they were not the most affectionate of all couples in the neighborhood. but when he died, she surprised everyone by pickling her husband's penis in brine and holy water.
i did not actually see the shriveled penis swimming in a hazy sacred consommé. but manang soling, our washerwoman awash with tales, did. or so she told us.
"what would she do with it?" my mama, overhearing manang soling, interrupted.
"what else?" our laundry lady shot back.
visibly aghast, mama hauled me quickly away from manang soling. I remember, too, mama having suddenly this jones for ice cream that night manang soling told me the story of a flaccid penis that still could.
this, when I was yet growing up in an island where my existence seemed to be mediated by an old, half-crazy woman hoarding fiction obsessively while being recklessly wasteful with what my mama and our neighbors called reality.
today, straphanging across me in the middle of the bus was this diminutive guy in sagging pants. whenever the bus stopped along its designated route, he would unconsciously grab his crotch. without fail.
there is no good thing that may come to admitting this, but sometimes, I am just appalled at myself and the way my so-called memories are triggered back to life.
why couldn't the memory of say, that night i spent with the first person i've ever felt comfortably natural with get priority screening in my mind now over the decidedly unedifying pickled penis story?
i can only take comfort, somehow, in how the dubliner fictionist elizabeth bowen described the charm, no, the genius of memory as choosy, chancy and temperamental.
"it rejects the edifying cathedral and indelibly photographs the small boy outside, chewing a hunk of melon in the dust."
by the stop at arthur avenue, a lone bucket seat was emptied. in a heartbeat, the crotch grabbing guy slinked down to the vacant seat. but not before doing first what he had always been doing while straphanging.
as soon as the bus rolled, my memory, that pickled memory, just fizzed out of the window, the rimy bus window. it will travel, I suppose, on its own back to somewhere warm and humid like the island of my childhood.