Chapter One

For those who love to love and eat

For those who long to love and eat

When we laid my baby sister in a shoebox, when all the banana hearts in our street were stolen, when Tiyo Anding stepped out of a window perhaps to fly, when I saw guavas peeking from Manolito's shorts and felt I'd die of shame, when Roy Orbison went as crazy as Patsy Cline and lovers eloped, sparking a scandal so fiery that even the volcano erupted and, as a consequence, my siblings tasted their first American corned beef, then Mother looked at me again, that was the summer I ate the heart of the matter.

So how did it all begin?

With this lesson about the banana heart from Nana Dora, the chef of all the sweet snacks that flavored our street every afternoon, except Sundays.

"Close to midnight, when the heart bows from its stem, wait for its first dew. It will drop like a gem. Catch it with your tongue. When you eat the heart of the matter, you'll never grow hungry again." From the site of her remark, I will take you through a tour of our street and I will tell you its stories. Ay, my street of wishful sweets and spices. All those wishes to appease stomachs and make hearts fat with pleasure. And perhaps sweeten tempers or even spice up a storyteller's tongue.

Let's begin with appeasement, my first serious business venture long ago. Let's begin with a makeshift kitchen, a hut with no walls, under banana trees in bloom. Here, Nana Dora parked her fragrant wok at two in the afternoon. By three, the hungry queue began.

Chapter Two

Turon: the melody

The sound of deep frying was a delectable melody. Instantly loud and aggressive when the turon hit the pool of boiling coconut oil, then pulling back. The percussion was inspired to be subtle.

"Ay, it sounds and smells like happiness," I said, nose and ears as primed as my sweetened tongue. Happiness that is not subtle at all, I could have added. Such is the fact about the turon, which is half a slice of sugar banana and a strip of jackfruit rolled in paper-thin rice wrapping, then dusted with palm sugar and fried to a crisp brown. How could such fragrance be subtle? My nose twitched, my mouth watered, my stomach said, buy, buy.

"So you're an expert on happiness?" Nana Dora asked. Her face glowed with more than sweat and the fire from her stove.

"Believe me, your cooking is music, Nana Dora."

"Hoy, don't flatter me, Nenita." She made a face. But I could see the flush deepening on her cheeks, the hand patting wisps of hair in place and the coy turning of the neck, as if a lover had just whispered sweet nothings to her ear.

I hovered closer, bent towards the wok, no, bowed, paying obeisance to its melody: mi-fa-so-la . . . no, definitely a high "do." There were about five turones harmonizing in the deep wok. The aroma climbed the scales, happiness from rung to rung. Can I get one on credit? I wanted to ask, but only managed, "Can I help you roll, Nana Dora?"

"So you want to burn your nose or flavor my turon with your grease?" she scolded.

I withdrew the endangered appendage from the wok's edge, along with my grease, or sweat, which I imagined was what she meant. She stared at me, sizing me up in my dress that was once blue.

"I'm just saying hello, Nana Dora," I explained. "If you must know, I'm actually off to a . . . a business venture." And I'll be earning soon, so can I get one on credit? But the question drowned in the pool in my mouth. I swallowed, but another wave washed over my tongue, my belly made fainting cries, like little notes plummeting, and my esophagus lengthened. "When you feel it lengthen, you know it's really, really bad." Who said that first? Nilo, my fourth sibling, or Junior, the second, maybe Claro, the third one, or perhaps Lydia? There were six of us, so it was difficult to tell who said or felt it first. Not that we called it esophagus then. We just said "it" and motioned with our hands from the throat to sometimes beyond the stomach. Then we squatted for a long time, "to arrest the lengthening." Better than saying we were feeling too faint with hunger to keep on our feet.

"Business venture, hah!" Nana Dora snapped.

Of course she meant, leave business to me, girl, as she wrapped a turon in a banana leaf and handed it to a customer right under my nose. I kept my hand in my pocket.

"Hoy, aren't you supposed to be in school?" Of course she meant, school is your business and don't you forget that! But I was unfazed as I listened to the sweet noises behind me