Cencavos Uke Scone
with unbroken rhythm, my unconscious metronome. She made her way through the bougainvillea, the frangipani trees and winding orchids. The santol tree was dropping its fruit on the walkway, and she picked her way around them. I could see her disgust at their squashed stench, their thick, juicy texture under her sandals. I knew my mother best from this vantage point, the boredom in her face unmasked. Just as Atti Ana set the plates on the table, Father came in. His uniform would be just as starched and smooth as it was that morning, his posture just as straight, his eyes just as hard and steady. I had heard many of my parents' friends say of him, "He is a good man," in the way you might slap an athlete on the back after a good play-hard, careless, and unreflectively. Perhaps he was a good man, but I confess I hardly knew him. My sister and I would sit resolutely-Bella eating each bite with critical consideration-waiting for him to ask us how our day had been. This question was asked with disturbing consistency immediately after he finished his last bite of rice. I was afraid of catching his eye until that moment. I was tired of seeing the same face staring back, saying unmistakably, "I am a dutiful father, though I would rather have had a son." On one particular morning, I rose with greater hesitancy than usual. The sun had found its way through the window screen and the thin wall of my mosquito net, waking me against my will and driving me out into the cool wet of the morning. If it wasn't raining, I liked to eat my breakfast in the garden, watching the lizards dart across the wall of the house, eating moths and spiders. Mother always awoke later than Bella and I. Father began the day with the dawn. On this day, Father wrote at his big roll-top desk when I came in from the garden. He didn't say anything, and I took my bowl with its lingering clumps of oatmeal into the kitchen for Atti Ana to wash. Bella and I picked up our book bags and headed toward the door just as Father rose from his seat, closing the desktop behind him. He was in uniform as usual, and his hair was slick and tidy. He walked after us with long strides and followed us out the front door. "I am coming with you," he said, as though we needed no other explanation. I didn't particularly care to know, but Bella looked up at him with her round green eyes and asked why. "I am meeting with your headmaster," he told us. "To discuss building plans for a new wing to your school. I am on the board." Great details of his life often came out like this, in brief, surprising statements. We walked to the road's edge, and I wondered if Bella knew what a board was. She wasn't clutching me this morning. She had learned by then that I didn't like her hanging on me in front of our father. We hadn't stood there for half a minute when the beggar woman came out from the trees where she must have slept every night. She hobbled up to us and began her circling, crying out, "Please for food for baby," with her Summer 2005
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