern New Hampshire. His stories have been published in Orca, Forge Journal, Pithead Chapel, Rio Grande Review and others. He also has published essays and poems. James teaches English at university and high school levels. You can interact with him on Insta: @james_morena.