EMERGENCY— the news stream announced on his cellphone. Jaime didn’t have a television in his new apartment, and he didn’t plan on paying for service. It was a rather empty studio apartment downtown, a cheap mattress on a metal frame, a foldable plastic table with four matching chairs meant for outdoor picnics. It was on the third floor in a complex with no elevator, and having made the move alone, Jaime had no care for furniture. He was happy with what he had, which wasn’t much. “What will your guests say about you?” his mother said, calling immediately when he texted her pictures of the apartment. “What guests?” he replied. “It’s just me.” At least, if the hurricane was for the worse, he’d have nothing to lose.
The news stream switched between the Louisiana governor and the mayor-president of Lafayette parish. Where he had come from—New Jersey—Jaime called them “counties,” not “parishes.” Parishes were for churches, and Jaime hadn’t been to church since high school.
“Is there a church nearby?” his mother had asked too when he moved. “You should know where the nearest church is, and the nearest hospital and grocery store. But church most of all. Maybe you’ll find a nice girl there.”
By girl, she meant a specific type of girl—Filipino. Jaime knew his mother’s ploys, like when she hosted a rosary group in their house soon after he stopped going to Sunday mass. All old nanays: Filipino women whose rosaries were blessed by the Pope and whose perfume smelled of rose petals that lingered when they left. One day, a nanay had brought along a granddaughter, whom Jaime thought was cute enough but who later confessed that she had no interest in him, only an elaborate plan between her mother and Jaime’s to lure him back to God. “She could have been the one,” Jaime’s mother would later bring up from time to time.
But Jaime was no prodigal son, which was why, when he had the chance to, he moved as far as possible from his mother and her evangelizing. Unlike for college, where he was a commuter rather than a resident—“Take the bus,” his mother said, “You’ll save much more money”—he chose a grad school in a different state, in a different latitude much closer to the equator, where hurricanes were more frequent than snow.
When he first arrived in Lafayette, he thought there were more Filipinos around. The flag of Acadiana had an uncanny resemblance to the flag of the Philippines. Both sported the same colors and similar geometric design: a white triangle jutting into the upper blue banner and the bottom red. But the Acadian flag differed in detail—a single gold star rather than an eight-rayed sun, and embellishments of three silver fleurs-de-lis and a gold Castilian tower. On his way to class at the university, he passed the flag every day; Lafayette was covered in it. He knew that flag wasn’t the flag of his country, despite the resemblance. He’d get used to it, he told himself, eventually.
Jaime decided to defy the governor’s orders. He opened the door into the hurricane. Where would he go? A question always on his mind. He could go down the stairs and walk the empty streets, an easy stroll through downtown and back. But there would be flooding, and he didn’t know how to swim. Instead, like all things whipped up into the storm, Jaime went up.
Jaime stood on the roof, and sat some, all through the night, a nomad waiting to move. But he remained in his spot, though the maelstrom tried its best. He spoke none but hummed a tune to himself and God, whom he assumed, if there was one, was there in the middle of it all. The gusts that swung against him, the dust-confetti in their swing. The flash of white against the dark horizon, the clamor in translation from sight to sound. The city was below, its stoplights swinging from their posts, red and green flickering in concert. Lafayette, whose flag resembled a country of islands halfway across the world, battered by Pacific winds rather than Atlantic, called typhoons rather than hurricanes. When he was a boy in the Philippines, his parents took him to a church, Our Lady of—, to whom his countrymen and women prayed in times of storm. Why not pray, then, on the roof of his new apartment? Try this time, he submitted himself, praying to God that he made the right choice moving there. He worked a poem into his prayer: Rage, rage against the dying of the light… Was this what it meant to be a Ragin’ Cajun? He found himself in that dying light, the literal blackout of stoplights and lamp posts below. It must have been God or something of the absolute. In other words, a state of—
*
“Grace,” she introduced herself to Jaime. She and her mother were moving into the second floor below his; a tree had fallen onto their house during the storm and it was going through repairs, which would take at least a few months. She was going door to door, handing out ziplocked cookies she baked herself to her new neighbors. Her hair was cut short, her bangs held back with a folded blue bandana, and she wore a plain white t-shirt with overalls. She also had brown skin and a similar set of eyes to his, and before Jaime could ask for himself, Grace asked him. “Filipino?”
“Very much so,” he answered.
“Me too.” She smiled. It was custom for one Filipino to acknowledge another, often with only a nod. Theirs was a silence that went for too long. “O-K,” she said, breaking, “I’ll see you around.”
“Alright, thanks.” He closed the door, knowing that he liked her in an instant. She had mentioned being a schoolteacher at a Catholic school, and he—a grad student teaching college freshmen—entertained the coupling of educators. Jaime had a habit of reading into potential matches; if anyone would have a say in “The One,” it would be him and not his mother.
Soon after their meeting, he came home from classes and found Grace unpacking boxes from her car. Jaime sprung at his chance. “Need any help?” he asked, walking up to her. “Oh yes,” she said, peeking out from behind the large cargo box in her hands. “Thanks, Jaime.” His stomach stirred at her remembering his name. He took the cargo box from her, a box he knew all too well; his parents had the same kind to send goods back to the Philippines—balikbayan boxes, they were called, that which returns to the country.
Grace picked up a smaller box and led Jaime up the stairs. “These are only temporary things, essentials, until we get back to the house.” Despite her words, Jaime, his arms flexing at ninety degrees against the cargo, imagined he and Grace were moving in together. He lent himself to the fantasy until a misstep up the stairs broke it.
“You okay?” she asked.
“Yup,” he said, catching himself on the last step before the second floor. He tried to suppress his exasperated breathing, which made him suffer all the more.
“Don’t expect much.” Grace turned the key into the door. “We— well, my mom is still deciding where to put things.”
“You should see my apartment.” Shit, he thought to himself, too much, too desperate. “I didn’t mean it like—”
As she pushed the door open to let him in, Jaime heard the familiar voice of a Filipino nanay, an accent of superiority strung together with motherly love.
“Sino yan?” Grace’s mother entered the living room, surprised to see a young man inside. “Hay! May lalake.”
“Nay.” Grace inflected her voice like a child, a plea to stop the embarrassment. “This is Jaime. He lives upstairs.”
“Hi,” Jaime said, the box still in his grip. The nanay’s eyes were fixed on him, dark brown targets that pinned him on the spot. Eager to break her stare before the cargo box broke him, he spoke up, quivering, “Where should I put this down?”
“Right here is fine,” Grace said. He set the box down next to hers. She was already unpacking her box, unwrapping a small object from a bundle of newspapers. When it was fully unwrapped, Jaime knew it immediately—a miniature statue of Jesus as a brown child, a Santo Niño. A similar one sat on an altar back at his parents’ house. She handed it to her mother, who took the statue into the kitchen, a separate room with a pass-through window into the living room so Jaime could still feel her stare.
“So, Jaime.” Grace’s mother pronounced his name the way his own mother called him, the J as an H, Hi-meh rather than Jay-me—he’d gone by the American pronunciation since his family immigrated, but his mother kept to the original, much like other things she brought from the motherland. He saw his mother in Grace’s, a woman who had grown old but never weak, modeled herself after the Virgin Mary, wiping down the Santo Niño with a damp paper towel as if the Christ child were hers. “What are you doing in Lafayette?”
“I go to the university,” he answered. “For my master’s.”
“Engineering? Chemistry?”
“No, uh…” He was always insecure in admitting this part, especially to other Filipinos, and especially to the Filipino mother of the girl he’s crushing on. “English.”
“Oh,” she said with the same disappointment he heard from his mother when he revealed his college major and, later, graduate course of study. To her, the humanities were inextricably tied to lower salaries, so one was expected to take care of humans—the stereotype being nurses or domestic servants—and not be human, unless you were an athlete or actor, successful ones who presented well in money and performance. “The same with Grace. She studied history.”
“If by the same you mean not nursing,” Grace interjected. “Nay’s disappointed I didn’t become a nurse like her.”
“At least you became a teacher,” her mother said. “Good enough for you.”
Grace held in a breath, rolled her eyes; You mean good enough for YOU, Jaime understood.
She was unboxing the larger box, uncovering notebooks, planners, textbooks, even a printer—this was life in the humanities, Jaime knew all too well, carrying around a variety of Norton anthologies on his back, Sisyphus in every step. He was happy to bear that burden for Grace for a short while. It was juvenile, the way a teenage boy carried a girl’s backpack, but romance was always juvenile—Jaime, at least, didn’t recognize a difference between his high school pursuits and adult ones.
“Is there anything else I can do?” Jaime asked. Between Grace and her mother, he was a balloon in a stack of needles.
“I think we can manage—”
“Yes, Jaime,” her mother accepted eagerly. “We only had the movers for a day and they didn’t care for the layout. You can help me move these in place.” She gestured to the furniture pushed to the side of the living room.
“You really don’t have to,” Grace assured. But Jaime couldn’t help but try to impress her and, a bonus, her mother, thinking ahead that he would need her blessing as her daughter’s suitor.
Their apartment wasn’t a studio like his. It had two bedrooms, the smaller one for Grace and the larger one for her mother. There were separate bed frames and mattresses for each of them, three dressers, two bookshelves, a couch, a dining table and smaller ones. Jaime tried his best to follow their instructions, moving one piece of furniture from one wall to the other, one corner to its opposite, between Grace’s “Over there” and her mother’s “No, no—doon, diyan, yes!” He had cheated himself of this experience with his own apartment, moving in with plastic chairs and plastic bins, a discounted mattress on a metal frame. When both women reached an agreement and one piece of furniture was set firmly in place, Jaime snuck a successful smile toward Grace, who received it with an amusing slow clap.
He knew they were finished when Grace’s mother set down the Santo Niño onto a table, consecrating it an altar in one corner of the living room.
“Perfect,” her mother said. “Okay na for Sunday.”
“We’re getting the apartment blessed,” Grace explained. “Even though this place is temporary.”
“All homes are temporary,” her mother said, “which is why you have to take care of every place you live in and get it blessed.” Jaime nodded, not wanting to confess to the poor condition of his own apartment. “You should come, Jaime, yes?”
He looked over to Grace. She shrugged.
“There will be a big party and lots of food,” her mother urged him on. “Pancit, lumpia, and lechon! Sige na—consider it our thank you for all your help.”
He didn’t want to attend any religious gathering, but he really liked Grace. The food, too, would be a welcome reward for his moving services. He hadn’t had good, greasy Filipino food since he left for Lafayette; all he’d been having was instant ramen and microwavable meal trays.
“Yes,” Jaime said. “Sige.”
He didn’t expect the elder woman’s embrace, thin but fortified arms hugging him, her greying hair brushing against his chin as she leaned into his chest. She was about the same height as his mother. When he was released from her hold, he had half-hoped Grace would follow up with her own embrace, sadly to no avail.
“Let me walk you to your apartment,” she said instead and led him to their door.
“Goodbye, Jaime,” her mother said on their way out, again with a silent J in her native tongue. “See you Sunday!”
They made their way up to the floor above, Jaime leading Grace to his door this time.
“You don’t have to go to the blessing if you don’t want to,” Grace said. “My mom likes to pressure every boy I meet into these things.”
“I understand,” Jaime said. “My mother’s the same—controlling.”
“Yes, that’s the word,” she said. “Controlling.”
They returned to the awkward silence from their initial meeting, the moment of goodbye when neither wanted to say it.
“I’ll go to the blessing,” Jaime said, breaking the silence. “If that’s okay with you?”
The edge of her mouth piqued a half-smile. “I’ll see you Sunday.”
*
There had been a mass before the blessing, but Jaime didn’t go. It was Sunday after all, and he usually slept in, which he did that morning. He rolled out of bed at 11:30a.m., enough time, he thought, to get ready for the noon gathering downstairs. He showered and brushed, styled his hair back with pomade, and put on a button-down shirt and khakis—loose, professional clothing he wore when he taught and attended his classes. Jaime eyed his outfit in the mirror, knowing full well his mother would have sent him directly to the tailor to get his clothes fitted. He loved wearing clothes that would upset her, now that she was no longer there to chide him. He even considered a tattoo. Whatever he wore on a Sunday would be his Sunday best. He finished getting ready at noon exactly, leaving his apartment for Grace’s without making his bed—he loved that part of his new life too.
He didn’t expect the gathering to have started already, the 10a.m. mass only ending an hour earlier. But it seemed that the entire congregation—all Filipinos—followed Grace and her mother home immediately. He could already hear the music and conversations, and on his way down, the neighbors too began to notice.
“What’s going on there?” one neighbor asked Jaime as he passed by.
“A house blessing,” Jaime said.
“Oh, really?” The neighbor seemed more enthused than disgruntled. “They’re getting their apartment blessed, hun,” he yelled inside his own apartment. “Why didn’t we ever get ours blessed?” And with that, the neighbor retreated indoors, the curiosity satisfied. The other neighbors followed suit.
The door to the apartment was already open, people trailing in. As he entered, the others acknowledged Jaime with their eyes, to which he nodded, everyone already familiar with a sense of Filipino-ness otherwise absent from his daily life in the city. He also smelled that familiar rose petal perfume, and sure enough, he spotted all the Filipino nanays seated in the midst of chismis. Yesterday, he wouldn’t have thought of fitting more than fifty people into their apartment, but there they were, parents and children, the Filipino congregation of Lafayette and the surrounding areas. Regardless of his falling out with the faith, Jaime fit right in.
He could already smell the food, and all along the kitchen counter and dining table, Jaime saw the banquet. Two large rice cookers, hefty trays of pancit and lumpia, and—the centerpiece—lechon, a whole roasted pig, its crispy skin glistening like glass, waiting to be broken into. There were also the desserts laid out on a separate table: leche flan, cassava cake, ube cake. Was he not in the Deep South, or was he transported back to his childhood home where they celebrated birthdays and Christmases with the same sweet and savory menu?
“There you are.” Grace tapped him on the shoulder. “We’re about to start.” Her Sunday best was also more laidback than his mother, and her mother too, would have approved—a plaid button-down rather than a white t-shirt, tucked into the same overalls. Rather than a bandana, her bangs were clipped to the side with a hairpin. Even then, Jaime was infatuated.
She took his hand and pulled him through the crowd—the number of people inside again surprising him. They found themselves in a clearing at the center of the living room, where the altar with the Santo Niño was placed. The Christ child had new ornaments: colored flower petals wrapped around his neck. Beside the altar were Grace’s mother—wearing a white Maria Clara dress, its high shoulder pads almost eclipsing her head—and a Filipino priest, young, clean-shaven, and bald, dressed down in black and a white collar. Grace’s mother found Jaime with Grace and gestured for them to come join them in front of the altar.
“Jaime.” Her mother took over his hands from Grace, kissing him on each cheek. “Father, this is Jaime. He’s the one who helped us move in.”
“Jaime,” the priest called him, also with the authentic pronunciation. “Blessed are you. I’m Father Dominic. The parishioners call me Father Dom.”
“Nice to meet you, Father Dom,” Jaime said uncomfortably—he never liked calling other men by Father; family they were not.
“And you met my daughter at the mass.” Her mother pushed Grace forward to greet Father Dom.
“Yes, hello, Grace.” The priest shook her hand, which Grace pulled back as soon as he finished.
“Okay, good! Nandito na ang lahat,” her mother exclaimed. “We’re ready to begin, Father.” She clapped her hands and waved to the others from one side of the room to the next, letting everyone know it’s time for the ceremony. The conversations soon simmered, hushed voices turned silent, a nanay threatened a whining child to be quiet with an extended, flattened hand, which would do instead of the typical flip flop. Jaime, standing next to Grace, met her eyes, both suppressing laughter at the scene they had experienced as children of Filipino mothers.
“Brothers and sisters,” Father Dom began. “Today we are gathered at the blessing of Ginang Mara and her daughter’s new home. Let us pray…” He proceeded to recite a blessing from a three-ring binder he held in front of him, probably a ready-made blessing he recited at every house warming, Jaime thought. The priest retrieved a bottle of holy water with his other hand and raised it, splashing it on the altar, then around the room. While they followed Father Dom into each room, Jaime let the priest’s words turn to white noise, thinking, as he stood next to Grace, that the ceremony could have been their pseudo wedding. He relished the moment until his ears perked up at Father Dom’s final words, “On behalf of Ginang Mara, her daughter Grace, and Grace’s boyfriend, thank you for coming.” Grace retracted her hand to hide her face, blushing red. Jaime, too, felt his cheeks go warm. He wasn’t her boyfriend, or at least, not yet. Their embarrassment only lasted a moment—thank God—as Grace’s mother announced, “Kain na tayo!” rallying the congregation to the food.
*
“How long have you been in Lafayette?” Father Dom asked him at the table. Jaime sat next to Grace, who sat next to her mother, who sat next to the priest. He would have been content with keeping quiet while his mouth was occupied with food—he would have indulged in it—if not for Father Dom’s interrogation, pulling out a confession.
“A few months,” he said. “I got here in the summer, then began school right away.”
“Ah, I see,” the priest responded. “So, recently. No wonder I haven’t seen you at church.”
“Well, I also don’t have a car to get there,” Jaime added in defense. “I walk to class and back.”
“Pues— I can arrange for the church bus to pick you up.”
“Uh-hm.” Jaime swallowed his bite, the fat from the roasted pig still a chunk, which he forced down uncomfortably.
“Yes, good idea, Father!” Grace’s mother added.
He looked over to Grace, who had been silent until then but was now giggling to herself. She raised her eyes at Jaime and nodded. While he slid into his seat, Grace was having fun.
“Actually, Father,” her mother continued, “Jaime’s apartment is just above us. Maybe you can do another blessing?”
Panic ran through Jaime’s body, the grease from all the rice and pork unsettling his stomach. Grace kicked his foot gently, laughing to herself behind her plate. She was enjoying this.
“Of course!” The priest put his plate down and stood up. “Jaime, would you lead us to your apartment?”
Grace stared at Jaime, waiting for his next move, amused.
“Yeah, uhm.” Put on the spot, having already eaten the food, pierced by the eager eyes of Grace’s mother, Jaime had no choice. “Okay, I’ll take us up.”
By “us,” Jaime only meant Father Dom, Grace, and her mother. He didn’t expect the others to stop their conversations, put their plates down, and follow them up to his apartment, per Grace’s mother’s instructions. “Tara na,” she announced, raising her hand like a tour guide as she followed Jaime out the door.
“I hope you know what you got yourself into,” Grace said, following beside him, nudging his shoulder with hers.
Under his breath, clear enough for Grace to hear but not for the others, he lamented, “Fuck me.”
“Eto na?” Grace’s mother asked as Jaime stopped in front of his door.
“This is it.” He turned the key and let them in.
“Oh,” she said. Grace’s mother reacted the way he imagined his mother would—with shock and disappointment. Of course, had it been his mother, she would have lashed out, pushing Jaime to attend to his cheap bed, pointing out the ruffled sheets, telling him to take the dirty laundry off of it and to sort it out in a laundry basket; she would have smelled the musty, heavy air and opened up a window, kicked the empty frozen food boxes to the side, and told him to pick up the trash and take it out; his mother would have left moments after, gone to a store, and brought back a trove of cleaning supplies. Instead, Grace’s mother held in her impulses, dragging out her frustrations in another “Ooohhh.”
“Looks like the hurricane came through your apartment, Jaime,” Father Dom said. “It’s going to need a little extra prayer today.”
Jaime unfolded the plastic picnic chairs for the nanays, urging them to take a seat despite the clear disgust on their faces. One of them brought out a perfume bottle and spritzed the air. Jaime held in his cough, suffocated in roses. Because his apartment was a studio, the whole congregation didn’t fit. But many of them didn’t bother going inside his apartment after seeing its condition; they remained on the balcony outside, hoping for the blessing to end quickly.
And it did end quickly. There weren’t other rooms besides the bed/living/dining room, so Father Dom merely stood in the center, reciting the same prayer from his binder, splashing holy water at each of the four walls. Grace’s mother stood next to the seated nanays, while Grace stood next to Jaime, holding his hand, still hiding her laughter under her breath. He wondered if she was also laughing at his lackluster apartment in its state of disrepair, if she thought it a lackluster reflection of him.
“Amen,” the priest concluded, much to everyone’s contentment. The nanays were the first to leave, Grace’s mother among them. Before leaving with the rest, Father Dom told Jaime, “Prayer goes a long way, but so does making your bed, cleaning up your home. Cleanliness on the outside, cleanliness on the inside.” He pointed to Jaime’s heart. On his way out, he continued, “I hope to see you at church, Jaime.” Jaime merely nodded.
Grace stayed with Jaime. They were finally alone.
“Your mother’s disappointed in me,” he said.
“I know the feeling,” she said. “I like what you’ve done with the place,” she added sarcastically.
“It’s just me here,” he said, repeating what he had told his mother. “First time living on my own, no one telling me what to do. Simple living. And I wasn’t expecting guests.”
“I love Nay and all,” she said, “but she’s followed me wherever I went. Sometimes I wish for that simple living.”
Not wanting to subject her to any more of his apartment’s rugged torment, Jaime thought of taking Grace elsewhere. “Have you been on the roof?”
*
It had been a week since the hurricane, since Jaime found himself alone on that roof raging against the whirlwind of night. Now he sat next to Grace, their legs dangling off the edge. Had it been a weekday, the city below would have been alive with suits and skirts, lawyers, bankers, locals frequenting their café of choice. It was almost like New York, where Jaime used to think he’d settle after college. But Lafayette had its own hue of sun, its own leisurely pace. New York would have still been buzzing, even on a Sunday. There were plenty of bike riders like the larger city, but Lafayette had more trucks and fewer yellow cabs. The air was clearer in breath and sight, the sky less scraped by glass and steel. He described these differences to Grace, telling her his life story, where he came from and how he got there.
“But I was born in the Philippines,” he added like a footnote. “I was only four when we left for Jersey. There’s not much I can tell you from there.”
“You know,” Grace began, “some of the first Filipinos in the States landed in Louisiana.”
“Really?” Jaime often viewed himself as the first of his kind, having immigrated as a boy, grown up American but not really, raised Filipino but not really. He kept up his schoolwork for his parents, knowing their measure of his success was a measure of their leap of American faith. He had never thought of himself as one of a long lineage of Filipino Americans.
“They were fishermen who jumped ship to escape the Spanish, then they settled around the bayous. You don’t really learn that in textbooks, which is why I always begin the school year with that fact. I introduce myself to the high schoolers, ‘Ms. Bautista,’”—She put on her teacherly persona—“then I throw them that fun fact as if it’s a fact about myself.” She introduced more of her story to Jaime, how her mother immigrated as a nurse, married an accountant who left her when Grace was born. “It was always just me and Nay. She took care of me, and now I take care of her, though she wouldn’t say that exactly. To her, she’s still taking care of me.”
“Even after moving here,” Jaime said, “I can still hear my mother telling me to make my bed, to throw out the trash. I don’t, of course, as you already saw.” Mhm, Grace nudged his shoulder. Jaime feigned falling off the edge, only kidding. He continued, “Sometimes I feel like there are hidden cameras in my apartment when there aren’t. But she’s still there, Mama. As long as there’s a mess, she’s still there.”
“Do you like Louisiana?” she asked.
“So far,” he answered. “It’s definitely different from what I’m used to. Don’t get me started with all the French words and last names. I butcher all of them.”
“That’s Acadiana for you,” Grace explained. “French Canadians expelled from their country when the British took over, then settled down here and made it Cajun country. Lafayette is at the center of all that. It’s called the Hub City for a reason. Some people pass through like hurricanes, while others stay and settle down. It’s life, you know. At least that’s how I think of it.”
“You’re starting to sound like me,” he said, finding confidence in his comfort with her. “Metaphor and life. My love language.” Yuck—“Sorry,” he apologized for his attempt at flirting.
“Don’t be.” Grace kissed him on the cheek, and he was reminded of the hurricane, its raw power to convince him of some higher force at work in the universe. He felt the fulfillment of belonging where one has never belonged, where the outsider finds the inherent. It was juvenile; it was romantic. “I better get back. Nay’s probably wondering where I went.”
He walked her down from the roof to her apartment, where the crowd had shrunk, Father Dom had already left, and her mother was talking to the few remaining nanays. Jaime stayed and helped Grace clean up the plastic plates and cups lying around, then packed up the leftover foods in Ziploc bags and Tupperwares. As the remaining guests went out, Grace’s mother offered them the leftovers, and as Jaime started for the door, he received the rest. “Your reward, Jaime.” She handed them to him with some parting words, “After you clean your room, ha?” Jaime nodded. She was laughing, but he knew she meant every word.
“I’ll see you around,” Grace said, smiling.
“See you around, Grace.”
Jaime returned to his dilapidated apartment, newly blessed. He even considered making his bed, doing the laundry, and vacuuming. He placed his packed leftovers in the fridge, a Filipino feast that would last him for the next few days, saving him from the expense of cheap frozen foods. Then the scent of roses struck him, the scent of the nanays and their Pope-blessed rosaries.
“I got my apartment blessed,” Jaime said when he called his mother. “And I met a girl…a Filipino girl,” he confessed. It was as if it was because of her he had moved to Lafayette—which was partly true—as if she herself had conjured up the hurricane, which led him to meet Grace, like it had been all part of her plan.
