Hair Trigger 2.0 Issue Two

thing. I say, every ten years we splurge.”
The first few months, we spent our Saturdays driving around the countryside
in the new Impala. We pretended we were buying one of the ranch-style houses
with the bigger, more colorful gardens in front and a grove of orange trees fanning
out on a slope behind it. I packed chicken adobo and rice in Tupperware, and when
we found a house we liked, we stopped across the street and ate our lunch in the
car. I used to cook a bucketful of chicken, for Bonafe liked to eat. I made sure we
had plenty of napkins, for chicken adobo is slippery, greasy, and I didn’t want any
stains on the cloth seats. Bonafe isn’t a tidy person, but on our picnic trips he was
very good.
I tried to make our driving trips pleasant, but there were times when
Bonafe grew melancholy. When we looked at the big farmhouses, he would say it
was useless to save for a house with many bedrooms since we couldn’t have
children. I never told him what the doctor told me, that he was infertile. I explained
to him I was too frail to carry a baby to term. During a game of rummy, Manong Leo
questioned the results, and although I scolded him for bringing it up, Bonafe’s
thoughts and words reflected Manong Leo’s doubts. We stopped looking at
houses after a while. I convinced him we were fine, the two of us together. He
nodded and patted my hand when I told him we can treat ourselves, like he did by
getting the silver Impala.
Sometimes he let me drive the car to the packing house. Most of the Filipinas
in Terra Bella packed oranges at Grand View Citrus Heights at the edge of town,
and many of us living on the same street carpooled. We were at work by seven in
the morning, standing up all day, our hands flying back and forth to fill up crates
with oranges. In the summers, we rolled up our pant legs to our knees and draped
wet washcloths straight from the lunchroom Frigidaire on our heads. In the winters,
we kept our coats on to ward off the unforgiving cold of the Central Valley. It was
always like that, every season, every year. But then we got the silver Impala, and
I insisted on driving my neighborhood co-workers to Grand View. When I warmed
up the car and checked all the needles and numbers on the dashboard while the
others stared in awe, Bonafe watched from the kitchen window, smiling at me
sitting in the driver’s seat of our “fancy thing.”
So our fancy car is old now. Maybe it’s in a junkyard, maybe in somebody
else’s garage. I wonder how much it sold for. I try not to think where the money
has gone. I keep hearing Manang Elsie’s words. What does it matter if he used
the money to go to Las Vegas, or to place a bet on a horse he’s never seen before,
hundreds of miles away—a young horse with swift brown legs that knows the secret
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Patty Enrado