Tall Story (16 page)

Slowly I opened my eyes.

‘Is this what you want?’ Gabriela stood there, swaying her hips, like a girl flirting with a boy. She toyed with the wishing stone that hung from her neck. ‘Did you want my stone?’

I gasped. How did she know?

She lifted the wishing stone from her bosom on its chain and swung it like a pendulum. Malevolence twisted the pretty face.

‘Idiot!’ Her eyes flashed. ‘You thought you could sneak in here and steal the stone! What were you going to do? Hold me down and rip it off my neck?’

I did not trust myself to speak.

‘Or maybe you wanted to make a wish!’ She thumbed the stone and grinned.

‘I know! You obviously think you’re some kind of hero. Some kind of Bernardo Carpio.’ She closed her eyes and pressed it against her heart. ‘Stone, let this pipsqueak turn into a Bernardo Carpio!’

Bernardo Carpio!

My mouth dropped open. She would have me turn into a giant? She was mad.

Suddenly the door flew open. Nena stood in the doorway, an ugly smirk on her face.

‘
Putris!
Who is this?’

I saw the glimmer of alarm on Gabriela’s face as she whirled towards her mother.

‘You insolent girl!’ Nena snatched one of the whips from the wall and advanced on Gabriela, fury etched on her face.

‘Ma, I can explain!’ Gabriela let go of the wishing stone and backed away. I realized with surprise that, domineering, outrageous and vicious though she was, Gabriela feared her mother.

This was my chance.

My only chance.

I leaped up, bumbling into the statue behind me.
The angry Christ teetered, and for a moment I thought it was going to fall on me.

In my haste to get out of the way, I blundered into Gabriela.

But the statue, weirdly, didn’t fall. It righted itself.

‘Grab him!’ Nena screamed.

Gabriela snatched me up against her in a tight embrace. I found my face pressed against the black stone dangling from her neck. My hand closed around it and I pulled it hard as I lunged away from her clutches. The necklace snapped off with a tiny
ping
.

‘No!’ Nena’s face was livid. ‘Gabriela, he’s got the stone!’

‘Give it back, you little monster!’ Gabriela, her eyes angry and staring, her teeth bared, looked more beast than beauty.

I ran for the front door.

There was a howl and I remembered with horror the sign on their front door.
Beware of the Dog
. Judas!
Oh please oh please oh please
. I could hear the dog’s toenails clattering on the tiled floor behind me, its heavy panting interspersed with a ferocious growling.

I reached the door and my numbed fingers fumbled to undo the massive latch. Suddenly Gabriela was
upon me, her long fingernails digging into my arms as she tried to tear me away from the door. We tumbled down to the ground, me trying to get away, Gabriela’s nails biting into my hand.

Then the dog’s wild barking was suddenly closer. It leaped on us and I could smell the stench of its breath, feel the heat of its body.

Gabriela screamed and let go of me. I didn’t wait to see what had happened. I yanked the door open and ran out.

As I stumbled away, I looked over my shoulder. Gabriela’s arm was caught fast between Judas’ slavering jaws. The witch was there, frantic, pulling at the dog’s collar. But the dog was not letting go. Gabriela screamed, struggling to get away. There was a mad, unseeing look in the beast’s eyes as it shook the limb from side to side, the saliva foaming from its mouth stained crimson by Gabriela’s blood.

I ran.

And as I ran, my courage shrivelled and turned black like a rotten banana.

Because after all that, I had failed.

I was such an idiot.

In the struggle, I had dropped the stone.

‘I
have sorry. My English is … 
barok
.’

Barok
. Baroque? Broken?

‘It’s OK, Bernardo, I understand everything.’

How many times had Bernardo apologized for his English? I couldn’t seem to make him understand that it really, really was OK.

In a funny way, I think I do get a lot of Tagalog. Language is just like a film soundtrack. I’ve heard Mum and Dad say,
Hey, that piece of music was the soundtrack of my childhood!
Well. Bernardo’s
barok
English was just him singing
his
soundtrack in another
key
. Not his key. My key. When I thought about it that way, it wasn’t the funny, broken English that I heard but the story he wanted to tell.

And what a story it was.

It was so strange and wonderful and terrible and awful at the same time. It was so unfair. Poor Bernardo, the smallest in his class, just a boy. Going through all that. And us, his family, who should’ve
been there with him, out here on the other side of the world.

How lonely he must have been. How he must have missed being with a mum and a dad – and a sister.

And I felt a sharp pang. Because I should have been there with him, shouldn’t I?

The funny thing is that Bernardo and I have more in common than anyone would think.

And the truth is, even though I didn’t know him, I have missed him just as much as he has missed me.

S
o I ran.

Ran from Judas, his sharp teeth sunk into Gabriela’s white flesh.

Ran from Gabriela, screaming and fighting to free herself from the evil dog’s grip.

Ran from Nena, the witch, trying to pull the dog off her daughter.

I ran all the way home, and that afternoon Auntie returned from the shops in a frenzy of gossip about how Gabriela was bitten by her own evil dog. How the neighbours had struggled to force the dog to let go. How instead of thanking them for their troubles, Gabriela and Nena had rushed back into the house, slamming the door behind them. How the dog was left outside the house, crazed and bloodthirsty. How everyone had fled into their houses as the dog had howled and snapped. How—

‘Enough, enough, Auntie,’ I cried, unable to bear
the horror of it all. ‘I don’t want to hear about it!’ I ran upstairs to my bedroom.

I did not emerge for supper and stayed in my room until well into the next day. ‘What is the matter with you?’ Uncle shouted through the door.

‘I don’t feel well,’ I replied. ‘Please leave me alone. I just want to sleep.’

I was waiting, waiting for the police to come. Isn’t that what Gabriela and Nena would do? Wouldn’t they command the police to fetch me and put me into jail? But nobody came.

When I finally did venture out, I pretended that I had a splitting headache. Auntie gave me a Panadol and sent me back to bed.

And I waited.

And still nobody came.

After three days, Auntie made me go back to school. Of Gabriela there was no sign. She didn’t turn up at school but that wasn’t unusual. Gabriela took holidays whenever she felt like it, and everyone – the nuns, the teachers, the children – was always happier for her absence. I avoided all talk about the witch and her daughter. Whenever Auntie started, I walked out of the room. I didn’t want to
know because if I didn’t know, I couldn’t be held responsible.

But still I was afraid.

It was a month before I realized what was happening to me. A month! I had no idea. And by the time I noticed, it was too late.

One day I saw a house lizard above the old wardrobe in my room. Auntie hated house lizards; the sight of them sent her into hysterics. Without thinking, I had plucked the lizard from the wall and released it to a tree in the back yard. It was only when I returned to my room that I began to think. To fetch the lizard high up on the bedroom wall, I had not needed to stand on a chair. To release it, I had merely reached up to a tree branch.

I had grown a foot taller.

‘But it must be normal,’ Uncle said. ‘Boys his age grow fast. I remember when I was his age, one moment I was a small boy, the next I was a teenager!’

I overheard Auntie on the phone to Mama. ‘Hello? Hello? Mary Ann? Oh, that Bernardo, he’s growing so fast.’

Everyone in San Andres acted like there was nothing strange about it. ‘How you’ve grown, Nardo,’
they said. But I lay awake at night, listening to my bones creak like bamboo as they lengthened. Wasn’t that the way with giants? Had not Old Tibo told us over and over again? You needed to stand back. Up close you couldn’t see them. Giants were the landscape.

I did not need to see a doctor. I knew what had happened. I was cursed.

I decided that I had to go back. I had to apologize. Then the growing would stop.

I knocked on Gabriela’s door with a beating heart, my apology carefully memorized.

The door swung open and at first I did not recognize the woman who opened the door. Her hair was a tangle, like thick black telephone wires matted in a coiled mess.

It was Nena.

I tried to speak. ‘Good … good afternoon …’

Her eyes stared into mine without any recognition. She was covered with a greasy-looking filth, like she’d been rolling around in the motor oil that dripped from the engines of the tricycles on the street. She smelled like she had not bathed for weeks. I took a tiny step back and resisted the urge to cover my nose.

‘M-Ma’am?’

But the woman did not seem to see me. She squatted down on her haunches, muttering to herself. She might have been praying but I wasn’t sure.

A hand touched my shoulder and I whirled around.

‘Bernardo!’ It was Sister Lydia, who lived down the road. ‘My, how you’ve grown!’

‘Sister Lydia,’ I said. And then I couldn’t go on.
What is wrong with Nena?
I wanted to ask. But my old fears locked the question in my throat.

Sister Lydia seemed unafraid. She stepped past me and bent down, gently helping the witch up to her feet. She spoke slowly to Sister Nena, like she was speaking to a child. ‘There, there, darling. Go back inside.’ She put a hand on Nena’s elbow and tried to usher her back into the house but the woman just turned and pressed her face against the door.

Sister Lydia turned to me. ‘She is sick. She’s been very sick since the dog bit Gabriela. You heard about it, didn’t you?’

‘Yes, I heard.’

‘And what did you want from Nena?’

I bowed my head. How could Nena free me from the curse in this state? What was I to do now? Perhaps Gabriela would know. ‘Gabriela, is she here?’

As if in answer to my question, the dog began to howl inside the house, like a wolf at the moon. Goose pimples rose on my arms and I shuffled uncomfortably. ‘Oh, that Judas. He scares me.’

Sister Lydia’s eyes widened. ‘Nardo, that isn’t Judas.’

I squinted at her. ‘What do you mean?’

‘Judas was rabid. Dangerous. After he bit Gabriela, he went wild in the streets. We had to call the police. They caught him and destroyed him.’

‘Destroyed him? Then …’

The dog’s howls became louder. They were coming from the room above our heads.

Sister Lydia covered her face with her hands. ‘The dog is dead. That sound …!’

There was a banging above our heads and a window swung open. The dog’s howls resonated from deep inside the upstairs room. They subsided for a moment and then a shrieking began, unearthly and high and sharp.

Nena suddenly began to scream. ‘Gabriela! Oh save her, Lord! Gabriela!’

She threw her head back and held both arms out at the window as if someone was going to leap into her embrace.

Only then did I notice the small face staring down at us from the window. The hair was matted in long unkempt strands. If Gabriela had ever been a beauty, it was hard to see. Her expression was contorted with pain and madness. She strained towards the window, grunting like an animal. And then she opened her mouth and gave another bloodcurdling howl.

‘The dog infected Gabriela with rabies,’ Sister Lydia said, gently putting an arm around Nena, who was sobbing into the wall. ‘For a month, her mother tried to cure the illness with her spells and potions but nothing worked. By the time she took Gabriela to a doctor, it was too late. Nobody can help her now.’

E
verything pales into insignificance.

I’ve heard that said; read it in books.

But when it fits something you know in real life. Well. Everything pales into insignificance. All our troubles. The shoebox house. The workaholic parents. The basketball, or lack of it. Everything paled in the face of what Bernardo had been through.

I am the blame
. Bernardo’s soft, sad voice echoed in my head like my brain had somehow vanished and the sentence was just bouncing around in my big empty skull.

Yesterday’s Andi might have sniggered to herself – I mean, giants and witches and curses. I don’t go for Harry Potter or
The Lord of the Rings
or … but what Bernardo’s been through – it wasn’t just about magic, was it?

It took Gabriela a month to die of rabies.

After her death, her mother became obsessed with
Saint Gertrude, who has the power to free souls from Purgatory.

‘Mad Nena, she pray and pray so that Gabriela can go to Heaven,’ Bernardo explained. ‘Sometimes I pray too. I be very sad for her.’

I was tempted to say Gabriela did not sound like the Purgatory type. Wasn’t Purgatory a way-station for sinners who could still be saved? I had no doubt that she went straight to Hell.

But the earnest expression on Bernardo’s face made me hold my tongue.

On the day Gabriela finally died, Bernardo – who had grown to six and a half foot tall – took the bus to the nearest church in the next village, San Isidro. He went to Confession and begged forgiveness for his part in her decline.

Confession is supposed to be the secret sacrament, right? The priest, as God’s stand-in, is sworn never to reveal the confessions of his people. That’s how the slate can be wiped clean, and everyone can start from scratch and all that. Well. San Isidro had not been immune from the brutal bullying of the witch and her daughter. The priest could barely contain himself when he heard that Gabriela was dead and that the witch had lost her mind. He leaped
out of the confessional and shook Bernardo’s hand.