Anneliz Marie Erese
Anneliz Marie Erese is a Filipino writer whose works have appeared or are forthcoming in The Saturday Paper, Meanjin, Island Online and Cordite Poetry Review, among others. She has previously received writing prizes such as the Nick Joaquin Asia Pacific Literary Awards (2019) and the Deakin Postgraduate Prize in Writing and Literature (2022). She was also the 2022 Deborah Cass Prize winner. Most recently, she was awarded a scholarship to Faber Writing Academy at Allen & Unwin. She lives on the unceded lands of the Wurundjeri people.
Photo Credit: David Patston
International
I found a place in a five-bedroom house share in Hawthorn with two students like myself and a paramedic. The landlord also lived with us – a mid-thirties contractor who disappeared to his beach house in Point Lonsdale for two weeks at a time. The place was enormous and charming and a bit rundown, but wherever I went there was light. Even in the bathroom. I would lay for a long time in the tub looking up through the skylight and see nothing but white. There were wooden floors throughout. An updated, working oven. There was a kitchen bench and bar stools and the dining table sat eight. I picked a different chair each time.
At the end of the hallway was my room. It was small and perfect and mine. I had a second-hand mattress and bed I purchased from the tenant I replaced, a double wardrobe with a full-length mirror drilled into one of the doors, a small wooden desk pushed against the wall, and a hand-me-down bedside table. My books were stacked neatly on the floor. At night, I would play some tunes on my ukulele and Veena, one of the girls, would knock and ask me if she could come in and listen. We would stay quiet for a while, the only sound was that of the strings, and then she would get back up and say thank you before leaving. It helped me fall asleep quickly.
*
Some mornings were disorienting. I would lie awake and try to remember what I must do for the day, but I wouldn’t be able to come up with any. It always seemed like my subconscious took care of things before my consciousness caught up. For example, I would find my linens were already drying on the clothesline when I couldn’t remember doing them the day before, the same way I would keep buying a bottle of tomato sauce then open the pantry to find three of them, mouth sealed. I knew there was nothing to arrange in my room nor in the house. Classes weren’t to resume until the end of summer. I felt undeserving of this brief idleness. Alone, there was no one I must talk to, no one to report my day to. No one to cook for. No one whose laundry I needed to do, whose pants I needed to press. There was no one taking account of what I spent or where I went. No one to whom I must justify myself. No one whose justifications I chased to hear, whose tales I craved, whose mouth I needed to kiss, whose body sought my body as escape. There was nothing waiting for me, and I breathed.
*
In between his orders to bring this drink to that table or to fetch that thing from the back storage, Connor often told me stories about the time in his life when he travelled overseas. He smacked his thin lips numerous times before he finished a sentence in a mix of Irish and Australian drawl. Last week it was about the pub where he served naked in Amsterdam. Tonight, it was about a supposed three-week trip in Saint Petersburg that was cut off by an involvement with a gang. He’d gotten drunk one night with the leader after they met at a tattoo parlour. ‘This snake here,’ he said, pulling up the sleeve of his shirt, ‘up around the back of my neck.’ He turned around, moving his long bun to the side, and sure enough, the reptile’s head popped out from underneath his collar.
He was invited to the gangster’s family home where he met the sister. ‘Fucken gorgeous,’ he said. Then he’d slept with her while everyone was unconscious off their faces from alcohol. Next thing he knew, he was being forced to marry the woman. He’d fled as quick as he could. He didn’t want to get married. ‘Especially not to a Russian,’ he said. Who did you want to marry? I asked. He told me he had a penchant for Asian girls. He was staring at me with a smile plastered on his face. Penchant, I said, is another word for fetish. ‘Nah,’ he growled. ‘I just like my girls soft and small. No harm done.’ His hands were up in surrender as he chuckled.
I was observing him the whole time – the disturbing chewing sounds his lips made between sentences, the way he seemed to be gliding when walking, the jokes that missed the mark. He must had felt uncomfortable with the way I was staring at him, expressionless and unmoving, because he raised his huge palm to cover his cheek and asked, ‘Is something wrong?’
*
To my mother’s appeal, I visited home for a week. I was exhausted before the plane even hit the tarmac. I couldn’t bear to see her face, although I didn’t really know what about her face was too difficult to see. Her concern, perhaps? Or worse, her ridicule. Her hair was cut short now, brushing her nape. I considered giving her a hug, now used to how people overseas greet each other. But as I approached her at the gates, the truth struck me: this was my mother; intimacy, even feigned, was alien between us. Her first words to me were about how sickly I looked. I braced for all the others to come. The moment we got in the car, she asked: what happened? Was it money? Did he get tired of you? What did you do? She asked me if there was ever a chance to fix it. I sat uncomfortably beside her, silently cursing the heavy traffic. She said, ‘Maybe you didn’t look after him the Filipino way.’ What is the Filipino way? I asked. ‘Alam mo na,’ she said, ‘cooking and cleaning. Men like those kinds of things.’ I didn’t answer. Then we stopped at a fast-food joint and she bought me lunch.
*
I almost forgot what my grandma’s house looked like after being away for more than a year. We had new neighbours whose concrete wall cast a shadow over the walkway. The gate was painted moss green to cover its old red colour. I was lent my old bed which had become my brother’s. The sheets smelled of strong soap. My bookshelf was covered with thick transparent plastic. There were Korean pop group posters tacked on the wall above my pillow. I walked around the house in a state of stupor. Listened to the blabber around me. The bathroom was the only private place, though tiny. There was still the small mirror with the scissors hanging on a hook on its frame. It reminded me of days when I used to stare myself down in it, daring myself to do something. My lola was wondering about the man I used to love. ‘Nasa’n na si––?’ she asked. In the past, I wanted to say. I listened to the little fights. Observed how this house had become smaller as things accumulated. More people, more things, less space. My little cousins’ biggest worry was who would take what gift from my luggage. People came – my aunts, uncles, more cousins. They said hello and I said hello. At night, we watched television the way we used to: sitting closely together in a small couch while the children played with their toys on the floor. The fan blasted hot air. In the middle of this, a pin dropped. Lola thought I left. ‘Nasa’n na si––?’ she asked, her eyes roaming around the small room. I was sitting right next to her, useless and invisible.
*
Often, I imagined whole conversations with my father as if he were still alive. Being his daughter had been an education in being a version of a good girl: learning how to pray, avoiding swear words, going to church, learning the piano, getting home before dark, selecting parent-approved friends, becoming invisible from boys, getting high marks in class, becoming someone. In my fictive scenarios, I was always defending myself. If he said I was late to get home, I said the traffic was bad. If he asked me why I had failed my Chemistry class, I asked him where I got my genes from. If he yelled at me for missing church, I said I already atoned for my sins. In one of these scenarios he asked, ‘Which is worse: staying or leaving?’ I said, I think it is the leaving. It is always the leaving. The only thing I still couldn’t find an answer for was when he asked me why I was like this. I came up with several things: I couldn’t have known; I didn’t ask for it; I’m sorry. Sometimes I wanted to tell him: I think I wasn’t loved enough. But I never dared to even say the words.
*
Back in Melbourne, I started having these moments when the world appeared to go dim and I would suddenly be alone in my head – although I could be waiting to cross at the lights or in line at the self-checkout – and my mind would go back to the dark apartment where I used to live. When it happened, I shook my head vigorously or pinched the skin on my palm over and over again. In those moments, there was nothing more important than getting from point A to point B. Through this, I discovered movement. I developed a routine of walking in early mornings and stopping by at the corner café. Then I’d continue to walk on with a cup in hand. These mornings were like finding a toehold on a cliff I didn’t know I was on. It saved me, to say it simply, in that it took me away from myself. The poet Arthur Rimbaud had loved walking, too. He’d had swollen knees because of all the walks he took that his leg had had to be amputated. What cause was so noble to implore oneself to a point of dismemberment? Rimbaud walked from city to city, across deserts, took weeks and weeks of journey on foot. He’d considered himself a passer-by: ‘I’m a pedestrian. Nothing more,’ he’d said. On his last days, he’d been excited about having a wooden leg, it was all he was talking about. His last words had been: ‘Quick, they’re expecting us.’ Who was expecting me? I wanted to arrive for nothing and no one. For an hour or two, I was all bones, one with the neighbourhood trees and Victorian bungalows and closed Chinese restaurants. I was the leash on the dogs and the dogs themselves and the owners of the dogs walking the dogs. I was the yoga place and the mat and the plants behind the glass windows and the baguettes and croissants from the bakery. I was the clouds and the blue hidden behind the clouds and I was the peach in the sky and the cars and the tram passing by. There was nothing that wasn’t me, and I was lost in this rhythmic dance with the world that I forgot I was simultaneously suffering.
*
Night-time would come, as always. I was still trying to create a habit of sleeping alone. I would place one pillow in the middle of my queen-sized bed with every intention of spreading myself. But in the morning, I would always find myself on the right side, close to the windows, in a position that didn’t look like I just happened to roll there. In my sleep, I was making space for him on the empty side, leaving room for an absent body. I was clinging desperately for anything to fill the space that I started filling it with books and bags and used tissue. Something, anything. But nothing seemed to work. Separation is like death except in death, we nurse the ache knowing fully well we cannot unbury the body. In separation, the body just leaves; there is nothing to bury. I considered getting a smaller bed, but in the end, I wanted to face the ghost that seemed intent to sleep beside me.
*
A woman moaning, gasping, followed by a man’s grunt. The particular orchestra of sex. Flesh on flesh on flesh on flesh. I could tell the exact moment he put his hand over her mouth, the muffled cry and her bite on his palm. A quick flip over and now he’s on top of her. Something happens to a woman pressed down by the heavy weight of someone she wants. She becomes weightless herself, initially floating on a lagoon then sinking down to the bottom of it. She welcomes the entering, soaking wet with anticipation. Then a fullness comes over, drowns her to the core; nothing is left dry or empty. If there is a kind of heaven where you’re gagging as your lungs fill with water, then this is it. Perhaps this is why humans are obsessed with sex, as much as they are obsessed with death – they are one and the same. The thud of the headboard, the wall moving. For a second, I feared I was back in the old apartment, back at the end of the days when it had begun. But as I sat up, I saw the full moon through the window, the books on the floor, the sparse bedroom, the bed that was mine. The sounds were coming from the paramedic’s room next door. I lay back down again, eyes open, staring at the ceiling. It was so quiet it was easy to tell what was happening. He was kissing her now, his tongue inside her mouth. The rustling of hair on the pillow. Their bodies adjusting to each other. I yearned for the clumsiness of it all, the learning that transpires between two people naked before each other. My hand slowly moved down under my blanket, underneath the cotton garment covering what was between my legs. I stared up at the ceiling. There was nothing. With my eyes open and with the sound of their lips together, my fingers found the spot that weakened me, moved there slowly, slightly, gliding and gliding until I was drowning too in heaven, and crying on earth.
*
Connor asked me out on a date, but I turned it down. He’s my friend, I told him. ‘I don’t need more friends. I already have friends,’ he quipped, which surprisingly hurt. We worked together in tense silence. He was cold to me, asking me to carry the heavy boxes of liquor to the storage area or deal with the difficult customers. When someone wanted an expensive drink that was at the top of the shelf, Connor called me and pointed at the stool. ‘Use that,’ he said. I obliged and they all watched awkwardly as I placed the stool in the middle of the bar and climbed up on it to reach the bottle. I poured the guy his drink and, in turn, he put a large tip in the tin can. At closing, when I passed by Connor at the hall, I pulled his arm to a room and asked if we could talk. There was nothing to talk about, he was saying. It’s just that he couldn’t understand why I flirted with strangers all night but rejected him straight off the bat. He was kind to me, he said, he was there for me when I needed help, he gave me more hours than legally allowed, he waited for me at the tram stop when we finished late at work. He looked like a kid pacing around the room. I understood this so well, the panic, the anxious way emotions surfaced the moment something felt like slipping away. He was making his case, and I suddenly felt the urge to put my arms around him. I asked him to stand still, then approached him slowly, afraid he would bolt. Let me try this, I whispered, then tiptoed to kiss him. He was so tall, so bulky, and I imagined for a second how it would feel like to be underneath all that weight. His lips were dry, tentative against mine. I felt his hand move to my back and all the wondering stopped. I broke the kiss and gently pushed him away, shaking my head. I can’t, I said, I just can’t. I apologised. ‘Why would you fuck it up like that?’ he whispered, his fingers brushing his lips, then left the room.
*
I wanted to write a good piece about my father but someone told me I can’t call myself a writer until I am published. I desperately wanted to call myself a writer, but I had to deserve it first. So, I called my mother and asked what she could remember about Dad. ‘What does it matter what I remember?’ she said. I told her she was the wife. She told me I was the daughter. We were quiet after that. In the end, she talked about her hands, how because of her arthritis, she found it hard to wash clothes. The machine was no good, she was saying. It was still better to touch things. Feel the fabric. She swore she could feel the dirt being washed away, carried by soap water. She tended to forget these things. What things, I asked. ‘How water feels,’ she said. ‘Or dirt.’