THE BUTTERFLY HOUSE
When I get home Sister Margaritte is with Nanay, and they both rise from the floor when I walk in. ‘There you are, Amihan,’ says Nanay briskly, wiping her eyes with one hand and taking her stick with the other. ‘I was just about to come and find you.’
‘Hello, Ami,’ says Sister Margaritte. ‘I’m sorry for interrupting your day with your mother, but there were some important details I had to tell her. I’m sure she will fill you in.’
She reaches out her hand and I put down the basin to take it. ‘God bless you, child. I am sure Coron will be a wonderful adventure.’
Her hand is warm and dry, her fingernails spotless as usual, small and pink as shells. My own hand looks dirty and clumsy in her grasp. I wonder if it is prayers that make her hands like that.
‘Thank you, Sister Margaritte,’ I say. She nods her head and leaves.
Nanay beckons me over. I sit on her crossed legs and she wraps her arms around me, my spine pressing against her chest so I am cocooned between her chin and lap. I try to still the moment in my mind. I will be bigger when I see her next time – I want to remember being held like this.
‘Sister Margaritte was sent to fetch you,’ she says in a quiet voice. ‘Segregation is starting tomorrow, and Mr Zamora wanted all the Untouched children taken to Coron tonight. But Sister Margaritte argued with him and he agreed you could all go tomorrow instead.’
‘Tomorrow?’ My body jerks involuntarily but Nanay holds me tightly.
‘We mustn’t think of it as only a day left, but rather a day extra,’ she continues, and I can tell Sister Margaritte has told her what to say. ‘We will be able to write to each other, and I will write to you every day until we see each other again.’
‘But that is six years!’
‘Not quite,’ she says, speaking faster. ‘Your birthday is in four months so really it is only five years and four months. That’s . . .’ She scrunches up her face, and I know the numbers in her head are flicking. Nanay is good at numbers, says she can see them, clear as if she were writing them out. ‘One thousand, nine hundred and forty-five days, or thereabouts. So I will write you one thousand, nine hundred and forty-five – or thereabouts – letters.’
I think she thinks these numbers make it feel easier for me, but they don’t have the same comfort as they do for her. So many days have to pass, starting sooner than I ever guessed. Starting tomorrow.
‘I know it sounds like a lot, but Sister Margaritte says it’s fewer than the number of steps we take to the beach and back – that isn’t so far, is it?’
‘So each day is a step?’
‘Exactly.’ Her voice is calm again. She kisses the back of my head. ‘A step bringing us closer together.’
Though they aren’t her words – Nanay would never put things like this, so sweetly and softly, so like Sister Margaritte – they do help. I print one thousand, nine hundred and forty-five into my brain alongside all the other important numbers: mine and Nanay’s birthdays, the number of brass lights in church, Nanay’s identification number.
‘I’ll write to you too,’ I say. Though I’ve never sent anyone a letter before, I’m sure I will work it out. Maybe people in the orphanage will help me. We sit thinking our separate thoughts for a while. I am mainly wondering what Nanay is thinking, and about how tomorrow is sooner than I know what to do with.
‘Do you want some dinner?’ Nanay says eventually. I shake my head. ‘Want to catch some stars?’
The wall opposite is dim and I hadn’t even noticed.
‘Yes.’
We unfurl ourselves stiffly and I help Nanay to her feet. She fetches the sheet from our bed and we go outside. Noise from the new street and the tavern is carrying on the wind, but I take her to my sun patch and the trees muffle the sound. She spreads the sheet on the ground and we both lie down.
‘What’s it like, crossing the sea?’ I have only ever been out on Bondoc’s boat, barely past the reef that circles the island.
‘It is a long time since I came,’ says Nanay thoughtfully. ‘But it felt a bit like being rocked in a cradle. Everything is unsteady at sea.’
‘But I’ll be safe?’
‘Yes, the sea channel here is calm. All the currents pull towards land in both directions – I remember when I arrived the boat seemed to bring itself in.’
‘So if I fell out, I’d float back to Culion?’
‘Don’t get ideas,’ laughs Nanay softly.
The stars are set gently against their spread of deep, dark blue. I try to section off the sky and count them, but every time I focus on one star to start counting outwards from it, my eye gets drawn to another and I lose my place. Every so often one falls across the sky and Nanay or I point and say ‘Catch!’ The person who says it first wins the star. I am much better than Nanay normally, but this time I only win by three.
When it gets cold we go inside. I don’t want to fall asleep because when I wake up it will be tomorrow, and Nanay seems to feel the same because she suggests we tell stories.
She tells me about an island with black sands and white forests where giants live and shake the earth, and that is where the tsunamis start. It is a good story and I have to think hard of one that will be as good. So I tell her about a place where the ground is upside-down and people walk around attached by their feet, the sky opening like a mouth below them. They can never sleep because they will lose their grip on the ground and fall into the clouds.
‘That’s very clever,’ she says. ‘May I tell you one more?’
She shuffles on to her side and props herself up on her elbow. ‘Once there was a girl, and she was in love with a boy. He was in love with her too, but he was very sick and told her they could not be together. He moved to a small hut many miles away, but the girl followed him. She told him she would look after him. They wanted to be married but were too young and he was too sick. So they lived together anyway, and he began to get better.
‘They were very happy for many years. They made the hut beautiful by painting the roof blue and training red gumamela flowers to climb the walls. They’re beautiful open flowers with thin tongues trumpeting from the centre. Once a year the butterflies came and made them flicker like fire. You could see their house from the top of the surrounding hills, because of the blue roof and red flowers. That’s how they were found.
‘Eventually the girl’s family went looking for her. When they saw the hut from the top of the hill, they waited until it was dark. Then they crept down, overpowered the boy and took the girl back home. She was very sad and the sadness crept into her blood. Soon she was as sick as the boy. Her family blamed him, but she knew it was because she was heartbroken. They sent her to an island where all the heart-broken people live, and she thought she would die without ever being happy again. But she was wrong.
‘The boy had given her a gift before she was taken, and now she found it growing inside her. Her belly grew round and soon the gift was ready. From her body came a beautiful and wondrous breeze, smelling sweet as rain. She named it Amihan, after the winds that bring the monsoon, and so are life-giving. The breeze gave the girl new life, and made her happy for many years, until it was time for it to move on. Even after the breeze went out into the wide world of the Places Outside, it left enough love for a lifetime.’
I wait the right amount of silence before speaking. ‘But Nanay, you won’t have to wait a lifetime. I’ll be back in one thousand, nine hundred and forty-five days. Or thereabouts.’
Nanay laughs sadly.
‘Was the house yours and Ama’s? The butterfly house.’
‘Yes. It was beautiful.’
I can see it clearly from above, like a bird might. The blue roof, the fiery walls. ‘Is Ama all right now?’
Nanay rolls on to her back so I can’t see her face any more. ‘I don’t know if he stayed better.’
It clicks into place. ‘He was Touched?’
Nanay puts her arm across her eyes. ‘Yes.’
‘What was he like?’
Nanay hesitates. ‘I don’t know how to sum him up. It’s hard, isn’t it? Describing a person in only words, when they can hold whole worlds in them.’ She swallows. ‘He was short. He always cut his hair wonky on one side. His hands were rough. He was the kindest man I’ve ever known.’
‘I wish I had met him.’
‘You are so like him – your smile, your eyes. Your kindness. You are my world now.’
I find her hand. We breathe together in the darkness.