after telling him of the story about our phlegmatic neighbor who decided to pickle her husband's penis in brine and holy water after he died, my friend gave me that stare, that plausive stare he has which he, nowadays, reserve for american idol contestants he is rooting for, and said in the most humdrum of manners, "your mom must have been a regular aesop."
despite having drunk about four and a half tall tumblers of very lush margarita at this point, his rush armchair psychoanalysis of the genesis of my inclination to tell stories sobered me up.
"au contraire," I insisted. "in fact, my mother never had any affection for what she derisively called made up stories."
not grimm's fairy tales but the only bed time stories I remember mama read me were the sunday school approved bible tales complete with hokey visual aids. but then again, my fundamentalist mother always maintain, even now, that these stories, stories of seas parted, of toads raining down on the heathen, of burning bushes, as incontestably true.
our saturday soiree degenerated after my quitely crisp protestation and after one more round of margarita that tasted flat this time.
upon entering union square metro station at about three in the morning, a coven of still zippy doves was happily trapped inside and they were feasting on a semi frozen baguette near the turnstiles.
it was only when the number 5 train went earnest with its express run that I regretted not telling my friend about manang soling. she was our washer woman who reeked of bleach and betel nut. this was when my mother dragged me to that yellow house under two adolescent camachile trees.
I remember being impatient with my mother, this was on schooldays, for not leaving early enough to that non sectarian high school she used to teach. for it was only when she left that manang soling, squatting like a town fair fortune teller in front of a foam crested corrugated iron laundry vat, could begin, without trepidation of mama's disapproving stares, to cast her spell on me with her magical-there is just no other word for it-tales in between beating our soileds with her ratty laving paddle and spitting out overchewed betel nut.
oh the stories she told me. but being the ever selfish me, I am not about to just share them with you, just like that.
but manang soling, this before mama finally had enough of her so-called made up stories and dismissed her just three days before christmas of my seventh year, would tell me all she knew. everything bewitching she knew, she would regurgitate from her prodigal heart, spit it out from her betel bleeding mouth and in sweet morsels feed it to me like a fledgling impatient to acquire my flight feathers.