Excerpts from
All the Way to the Stars
© 1998 by Edessa Ramos

Tabito's mother woke up one morning to the sound of tiny feet tapping across the floorboards, flitting in and out of rooms. There was a sense of urgency to it as though something very important was about to happen. Gripped by a sense of curiosity and excitement, she got out of bed that bleak foggy Sunday and peeked into the small dining room which they had transformed into an art studio/mess room. It was quiet there, but she observed strange little cone-shaped objects hanging from the corners of the filing cabinet and even along the sides of the coffee-maker. Touching the tiny things gingerly, she realized they were made of modeling clay.

She found him in the living room next to the little yellow study table, the one they had fished out of a thrift store last summer. He glanced up at her momentarily with his serious dark eyes, then went back to the work which had preoccupied him since 6:00 that morning.

"Hi, mom."

"It's quite early to be up. What are you making, anak?"

His face lit up with excitement. "Cocoons!"

"Wow, you're making, uh, cocoons."

"Yeah. Miss Plummer said that butterflies, before they become butterflies, must first be cocoons. See?"

He held up a cocoon and she peered into it with great interest.

"They have to be alone and it has to be quiet. And safe. Then, when they are ready, they'll prick their cocoons to open them up. Then they'll come out as butterflies!"

Their lives were ruled by the daily routine of coming home every evening from the babysitter's house. Late in the afternoon, she would speed frantically on the freeway after another day of hard work and low pay, hoping that this time Maria would have no more complaints about her being late. For Tabito, it would have been another long afternoon in Maria's house with her three bullish kids. Another long day in Kindergarten where, for sure, something was bound to go wrong, like that morning when Mommy forgot to tuck his homework into his school bag and earned for him Miss Plummer's look of displeasure. Driving through the endless rush-hour traffic on 16th Avenue, she would try her best to keep him awake for dinner. Then they would finally enter the apartment door and he would rush in like he was never tired from the long day. He would rush into the small hallway calling out "Tito Victor?! Tito Victor?! We're home!"

Then he would stop in the middle of the living room. No Tito Victor there.

How many times did she have to explain that Victor did not live with them anymore? That they probably won't be seeing him again. It was a difficult moment to bear, to watch the expectation in those little eyes wilting away into sad realization.

"Oh yeah," Tabito said softly. "I forgot."

His hopes would once again turn into a pillar of salt dashed to the black-painted floor. She would feel the urge to assure him, to tell him that Victor will visit, that maybe this weekend they will see him. Then nearly the same instant she would decide against it. She must stop shielding him from the fact that they were, once again, on their own. Her relationship with Victor ended in bitter failure way ahead of its time. Once again, just Tabito and Mommy.

Somewhere on that blurred horizon where dissolve the boundaries between certainty and insecurity, between joy and sorrow, she would sit still and wait for her son's embrace. She knew that he would simply come to her. She laid a tender hand on his swollen heart, right at the spot where the hurt threatened to rupture.