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Back The Human Zoo Save as PDF
Chapters (37)
  1. THE HUMAN ZOO
  2. Also by Sabina Murray
  3. Title Page
  4. Copyright
  5. Dedication
  6. Epigraph
  7. Part I
  8. I
  9. II
  10. III
  11. IV
  12. V
  13. VI
  14. VII
  15. VIII
  16. IX
  17. X
  18. XI
  19. XII
  20. XIII
  21. XIV
  22. XV
  23. XVI
  24. XVII
  25. XVIII
  26. Part II
  27. I
  28. II
  29. III
  30. IV
  31. V
  32. VI
  33. VII
  34. VIII
  35. IX
  36. Acknowledgments
  37. Back Cover

“That’s what tomorrow is for,” I said. “Or the day after.” I was not going to open it then because I knew what it was. Or at least who it was from. Even my aunt’s scolding eyes could not budge me.

I entered my room, feeling the exhaustion in every inch of my being, tempted to crash in my clothes. I left the envelope on top of the dresser, next to a framed picture of Tita Rosa’s grandchildren, taken in the eighties, people who all had kids of their own. I knew that the envelope had been sent by my husband, that I likely had something to sign, which I would send back to America. Then I would be free to start my new life. This should have been appealing, but I felt as intimidated by that prospect as I did by staying suspended in my separation. In the bathroom, the bucket of cold water awaited me, and although the thought of being clean was inviting, I hesitated to take the plunge.

VII

VII

It was Wednesday and I had been tasked with retrieving Tito Ben from the Jesuit retirement home. I stood by the reception counter, sobered by the strange quiet, which seemed unnatural in Manila. The building was new, the walls all painted white, and there was little decoration: a predictable print of the kneeling Saint Ignatius offering his sword, a statue of some tonsured, robe-wearing Spaniard, his neck garlanded in sampaguita. At the end of the hallway, a disturbingly lifelike cutout of the pope raised his hand in benediction, as if advertising the salvation that was soon to come to the aging priests. I heard the elevator doors slide open and Tito Ben appeared, leaning on a surprisingly tall male nurse, having descended to this level from his room on the fourth floor. He had recently been moved there from the third floor, although his first room had been on the second. It was if as if he were slowly inching his way to heaven.

“Ting,” he said, “You look more and more like your mother, only not so angry.”

My aunts and my tito Ben were the survivors of what had once been a group of seven siblings. One boy had not survived the war, another, cancer. The eldest had died of something appropriate for a person his age, and perhaps my mother had too: Parkinson’s in one’s eighties seemed more of a category of exit than an injustice.