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Show Moon -106 retaining wall at the edge of the harbor at sunset, huge black bugs crawl out at you. I was one of the lucky ones. Daddy made the move to the Zones when I was old enough to resist. Not that I hadn't seen it coming for years-all the pulls to the lap, the sorrowful protests that I didn't love him, his coming to my bed to stroke my hair and my wishing he'd go away. When I tried to tell you, you weren't able to hear, and I thought this meant I had to protect you from the sort of knowledge for which forgiveness seems impossible. I've told no one this story. Why not? I can think of many reasons, but perhaps the main one is that this brave secrecy is the only remaining avenue to honor. We who survive want above all else to live in the Kingdom of Honor, for we've been cast out of the Kingdom of Home. Now, the need for That bravado is gone, as is your need not to know, so here-in the third person, which is the only voice I can use to tell this-is the story as close to truth as my memory will allow: After they'd lived in Manila a few months, Joy's mother went off to a vacation in Baguio with,the boys. James and Joy couldn't go because of their jobs. Joy was worried, for he'd been saying things like, "We'll be alone at last." She tried to pretend this was just his normal possessive love, and she didn't beg her mother not to go, though she wanted to. After her mother and her brothers left, James took her to dinner at Guernica's, a Spanish restaurant where the band played Besa me Mucho and the steaks came wonderfully smothered in oil and garlic. James kept trying to hold her hand across the table. Joy thought this would be a good time to talk of her plans to go to art school. |