The Mysterious Drawings

The first drawing showed up three days after we moved into the apartment.

I already knew it was from Mela before Mama Lina even got to the name on the envelope — my cousin drew flowers on everything, and hers always looked more like fried eggs than flowers. Five of them circled my name, orange in the middle.

“Can I open it?”

Mama was wrestling plates into a kitchen cabinet that wouldn’t shut. “It’s yours. Why are you asking me?”

“You said not to touch the mail.”

“I said don’t open other people’s mail.”

I sat down right there on the floor and tore the envelope open along one side.

We were now in Unit 3B of Rosario Court, an old building on a busy road where jeepneys coughed smoke under the windows, and vendors yelled over each other in the afternoons. The elevator smelled like wet metal and never quite lined up with the floor; you had to step up a little every time the doors opened.

At Lola Pilar’s house, there was always somebody around; the neighbor’s kids, people buying stuff at the sari-sari store, cousins looking for paper dolls, some tita asking who took her slippers. Here, everyone just disappeared behind their own door.

Paolo was thirteen, which meant he was too old to play with me unless he needed somebody to blame for something. Mama was out most days at her office, waiting on another contract overseas. Tita Celia, who split the rent with us, worked at a department store and didn’t get home until well after I was supposed to be asleep.

The drawing was of the street I missed.

Mela and I were standing under Lola’s mango tree in dresses way too wide for our bodies. A couple of Barbie dolls floated around us for no reason. A blue dog was sitting on the roof, even though neither of us had ever owned a dog.

At the bottom she’d written:

I MADE YOU TALLER SO YOU WON’T BE SAD.

I laughed.

“What’s funny?” Paolo asked from the couch.

I showed him.

“You still look short.”

“She made me taller than you.”

“That’s a tree.”

“That’s me.”

“Then why do you have leaves?”

I grabbed the drawing back before he could say anything else. He went back to his comic book, looking pretty pleased with himself.

I taped Mela’s picture up next to my bed. That night the pipes in the wall kept knocking, and somebody’s TV ran past midnight. I kept looking at the drawing whenever I felt like crying.

Another envelope came before the week was even over.

Paper dolls this time, plus three dresses Mela had designed herself. One had stars all over it. One had pockets big enough for candy. The third looked like something a grandmother would wear to Mass.

“That one’s for you,” Paolo said.

I threw a pillow at him.

The third envelope showed up on a rainy afternoon. Mama wasn’t home yet from work. Paolo had basketball practice. Tita Celia had left a plate of pancit under one of those mesh food covers before she left.

I took the envelope into the bedroom before I opened it. I wanted Mela’s old neighborhood to be just mine for a few minutes.

First page: four girls playing Chinese garter.

Second: Lola’s veranda.

The third one made me stop.

She’d drawn Rosario Court.

I recognized the cracked sign over the entrance, the narrow guard desk next to the elevator. But Mela had never even been here. She didn’t know about the green railings or the square floor tiles.

In the drawing, a small girl was standing in front of the elevator. Her hair was cut to her chin, like mine. She was holding an envelope covered in fried-egg flowers.

A man was standing behind her.

Mela had colored his clothes gray, and she’d pressed so hard with the black pencil near his face that the paper had torn a little. He was carrying a red rectangular bag.

His hand was reaching toward the girl’s shoulder.

I flipped the page over.

Nothing was written on the back.

Out in the hallway, the elevator groaned.

The doors dragged open.

Footsteps came down the third-floor hallway and stopped outside our unit.

I pressed the drawing against my chest and looked through the peephole.

A man in gray work clothes was standing there with his back to me.

In his right hand was a red metal tool bag.