Dating : A Dinner

I swear these people were vampires with the way they tried to sniff blood on everyone.

I shuffle uneasily in the restaurant, rubbing my worn sneakers against each other and making them squeak against the sleek ceramic floor of the restaurant we were sitting in. I look across the table and see Antonio sipping coolly from the glass of cold water he asked a waiter to bring to the table. I stare at mine as the moisture clumps up and drops down to the placemat. I’m thirsty, but I’m in no mood to drink anything.

The restaurant is filled with noise. There are people laughing, talking, and whispering, while the porcelain, glass, and ceramics clang and ting sharply throughout the room. A waitress notices my unease and comes forward to us and as she is about to open her mouth, Antonio waves his hand and signals that we still aren’t ordering, that we’re still waiting for another guest. My head swims as the people around me talk. I can hear them laugh while covering their mouths, I swear they’re laughing at me but they’re speaking in an accent my friends and I used to mock — now it seems that I’m the butt of the joke.

“You said it would casual,” I say to him across the table.

He raises both his eyebrows at me, he seems nervous too but I can’t tell — he just looks so different with his blazer and well-groomed hair. He takes another sip from his glass of water and swallows.

“Well, this is casual, isn’t it?” he seems oblivious to the torment I feel in my mind.

“Tony, I’m wearing a t-shirt and jeans, and I probably still have that fresh from the jeepney smell. Hell, I feel like people are thinking that I’m one of those gold diggers we see with foreigners, we probably look like that couple on TV everyone makes fun of. Casual meant, oh I don’t know, KFC, McDonalds, fast food?”

His lip stiffens, “well, what do you want me to do?”

I shoot him a bewildered look. I sigh and stand up and make my way towards the restroom. My head spins as I stand up too quickly but regain my composure as quickly as I can. I don’t want those girls at the opposing table making more jokes and jeers at my expense. My rubber shoes squeak against the tiles and I keep my head down as I walk. This would be the last time I would go to the bathroom tonight, I swear to myself. I weave through the dressed tables and keep my head down, I keep my hands in my pockets. I was afraid these snobs could smell how clammy they were quickly getting.

I finally make it to the restroom and run my hands through with cold water. I feel my brain coming back level.

“You know, we aren’t supposed to do that,” an unknown voice tells me from the door, “you know, waste the water,” she finishes.

I stand up straight, shocked by a stranger taking note of my presence.

“S-sorry.”

“I don’t blame you, I saw you queasy and squirming in your table, my first thought was that he was keeping you against your will. You are here on purpose, aren’t you?”

I calm down and realize that it was our waitress talking to me. I nod yes and grab a paper towel from the dispenser.

“Look, you have to be more steely than that,” she says, “I see this quite often, believe it or not, and you have to be tougher than what you’re showing me. I’ll see what I can do about your shoe situation. Anyway, I have to go, there’s only so much time given for a bathroom break.”

Before I could protest she rushes out of the comfort room and I’m left alone with my thoughts once again. I take a few deep breaths and run my hands with cold water again. I think I can do this, hopefully? I shake my hands and jump a few times to get the blood flowing and head back out to our table.

I notice the waitress mopping up the space near our table with her head hung low, conveniently hiding a smirk as those girls from the other table roll their eyes in annoyance. Antonio looks at the waitress with slight disgust on his lips. He feels like an entirely different person in here. I walk back to the table as calmly as I manage, careful to keep the squeaking from my sneakers to a minimum. To my surprise, my sneakers were quiet for the first time in the night.

“Can you believe that woman?” Antonio says, breaking me out of my mind, “She said she didn’t notice the hot tea spilling out of the cup, how could a restaurant like this hire someone so clumsy? She just finished mopping, pero, alam mo yun?”

I keep down a smile and look for the waitress around the restaurant but see no trace of her. Before I could spot her, a tall figure clad in red approaches us and gives Antonio a hug. She gives him a kiss on the cheeks and asks how she is. I wipe my hands on my jeans and extend my hand from where I am. She takes it lightly as if she’s afraid to catch germs or dirt from me. She holds me in her gaze keeping her chin up. Her stare pierces right through me and I feel invisible, irrelevant, small.

“So you’re Christina, I’ve heard so much about you. What’s your last name again?”

“Delgado”, I say.

“From Panay? I used to vacation with some Delgados from Panay when I was younger, they were warm, friendly people, say, how’s the sugar business?”

I look at Antonio confused, I didn’t know what to say.

“Oh, Chrissy’s from Tarlac, I met her in one of our classes,” he finally responds

“Oh?” was her only reply.

We were still standing around the table and I felt confused as to why we were still standing up. I try to take stock of Antonio’s mother and notice that she didn’t look very motherly. I was used to mothers being more relaxed with their appearances at the age I assumed she was, but she wasn’t. Her hair was kept short and colored as if she just came fresh from the salon. She was dressed in a red dress that came down to a tight taper just above her knees. Her facial features were prominent with her high nose and sharp cheekbones, her skin was almost translucent — I didn’t see why she felt the need to put on makeup on top of it.

“Oh, well, then sorry for assuming, but you do look familiar, are you sure I don’t know your father? The Delgados are a big family after all,” she says as she finally takes a seat, followed by Antonio, and lastly, me. I didn’t quite understand the emphasis on that last statement. I try not to think about it.

“I already had some coffee ordered for us as I walked in, thank you so much for waiting for me,” she says, her eyes fixed on her son.

“The name’s Isabela Flores if Toning here hadn’t already told you.” she turns to me.

“Oh, sorry, yes he did tell me, I just didn’t know how to address you,” I mumble.

“Just call me Tita, dear. Anyhow, Chrissy, Toning here tells me that you’re taking Hotel and Restaurant Management? Just tell me when and I can pull some strings here and have you settle in,” she says and turns to Antonio “I thought I wanted to take HRM when I was younger because of their pretty uniforms but my dad said they were just glorified servants with degrees.”

“Oh, I didn’t mean that in any offense, dear,” she continues, “it’s just what they told me. It’s not like that anyways, I mean imagine how chaotic our vacations would be if it weren’t for people like you. It’s such a cute course. I imagine the uniforms are still cute?” she addresses me as if noticing that I was dressed too far down for an establishment like this.

I stiffen my lip and force a smile.

“Yes, the uniforms are still cute and way too hot in normal Manila weather,” I say.

“Well, just stay in the aircon my dear, I mean, wouldn’t it be better to look cute and pretty than plain?”

At that moment I felt all the more conscious of how plain and out of place I looked in the restaurant. Everyone around me was wearing clothes from brands I couldn’t afford. Everyone looked so pretty with their hair down and wearing clothes that complemented their fair skin. I’ve even caught Antonio taking one or two glimpses at the girls on the table next to me. I want to let my hair down from the ponytail I’ve tied it in, but maybe doing so would invite Tita Isabela to make more comments about being plain.

My mind drones for a moment, I’ve never felt more conscious of my brown skin up until this point. Though I’ve never thought about it before, Antonio is also deathly white. I always thought it was because he was sickly and never went out of his condo. Now, looking at him and his mother side to side and I could see the similarities, that it was hereditary. Come to think of it, everyone around me in this restaurant is blindingly white, whether it was natural or bleached skin, everyone was fair-skinned except me. I fit better with the waiters, waitresses, and bartender — I wouldn’t look out of place there.

“I’m sorry, but I couldn’t help but overhear, did you say you were Isabela Flores?” a girl from the adjacent table says.

“The one and only”, Isabela replies, rising to take the outstretched hand of the girl who took her notice.

“Can I have your autograph?” one of the girls say as she stands and walks over to our table.

“I’ve been training for pageants since I was little and I would love to have the blessing of one of Manila’s classic beauty queens.”

“Of course, my dear, where do I sign?”

The girl hands over a clean notebook and Isabela signs it with a short message. She tells the girl good luck and hopes that she might be the judge in one of her pageants one day, assuring her that she would tip the judges in her favor.

“What well-mannered girls.” She sits back down as the girl walks back to their table and I can overhear the giggles from their table, mocking me and my appearance, loud whispers of how someone like me could have ever landed a Flores — that I might have bewitched him since I look like a bruja.

The waitress comes and puts down three cups of coffee before us along with containers of cream and sugar. Antonio begins mixing his coffee with a few teaspoons of sugar and no cream which I found strange — it wasn’t the way he would usually mix his coffee, it was always deathly sweet when we were together. I grab the sugar and cream and begin making coffee as I usually do: with heaping amounts of both — I liked it sweet and it was normal to do so, right? As I pass the containers to Mrs. Flores I can see that her face changed quickly from a look of quiet judgment to a forced smile.

“You know, even though I grew up in Manila, I never understood the craze about Starbucks and all those chains that popped up in the last decade or so. They all just tasted like liquid diabetes to me with all those toppings and extras they put on it. Call me old fashioned I guess,” she takes the containers and makes coffee exactly as how Antonio made it. Ah, I think to myself, that’s what’s different now.

“Anyway,” she continues, “I do thank both of you for waiting for me, there was a terrible line at the salon. On top of that, there was one of those people that just made so much noise during her whole stay and when it came to paying, her card got declined. Ano ba? If you can’t afford it then just stay out of places like that. I hate it when poor people try and look rich. There’s nothing gracious in being social climbers.”

My mind focuses on how she said poor. What was her determining factor for being poor? I didn’t have much money by a longshot, I’m from a no-name family in the province — it didn’t even matter which province, my name could as easily be transplanted anywhere and it wouldn’t matter. She takes the cup to her face without having to lean forward to take a sip. She flips through the menu and between us I could feel an invisible barrier that separated her from me. Her body was turned away and seemed eager to leave like she knew this wasn’t worth her time. Or I’m overthinking and all of this is actually in my head. I try to mimic the way she drank coffee, lifting the cup all the way to my lips, but it sloshes over and drips to my jeans. I look to see if anyone’s noticed and catch a quick snicker from Isabela.

“Well,” she says, putting down the menu, “shall, we order? I’m absolutely starving.”

She signals to the waitress and I can’t help but notice the grace in how she carries herself. From the way she stood, the way she sits, the way she motions for waiters and waitresses, everything seemed to come to her with natural grace. It makes me wonder how it was that Antonio could ever notice a girl like me, she made me feel so inadequate even without saying anything. We list down our orders to the waitress and she lists them all down on her notepad. She flashes me a reassuring smile.

“Chrissy,” she says in a way that places emphasis on my name, “where in Tarlac are you from?”

“We’re from Paniqui, my dad is a farmer while my mom runs a tailoring shop. It’s not much but we make ends meet,” I say as a matter of fact.

“Oh, well, I’m glad. I heard the Villamonte’s are opening a subdivision there soon?”

“Yeah, we really hope that they don’t. It’s going over so much farmland that so many people will lose their livelihood”.

“Well, they should just reach a settlement, maybe they could replace those shoddy little houses of theirs. You know, to make things pretty”.

I raise my eyebrow as a kneejerk response. I’ve always known that Antonio and I came from wildly different background, I think I only realize now just how different the worlds we came from are. I was one of those families, but saying that now with her opinion out in the open just feels like opening disagreement. I wanted her to have a good first impression, after all.

Moments pass in silence after that last sentence. She sips coolly from her cup of coffee and I can’t help but feel the cold emanating from her. The whole time that she’s been here her whole person’s been turned away from me and almost facing the exit as if she couldn’t wait to leave. She puts her cup down and slowly turns her gaze towards me.

“You’re staring, dear,” she says.

“Oh, sorry, I didn’t mean to.”

She waves her hand, “It’s nothing, don’t worry, I’m used to it. People used to look at me like a pack of ravenous wolves.”

I felt small once again like I was so far out of my depth. I fiddle with my fingers and look around the restaurant. I could tell that the place was old with its Greek columns and vaulted ceilings. It was a relic from a time long gone, a relic that survived war and modernization. An awkward silence ensues between the three of us. Antonio is distracted and probably doesn’t notice the quiet that had enveloped our table. Isabela taps her fingers on her thigh in quiet composure, I don’t know what to say and I don’t know if I should say anything. I was out of my depth, who was I kidding? I still felt like a sore thumb in the middle of all this and Antonio who swore would be my saving grace if things went awry, faded into the background deep in thought or lost in the static of his own head — he truly felt different here.

“I remember when my father brought me here once,” she says to me, “it was to meet Antonio’s father. It was an arranged marriage, did you know that?”

“Oh, no, Tony didn’t make mention of that,” I say

“Well, it was, I was so terrified. ‘What if he’s a brute?’ I asked my father, ‘Dad, what if he’s manyak?’, he used to just wave his hand and tell me that the Floreses come from a good family, a good old family that’s been friends of our family since before the Spanish left. Imagine, hija, it was the seventies and my dad was still talking about the Spaniards like they just left yesterday.”

I can only smile in response.

“It all worked out in the end, I suppose,” she no longer seemed to be talking to me but focused on an indeterminate spot past me, like there was a window to her past just above my forehead, “Valentin turned out to be gentle and we took our time, eventually we did fall in love, even for just a moment. We only had one kid, Toning, and he was so sickly when he was young we were so worried,” her eyes lock on to mine and I feel her mind coming back down to earth, “so sorry, dear, I didn’t think I would suddenly soliloquy into a musing of my past.”

“It’s all right, Tita, it happens to the best of us,” I say, smiling slightly and hoping that there was a genuine connection there.

“Did you know that Toning here was also set to have an arranged marriage?” she says, dropping the news like it was announcing that dinner was ready.

I make no response but my entire person is frozen in place, shocked by the news that I never heard before.

“He didn’t tell you? That is so rude of you, Toning,” she says.

“It didn’t seem to matter, I didn’t want it, mother, that might have worked for you but I knew it wouldn’t work for me,” Antonio says, his mind suddenly back at the table.

“Well, you left a girl heartbroken, Toning, she was looking forward to getting to know you. The Dy’s have been so cold towards the family since. Diane’s been so miserable, you know. And she’s such a nice girl from such a good family.”

“I. Didn’t. Want. It. Mother,” Antonio says through his teeth.

“Now, now, let’s not get mad, hijo, let’s not ruin a perfectly nice dinner, right, Chrissy?”

She flashes me a smile, a fake smile, but a smile nonetheless. I feel my head swimming and the world around me got louder and brighter. I didn’t know. I didn’t know. How much don’t I know. Was I just a means for Tony to get out of that arrangement? Fuck, fuck, fuck, I was, wasn’t I? My head swims and I feel as though the world’s eyes on me, the snickers from the next table were for me, they’re laughing at me, at my shoes, at my hair, at my clothes, they’re just laughing — I feel it, I’m sure of it. I look at Tita Isabela and her mouth’s formed into a smirk, Antonio crunches his eyebrows together, visibly annoyed.

“Are you all right, my dear?” Isabela says to me.

“Sorry, I just didn’t know, I was just caught off guard,” I say, trying to regain my composure.

“Well, hija, you know how men are. Especially the Flores men, you never know where the surprises end. Am I right, Antonio?”

“I barely knew Diane, mother. I wasn’t going to go around marrying someone. All my friends were getting college degrees and I wanted one too, I hated how suffocating it was,” Antonio says.

“Yes, yes, your friends were getting degrees, but hijo, did you need one? You could have just as easily learned from your father, your name is a pedigree in itself. Who would say no to you? What did you want? A Cinderella story? Don’t forget that we obliged your selfishness and I managed to convince your father to let you have the allowance that you have despite his crueler wishes. He’ll come around, I kept telling him.”

I look to Antonio in hopes that he would defend me. I don’t know if I’m the Cinderella in this story, I hope not, I don’t want to feel like some charity case by the old money I never realized Antonio was from. I wait for a response from Antonio, a defense, anything at all. Instead, I find myself punched in the gut when I see him sink back on to his chair, filled with vitriol but deciding not to do anything.

Isabela straightens herself on her chair and clasps her hands together on the table, “let’s not ruin dinner even more, hijo, Chrissy, you have been lovely, you didn’t need to hear any of that. Let me just call the waitress and see if our orders are coming up.”

Part of me doesn’t believe her, in all honesty I don’t think I believe anything from here anymore. My mind is blank in static as it buzzes in and out without making any sense. It was a radio looking for frequency. She wasn’t here for me, she was here to tell me off in with all the grace that she could muster, I thought to myself. I take out my phone and text my friend the address of where she would pick me up — far enough from here that I wouldn’t be followed. I felt disgusting, disgusted with everything, I felt lied to, and cheated. I don’t want to be a means to the freedom that Antonio had so wanted. No, he was going to do that himself.

“I’m sorry but something came up and I have to go,” I say.

“Chrissy,” Antonio begins to say.

“Don’t. Please. Let me.”

“Well, dear, if you really must go. I won’t stop you,” says Isabela

“Thank you, Tita,” I flash her the fakest smile I can muster. I felt nothing but disgust, none of that awe about her grace remained. I truly did feel disgusted. “Please tell Diane that I’m sorry that Antonio hurt her.” I continue.

“I will, my dear, she’ll hear all about it,” she says, only half-trying to hide the smirk on her lips. It was mission accomplished after all.

“Chrissy, please,” Antonio begins.

“Is that all you really have to say? Please?” I raise my voice at him. “You know what? Never mind, you’re so threatened to lose your precious money and your status and all the perks that come with your name. I mean Jesus Fuck, was I not white enough for you, was I just your ticket ride out, would you have defended me if I was a Delgado from Panay?” I sling my bag on my shoulder, take out the money I had left in my wallet, shove it to Antonio, and storm out of the restaurant. I make my way to the exit and see Antonio frozen in place with his hands cupping his head and Isabela sipping the last of her coffee. She turns to say something to Antonio but I don’t bother with knowing what it might be. I begin heading out of the block and still feel the disgust swirling in my stomach. I buy a cigarette from a street vendor with the coins I have left and light it. I watch the smoke rise and sweat begin to form on my forehead.

Stay in the aircon dear, I say to myself, mimicking the way Isabela said it. I was truly a mongrel, perhaps. A bitch without a pedigree or a breed to call its own. But people weren’t dogs. I don’t understand why they were so proud to breed like one. Can your retriever stud for my labrador? We can split the profits when we sell the pups. Can you Flores men stud for a Dy? We’ll make business more profitable if we’re in it as a family. Same fucking thing. My friend shoots me a text and tells me that she’s near. I finish my cigarette and flick it to the canal.

“You look like you’ve had a rough night,” the vendor says

“You’re right there, manong, things are different when you’re rich, we worry about making it through the day. They worry about how things would look,” I say to him, handing a few more coins for another stick.

He refuses the payment and gives me another stick for free, “yeah, but it’s hard to be poor too. What I wouldn’t give to be rich.” he tells me.

I light the cigarette and take a drag, “trust me, manong, it’s hard to be rich especially when we’re like you and me, we’ll never belong.”

“Ah, bahala na, each to their own,” he says, smiling at me.

I take another drag from my cigarette and realize that I don’t feel out of place anymore. Manong had the same color of my skin and the person walking there in the street across dressed like me. I close my eyes and take comfort in it — in the streets with my fellow mongrels and half-breeds.