Tall Story (7 page)

Every man and boy in the village had experienced their first haircut at Tibo’s ancient hands. It was like
a benediction. Tibo was the oldest person in the barrio; his family had run a barbershop on the same spot on our road for almost a century.

The year Ma came to visit with little Amandolina and Uncle William, when the big earthquake hit, we all rushed out into the streets in our nightclothes, Amandolina in her father’s arms, me in Uncle Victor’s, and Ma and Auntie clutching each other like young girls. I remember hearing the sharp crackle of windows shattering like popcorn, the high wail which at first I thought was a fire truck’s siren but turned out to be screaming as people ran out into the street. And I remember Old Tibo weeping as he fell on his knees in the rubble. The earthquake had shaken his barbershop into kindling.

‘Why, God?
Why?
’

Much later, when I was older, Auntie told me that it was not the first time Old Tibo’s shop had been levelled by an earthquake.

The first time was many, many years ago, before Auntie was born, before most people now living in the village can remember. That time, the earthquake had struck while Tibo, his young wife and baby son were inside the shop.

That time, the tremors had been stronger, levelling
a chapel and the municipal hall. A few miles away, the hillside had yawned open and swallowed a schoolhouse, just like that. The seabed thrust giant waves onto the shore. A fishing village drowned.

Tibo was pulled out of the wreckage of his shop after twenty-four hours. He broke both his legs and a hip – but at least he was alive.

But both his wife and son were crushed to death.

W
e pulled into the school car park. The new gym sat on a fat cushion of mist.

Mum frowned and checked the clock on the Toyota’s dashboard. ‘I thought you said the trials were at eight o’clock? There’s nobody here—’

‘Eight-thirty,’ I said, kissing the air next to her cheek and jumping out before she’d even finished her sentence. ‘I wanted to get here early.’ I ran into the gym, basketball under one arm, ignoring her squeal of protest.

The gym was pretty snazzy; it was so new it had yet to absorb the odour of socks and sweat and trainers, the default aroma of any secondary school gym.

I came early so I could warm up.

No. I lie.

I came early because I couldn’t wait a minute longer. I was so excited, the butterflies in my stomach had morphed into monster ostriches.

There was an arctic gale blowing through the gap
between the double doors but I shrugged my tracksuit off anyway, I was that eager. On impulse, I had worn the Chicago Bulls basketball kit Dad got me on eBay. It was the first time I’d worn it and it felt crispy on my thighs.

But what if they took one look at me and said, ‘Sorry, you’re too short’?

The thought sent the ostriches galumphing. Stop thinking. Get going. Shoot some hoops.

I threw my stuff on a bench and ran out onto the court, dribbling the ball low as if a defender was already sweating over me.

OK, this is the thing about me and basketball: I may be small and I could be faster … but I never miss.

I. Never. Miss.

It’s some kind of weight-versus-strength-versus-balance thing. I just don’t miss. I shoot and the ball swishes through the basket. Hook shot. Set shot. Turn-around-jump shot. Lay-up. Under the basket. From the free-throw line. And even way, way out, from the three-point line.

It all goes in.

Swish.

Swish.

Swish.

I’d shot twenty in a row before the sound of the gym doors creaking open made me turn round to meet whoever it was – the coach? My new teammates? Heart booming, teeth shredding my bottom lip, I wondered if I looked like an idiot in the Chicago Bulls kit, like I’d dressed up all posh for a jeans-and-T-shirt party. Suddenly I wished I’d worn my plain old Nike sweats instead.

The heavy double doors swung open slowly and a boy shouldered his way in, one arm wrapped around a large kit bag, the other dragging a net sack full of basketballs. Our eyes met and then both of us looked at the other from top to toe. Oh Holy Mother of God, he was wearing a Chicago Bulls kit too. I felt a blush start up in my cheeks and spread to my forehead and ears like a rash.

The boy pointed at the
No Entry Unless Authorized
sign on the door. ‘Uh, you can’t play here, we’ve got basketball trials scheduled for eight-thirty.’ The stubby dreads on his head bounced like coiled springs.

‘I’m here for the trials,’ I said, hating that my whole face was now radiating more heat than a radiator. I probably looked like a well-boiled lobster. With freckles. ‘Are you the coach?’

The boy put the kit bag down, let go of the sack, and folded his arms across his chest, looking me up and down. ‘There’s no coach. Just me. My name’s Rocky. I’m the team captain.’

He was tall, probably six foot two, maybe more. I had to bend backwards from the waist to look up at him. He had biceps like boulders.

He stared at his shoes. ‘Listen, I’m sorry but …’

‘My name’s Andi,’ I said. ‘Andi with an
i
. I started at Saint Sim’s two days ago. My family just moved here. Near the hospital.’

‘Ah,’ the boy said. ‘That explains everything.’

‘Explains what?’

He smiled and scuffed the floor with his feet. Which were huge. I could probably swim in his Converses. ‘Well, it’s just that …’

I tried to relax. ‘Oh, well. I know. I’m really small. But you’ve only got to see me play …’

‘No, no.’ Rocky’s tan seemed to darken. Was he blushing too? ‘It’s … well, I’ve got to tell you now, before anyone else arrives. You’ve got it wrong.’

I closed one eye and peered up at him. What was he on about?

‘Andi … it is Andi, isn’t it?’

I nodded.

‘Andi, it’s great you’re here but … you’re new to the school so you had no reason to know …’

‘No reason to know what?’

There was real sorrow in his doggy brown eyes. ‘The Souls. It’s a
boys’
team.’

For the first time in my life I wanted to be even smaller than I was. I wanted to shrink away until I disappeared.

‘But your poster said: “Basketball,
anyone
”,’ I mumbled. ‘And Saint Sim’s is a mixed school – surely there’s a boys’
and
a girls’ …’

Rocky sucked his teeth and stepped closer, as if he wanted to do something sympathetic like pat me on the head.

‘It’s
boys only
. I’m sorry but you can’t join the team. There isn’t a girls’ basketball team but there’s a girls’ netball team. How about—’

But I didn’t wait to hear more. I grabbed my stuff from the bench, picked up my ball and ran.

‘H
ow is our Bernardo?’ Tibo always asked when I came in for a haircut.

He meant Bernardo Carpio, of course.

‘I’m fine,’ I mumbled as he produced a footstool. I had to sit on the low stool so that he could cut my hair without the help of a ladder. I was never going to be small enough to sit on the barbering chairs that could lean back, move up and move down.

‘Now, look. Up in the sky. What do you see?’ Tibo would say.

‘Nothing, sir. I see nothing,’ I murmured resignedly.

‘Precisely.’ Old Tibo pulled his clippers out. ‘So many millions of sins pushing the Heavens further and further away. Tragic.’

And then, as he cut my hair, he recited the story.

When Time began, people had no use for churches, nor did they pray. There was no need. Heaven sat low over the Earth, leaning gently against the tops of the
coconut trees. Thus gods lived and walked amongst men – indeed many fell in love with mortals and married them.

The offspring of these mixed marriages were the giants, who looked human but were of a magical size. They may not have been gods but they were immortal – unlike the human side of their families.

As time passed, humankind grew older and wilier and innocence was lost and life became a matter of what one could get away with. The accumulated sins of man began to push up against the Heavens, pushing it higher and higher and further and further away until one day the gods were amazed to see that the Earth was just a distant green patch under the clouds beneath them.

The giants were confronted with a difficult choice: to live with their heavenly parents in the sky, or step down to Earth to live with their mortal families.

Many stayed in Heaven. But who could bear to be parted from his or her mother? The ones with human mothers returned to Earth.

So Heaven rose beyond the atmosphere and the giants who had chosen to stay leaped down to Earth to make their lives amongst ordinary men.

And they were happy.

But only while their mothers were alive.

Their mothers eventually passed away, as mortals do.

Their neighbours, who previously had shown no sign of ill will, suddenly turned against them. They massed in small paramilitaries and attacked the giants, burning their homes, destroying their crops, and driving them out of their villages.

Hurt and disappointed, the giants filtered out across the world, some stepping over oceans in search of other lands, others simply lying down in their grief, covering themselves with forest and rock and becoming part of the landscape.

‘Do you really think that’s a bamboo thicket sighing in the wind?’ Old Tibo would put the clippers in his left hand to wag his right finger. ‘Do you really think that’s the monsoon howling? Do you really think that geology had a hand in carving that hill into the shape of a man’s body?’

‘No, sir,’ I’d say, bowing my head.

‘Giants! That’s what they are. Just giants. As for earthquakes – an earthquake is nothing but a giant’s shudder.’

This was my cue to ask the question I asked every time. ‘Why would a giant shudder?’

‘Regret, of course.’ Old Tibo would shake his head sadly. ‘All giants regret that they had to leave Heaven to be with their mortal mothers.’

The cellphone shuddered on the bed again. My eyes flew open. What time was it? I snatched the phone up.

But its little window remained dark.

Then it shook again.

It was not the phone.

It was the bed.

The wall.

The room.

Mama’s picture on the wall tilted slowly to the right.

Earthquake.

H
e had to crouch to get through the double doors.

And suddenly it was as if the crowd in Terminal 3 had turned into a sea of eyeballs, all swiftly rotated in our direction.

He was massive.

No, not massive, because he actually looked
slight
, if you could call a giant slight.

Slight like it would take a tiny gust to blow him over.

Slight like a long straw, all air and no structure.

Slight like an empty suit dangling from a hanger. A very
long
suit.

His shoulders were round and he was stooped.

Everything about him was lanky, his arms, his legs, his hair. Who cut his hair? It was
horrible
, chopped around his ears like a jigsaw. And don’t get me started on the suit, made of some kind of
shiny
nylon, and the tie that hung like it had been pasted on with Velcro.
On his feet he wore some deeply ugly sandals with
black
socks.

The other passengers emerging from the doors flowed past him like a fast-moving stream as he made his way towards us, walking like his legs were tree trunks that he had to uproot with every step.

His face was all angles, like the bones had grown all wrong, his cheekbones jutting, too sharp for a boy’s face.

Then when he spoke … oh, that voice!

He sounded like he was underwater. He sounded like he had the treble turned off. He sounded like Dad’s prehistoric CD Walkman with a flat battery.

And yep. He was
tall
.

I mean, did Mum actually think she was preparing me to meet this … this
GIRAFFE
 … by bleating ‘he’s tall’ every few minutes?

Lame. Lame. LAME.

M
a leaped higher than a grasshopper in a paddy field to hug me. She just missed my shoulders and embraced me around the waist instead.

The Arrivals area shimmered behind the tears in my eyes and I squeezed her hard.

‘Mama! Mama,’ I murmured, my throat tight. Suddenly the worries that had plagued me since I got off the plane vanished. Losing my way, taking the wrong exit, picking the trolley with a sticky wheel – nothing mattered.

I was in London at last.

Uncle William was waving a long white streamer high in the air. I recognized him from the photos: pineapple hair cropped close to his head, freckles like orange dust all over his face. More tears welled in my eyes as I read the message written across the banner with a marker pen.

Welcome Home, Bernardo.

Remembering my manners, I bent low to touch Ma’s hand to my forehead.

She grabbed my hand and cradled it against her cheek, whispering in Tagalog, ‘Oh, my son. My baby. At last. At last.’

Uncle William came forward, rolling the streamer into a scroll. He gave me a quick hug.

‘Welcome to London, Bernardo,’ he said.

Instead of touching his hand to my forehead, I shook it firmly, hoping that my palms weren’t sweaty. ‘Once you’re in England,’ Auntie had admonished, ‘do as the English do.’

But when I opened my mouth to speak, the English weighed my tongue down like a stone.

‘I am glad you meet me.’

Uncle William smiled. ‘Glad to meet you too,’ he replied and I almost sagged with relief.

‘I am fine, you are how?’ I said.

Uncle William paused like he was adding up a complicated sum, but he just clapped me on the shoulder and answered my question as if everything was OK. ‘I’m fine, Bernardo. Thank you for asking!’

Ma beamed up at me and continued to cling to my hand.

Where was Amandolina? There was no sign of my
sister in the airport crowd. Did she not come to meet me? Disappointment began to gnaw at my chest.