21st century sinigang
Storyboard Text
- Did you meet…her?
- Yes.
- Yes.
- Are you Liza?
- What did she tell you?
- Nothing much. She told me who she was.
- I continued to pick out tomatoes for the sinigang we were to have for dinner. I wasn’t usually the one who assisted my aunt with the cooking. She preferred my younger sister, Meg, for I knew far less in this area—not having the aptitude or the interest, I guess—for remembering recipes. That didn’t matter today, though. This time, Tita Loleng wanted more than just an extra pair of hands in the kitchen.
- I am Sylvia.
- There came to me a memory of sitting in one of the smaller narra sofas in the living room in Bulacan. I faced a smooth white coffin whose corners bore gold-plated figures of cherubs framed by elaborate swirls resembling thick, curling vines. Through an open doorway, I could see into the next room where a few unfamiliar faces held murmured conversations above their coffee cups.
- I am glad you came.
- I gently spilled out all the tomatoes into the sink and turned on the tap. The water, like agua bendita, cleansed each tomato of the grime from its origins.
- I’m sorry.
- She looked like she had Indian blood with her sharp nose and deep-set eyes thickly bordered by long lashes. Suddenly, she grabbed my hand from where it had been resting on the arm of the sofa. Her own hands were damp and sticky with sweat. She knelt in front of me—a sinner confessing before a priest so he could wash away the dirt from her past.
- Everyone makes mistakes, Liza.
- When my Dad had come out of the room, I remembered sensing it immediately—the same way an animal instinctively perceives when it is in danger. I had been looking at the face of my dead half-brother, searching for any resemblance between us. Chemotherapy had sunk his cheeks and had made his hair fall out, but even in this condition, I couldsee how handsome he must have been before his treatment. His framed photographatop the glass covering of the coffin confirmed this.
- I remembered the flower petals each of my two sisters and I had thrown, fistful by the fistful, into the freshly dug grave as Lem's casket was being lowered into it. My dad was crying beside me and I recalled thinking, would he be the same if I was the one who had died? I glanced up at him and was surprised to find that he was looking at me. His hand, heavy with sadness, fell on my shoulder.
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