Mafia Princess

Jane's POV I had always felt like a blurred edge in the family photo. I'm Jane Lopez. Fifteen years old. Second youngest of four kids in a small wooden house in the province of Laguna. The kind of house where you don’t need a clock because the roosters, the tricycles, and Nanay’s 4:30am footsteps tell you exactly what time it is. The walls were thin enough to hear Tatay snoring in the next room. He sounded like a jeepney engine that wouldn’t start. I could hear Nanay humming while she cooked sinangag at 5am, the scrape of her spatula against the kawali, the sizzle of garlic hitting oil. I knew the sound of every floorboard. Which one creaked when Kuya Mark snuck in past curfew. Which one groaned when Ate Liza paced before an exam. My siblings were loud, warm, and always touching. That was the Lopez way. Kuya Mark ruffled my hair every morning, hard enough to mess it up. “Gising na, bunso,” he’d say, even though I wasn’t the bunso. Ben was. But Mark called all of us bunso when he was in a good mood. Ate Liza borrowed my shirts without asking. She’d just appear at breakfast wearing my favorite blue one, the one with the small rip near the hem. “Bagay sa’kin,” she’d say when I glared. And it did. It always looked better on her. Bunso Ben followed me to the sari-sari store like a duckling. He was eight and had no sense of personal space. If I stopped walking, he’d bump into my back. “Sorry, Ate,” he’d mumble, then do it again five minutes later. My parents were loving. Strict about school, soft about everything else. Tatay checked our homework with a red pen and a furrowed brow. “Dapat 90 pataas,” he’d say. But when I came home with 88 on a math test, he just sighed and bought me taho from Aling Nena. “Next time, 90,” he’d say. Nanay never raised her voice unless someone was about to touch a hot pot. Then she could shout loud enough to wake the barangay. It was a good life. It was a warm life. But I never looked like them. My skin was paler. Not mestiza pale, but pale enough that strangers asked Nanay if she was my yaya. My nose was sharper. My hair was a dark brown with a natural curl that no one else had. Tatay’s hair was straight and coarse. Nanay’s was wavy but thin. Mark, Liza, and Ben all had the same thick, straight hair that stuck up in the morning. When relatives visited during the fiesta, they’d joke, “Naku, baka napalitan sa hospital yan!” Everyone laughed. Uncle Tito laughed. Auntie Cora laughed. Tatay laughed the loudest, then pulled me into a one-armed hug. “Akin ‘yan, noh. Walang papalit-palit.” I didn’t laugh. I smiled, because that’s what you do. But I didn’t laugh. I started keeping a list in my head. Things that didn’t match. 1. I hate bagoong. Everyone else puts it on everything. 2. I don’t get mosquito bites. Liza gets eaten alive if she sits outside for five minutes. 3. I dream in English sometimes. Not Tagalog. Not Taglish. English, like in the movies Kuya Mark pirated. 4. When I’m mad, my hands don’t shake. They still go. Cold still. Tatay’s hands shake. Nanay’s hands shake. Mine go dead. It was stupid. Little things. But they piled up. --- It was a Tuesday. Rain tapped the galvanized roof like someone typing too fast. The kind of rain that doesn’t cool anything down, just makes the air thicker. Nanay was chopping garlic when I came home from school, uniform damp at the hem. The street outside our house was mudded up to the ankles. My socks were soaked. No one else was home yet. Mark had basketball practice. Liza had a student council. Ben was probably at his best friend Paolo’s house, playing Agawan Base until someone cried. The house smelled like garlic and wet wood and the sampaguita Nanay kept in a glass by the window. “Ma,” I said, dropping my backpack by the door. “Why do I look different?”