Laurel
by Nadine L. Sarreal

Mom and I cruise Aisle 9 for the umpteenth time tonight. She can't find laurel leaves. ("Lao-REHL," she told the store manager, rolling the r. He looked at her apologetically and shrugged.) The pimple-faced stock clerk (who is also Albert, a classmate of mine in AP Lit at school) also shrugged when she cornered him. "If it's not on the shelf, we don't have it," he said, his voice pitching upward at the end. "Well," she replied, "Kim Cheung Asian Grocery always had laurel, fresh and packaged, both ways." I look at the floor, knowing Albert hasn't ever heard of an Asian grocery, not even the one two blocks away that closed down because the Vietnamese family who ran it moved to California. Probably a big improvement for them after Texas.

I mean, come on, Lolo Ramon's been dead for like 50 years, in World War II. Who is she really talking to? If it's Lolo Ramon in her head, then Lola's senile, too.

The thing is, we have to have the laurel leaves for Lola's birthday party on Sunday. Mom's been planning the event for her mother for a couple of months now. She's invited practically the whole Irving Filipino community. Lola gets homesick, Mom says. Hey, I tell her, what do you expect, she's going on 80. All the people she grew up with are back home. Or dead. The two sisters who are still alive in Manila Mom says are ulyanin, senile. She'd be homesick wherever she was, just because she's so old. There's no one to talk to who knows about her times.

And senile? What about Lola? I hear her talking all the time, especially when she's alone. She calls out to Lolo Ramon as if he was right there in the living room with her. "Monching," she says in that low voice meant for secrets you're allowed to hear but can't let on you're hearing because then it's eavesdropping. "Monching, que barbaridad! Los hijos de putas!" And then she'll go on about her favorite grievances—the guy she caught peeing in our front yard at two in the morning, or the lady driver who honked at her because she was still crossing the street when the traffic light turned green. I mean, come on, Lolo Ramon's been dead for like 50 years, in World War II. Who is she really talking to? If it's Lolo Ramon in her head, then Lola's senile, too.

See? Well, I get sidetracked. My point is, we're looking for these leaves because people have told her that her adobo is DA BES! And she needs to cook a couple of pots' worth for Lola's big 8-0. This is the third grocery we've hit tonight in search of the elusive spice.

Our fourth trip down this aisle, I turn to Mom and catch the determined set of her face, the knotted space between her eyebrows. Her eyes, dark with suspicion, skim the shelves left to right, top to bottom, as if the leaves might suddenly pop up between the garlic powder and nutmeg while she scans over allspice, basil, curry...She studies a clear bottle of sharp-tipped leaves, muted green. She shakes it a little to force the contents to reveal themselves beyond the paper label which reads "BAY LEAVES."

"C'mon, Ma," I wheedle nasally to annoy her so she'll pay attention to me. "Just buy that, if you think that's it." Her hand is poised over the cap and I know she's tempted to break the seal and open the bottle to sniff the leaves inside. Albert is stocking plastic bags of powdered sugar a few feet away. "Ma-ah!" She hates it when I call her Ma and talk like an American. "Just make the adobo with what you've got, okay? It won't make a difference if there's no laurel."

She swats at her ear to push my voice away. Keeps scanning labels, reaching out for a bottle and then changing her mind. She fiddles with neat red and white containers of peppercorn and paprika, gently lining them back up, re-alphabetized.

"Mom?"

"Adobo needs a special blend of spices in the right proportions," she says intensely, half for my benefit, and half for the benefit of Albert, who is now taking inventory of cooking oil. "It won't taste right without the lao-rel."

I do my exasperated eye rolls and heavy sighs. It's past ten. I have a pre-calc test first period tomorrow. Me, I cram. If we get home in the next few minutes, I'll have less than an hour to shower and read four sections on derivative equations. Mom sniffs and pushes the cart towards the bank of cash registers without checking to see if I'm following. Finally, we leave Humpty Dumpty and head home with two sacks of groceries, but no laurel.

We startle Lola, although we come in quietly. She's sitting on the sofa in her velour robe with an afghan spread over her legs—yes, in the middle of an unusually hot April. She's always cold, always, and to see her wardrobe of sweaters, shawls and fluffy slippers, you'd think she lived in Alaska.

They protect each other and soften the discrepancies between expectations and harsh truths with loads and loads of what they think is sympathy. If I could, I'd tell Mom I think this just hastens Lola's loss of memory and loosens her grip on reality here in the States.

The TV is on; the mirror image of a black and white movie plays on her glasses which have slid halfway down her nose. "Ayan, hija," she says, smoothing the already smooth cover on her lap before she stands. "Are you hangry? There is merienda in the kusina."

Mom sighs and puts down her armload of groceries. "Mamang," she says in a surprisingly tender voice. "You shouldn't have waited up for us. We just ran out to the grocery for Tina's vitamins."

"My vit—" I start, but Mom's shoe hits my shin in warning. My vitamins? Since when were laurel leaves my medicine? I know, I know, Mom doesn't want Lola to think we were going to any trouble on her account, for the birthday that looms ahead.

Lola and Mom do this. They protect each other and soften the discrepancies between expectations and harsh truths with loads and loads of what they think is sympathy. If I could, I'd tell Mom I think this just hastens Lola's loss of memory and loosens her grip on reality here in the States. Mom feeds her overbearing kindness every moment she can. When I get old and batty, I want my kids to give me the honest truth, straight and plain. Never mind. I've got 24 pages of math to read tonight.

* * *

Sometimes, Mom forgets how little Tagalog I remember. "Tina, naaalala mo pa ba si Tito Tiyaging, 'yung asawa ni Ate Charing?"

"What, Mom?"

An uncomfortable silence follows. Mom deals anew with her disappointment in me. I know, I know. She figures she's losing her daughter, her only child, just the way she lost Dad to another woman when we lived in L.A. She won't lose me, though. I try to tell her without actually saying it. Saying it would mean I could see her vulnerability and she wouldn't like that.

I wish she'd do fun things sometimes. But Mom's on a treadmill—work, home, work, home. She puts in as much overtime as she can at the clinic. At night, she sheds her outer work clothes carefully into a separate hamper in the laundry room, and then scrubs her hands and arms vigorously, even though she already washed up before her drive home. She lathers up with a no-nonsense antiseptic soap, working the suds into her skin, to erase the smell of the clinic and the kidney patients. We work quickly, wordlessly, in the kitchen, getting supper on the table. I see her arms, red from her relentless scrubbing and the hot water.

Then after dinner and a long shower, she goes directly to bed. Sometimes on Friday nights, she stays up late enough to catch the 10 o'clock news. That's because she can sleep in till 8:00 on Saturdays, when she works at a clothes store at the mall. On weekdays, though, she's up at 5:00 so she can leave for work by 6:00. I don't see her until scrub time the next evening.

* * *

On Friday, during AP Lit class, Ms. McGee is in one of her mysterious moods. She writes two lines of poetry on the white board, her marker squeaking. She makes the period at the end of the couplet with great emphasis so that it looks like a black blob, a squashed fly. We're studying Blake's poetry and his tendency to aphorism, at least according to Ms. McGee.

The strongest poison ever known
Came from Caesar's laurel crown.

Martin and Jeff crack up again, and I know, I really just know Albert told them about Mom cornering first the manager and then him in Humpty Dumpty in her pursuit of laurel.

"Albert," she says, pacing the front of the room. "Interpret." There are just eight of us in the class and our chairs are set in a half circle. I sit at one end and Albert on the other of the half circle so that we're facing each other.

Albert sits up from his usual slouch. He's been dozing off in class lately, probably working too late at Humpty Dumpty. He squints at the lines on the board. The rest of us squirm in agony, knowing that she won't let Albert off the hook, that he'll have to make some kind of attempt. I feel sorry for him, but at the same time, relieved that she didn't call on me.

Albert puckers his lips and scans the lines again. "Um, maybe it means, uh, laurel is poisonous? So Caesar got killed from the toxins in his crown?"

Martin and Jeff, the other guys in the class, burst out in derisive laughter. Ms. McGee sighs and looks over at me. "Tina? Can you do any better?"

I open my mouth, hoping to extemporaneously paraphrase, but Albert cuts in, "No, wait, I know now. Lao-REHL, right?" He rolls the R just the way Mom did at the grocery. "Hey, Tina, isn't that what gives a-doe-boe it's special blend of flavor and spices?" Martin and Jeff crack up again, and I know, I really just know Albert told them about Mom cornering first the manager and then him in Humpty Dumpty in her pursuit of laurel. I scowl at Albert and he crosses his eyes at me.

Ms. McGee shakes her head at us both. "What is it with you? Laurel, laurel. Read up on it. I want you to understand what it means."

* * *

I've fallen asleep with my face in the smack dab middle of Hummerman's Intro to Philosophy. I wake up to Lola calling out from her room, which is next to mine. She sounds like she's arguing with someone, her voice quivery but firm. I shake off the sweet dream in which I've just won the 200-meter dash against Albert and am strutting off the track with a crown of adobo. I lie still for a moment, trying to relate my dream to Lola's voice. I hear her bed springs squeaking, a sign that she's getting up by herself. She's not supposed to. I leave my door open so I can hear her calling for me when she needs to go to the bathroom in the middle of the night. I'm a pretty light sleeper. I almost fall over my own legs now as I fight my way out of my bed covers. Maybe she's having a memory attack. Maybe it was her party this afternoon that got her excited: the crush of a hundred people in our small apartment, strangers coming in to eat and talk and then leave so more Filipinos could come in. Everyone made their way to the arm chair in the living room where Lola sat and bowed their foreheads to her wrinkled hand in respect and to wish her good health..

Was the party as much of a nightmare for her as it was for me—people speaking excitedly in Tagalog or Ilokano, depending on which part of the Philippines they're from. Children pushing and running, bumping into our knees. People were eating in my bedroom, on the floor in Lola's room, just anywhere they could park themselves. I knew we would find scraps of chicken and noodles, shriveled bok choy in the oddest places later on when we cleaned.

The din of happy voices pressed down in the living room, on the stairway—everywhere, just everywhere, people. That old Mr. Herrero, the guy who loves puns, was at his best. He told the same joke over and over. As soon as a new batch of visitors arrived, he cornered them and demanded, "Why did the probinsiyano bring his newborn son to the Frito Lay factory?" Without fail, his audience would back away a few inches and shrug. "Why did the probinsiyano bring his baby boy to the Frito Lay factory?" he would exclaim again, his voice rising with excitement. "Because he thought he could get a free circumcision. Ha ha ha! Free tulé! You see, you see!" he cried, slapping his thigh and ushering the guests in, as if this were his home and it was his birthday party. He caught my elbow once as he delivered the punchline. "Tina, did you understand it?" I shook my head and tried to move on. "Anak," he chided, "you're becoming too American to appreciate Pinoy humor." I rolled my eyes and pulled my elbow from his hand.

"Celina, Ramon is no more. My Monching. The Japanese soldiers. They came and rounded up all the men in San Lucas. I knew they were coming. I told him to hide in Inay's aparador, the one with double doors and the cut glass mirror. Hide, hide, I said..."

Mom glanced up from arranging the food on the dining table, worry scrawled on her flushed face. I got that second skin feeling again, this time among the very people Mom says are our fellow countrymen, the people who think and act the way I'm supposed to. Mrs. Herrero nudged her husband and whispered fiercely into his ear. She covered her moving lips with a hand covered in diamond and emerald rings, almost as if she wanted us to notice her jewelry. "Okay, okay," he agreed reluctantly, looking at me sideways. "My jokes aren't good for young ladies like you. Excuse me, I'm getting too old, I guess," he apologized. A sheen of perspiration covered his forehead. I felt terrible then. Mom called me to help Lola with her pile of presents, and I was relieved to be away from scrutinizing eyes and shaking heads. That Tina, they would say to each other on the way home, becoming too American.

So it had been quite a party. Lola fell asleep in the middle of the noise and mad shuffle. Someone had put a baby in her arms and the baby was sleeping, too.

I peer in to Lola's room now. Mom, just across the hall, must be too tired to have heard her. No need to bother her and rouse her from a hard-earned sleep.

Lola is sitting up, her shoulders hunched over. She has drawn her blanket up to her shoulders and she squints at me in the semi-dark. "Who are you?" she says. "Celina? Is that you?" She mistakes me for her sister, the one who died during the Japanese occupation of the Philippines, when Mom was still a child.

I sit at the foot of her bed. "Lola, Lola," I whisper. Sometimes, just hearing someone else's voice brings her back to the present. I have to be gentle, though, so I don't spook her.

She shakes her head, rocking back and forth so that the mattress coils creak beneath her shifting weight. "Celina, Ramon is no more. My Monching. The Japanese soldiers. They came and rounded up all the men in San Lucas. I knew they were coming. I told him to hide in Inay's aparador, the one with double doors and the cut glass mirror. Hide, hide, I said. But he stood on the front porch. Waited for them as if they were welcome guests. Hiding is for cowards, he said." Tears streaked her face, but Lola's voice was calm, unemotional. "They had black boots. They smelled sour, unwashed. Two of them came to the porch and pointed their rifles at him. They said something, I don't know. Monching looked at them, surprised, and he told them to leave the family alone, that there were no more men in the house, and he went with them, his hands clasped behind his head. They poked him with their guns, pushed him into their truck." Lola shakes her head, a look of disbelief on her face. "It was Manong Itoy's truck, from his farm. I ran after them, shouting that they had to bring Ramon back. I ran and ran."

I hand Lola some tissue. She rubs her eyes and blows her nose. "Nana Vita and I went to the municipal hall everyday. They kept the men there. We couldn't even go into the yard. We waited outside, just in case, anything, just to see him, to hear news. Once, we heard some screams. Terrible, terrible. I've never heard screams like that again, but I'll always remember. The woman who lived close to the hall said one night, she heard shots, seven. Celina, Celina! Nana Vita gave money to the head guard and asked if we could see. I wanted to know. The guard just took the money and told us to leave him alone."

Lola leans back against her headboard. "I never saw him again. Not even once. What did they do with his body?"

I kneel beside her bed, stroking her forehead, pushing stray wisps of hair out of her face. Her skin is smooth, dry. She hums a song, her voice breaking on the high notes. The tune is vaguely familiar, a lullaby or a love song. Maybe a loving lullaby. I wish I knew.

No one had ever told me how Lolo Ramon died. I had pictured him dying a simpler way—of pneumonia or a heart attack, a few years after the war. Now I realize that at a young age, he must have been tortured and killed by the Japanese.

In a few minutes, she is asleep. I kiss the air above her cheek. I place her hands carefully at her sides and tiptoe out of the room. Mom stands in her doorway, tying the sash of her robe around her. "When did she start? Why didn't you call me?" Her hair is wild with sudden waking. Weariness lines the puffy flesh beneath her eyes. I shake my head, suddenly tired, too. No one had ever told me how Lolo Ramon died. I had pictured him dying a simpler way—of pneumonia or a heart attack, a few years after the war. Now I realize that at a young age, he must have been tortured and killed by the Japanese. What a burden of memories Lola has carried.

"She's okay now," I tell her. "She's sleeping."

Mom and I sit side by side on the top stair, gazing down the well of darkness. She reaches into her robe pocket and fishes out a cigarette. "Poor Mamang. The party must have tired her. Good thing Tita Lou and Manang Tess stayed to help clean up." She covers a wide yawn with her hand.

"Still a lot of cleaning to do," I remind her.

Mom groans. "You know, Tita Lou said everything, the food, was pretty good. Except the adobo." Mom shakes her head, making her hair dance in untamed clusters. "Tita Lou said the adobo lacked fragrance. Walang bango. She asked why I didn't use laurel. Laurel." Mom's voice catches on itself. "I just stared at her because we looked so hard for that laurel and I thought maybe no one would notice we didn't have any. But she said, laurel, laurel, you know, what they call bay leaves here."

"Bay leaves!" I exclaim. "Didn't we see bay leaves at Humpty Dumpty?"

Mom nods fiercely, setting her hair in motion. "Humpty Dumpty. Albertson's. Krogers. Everybody had bay leaves."

An easy silence grows between us. "Well, what can be done now?" she says, raising her hands palms up, as if pleading for leniency. "Next time. Next time. We'll get used to this life yet." She slips an arm around my waist and gathers me in a quick, tight hug. "Let's get some sleep. It's only four. We can still have a few dreams."

For the briefest moment, before we part in the hallway to return to our rooms, I feel a joyful lightness. Tomorrow, I might forget this moment, especially when Albert mocks me in Lit class. Tonight, though, nothing feels impossible and I know each of us, Mom, Lola and I, has to get through this new life a day at a time.

© Nadine L. Sarreal

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