Monstress Read Online Free PDF Page B

too. We don’t correct him.
    The funeral doesn’t take long to plan: Ma makes it similar to Dad’s, ordering the same floral arrangements, the same prayer cards, the same music. Only the casket is different: Dad’s was bronze, which best preserves the body. Eric’s will be mahogany, a more economical choice. “It’s all we can afford,” Ma says.
    Later, Loomis drives us through the cemetery to find a plot for Eric. We head to the north end, pull up at the bottom of a small hill where Dad is buried. But his grave is already surrounded, crowded with the more recent dead. “There,” Ma says, walking uphill toward a small eucalyptus. She puts her hand on a low, thin branch, rubs a budding leaf between her fingers. “It’s growing.” She gives a quick survey of the area, decides this is the place.
    â€œBut your knee.” I point out the steepness of the hill, warn her that years from now, when she’s older, getting to Eric will be difficult.
    â€œThen you help me,” Ma says, starting toward the car. “You help me get to him.”
    B ack home, Ma calls the people we couldn’t reach last night, and each conversation is the same: she greets them warmly, pauses, but can’t catch herself before she gives in to tears. Meanwhile, I get the house ready, vacuuming upstairs and down, wiping dirty window screens with wet rags, rearranging furniture to accommodate the foot traffic of all the guests who will pray for my brother’s soul. This will be the first of nine nights like this.
    â€œI hate the way Filipinos die,” Eric once said. It was the week of Dad’s funeral. “Nine nights of praying on our knees, lousy Chinese food, and hundred-year-old women keep asking me where my girlfriend is.” The businessmen were worse. On the last night of Dad’s novena, one guy—he said he was related to us but couldn’t explain how—tried selling life insurance to Eric and me. He quoted figures on what we could get for injury, dismemberment, death, and even took out a pocket calculator to prove how valuable our lives were. “Promise me, Edmond,” Eric had said, “when I die, take one night to remember me. That’s all. No old people. No kung pao chicken. No assholes telling you how much you’ll get for my severed leg.” He came close to crying, but then he managed a smile. “And make sure Village People is playing in the background.”
    â€œ ‘YMCA’?”
    â€œ ‘Macho Man,’ ” he said. “Play it twice.”
    He started laughing. I started laughing. The house was full of mourners but we stood our ground in the corner of the room, matching in our Sears-bought two-piece suits, joking like the closest of brothers. But now I know we were wrong to talk like that, as though I would automatically outlive him. I was five years older than Eric, and he was only twenty-six.
    Brothers are supposed to die in the correct order. I keep thinking: Tonight should be for me.
    B y six, the house fills with visitors. A dozen or so at first. Soon it’s fifty. I stop counting at seventy-five.
    Strangers keep telling me they’re family. They try to simplify the intricate ways we’re related: suddenly they’re cousins, aunts and uncles, the godchildren of my grandparents. None of these people have seen Eric in years, have no idea of the ways he’s changed. All they know about my brother is that he’s dead.
    Twice, an old woman calls me Eric by mistake.
    When a neighbor asks, “Where’s Delia?” Ma answers before I can. She’s embarrassed by the idea of divorce, so she says that Delia is on the East Coast for business, but will be here as soon as possible. I wish it were true: I keep checking the door, thinking Delia might walk in any moment, that somehow she found out what happened and took the next flight out to be with me. Eric’s death would have been our