Loss Amplified
Across the gravel alleyway outside my window my mother spends the nights forgetting. Chips are counted. I hear the clack of mahjong bricks being fingered and stacked and raked over the cluttered tops of padded tables. I listen for her voice: her laughter, her chronic cough, her occasional smoky sigh, and when these familiar sounds drift lazily into my bedroom through the torn mesh screen with the mosquitoes, I hold my pillow close. It's not difficult imagining her coin-calloused fingers fanning thick dust and smoke from her face. Captured in my mind is the image of a sweaty amber bottle of San Miguel beer, my mother's ragged fingers wrapped around it, raising it to her dry lips.
Come daybreak my mother staggers home across the alleyway, kicking up dust. Exhausted, she drops onto the straw mat beneath the electric fan, where she pretends to sleep, pretends she is alone. Her closed eyelids twitch to stay off the deep slumber that will surely bring my father back. In this state of half-awareness, the quickness of her hands startle houseflies that buzz her pasty skin and thread her uncombed hair.
Shadows lengthen along the floor and up the walls. My mother rises to prepare our meal. Over bowls of rice and vegetables we exchange emotionless glances, addressing without words one another's emptiness. The mask of loss and pain has never faded from her face. After showering and dressing, my mother's coarse lips press against my forehead, always followed by the whispered promise that tomorrow, always tomorrow – she will move from the hazy past into the future. She will find a way to heal herself. But not until tomorrow.
* Robert Aquino Dollesin was still a kid when he left the Philippines. He now resides in Sacramento, where he manages to pen out short work now and again.
