Blood

By Noelle Q. de Jesus

Blood Collected Stories
Winner of the 2016 Indie Book Awards (Short Stories)


Noelle Q. de Jesus’ collection of short stories is a striking debut of cultural exchanges and foreign tongues: stories that trace and sustain the conflict between man and woman, parent and child, country and identity, self and sexuality, love and loss.

"... De Jesus' characters inhabit a world of regret, loss and unfulfilled longing. In these works, there is as much said in the silences and ellipses, as there are in the fraught, perfunctory exchanges. ... De Jesus' economy of words and her voice, bleak and spare, yet intimate, recalls the virtuosity of short story fiction masters, such as Lorrie Moore and Edith Pearlman."
-The Straits Times

“At the start of each compact narrative in this collection, Noelle Q. de Jesus places a cunning tiger of thrilling tension ready to spring. Thematically cogent, these stories are about the lives of the displaced"
-Michael Carroll, Author of Little Reef and Other Stories, Lambda Literary Award Winner 2015

“Carefully crafted and richly observed, these stories are filled with unforgettable women"
-F.H. Batacan, Author of Smaller and Smaller Circles

• Language: English
• Publisher: Ethos Books
• Release date: Apr 30, 2023
• ISBN: 9789811176029

Book preview

A Small Consolation

No one knows exactly how babies dream. They dream in sounds, not words, perhaps in fuzzy colors or pictures. Maybe they dream physical sensations—the cold of being left alone or the warmth of being held against living skin, close to a beating heart. No stories, only feelings nudge a baby from sleep, draw the tears or shape the smile upon his waking. But when someone abandons a baby—leaves it on a doorstep, in a restaurant, or as this baby was, left in an elevator of an office building, then perhaps there is no dream.

Tonight, this particular baby slept next to an old woman who could not. From time to time, she sat up and adjusted his blanket and touched him as though she were his mother. Her room in this spacious apartment in New York City’s Upper East Side was comfortable, but she was cold. It wasn’t that she longed for heat, nor was it the loneliness of silent snow falling outside her window; Consuelo could not sleep because she was eavesdropping.

Consuelo stepped to her door, feeling the wool carpet beneath her bare feet, but she could not make out the words coming from the room across the hall. Therese and Ken had been arguing for hours, and though it started out being about this baby, it was now clearly about something else.

Consuelo’s new digital clock read 2:30 a.m. Almost as if he could understand, the baby whimpered. She returned to him, lay back in the bed and smoothed out his blanket, tucking its edges beneath his small round body with a reassurance she did not feel.

"Meme na∇ Totoy,"∇ she whispered and tapped him on his bottom, light, rhythmic taps with two fingers, just the way she’d tapped her own babies to sleep, so many years ago. The baby settled.

Once again, she slid her limbs out of bed, her skin, wrinkled as unpressed cotton and shockingly white, as though infused with the light of the moon and the white of the snow outside. She stood peering out her window, leaning her fingertips on the opaque glass pane, which was frozen and shiny.

The city was a giant sugar bowl, hills and peaks of powdered white crystals twinkling, brilliant enough to light the night. Snow reminded Consuelo of sweet polvoron∇ that melted in her mouth, dissolving from a powdery mess into sweet creamy nothingness. She shivered in her flannel nightgown. Maybe coming here was a bad idea.

How can you say that to me? Because he’s black? How dare you!

Consuelo hurried back to the bed, shocked and embarrassed. All at once, her granddaughter’s voice was loud and clear, all too easy to hear.

They didn’t want children; Consuelo knew that. At least, Therese didn’t. The couple had been married three years, a long time in a marriage not to have babies, it seemed to Consuelo. But things were different now. In her day, after just one year, mothers, aunts and old wives made loud, interfering remarks. They watched these young women with hawk-eyes, accused them of not sleeping enough or not eating well or worst of all, eating too much. Fat in the hips and stomach, the old women said, would get in the way, they scolded all the while cackling with laughter.

Consuelo herself conceived her first baby on her wedding night. But after that, there was no baby for two whole years. Her mother-in-law got cranky, wanting a grandson. The old woman forced her to sip tea brewed with leaves from bitter herbs mixed with raw egg in a thick, pungent potion that made Consuelo gag. Mama even burst into their room in the early mornings, before they had gotten out of bed. She would choose what Consuelo should wear for the day. Wear that. It will show your shape. Her husband didn’t think there was anything wrong with that. Nanay∇ just wants to help, he’d say.

But for the life of her, Consuelo couldn’t imagine doing anything like this with Therese. Grandmothers just no longer had the rights they used to. They were supposed to go with the flow and did not meddle, especially not one flown across the ocean to visit her granddaughter and her new American husband in their apartment—paid for by the latter’s rumored-to-be large salary, earned from his job at an investment bank. This confused Consuelo: weren’t all banks for keeping investments? She was too much in awe of them, too grateful, and in no position to make demands about great-grandchildren or anything else for that matter.

When Therese came home from work one evening last week with a little baby in a basket, Consuelo said nothing. What could she say? Therese was almost faint with fatigue, faded eye shadow streaked her lids and strands of hair escaped the knot at the nape of her neck. How hard her work must be, Consuelo thought, wondering at the vast distance traveled by her granddaughter, once just a grubby child in her care who spent summer days at her house, playing in the murky waters of her garden fishpond. Therese was a section editor and just recently, also a some-of-the-time columnist for a popular women’s magazine.

Therese held the baby in her arms like it was some strange alien thing. The child was left with her—what else could she do but take him home? She spoke as though this was not a child at all, but some inconsequential item that had found its way into her lap.

Consuelo gasped but held her tongue, though she itched to say something. She stared at this little black-skinned baby. Was he the answer to her prayers?

Ken was concerned. He knew this was serious. No matter how confident Therese sounded about the police finding this baby’s parents any time now, he knew it was a lost cause. The child would go to a city institution and become a ward of the state. Later, maybe, if he was lucky, he might be adopted. As for the child’s parents, Ken was sure they were long gone. He looked at the baby and felt his heart grow tight like a closed fist.

The truth was, Ken had always wanted kids. Someday, and soon, he thought. After all, they were young, made good money, and had their whole lives ahead of them. But moments did seize him: small pinpoints of pain in sharp slivers of time when he felt he could scarcely wait to be a father. It struck him in the park watching kids play, or when he was with his nieces. And if ever Ken was reminded that Therese had said very early on that maybe, she didn’t want kids, he was sure it was just a phase, part of her youth, her contemporary vibe. He was confident that he, her loving, attentive husband would eventually succeed in persuading her otherwise. Therese was from the Philippines, after all; didn’t all Filipinas want to be mothers?

The baby waved fat dimpled arms in the air and babbled happy sounds. Consuelo couldn’t help but laugh with delight.

Did you speak to the police? Ken asked his wife.

Therese let out a long sharp exhale. She had called the police. She’d been calling them all afternoon, in fact. When she was finally connected to the right department, they told her to bring the baby straight away—like she had nothing else to do but drop everything and make a trip across town. She’d told them she couldn’t and asked if someone could come to fetch him. Finally, she agreed to bring the baby as soon as she possibly could. But it wasn’t today. It had been way easier to stop by the drug store for formula and diapers and just take him home. Now who was going to take care of him in the meantime, when she had presentations to make to big advertisers all of this week and the next?

She told them how it had happened, how she had gone for a long lunch meeting, and then been shoe shopping afterwards, buying a pair of camel peep-toe pumps that she had worn right out of Saks. She had almost stepped on the baby.

He was in this carrier, on the elevator floor!

Therese sat at the kitchen counter with her head in her hands.

She slid her feet out of those same new shoes and twined her legs around the stool, straining her pinstriped pencil skirt.

Maybe you should have checked all the floors, Ken said. He stood and began to get dinner ready, realizing that Therese wasn’t going to. Did you ask the building's security?

Of course! I asked everyone. No one remembered anyone coming in with a baby.

Therese was exhausted. She knew it was no one’s fault, yet she couldn’t help that harsh, steely edge in her voice, impatient and irritated. All she wanted was a hot shower, quiet time to do her rewrites, and maybe a glass of wine. All she wanted was not to have to think about this baby, or anyone else but herself, really.

She watched as her small but sturdy grandmother took the infant in her arms. He was solid and filled out in the tummy like someone had loved him from his very toes to his tightly coiled springy hair. His closed fists and active chubby legs made Therese think of a little boxer.

When she had no choice but to take him back to her office, she had expected it to be a nightmare, a scene straight out of one of those movies about a single woman suddenly faced with a squealing baby in her office. A migraine had started inching its way from Therese’s temples well to the pockets behind her eyes. But the baby had been easy and quiet. He slept in his carrier, which she had perched on the corner of her table. She found a layer of diapers right under the carrier cushion. And when he woke with a gurgle, Therese changed him between her planning session and her meeting with the art director. He smelled of freshly baked cake, and his skin was the color of dark chocolate. But now, Therese wouldn’t even allow herself to remember how she was drawn to kiss his cheek in spite of herself.

"Lola,∇ have you eaten?" Ken called.

Consuelo sat in the living room, dandling the baby on her knee.

"I made chicken pork adobo.∇ In the fridge. I’ve eaten," she called.

Consuelo always cooked for herself, and she always made enough for Therese and Ken. Even though most of the time, they preferred pasta or a salad, something they could just throw together on-the-spot without the elaborate sautéing and simmering that Filipino dishes demand. In the end, only Ken took the dish, heated it, and ate it over his green salad.

Ken liked Consuelo. He was happy she had come to visit. It helped, he thought, for Therese to have someone here from home. Their wedding in Manila three years ago had been Therese’s first time back since she left for school. Both of them were surprised at how much she loved it. Sharp was her pleasure in the things she thought she had not missed—the constant bustle of people in small houses with large dining tables, long hours at meal times, and the biting tang of a slice of green mango smeared in fermented shrimp paste. Back then, a nameless fear had formed in Ken, that somehow, after the whole wedding business was over, Therese might suddenly not want to come back with him. But of course, she did. It was three months later, as she peeled carrots for dinner that she cut herself and then instantly dissolved in tears. The knife had barely scratched her, yet Therese wept like a small child. She wanted to go home, she sobbed.

Therese was shocked at herself. How could she tell her new husband that for the first time in all her years away from home, she was homesick? Never had she experienced exactly this quality of melancholy, a wistful kind of sadness accompanied by a sick feeling in her stomach. She had tried to explain it in a letter to a friend—how she didn’t think she could go on feeling this way. Her friend wrote back, teasing, Could this have something to do with Ken? Therese did not reply.

But then, soon after, she had landed this job at the magazine, and somehow, she started feeling better. And then they received a letter from her father saying that Consuelo wanted to come visit—if they had room for her—Perhaps she could help keep house? Therese was overjoyed at the prospect of Lola living with them. She started to feel more like her old self.

And of course, Ken was glad. Although Manila had been fascinating, and even exciting, he knew very well that he could not live there—not with that heat and the traffic and all the household helpers that made him nervous. Also, he didn’t like the way people looked at Therese on the few occasions that they walked down the street together in certain parts of town. Of course, Therese thought it was funny.

They think I’m a hooker, Ken. Do I look like a hooker? She pursed her lips and winked at him, and in husky tones, rolling her Rs, she intoned, Come here, Joe. Let’s party, Joe.

What kind of mother leaves her baby in an office elevator for someone to pick up? Therese asked, standing up from the table and leaving her plate barely touched. He could have been picked up by a psychopath. Or he could have starved to death. What if I had just left him?

She yanked hairpins from her head, pulling at her hair till it was all undone in a black mass on her shoulders. Ken shrugged. It fascinated him to see his wife so physically, so vocally upset. Most of the time, she was a self-contained person, given to moody silences and working things out on her own.

You leave a baby on a doorstep of a home or at a church or hospital. Maybe you look for a family. You decide, is this someone who will take care of my baby? You leave a note, with a name and details about its birth. This way—it makes no sense… Therese continued to rant.

Shhh… Consuelo rocked the now sleeping baby in her arms.

Therese stopped, her lips pursed in a pout. She hadn’t wanted to take the baby home at all. People had said she should take it to Social Services or an orphanage, as if it were solely her responsibility. What about taking him to the police? Therese had asked. The other editor in the next cubicle protested, not without disdain.

A city police station at night is no place for a baby. Therese bristled inwardly, but said nothing more. She took the baby home.

You assume it was the mother, but really, it might have been the father… Ken said, still thinking things through. This person chooses a fancy building on Fifth Avenue filled with upwardly mobile, childless women, takes the baby in a carrier and sends it up the elevator with a prayer and crossed fingers for luck. Makes sense to me.

That’s bizarre, Therese said, not even looking at him.

What will happen if they can’t find his parents? Consuelo asked softly as she stroked the child’s hair. Therese just shook her head.

I don’t know, Ken said. This baby was left deliberately. You could have called the police. They’d get the Department of Social Services in on it. I’m sure there’s a procedure to follow...

Therese could not even look at her husband. Waves of irritation overwhelmed her.

I didn’t know the procedure, alright? And I can’t take him tomorrow. You want to take him? Take him.

She picked up her handbag and her brand new shoes and then left the room, knowing her grandmother would see to the baby and to the dishes, and knowing too that she was acting like an impossible child, helpless, and unable to do anything else.

In the shower, Therese wept, choking on her own gasping sobs. It was too much to take. Was it just a month ago that Ken had spoken to her with more urgency and more pressure about having a baby? Therese had shaken her head, no. She had just gotten promoted. Not now. Let me get more settled in the magazine first, she said to Ken.

I understand. That’s perfectly fine for now, Ken had replied and then he kissed her and held her close. Only later did she hear his tone in the phrase for now. She sat up, and seeing him, snug and sleepy with a smug smile on his face, was suddenly annoyed. More and more often, she looked at Ken and wondered who he was. More and more, she felt discomfort with being his wife. But Ken is good to me, she thought as she let the shower water pound her face. And I love it here, was the other thought that ran through her head. It always did.

In the kitchen, Consuelo and Ken were silent, each thinking their own thoughts. He had started with the dishes, very un-Filipino, Consuelo observed. She watched him scrape the dishes clean and expertly pile them in the sink of hot sudsy water. She laid the sleeping baby back in his carrier.

Sleep well, Totoy, she whispered.

What did you call him? Ken asked, curious.

Toh-Toy, Consuelo mouthed. Just a nickname… he’s so smooth and… she hesitated, … so black… I’ve just never seen—

The baby’s skin was shiny, ever so much darker than her own.

You’ve never seen a black baby, huh? Ken had to laugh when he said this.

No, I haven’t, Consuelo admitted.

Ken often teased her this way, but Consuelo was ashamed. She couldn’t help it—what she read in the papers, what she saw in the streets—it was easy to make conclusions. Filipinos are racist; both her daughter and her granddaughter always said that.

But I’m not a racist! Consuelo always protested.

Yes, you are, Lola. You’re the worst, Therese argued, laughing. "You always say a child is pangit∇ if she happens to be dark, but beautiful if she’s fair."

Consuelo pondered this. She didn’t know why she thought that, but why did that make her racist? So she was afraid of black people in New York City, afraid of the hobos in the subway, the big black men on Times Square that looked to Consuelo like tikbalangs∇—the big black giants smoking cigars—from her childhood storybooks. It was what it was; it wasn’t personal.

You’re afraid he’s going to mug you, aren’t you, Lola? Ken teased.

No, I’m not! Consuelo retorted, but she knew he was just joking with her. In the beginning, this tall white man had called her by name: Consuelo. She thought he had a lot of nerve.

What a thing to say…

Okay, okay¬… Ken put his hands up in the air, as though there was any way this small gray-haired woman could pound his six-foot-two frame into the ground.

Together, they cleaned the kitchen in comfortable silence. Afterwards, Consuelo moved the baby to the bed in her room, and then she came out again.

What will we do with him? she asked Ken.

Come with me, Lola, and if they tell me to take him home, you can do it. And then I can go to work.

Consuelo nodded.

When Therese came out in her pink terry-cloth bathrobe, hair slicked back over her head and the traces of her outburst gone from her face, Ken and Consuelo were watching television.

You okay? Ken asked.

Therese nodded and sat herself down on the sofa beside him.

He drew her close, drinking in her freshly bathed skin, enjoying this closeness with his wife who showered twice a day without fail.

I’m sorry, she whispered. I just… She stuck out her tongue like an exhausted animated cartoon animal. I guess I’ll bring him. Sorry Lola, I’ve had this headache all day. It was a poor excuse. Therese knew it.

It’s okay. We’ll take him tomorrow morning, Ken said.

Therese glanced at Consuelo who nodded once more.

The baby began to cry in the next room. Consuelo stood and rushed to him, exclaiming, Totoy!

Uh oh. He has a name already? Therese shook her head. Lola, you better not get too attached, she called after her grandmother. Turning back to her husband, she said, You can take him, really?

Ken smiled at her. Now what do you say?

Therese sighed and settled back in her husband’s arms.

Consuelo shut the door behind her. When the baby saw her, he stopped crying. She mixed him a bottle of formula and fed him in her rocker by the window. He was gorgeous. What mother could have given him up? Wouldn’t you hold on to this one for dear life, if you had him? She closed her eyes. He couldn’t have had a mother, Consuelo decided. The woman who left this child wasn’t a mother. She was a devil. Only the devil could have abandoned this baby.

At once, Consuelo opened her eyes. She had scared herself with devil talk. This was New York City. Here it was people you had to fear. She glanced back at Totoy. He was asleep. He had not transformed into the gruesome tianak∇