Walneia Monstros

The first Saturday morning of June 1953, Walneia Monstros received a letter from Albuquerque, New Mexico, USA. It was from his brother, Hal. With eight graceful strides, she took the letter inside the house and set it on top of what her mother liked to call the “tea table”. It was actually a 3-foot concrete kitchen counter with a marble top, carved out, if the words of the salesman were to be believed, of the side of Tab’awan Hill in Baguio City. It served as the partition between the living and dining rooms of the house. It was, in fact, situated in the middle of the kitchen.

Over this counter was a beam of lacquered coconut tree lumber, sticking out of which were eight two-inch nails. Laddles, strainers, can-openers, funnels, cheese graters, peelers, spatulae, and several such kitchen implements there hung, many of them sharing a single nail.

On the farther right of the counter (when the observer is in the dining room and is facing the direction of the living room) was a wooden knife rack. Directly beside this was a cup rack that though had the capacity of holding ten cups with its ten branches, now held only two: cups belonging to Walneia’s mother, and her one younger sister Elneila.

This isn’t to say, however, that Walneia didn’t own a cup herself; she did.

It was at the moment on the kitchen sink, soaked in sopawater for later washing. It was for this reason that Walneia took Elneila’s cup and used it to hold refrigirated water to half its capacity, leaving the letter in the marble counter top.

No sooner had she closed the fridge door had she heard her mother call, “What’s that?”

She was at the laundry area at the back of the house. Now turning fifty, she still did laundry washing for the family, and had a unique ability of hearing mail being taken out of mail boxes.

“A letter, mom,” informed Walneia. “A letter. Geesh.”

“Oh,” her mom said, trying to digest what she’d just heard. Her daughter’s expression was something that wouldn’t be generally accepted as a common remark among the youth until fifty years later. At the same time, she was debating within herself if it would be wise to do what she was thinking of doing… which she did anyway, before very long. “Who’s it from?” she asked.

“Hal,” came the reply.

“Hal?” There was tenseness in her mother’s voice, and if Walneia’s hearing was as acute as her mother’s, she would have picked up the sound of her mother excitedly pushing the large aluminum clothes washing basin out of her way, getting up, straightening her laundry washing house clothes, and walking into the house full of determination to sieze the letter from Walneia’s hand.

And sieze the letter she did. Walneia was startled at her sudden appearance, coming up from behind her without warning like that. If she wasn’t through drinking her water, she would have blown it out in sprays out of her mouth and into her mother’s “tea table”. Thankfully, however, the cup had been emptied and hung—without washing, she only drank water from it—back on the rack.

“Geesh, mom. You nearly killed me there. Geesh.”

It could be the precosciousness of her expression that her mother ignored her. “Your brother hasn’t written us anything in seven months, in case you’re interested in that, young woman,” she informed her instead.

“I know, I know,” said Walneia. “Geesh.” She cleared out of the “tea table” now and was moving more in the direction of the living room than of the dining room. Halfway to sitting down a couch, however, a thought occurred to her. She walked back, past her mother, and into the dining room. She remembered seeing half a bar of leftover Pinefrosted Danglebar from last night left on the fridge. She thought such nutriment would be welcome right about now.

Meanwhile, her mother was busy opening the mail. Careful not to cause the tiniest damage to the page (or pages) inside, she employed the help of a nearby chopping knife to take off approximately a millimeter of the envelope.

She pulled out four sheets of legal-sized white paper from inside, folded in three. Setting the now empty envelope aside for any future use, Walneia’s mother unfolded the letter.

One scan at just the first page, Walneia’s mother’s face immediately radiated the brightest, happiest emotions of a mother who had received a letter from a son from thousands of miles away for the first time in seven months. “It’s true, Walneia,” she said with all possible delight. “It’s true.”

Walneia, crumpling the now empty Pinefrosted Danglebar wrapper, fifty years ahead of her time, could only say, “Geesh.”

© Jay Santos 2003.