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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

I spent that night at Tita Dom’s house because any more driving, even if it was not that far, seemed unwise. She rifled through the guest room closet and produced a floral shift. There must have been a hundred of these dresses, laundered and folded, waiting in closets all around Manila for me to show up and wear them. I was exhausted, but my adrenaline was high after the ride, and I had a hard time falling asleep. I switched on the light. On a shelf packed with notebooks, accounting ledgers, folders, and papers, there was an old copy of Jonathan Livingston Seagull and a paperback of Love Story, the cover a photograph of Ali MacGraw and Ryan O’Neal. Crammed alongside were eight books by the motivational writer Og Mandino, who must have motivated, at some point, some member of my family. A leatherette-bound copy of War and Peace kept strange company with the other books. I took it off the shelf and opened it. The onionskin pages fluttered open, revealing the tiniest of print and a fresh smell at odds with the general dampness that had worked its way into the other volumes. I decided on Jonathan Livingston Seagull, which I’d already read—this exact same copy—some thirty-five years earlier, and after the first few pages of Jonathan’s dissatisfaction with the seagull life, I fell into a restless sleep.

XVI

XVI

I’d breakfasted with my tita Dom, pan de sal and lansones, and by the time I made it back to my tita Rosa’s house, it was almost time for lunch. The weather had cleared and the air seemed washed, the storm of the previous night more in the realm of nightmares than weather.

“Do you know who missed you last night?” said Tita Rosa, walking out of the kitchen. To answer her own question she gestured dramatically down at her side. Tito Iñigo was wagging his tail with such energy that his whole rear end was wagging too. He ran over and I reached down to pat him. “I can’t take this dog in the house anymore. It’s over. You know, he urinated on your tito Ben’s leg.”

“What did Tito Ben say?”

“He was taking a nap. I thought it better not to wake him.” She thought for a minute. “And then I forgot to tell him.” Tita Rosa got a stern look on her face. “Enjoy him while you can. I’m giving him to my chicken suki in the market. She needs a dog to keep away the rats.”

“You can’t do that,” I said. “She’ll feed him chicken bones and it’ll kill him.”

“He’s a Filipino dog, Ting. That is their life.”

“But he’s already ruined. We’ve been feeding him hamburger and he sleeps on a blanket.”

“And he urinates on the blanket. And on people.”