Buttonquail

You're asking me to dance? Me?

I nodded.

Why?

***

Roland had come in through the front door with a burlap sack swinging from his belt. He stopped at the foot of the stairs, removed the sack, held it up and shouted for Pretchy-Anne to come down and clean the quail. Her door opened. The wooden steps creaked as she made her way down. And then she was standing there, rubbing the sleep off her eyes.

At the kitchen sink, Roland loosened the drawstrings on the sack and dumped the dazed quail into a shallow basin. I counted seven. Five still alive, shivering in the porcelain, making no sound, only blinking their black marble eyes. The other two birds lay dead, two heaps of bloodied feathers, perhaps from a blow meant to stun, maybe from the fear of being in the dark with the others, knowing death was inevitable. Or it might have been that their deaths had been brought about by the merciful grace of something else.

***





The table in the yard was set with
a thick rattan stick
discrete
squeamish
The slow sweeping cone of his light

***

Buttonquail

They held my cousin Elineta's wedding reception at the Grandfather's house.

The moment we arrived, I parted from my parents and siblings and sought out Uncle Roland's sister-in-law, Pretchy-Anne. Whenever visiting the Grandfather's house, I would spend most of my day with her. She was my age, twelve, and before tonight she had never judged me, or made me feel different. But that evening I couldn't find her.

Guests, many of whom I didn't know, crowded the large yard. Although there were lots of Filipinos -- friends of the family -- there were also a few Americans, friends of the groom, standing around the long wooden table in the center of the yard, neatly dressed in barong tagalog's.

The table was full. Laid out on banana leaves were two slaughtered hogs, countless chickens, and dishes overflowing with local foods. There was a three-tiered caked surrounded by glass bowls filled with sliced, chilled fruit.

Sampaguita flowers hung in garlands throughout the yard. I breathed in their warm, jasmine-like scent and watched a man on a wooden platform sing a romantic mariachi ballad. Behind him, three men with broad straw hats covering their heads strummed along on guitars.

Everyone seemed to be laughing. Having fun. Dancing.

Maybe if Pretchy-Anne was here, instead of watching the moon skip over the polished flagstones, I'd be dancing alongside it.

Each time I wondered where Pretchy-Anne was, I worried. Everyone I asked replied by shrugging and saying she should be here.

Once again I scanned the crowd. This time I met the gaze of the American serviceman who Elineta had married. We exchanged a long stare, after which the American smiled, brightly, then winked. Like he and I had something in common. Like we shared some fantastic secret. I flashed my most hateful scowl and whirled away.

When I ran across Eric, Pretchy-Anne's older brother, a flood of relief came over me. I asked him, "Where's your sister?"

"She'll be here later," Eric said. He blew out a mouthful of smoke and stomped his cigarette out on the ground. Although Eric was only thirteen, nobody seemed to mind that he smoked.

"But why hasn't she already come?" I asked.

"She got woke up late last night. To prepare quail."

"Quail?" I had never heard of quail. "What's that?"

Eric laughed. "Birds, of course. We hunted last night."

"Who?"

"Me and Roland."

Eric and I drifted away from the crowd. He lit another cigarette. We sat at a wooden bench along the fence, under an awning of mango laden branches.

It was dark enough now that the lights in the yard cast trembling glows. The star-shaped lanterns made of colored cellophane flashed brightly over the faces of the guests.

Still curious about quail, I asked Eric, "I don't understand. What do you do? Do you flush the birds from bushes?"

Eric shook his head and laughed again. Then he explained how he and Uncle Roland sometimes hunted quail in the surrounding countryside late at night.

While Eric swept the ground with a flashlight, Uncle Roland, armed with a narrow bamboo switch, lurked near the cone of moving light. The instant the light found a startled quail, Uncle Roland brought his weapon whooshing down on top of the bird's head. Then he quickly stooped, wrapped his fingers around the stunned bird and stuffed it into a drawstring pouch that hung from the waist of his pants.

Eric tossed his glowing cigarette butt onto the grass and then wiggled his fingers to describe the way the live quail fluttered while trapped inside the bag against Uncle Roland's thigh.

Last night they caught seven quail. It was very late when they finally got home. Roland had mounted the wooden stairs and woke Pretchy-Anne. He told her to come down to the kitchen to kill, pluck, and clean the birds, so they could freeze the birds for later eating.

"She cried the whole time she stood at the sink," Eric said, contorting his face to mock her expression. "She hates cleaning quail. She complains about being forced to do things she doesn't want to do, just because it's what the family, or anyone else, expects."

Eric stood. He patted his shirt pocket for another cigarette. "I gotta go," he said, lighting the cigarette. I watched him cross the yard, the red glow from the tip of his cigarette moving from hand to mouth in the faint light.

Sitting alone, hearing the music, smelling the food, I thought of Pretchy-Anne. Not long ago she'd told me that when she grew up she wanted, like Elineta, to marry an American. She wanted so badly to leave this dreadful country. I sometimes made-believe that I was that American whom Pretchy would marry. But was I even an American? I was white, true. Anyone could see that. But both my parents were Filipino. What did that make me? I had no idea if I could honestly claim as my country this place or that. Or, for that matter, anyplace at all.

The thought of Pretchy cleaning the birds came back to me. As I concentrated on the image of the frightened quail, I heard someone behind me say, "Oh, there you are."

It was Pretchy-Anne.

I got up off the bench, smiling, and led her across the yard to the table where the food still steamed and threw off odors that made your stomach growl in delight. As I loaded food onto a paper plate for Pretchy-Anne, I couldn't help but notice how gorgeous a girl she was. Her long creame-colored gown covered her feet. Her hair, for once, was not tied back with a rubber band, or scrunchie, or claw clip. In the warm and fragrant evening breeze the ends of her hair rose and dropped, rose and dropped.

With our plates held in front of us, we crossed the courtyard and sat back down on the same wooden bench beneath the same slightly trembling mango leaves where she'd found me. It was dark now, completely, and under the stars the music still played and couples still danced.

For a while Pretchy-Anne and I sat without speaking. Picking at our food with our fingers. Finally, to have something to talk about, I brought up the quail she'd been forced to clean.

Raising her face to grimace, Pretchy-Anne said killing things -- anything -- disgusted her. She went on to say that she probably wouldn't have minded cleaning the birds if they had already been dead. Like fish from the market, or frogs gigged in the muddy paddies and immediately gutted. But with the quail she actually had to use her bare hands to grab the birds around the neck and twist until the quail dangled limp and dead. Along with their frightened squawks and their pleading eyes the killing of the quail, Pretchy-Anne said, broke her heart.

As light from the flashing cellophane lanterns struck her face, I couldn't help but notice Pretchy-Anne looked strangely different tonight. Makeup. She wore makeup. I'd never seen her in makeup before. The red lipstick and the stuff she thickened her lashes with made her look older than twelve, made her look like a woman, which in a way, I guess, she was.

I couldn't help but wonder if the little girl with the coltish legs and scabbed knees was still inside this woman? Did the little girl disappear somewhere? Where was the child who screamed with delight each time the pink bubble blooming from between her lips exploded.

When the musicians in straw hats started another ballad, I set my plate down on the bench beside me and asked Pretchy-Anne if she wanted to dance. Without answering, she looked away to the lanterns dangling from tree branches not far from us. She rotated her paper plate in her hands. Then she turned to face me, smiled falsely, and said, "Maybe later, okay?"

Not five minutes had passed when another boy, a Filipino boy who might have been a couple years older than us, strolled up to where we were seated. He came down on his haunches and placed a hand over Pretchy-Anne's. She blushed, bit her lower lip and shook her head. But he persisted. Finally, she handed me her paper plate to hold. Before getting up she clapped her hands together, rubbing them free of crumbs. Then she let the boy lead her onto the grass, where they danced close against one another.

I sat watching Pretchy-Anne dancing on the flagstones. Her eyes were closed, the right side of her face was buried in the boy's chest. I glanced away, skyward to the stars, and couldn't help but wonder if maybe Pretchy-Anne rejected my request to dance because I was different.

Had she just been being kind to me all this time?

Then I closed my eyes and tried again to picture the quail. Tiny, barely alive. Feather-wrapped creatures that laid scattered on the kitchen counter, near the sink. The birds I imagined stared up pleading to Pretchy-Anne with their glassy eyes.

In my mind, tears swelled in Pretchy-Anne's s eyes as she wrapped her fingers around the quails necks and, one by one, put the birds out of their misery.

When I looked back to where she was dancing, I caught Pretchy-Anne staring at me. Her eyes in the moonlight appeared misted. Quickly, she turned her head.

Suddenly, I was clear about what she meant when she told me she wished the quail were dead before having to clean them.