Tall Story - Candy Gourlay [13]
‘WHAT?’
Mum’s eyes were platters.
This was some other kind of news.
‘What?’ she said again.
‘What?’ I said like a stupid echo. ‘What’s wrong?’
‘SOFIA!’ Her face was a mixture of fury and – what was it? Horror? ‘Oh my God, Sofia.’
She covered her mouth with one hand, strangled noises coming out of the back of her throat.
Auntie’s voice crackled tinnily over the line. ‘Hello? Hello, Mary Ann? Can you hear me?’
Mum dropped the phone into her lap.
‘What’s the matter, Mum? What’s wrong?’
She turned away and collapsed on the sofa, hands covering her face for the longest time.
When she spoke, her voice was hoarse, like she’d suddenly developed a sore throat.
‘It’s Bernardo,’ she said.
‘What about Bernardo?’
There was anguish in the look she gave me.
‘Bernardo is TALL.’
11
Bernardo
‘Hello? Hello, Mary Ann? Can you hear me?’ Auntie frowned and stared at the telephone as if she could fix the connection just by looking.
I wished now that we had kept that promise. We should have told Ma that I was still growing. We could have told her as soon as I hit seven foot. Seven foot didn’t sound as shocking as eight foot. Somehow it seemed still … normal.
But when I suggested we tell Ma, Auntie just burst out in exasperation, ‘Jesus Mary Joseph! Nardo, your ma is a nurse. A nurse! She is a scientist, not a believer. She will spit on the soul of Bernardo Carpio and then what? Where will San Andres be?’
So we didn’t say anything.
And I grew.
And now … eight foot. It was impossible. A point of no return.
Like everyone else, Jabby and I liked to hang out in the street just before the sun set, when the temperature cooled suddenly and the low sun didn’t burn.
We leaned on the gate and watched the world go by. Or shot hoops through the basketball goal nailed to the telephone pole outside Jabby’s house.
Well. Jabby shot hoops. I watched. Occasionally, when the ball swooped the wrong way, I reached up and tipped the ball into the basket.
The cooler temperatures drew people out of their houses and street vendors tried to press them into buying pork barbecue, fish balls, steamed corn, and sweet bananas fried in crispy wonton wrappers. Passenger tricycles rattled slowly up and down the street, casting for fares.
Inevitably, Old Tibo would wave from his shop opposite my house. ‘Nardo, Nardo!’ His dog, Flash Gordon, always gave a high-pitched yelp, as if to add his own greeting.
Sister Len-Len always made sure to catch my eye from where she fried garlic peanuts in her stall. ‘Hello, Nardo.’
Salim never failed to slow his tricycle cab alongside. ‘Nardo. How are you?’
‘Fine, Brother Salim,’ I would say and Salim would gun his motor by way of salute and drive off.
It sometimes got to Jabbar.
‘I’m fine too!’ he used to yell. ‘I’m really healthy!’
I tried to apologize but Jabby shrugged it off with a joke. ‘It’s not easy being best friends with Mister “Saviour of the World”,’ he would say, striking a tragic pose.
‘I’m not!’ I would laugh. But Jabby was right.
Only four years earlier, San Andres got into the Book of World Records for the hundreds of teeny tiny tremors that shook it every day.
On the World Records website, the entry says: The village of San Andres holds the distinction of reporting hundreds of earthquakes a day since seismologists began measuring the tremors in the 1940s. It is said the tremors are only a rehearsal for an earthquake so massive it will probably level the village when it finally comes. Above the article was the headline: The Land of Rock and Roll.
There was a picture in pen and ink of a giant standing between two cliff sides, muscles bulging as he strained to push them apart. The caption said: Villagers await the return of a giant of legend named Bernardo Carpio. Folklore has it that only the giant can truly save the village from destruction.
So imagine what a big deal it was when people discovered a boy amongst them named Bernardo who was shooting up like a giant bamboo.
And imagine what they thought when, as the boy grew, the rock and roll dwindled to a full stop.
And then