The Boy With the Broken Tooth

The Boy Beside My Chair

The first time I saw the boy with the broken tooth, he was crouching beside my chair and staring at my mango.

I was five, old enough to guard the sweetest cheek of a ripe mango with both hands but not old enough to wonder how a stranger had entered Lola Pilar’s dining room without opening a door.

Mama Lina had just come home from working abroad. She sat across from me with Lola, talking about money, passports, and an aunt whose name I had already forgotten. Their voices kept folding over each other. I was more interested in the mango juice running down my wrist.

The boy leaned closer.

“Can I have some?”

He looked about my age. Maybe younger. His yellow shirt was too big, his shorts were wet at the hem, and his knees were dark with mud. One of his front teeth was broken and black in the middle.

I pulled my plate closer. “No. This is mine.”

“Even the seed?”

“I’m still eating it.”

He rested his chin on the edge of the table. I should have called Lola. Instead, I became annoyed. He kept watching every bite as if I had stolen the mango from him.

“Stop asking,” I whispered.

Mama stopped talking. “Nica, who are you speaking to?”

My family still used my childhood nickname then, but in every version of the memory, I hear her call me Nica. Maybe memory fixes small things so the frightening parts can fit.

I pointed beside me. “This boy. He keeps asking for my mango.”

Mama looked at the empty chair, then under the table.

“What boy?”

The child crouched lower. His bare toes curled against the floor.

“That boy. He has a bad tooth.”

Mama frowned at Lola. “Ma, did one of the neighbors come in?”

Lola did not answer immediately. The spoon in her coffee cup had stopped moving.

“What is he wearing?” she asked me.

“Yellow. His shorts are wet.”

The boy looked at Lola, though she was staring a little to his left.

“Does he have anything in his hand?” she asked.

I looked. “Nothing.”

“Ask him what he wants.”

“I already told you. Mango.”

Mama pushed back her chair. “Ma, don’t encourage her.”

That was when fear finally reached me. Mama could not see him. Lola was asking questions as if she already knew what I might say. The boy was still there, close enough for me to see a small line of mud drying along his cheek.

I abandoned my plate and ran around the table. My knee struck a chair, but I did not stop until I had climbed into Lola’s lap.

The boy did not follow.

When I looked again, the space beside my chair was empty.

Lola held me until I stopped crying. Later, she placed the mango seed on a saucer near the back door. Mama complained that ants would come. Lola said she would throw it away before dark.

I checked before bedtime.

The saucer was there. The seed was gone.

For years, I kept that memory in the same crowded part of my mind as brownouts, rain baths, monggo ice drops, and the cockroach eggs I used to pick from beneath the dining table because I thought they were strange brown beads. Childhood had been full of things adults explained too late.

The boy, I decided, had been imaginary.

Thirty years later, I returned to Lola’s house for her funeral and learned that imaginary children could wait.

The house on Mabolo Street looked smaller than it had when I was young. The veranda still had the green metal railing that burned our palms at noon. The sari-sari store window was shut, its wooden ledge gray with dust. Behind the glass, empty candy jars stood in a row like they were waiting for Lola to return from her afternoon nap.

My six-year-old daughter, Lia, pressed her face to the window.

“You lived here, Mama?”

“When I was little.”

“Did you sell candy?”

“I mostly ate it.”

She laughed. I did not tell her how I used to shake the coin tray so Lola would hear it and announce that I had paid. Lola always knew the tray had been empty before I touched it. She let me take the juice anyway.

Inside, relatives moved between plastic chairs and trays of food. The burial had ended that morning, but no one seemed ready to leave. Tita Cora was dividing leftover pancit into containers. Mama Lina sat at the dining table with a folder full of property papers.

“The buyer is coming tomorrow,” she told me before I had even put down our bag.

“Tomorrow?”

“Only to inspect. We haven’t signed the final papers.”

Tita Cora snapped a lid onto a container. “The roof leaks, the store floor is soft, and the taxes are not going to pay themselves. We can’t keep this place because we’re sentimental.”

I looked toward Lola’s empty bedroom. “She hasn’t been gone a week.”

“And the bills didn’t wait a week,” Mama said.

Her voice was tired, not cruel. Lola’s medicines had been expensive. Tita Cora had borrowed money for the funeral. I understood the numbers. I simply hated hearing them discussed at the table where Lola once peeled fruit for me.

That evening, only five of us remained: Mama, Tita Cora, my older brother Paolo, Lia, and me. Paolo arrived late carrying grilled chicken and two ripe mangoes from a roadside stall.

“For peace,” he said, placing the food on the table. “Nobody can fight while eating.”

“You have never met this family,” I told him.

For a few minutes, he was almost right. Tita Cora complained about the price of rice. Mama asked Paolo about work. Lia ate with one knee tucked beneath her and kept looking toward the closed store.

I sliced one mango and put half on her plate.

She ate three pieces, then slipped from her chair.

“Where are you going?” I asked.

“Just here.”

She crouched beside the chair I had used as a child.

Something cold moved over my arms.

Lia placed a slice of mango beneath the table.

“Why did you put food on the floor?” Mama asked.

Lia looked up. “The boy said even a small piece is okay.”

Nobody moved.

I heard Paolo set down his fork.

“What boy?” I asked.

Lia pointed into the empty space beside her.

“That one,” she said. “The boy with the broken black tooth.”