fiction by e. p. tuazon
Bellow Below
My fraternal twin’s name was Boni—short for Bonifacio—and, before we separated, we co-leased a two-bedroom-one-and-a-half-bathroom deal in Burbank. The building was old, but the rooms had been refurbished, and the owners couldn’t wait to make their money back. It was perfect timing. Boni had settled into a gig with a family e-zine writing fluff like top ten TikTok lists and how-to’s for blood sugar pinpricks and Apple Pay, and myself, a stable position in a Christian advertisement firm writing clickbait for people looking for absolution and KY Jelly. In other words, we were fresh scum ready to migrate from our primordial ooze or parent’s house and strike out on our own, together. We applied and signed the lease the next day. We didn’t have to look at what we were getting into. We were free, and that’s all we wanted.
Boni and I were as close as twins could get, but it wasn’t without its pains. We grew up in the same tract house with the same immigrant-exiled parents, the same Catholic school classes with the same hard-fought grades, the same discount-designer clothes with the same knock-off BOGO shoes, but, despite all that, we were completely different. Boni wasn’t without friends, but the same could be said about enemies, and he made a lot of them. Yet, there was always some delight he took in seeing people upset and spiteful. Some delight he had even in his own feelings and reactions to things. He had girlfriends through grade school then switched to boyfriends in college. He never held relationships for long and it was seldom I ever met one.
I, on the other hand, was always the more reserved one. I kept my dislikes to myself and chose the least abrasive form of opposition to whatever challenges I met. I made few friends and have only dated three guys in my entire life, sleeping only once with the second after four years of prodding, and eventually marrying the third. Nevertheless, it was all to the same merit as my brother. I took pleasure in knowing these experiences, be it joy and pain, happiness and sorrow, gain and loss. It didn’t matter whose, theirs or mine.
Despite our differences, Boni and I reveled in these interactions together and told each other everything. Not just our everythings about others but also our everythings about ourselves. I knew how he wanted to tear out Abigail Legaspi’s hair when she kissed him in sixth grade, and he knew how I threw away my panties so our mom wouldn’t find out I slept with my second boyfriend when she did the family laundry. You learn more about a person when you hear what they think about other people. Boni and I knew each other more than anyone else, which was probably the start of our inevitable unraveling. Like a trapeze act where you have to trust the person to catch you and know when to let you go, we were the perfect pair. We really knew how to say goodbye.
And it all began when I told him about my future husband. Two years into us living together, Boni suspected what I was going to tell him the moment I invited him to the new, expensive, contemporary restaurant by our house, but he didn’t mention his suspicions until he was already there, talking about the bongus we had both ordered—or milkfish, the waiter had called it in his jubilant recitation of “today’s specials.”
“Milkfish caught just a few days ago from the volcanic coast of Tagaytay?” Boni mimicked the way our waiter orated the script, smiling like the Cheshire Cat from Wonderland except he couldn’t turn invisible even if he tried. “I wonder if it came in a balikbayan box with a couple of souvenirs? A T-shirt? No, a cute barrelman! I’d love to pull up one—”
Afraid someone might hear him condescending the restaurant, I tacitly kicked him and told him to behave.
“It’s bongus,” he uttered more softly but with more pomp, “why not call it what it is?”
“It’s milkfish. That’s what it’s called.”
“No, it’s called Bongus in the Philippines. It’s called Awa Awa in Hawaii, Ikan Susu in Malaysia. It’s bongus. You can google it.”
“It’s all milkfish. Google that.”
“God, we can get this any time at a tenth of the price.”
“Then why did you order it?”
“I’m curious why it’s the same price as the Wagyu skirt steak. Oh, I’m sorry, beef skirt steak. Maybe it has something to do with the volcano? Will there be shards of obsidian, you think?”
Unamused, I ignored his joke, and we quietly drank our twelve-dollar domestic beers until our food arrived. With the glow of a proud parent, our waiter delicately placed both plates before us at the same time. In the center of each, a six-ounce, skin-on, square fillet of bongus rested over a bed of black currant, mungo bean, and a bright orange puree of butternut squash and spices. Dashed around the plate were two spoon-waves of green chimichurri and four sprigs of fennel. The familiar pungent smell of the fish frying in our parent’s kitchen mingled with the austere and delicate aromatics of the restaurant’s interpretation. Our minds wandered back and forth between familiar and unfamiliar territory and, for a moment, I thought we might get to enjoy our meal after all the doubt, but the waiter wasn’t done with his service.
“Cane-na! Enjoy.”
Boni and I shuddered. We both knew what he had tried to say, but I was hoping to be wrong while Boni was hoping to be right when we asked him to repeat what he said.
“Cane-na. It means, ‘come eat with us’ in the Tagalog.”
“We know. We’re Filipino. It’s ka-in-na.” Boni mouthed each word slowly, sticking out his tongue for the “ka” and “na” and flashing all his teeth with the “in.”
“Ka-ina?”
“Ka-in-na.”
“Kayina?”
“Ka-in-na!”
The waiter and Boni went back and forth, each attempt getting more ridiculously exaggerated in speech until it sounded more like a Haka War Cry than an invitation to dinner. After startling a few tables around us and what seemed like a hundred kain na, Boni finally stopped torturing the poor guy.
“There! You got it!” Boni exclaimed, giving the waiter a high-five.
Feeling accomplished, the waiter barked kain na once more before gleefully meeting his next guests.
“You’re an ass,” I whispered. We didn’t even speak the language ourselves let alone knew whether or not someone was pronouncing something the right way.
Nevertheless, Boni was pleased with himself. He lifted a fork and turned his teasing from the waiter to his meal. “Well, at least he could say Tagaytay and Tagalog.” The brittle skin made a satisfying crackling sound as his fork sliced easily through it and the plump white meat. I broke into my own and we both mouthed a piece at the same time. Savoring the delicate flavors, I tried to meditate on the taste but was disrupted by Boni’s immediate sigh of disapproval. Like a heavy cloud of gloom, his groan withered whatever hopes may have been incubating on my tongue. Neither of us took another bite.
“It’s not that bad. We should eat it,” I said, not willing to give up so easily.
“Go ahead. I’m sending this back.”
“Really? It’s a goddamn new restaurant, Boni! Be nice! You’ve been rude ever since we got here!” I said, and upon hearing my voice rise, I proceeded to fork another piece of bongus, unable to taste it through my anger and anticipation of what I needed to say.
“Ok, I’ve been rude. I’m sorry. But come on, this bongus, it’s not worth as much as that Wagyu.”
“That’s not the point,” I said but agreed. No matter how good this dish was, Wagyu was always going to be better than bongus. “The point is that you need to stop criticizing people so readily and condescending them with your sleazy, bourgeois attitude.”
“But they started it,” He whined, play-pouting like a child.
“Don’t do that to me. I deserve better from you.”
He settled back in his seat. “Susmaryosep. You sound like mom when she found me in bed with the choirmaster.”
“Is everything a joke to you?”
“Do you have to eat everything you pay for?”
“You’re hurting people, Boni. Some people are too stupid to see you do it to them. Some people even think it’s cool. But you won’t be able to live like this forever. Eventually, you’re going to have to grow up.”
“Something tells me this isn’t about bongus,” he said, picking up his drink and rubbing his upper lip on its brim.
“Unbelievable. This is why you don’t have a steady boyfriend.”
“I have a boyfriend, thank you very much.”
“No, you have boy toys. You don’t have relationships, you play games. When are you going to get serious? When are you going to start showing some self-control and start trusting people enough to enjoy what’s good about them?”
“And you’re telling me you’ve grown up?”
“Yeah, I have. I met a guy,” I finally confessed, and told him about number three. He nodded silently, drinking his beer while I told him about how we met and how long we had been seeing each other, and how I thought it was getting serious. Boni had stopped talking, already getting out of me what he needed to hear. It was the first time I had kept something from him. Had someone eavesdropped on us, they may have mistaken me for someone admitting to an affair, but they wouldn’t be wrong. I was cheating on my partner, betraying his trust for my own benefit under the delusion of saving his feelings. What made it worse was Boni wouldn’t even think of doing the same thing to me. Despite all his failings—his pageantry and sadistic ways—he would never try to lie or intentionally hurt me. Soon after, we boxed the bongus, left a tip, and kept our leftovers until they started to smell like fruit and cheese.
The third guy’s name was Boying Bautista, but everyone called him Boy. Every Filipino family has an Uncle Boy, but I never thought I’d ever meet one my age, let alone date and marry them. Boy was an engineer for a private military contractor, the kind that required family interviews and security clearance to get through the door. He was always trying to fix things. The first time I visited his apartment, there were gutted appliances and their miscellaneous parts strewn across his floor. The only place that was untouched by the clutter was the kitchen. He was always trying to take broken things apart and learn how to repurpose their pieces to help other things work. He didn’t like to waste anything. Other than that, everything else about him was unremarkable, and I knew it would be hard to get Boni to like him, to justify my hiding Boy from him without further compromising my personal choices and interests.
But the more Boy and I stayed together, the more I became critical of Boni. In our twenty-five years of living together, the most dependable thing about Boni was that he wasn’t. Sometimes he would give you his full attention, shower you with all the understanding, wit, and praise you’d ever want from anyone in your life. Then, the other times, he would ignore you, your thoughts and feelings, or worse: discard them without giving you a second thought. He tortured people, whether on purpose or not, in favor of his own pleasure. It’s what attracted people to him. Boy was the opposite of that. He’d rather torture himself than waste anyone’s feelings. It was pitiful but endearing. It was something Boni could never offer.
Before I asked Boni to meet Boy in person, I shared a picture of him on my phone like a psychologist trying to mentally prepare their patient to reexperience a traumatic episode. By that time, Boni had listened to me talk about Boy, but he never asked after him. I felt the need to push things forward and went to the last picture Boy and I had taken together on my phone. I was sure Boni had seen it on my social media, but he never reacted or commented on anything I ever posted there.
Boni rested his back on the floor of our apartment, holding up my phone above his face. I rested on the couch. In the picture, Boy and I were each holding opposite ends of a narwhal tusk at Fishermen’s Wharf.
“Cute teeth.”
“Shut up.”
“Didn’t they use a narwhal tusk to beat up that London Bridge loon?”
“Stop holding my phone that way. You’ll drop it on your face.”
Boni turned his back to me and swiped through more of my pictures of Boy and I on my phone. “Why are you showing me these?”
“I didn’t know if you’ve seen him before.”
“I have. Not my type.”
“I don’t care if he is. Not everybody likes the same things you do, you know.”
He continued through, going further and further back in time. He slowed at a picture of Boy drilling a post to the beam of a gazebo at his parent’s house. In another picture, his father and him were fastening a guard rail in place. Another one, his mother and I mixing cement.
“You met his parents?”
“Yeah, so? Boy’s really close to them. They’re not like us. Boy and them came here when he was ten.”
“So, he’s a FOB?”
“No, he speaks English pretty well. You wouldn’t know he was from over there from just listening to him.”
“Never thought he was the type to get his hands dirty. Color me impressed.” He swiped back to Boy drilling. “Look at those biceps. Why are you showing me this again?”
“Well,” I hesitated, sitting up from the couch. I crossed my legs and pinched my thighs hoping to spur the words forward. “I was hoping to invite him here for dinner, just the three of us.”
“You want me to meet him?”
“Yeah, and I want him to meet you.”
“Has he met mom and dad?”
“Of course not. I mean, eventually. But I really want you two to know each other.”
“We do. We know of each other, right?”
“Come on!”
“So, this is it, huh?” Boni sat up and tossed my phone beside me on the couch. He stretched his arms up.
“Yeah, this is it.”
“He propose already?”
“We just talked about it. He didn’t do the knee thing yet.”
“No knee thing? Boo. Call me old-fashioned, but grand gestures need to make a comeback, pronto. What I wouldn’t give to have Ryan Gosling just sweep me up in the rain and make my brown ass feel safe.”
“They never went away. It’ll probably still happen that way when it becomes official, sans the Ryan Gosling part. It’s just, I don’t know.”
“I know,” he said then got up for a quick shower, dressed, and left for a date before I could climb off the couch.
The next day, my parents Facetimed me at work an hour before a staff meeting.
“Did he tell you?” I asked, typing while I talked. My phone leaned on a picture frame I had of Boni and I as kids sliding down a snow slope in a green, plastic toboggan. He was behind me, holding the reins.
“Not outright. You know how he is,” my mom said sitting beside dad. They knew secrets better than anyone. In the Philippines, they had served the Marcos family and even helped Imelda Marcos and her shoe collection escape to Hawaii. Although they weren’t allowed to return home since they were well compensated for their loyalty. They survived on secrets—theirs, and others.
“I didn’t tell him to tell you guys. I was going to eventually tell you on my own.”
“We know, Nakong,” my father said, his stomach protruding from under his shirt. “You don’t need to tell us about him yet.”
I stopped typing and sighed at them on my phone. “He’s a year younger than I am and an engineer. He and his family are from Sorsogon City.”
“Ah, good,” my mom chimed. “He’s a Pinoy! Thank God. Does he live with his parents?”
“No, his own place.”
“A house?”
“An apartment.”
“Catholic?” My dad asked.
“Goes to church with his family every Sunday.”
“Good.”
“Is that all?”
“You just let us know when we can meet him, Nakong. You shouldn’t hide things from us. We’re your family.”
“I wasn’t, but I will plan something for us in the future.”
“Look at your brother. He’s bakla but we still love him.”
“I love him too,” I said, and went to my meeting and about the rest of the week, a call a day from them about the same affirmations and the same exchange of words. It got to the point where I couldn’t tell who was being vetted anymore: Boy, Boni, or myself.
Finally, the day came. Boy arrived for dinner half an hour early, bringing an unexpected gift. In his hands were cans of coconut milk, premade purple balls of mochiko, and a bag of uncooked, rainbow-colored tapioca.
“What’s this?” I asked, already helping him put down what he brought in the kitchen. Boni’s Greek Salad was chopped and kept ready to be served from the same Tupperware container it was shaken in, but my Stouffer’s Lasagna was still frozen and needed another hour.
Boy looked in the oven window and I felt a twinge of embarrassment rise up my neck about how cheap and lazy a ready-made lasagna made me look.
“I thought I’d make you two some of my classic bilo-bilo for dessert,” he said, rising from the oven door.
I took him in for a kiss and held him close at the waist even though I knew it didn’t make him feel comfortable for me to take the lead. He was conservative that way. “How thoughtful. I love that stuff.”
He quickly held me in turn, trying not to let me get the better of him. “I just need a pot. Where is Boni?”
I frowned in his arms. “Still getting ready.”
“Did someone say pot?” Boni suddenly interrupted, sliding into view with nothing but his dress shirt, boxers (thank God), and socks on.
Angered and embarrassed, I jerked away from Boy and confronted him. “You fucking asshole!”
Boni ignored me. “Sorry, I’m Boni still-getting-ready. Charmed.”
Afraid to see Boy’s face, I didn’t turn around until I heard him clap and whistle. “All right! Awesome man! Jerry Maguire?”
I was simultaneously taken aback and relieved.
Boni smirked. “Risky Business,” he said, and walked over to shake Boy’s hand.
“I’m Boying. Boy for short.”
“You got an old man’s name.”
“I know. It’s ironic, isn’t it? Old Boy.”
“And an oxymoron.”
“What? Oh, yeah. I guess my full name does sound like a spring. Boing, boing.”
“No, that’s onomatopoeia.”
“On a what?”
Boni turned to me, his smile trembling, half-naked, finally feeling like the most absurd one in the room. “Nice teeth.” He murmured and walked back to his lair.
“Thanks, man!” Boy said after him. “Invisalign!”
The rest of the time Boni was gone, I sat back and watched Boying and the oven cook. He prepared the tapioca balls first and let them cool in a bowl of cold water while he let the coconut milk come to a boil. When the milk started bubbling, he put in the purple mochiko balls followed by the tapioca. Finally, he stirred in a cup of sugar and let the whole thing simmer. That was all there was to it. Watching him make it for me in his kitchen the first time helped me understand him better. I worried that what I saw thawing in the oven would give him the wrong impression of me, but when it was done and on the table, the lasagna was just a lasagna to him. I realize now that’s why I loved him.
By the time the table was set, Boni was back. He took his seat at the head of the table with Boy and me on each side. Properly dressed now, to my surprise.
“There he is,” Boy said, already helping himself to the lasagna.
“Here I am,” Boni replied, opening a can of beer he brought from the kitchen.
Listening to its snap and hiss, I immediately wanted one too, but, before I could get up, Boni was already calling from the kitchen. “Sorry, I forgot to bring you beers too.”
“Wow, thanks, bro!” Boy exclaimed with glee, piling extra fetta onto his Greek salad.
I saw Boni pause at the mention of ‘bro’ but continue back with the beers. He placed one down in front of me and then the other in front of Boy before taking his seat again. He held his beer but didn’t drink it. I was surprised by his show of restraint. “Someone make bilo-bilo?”
“Yup, my personal recipe,” Boy said, sprinkling a generous helping of parmesan on his lasagna. He wasn’t shy. He ate ravenously as he talked.
“Funny, I lifted the lid and I didn’t see anything in it. Just the mochiko and tapioca.”
Boy laughed, wiping his chin with the back of one hand while he lifted more lettuce with the other. “And ube and coconut milk.”
“Yeah, that’s it. It’s purple.”
“That’s not nothing.”
I could tell Boni wanted to say more, but he drank his beer instead.
Boy on the other hand chewed while talking and opening his beer. I had never heard him talking so much before that night. “I know it’s strange. Sorry. You expected more in there, right? It’s my own recipe. Boy’s bilo-bilo.” He took a sip of his beer and looked down at the food on the table before continuing. “Growing up, we didn’t have a lot of anything. But, a couple of times a year, my wealthy Auntie Jessa in the States would send us money and the whole family would splurge on food. I remember the first things my parents would buy were ingredients for bilo-bilo. There’d be fresh bananas, camote, ube, buko cubes, and fresh jack fruit, but, despite all those fancy ingredients, the only thing that mattered to me was the cheapest parts. My grandparents and all the kids would roll the mochiko balls with grated ube all night and let them sit until they were ready to cook in the morning. The tapioca balls came in a large pack you just had to microwave with water and there was so much of it the other kids and I would throw them at each other and make the adults run after us with bullwhips.
“When it all cooked together and everything was done, all I ever did was pick out everything except for what’s in the pot today. I know it’s childish, but all that other stuff is just extra, right? It’s still bilo-bilo.”
I looked at Boni, and—for the first time—he didn’t have that stupid grin on his face whenever he wanted to play with someone. Instead, he listened with something else. “Well, it’s not called balls for nothing. Or is it balls-balls?”
“You gotta have two! One ball is not enough! It’s bilo-bilo, not bilo!” Boy said and the two of them shared a hardy laugh. By the time Boy was finished with his first plate, both our plates were still empty.
And when the dinner was over and Boy had left, a strange emptiness still lingered in both of us we didn’t want to acknowledge, hoping it would go away on its own like a cat bellowing in the night.
“Thanks for being nice.” I yawned, already in my pajamas.
Boni was still in the living room, still completely dressed and reading a book. “You’re welcome.”
“Staying up?”
“Staying up. Not done yet.”
“So, what do you think?”
Boni exhaled and put his book aside. I couldn’t see the cover, but I could tell it was something new. He was always reading the new stuff. “He’s got balls.”
I laughed and took my place next to him, leaning my head on his shoulder. “There you are.”
“Here I am.”
“No, but really.”
“He’s great. I’m happy for you. Really.”
“He’s not boring?”
“He’s a little boring.”
“I knew it. You hate him.”
“I don’t. It’s just . . . ” He put his arm around me and kissed my forehead, holding me tight. “Is this really it? Are you sure?”
I closed my eyes and buried my head deeper into his chest. Searching for an answer, thundering in the darkness there below, it was easy to mistake his heartbeat for mine.
E. P. Tuazon is a Filipinx-American writer from Los Angeles. His newest book is a forthcoming novella called, “The Cussing Cat Clock” (Hash Journal 2022). He was a finalist for the 2021 Prairie Schooner Raz-Shumaker Book Prize in Fiction and the 2021 Five South Short Fiction Prize, and is currently a member of Advintage Press and The Blank Page Writing Club at the Open Book, Canyon Country. In his spare time, he likes to wander the seafood section of Filipino markets to gossip with the crabs.