BIG LADY

**And she will not stop eating, another pot, another plate, another mouthful of sadness, and she will grow bigger and bigger, and she will burst.

On the bed, six\-year\-old Rica braces herself, waiting for the dreaded explosion\-\- Nothing. No big bang. Because she's been a good girl. Her tears are not even mouthful tonight. And maybe their neighbours in the run\-down apartment have been careful, too.

from every pot and plate, the must have scraped off their leftovers sighs and hidden them somewhere unreachable. So Big Lady can't get to them. So she can be saved from

bursting.

Every night, no big bang really but Rica listens anyway.

The house is quite again. She breathes easier, lifting the sheets slowly from her face,

a brow just unfrurrowing, but eyes still warry and a mouth forming the old silent question--

are you really there? She turns on the lamp. It's girlie kitsch like the rest of the decor, from the dancing lady wallpaper to the row of Barbie dolls on a roseate plastic table. The tiny room is all pink bravado, hoping to compensate for the warped ceiling and stained floor.

Even the unhinged window flaunts a family of pink paper rabbits.

Are you there?

Her father says she never shows herself to anyone. Big Lady only comes when you're asleep to eat your sadness. She goes from house to house and eats the sadness of everyone, so she gets too fat. Bute there's a lot of sadness in many houses, it just keeps on growing each day, so she can't stop eating, and she can't stop growing too.

Are you really that big? How do you wear your hair?

"Dios ko, if she eats all our mess, Rica, she might grow too fat and burst, so be a good girl and save her by not being sad\-\-hoy, stop whimpering, I said, and go to bed. " Her father is not always patient with his story telling.

All quiet now. She's gone.

Since Rica was three, when her father told her about Big Lady just after her mother left for Paris, she was always listening intently to all night, noises from the kitchen. No, that sound is not the scurrying of mice, she's actually checking the plates now, lifting the lid off the rice pot, peeking into cups for sadness, both overt and unspoken. To Rica, it's always tastes salty, like tears, even her father's funny look each time she asks him to read her again the letters from Paris.

She has three boxes of them, one for each year, though the third box is not even half\-full. All of them tied with Paris ribbons. The first year, her mother sent all colors of the rainbow for her long, unruly hair, maybe because her father did not know how to make it more graceful. He must have written her long letters, asking about how to pull the mass of curls away form the face and tie them neatly the way he gathered, into some semblance of order, his own nightly longings**.

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