PART 1: The Hallway Rug

I am seventy-two years old.

Right now I am lying on the floor of my daughter's hallway.

I am pretending to be dead.

My grandson is on his knees next to me and he is crying.

He is telling me about a window he broke two years ago.

I did not know about any window.

Let me start from the beginning.

My name is Cely. I live in Daly City with my daughter Josie, her husband Dennis, and their two kids.

Kayla is nine. She is easy.

Miggy is fifteen. He is not.

Miggy has a hobby.

His hobby is jumping out at me.

The first time was in March. I opened my bedroom door at six in the morning and he was standing there.

He did not say anything. He just stood there.

I dropped my glass of water.

He laughed so hard he had to sit down on the floor.

Then he did it again in April, from under the kitchen table.

Then in the pantry. Twice.

Then behind my car in the driveway.

Then at church, in the parking lot, behind the van of the Ramos family.

At church.

Then he hid in the laundry basket. He is five foot ten and he got in the laundry basket.

Then behind the bathroom door.

That was eight.

I told his mother. She said, "Ma, he's fifteen."

I told him. He said, "Sorry, Lola," and he was already smiling when he said it.

I hit him with my tsinelas. He laughed at that too.

I prayed about it. Nothing.

Then one night in June I was on my phone watching videos.

I like the videos where people fall down. I like the ones where somebody jumps out of a bush.

And there was one where a boy scares his father, and the father falls down and lies still.

And the boy starts screaming.

And I sat up in my bed and I said out loud, "Ay."

That was it. That was the answer.

I practiced.

I want you to know that I practiced.

Three times, on a Tuesday, when nobody was home.

I picked the hallway rug because it is soft and because it is right outside the coat closet, which is where he likes to hide now.

I practiced going down on my side. Not on my face. On my face is not dignified and also I have my teeth.

I practiced with my arm out and my legs a little bent.

I looked at myself in my phone camera to check.

I looked very good. I looked terrible in the correct way.

Then I waited.

I waited eleven days.

Ay, sus. Eleven days is a long time to walk down a hallway on purpose.

On the twelfth day, which was a Saturday, everybody was out.

Josie was at Costco. Dennis was at his brother's. Kayla was at a birthday party.

Only me and Miggy in the house.

And at 10:15 in the morning I walked past the coat closet with my coffee.

The door came open.

"HOY."

I did not have to act.

That is the first thing I want to say. I really did jump. My heart went so fast I saw white for one second.

And then I remembered.

And I went down.

I dropped the coffee. That was not the plan but it made it better.

I hit that rug on my side, arm out, legs bent, exactly like I practiced.

I closed my eyes.

I stopped breathing loud and I breathed very small through my nose.

And then I waited for him to laugh.

He did not laugh.

He did not say anything at all.

The house was so quiet I could hear the refrigerator.

And then he said my name in a voice I have never heard him use.

"Lola?"

PART 2: What He Confessed First

He got down on the floor.

He put his hand on my shoulder and he shook me.

"Lola. Lola. Lola."

Diyos ko. I almost got up right then.

I am not a monster. I was already saying sorry inside my head. I was already counting to three.

And then he said, "Please, please wake up, I'll tell you everything."

I stopped counting.

I want to be clear about who I am as a person.

I am the kind of woman who hears the word everything and stays on the floor.

"I broke the blue dish," he said.

The blue dish.

The blue dish broke in 2024. It was my mother's. Josie blamed Buboy, our dog, and I said that dog cannot reach that shelf, and Josie said Ma, please, and we did not talk about it for a week.

Buboy took that for two years.

I did not move.

"And the window," he said. "In the garage. In 2023. That wasn't a rock from the mower. That was me and Julian."

Julian.

Julian's mother brings me pancit at Christmas. Julian's mother is going to hear about this.

Then he started doing CPR.

He does not know CPR.

He was pushing on my stomach. Not my chest. My stomach.

Every time he pushed, air came out of me, and every time air came out of me he got more scared, and every time he got more scared he pushed harder.

I had to hold my whole face still while a fifteen-year-old boy did push-ups on my lunch.

"I'm failing chemistry," he said. "I got a D. I told you a B minus."

Push.

"I ate your ube. The whole jar. I said it was Kayla."

Push.

That was my ube. That was the jar from Tita Lita. Kayla cried about that jar.

Then Buboy came.

Buboy is eleven years old and mostly asleep and he came down that hallway like he had been waiting his whole life for me to be at his level.

He licked my ear. He licked inside my ear.

And I held still.

If they had given me a trophy that day I would have taken it.

"Get away, Buboy," Miggy said. "GET AWAY."

Then he did something that broke my heart a little.

He picked up my hand and he held it with both of his hands and he put his forehead down on it.

And he said, "Please don't be dead, please don't be dead, Lola, please."

Okay. Okay, that one hurt.

I decided I would open my eyes.

I really did decide it.

And then he said, "I took Dad's car."

My eyes stayed closed all by themselves.

"Twice," he said. "At night. To Jollibee. I only have my permit."

Naku po.

"And I have a girlfriend. Her name is Sam. It's been seven months."

Seven months.

I have been sitting across from that boy at dinner for seven months asking him if he has any friends, and he has been saying not really.

Not really.

My leg was asleep. My ear was wet. There was coffee soaking into my housedress and it was going cold and I could feel it on my hip.

And I was having the best morning of my entire year.

Then he stood up fast. I heard his knees pop.

I heard him fumbling. I heard the little sound his phone makes when he unlocks it.

And he said, out loud, to nobody, "Okay. Okay. 911."

PART 3: What Stopped the Phone Call

The front door opened.

Grocery bags. Keys. Josie's voice, from the kitchen, normal.

"Miggy, can you help me with the trunk?"

Then nothing.

Then Josie screaming.

She came around the corner and she dropped everything on the floor. I heard a jar break. I found out later it was olives.

"MA. MA."

She got down on her knees next to me. She grabbed my face with both hands.

And I opened my eyes about this much and looked right at her.

Her whole life I have known that woman. Well, she has known me her whole life, but you understand.

She stopped screaming.

She looked at me. I looked at her.

She sat back on her heels.

Then she looked up at her son, who was standing there with the phone against his chest and his whole face wet.

And my daughter said, very slowly:

"Miggy. Before we call anybody. Is there anything else you want to tell her?"

She is my child. That is my child.

He started again.

He was crying so hard he was hiccuping and he could not stop talking.

The dent in the garage door. That was him, backing out the lawnmower.

He skipped his cousin Jaymar's confirmation to go to a car meet in Milpitas.

He sold the bike we bought him and told us it got stolen at school.

He has thirty-one absences in first period.

Josie was writing in her phone. Actually writing.

And that is when Dennis came home.

Dennis walked in the door, saw his wife kneeling on the floor next to his mother-in-law who was lying dead on the rug, and said, "What."

And Josie said, without looking up, "Miggy took your car to Jollibee."

Dennis said, "WHAT."

Then Kayla came in from the birthday party with a balloon.

Kayla is nine. Kayla took one look at me on the floor, looked at her mother's face, and understood everything in about two seconds.

That girl put down her balloon.

She sat on the stairs like she was at the movies.

Miggy was too far gone to notice any of it. He was on his knees telling us about a vape he keeps behind the water heater.

And then he said the last one.

He said, "I only do it because you laugh."

Everything stopped.

"You don't laugh anymore, Lola. Since you moved in. You just sit."

"You only make noise when I scare you."

Grabe.

Ay, that boy.

I opened my eyes and I sat up.

Miggy screamed.

I have never heard a sound like that come out of a person. It was not a boy sound. It was a bird sound.

He went backward into the shoe rack and the shoe rack went into the wall and every shoe in that house came down on top of him.

Kayla fell off the stairs laughing.

Buboy started barking at the ceiling.

Dennis said, "Diyos ko po," and had to hold onto the door.

Nine times he got me.

One time I got him. One.

It was worth all nine.

He did not talk to me for two hours.

He sat in his room and he was so mad. And he had every right, and I knew it, and I sat outside his door on the floor because my knees would not let me do anything else, and I said sorry through the wood.

He said, "You let me do CPR."

I said, "Anak, you were doing it on my stomach."

He opened the door.

That is a list on the refrigerator now. Josie wrote it. It has fourteen things on it and a number next to each one and he is working through them until December.

Buboy got a whole rotisserie chicken for the blue dish. He did not understand why but he did not ask questions.

And I laugh now. That is the thing. I laugh at everything now.

Because he still does it.

He still jumps out at me from behind that closet door, maybe once a week, and I still scream every single time, because it still works.

But now, before he does it, he waits until I am all the way through the doorway.

And he checks that I am not carrying anything.

Auntie Karma plays dead and hears everything. 💛