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“I am begging you. I am sincerely pleading with you. I know what your vocabulary is like. Please do not curse during the New Year.”
“Or what?”
“Or I will drag you out to the port and throw you into Manila Bay.”
I snorted dismissively at Tàiyáng before turning my attention back to the glutinous rice batter I’d been ordered to mix. The word “mix” was doing a lot of heavy lifting here, since it was more like I was senselessly beating the shit out of it when the annoying lumps wouldn’t dissolve.
I decided to mind my stupid batter in silence instead of needling Tàiyáng further, since I knew it was strong enough to make good on its promise to toss me into the water. It stood over the stove, keeping an eye on the previous batch of batter now cooking in a bamboo steamer.
The spiritual aspects of the New Year never really meant anything to me. As far as I was concerned, it was just an excuse for every Sangley and Mestizo de Sangley to eat a huge feast and pretend that they didn’t want to strangle their relatives every time someone brought up land inheritance. I knew that it was important to Tàiyáng, though. That’s why I was helping it with all this cooking in the first place. There was some taboo regarding the burning of fires during the New Year that even encompassed the fires of stoves, so here I was, making tikoy with it. (Let’s all pretend that I hadn’t forgotten what it was called in Hokkien proper.)
Profanity had a similar taboo around it, which was more of a problem for me. Cursing came as naturally to me as breathing and I think that says something about me, but I don’t really care enough to do anything about that.
I did care about Tàiyáng, though.
We sat there in comfortable silence for a minute or two before I spoke up again. “I’ll try my best. With the, uh, cursing thing. I don’t want to end up sick because I angered one of your ancestor spirits or something.”
“Ha ha. Very funny,” it replied dryly. It considered its words for a few seconds before continuing, “Thank you. I do appreciate it.”
I didn’t know how to respond sincerely without sounding like a dumb sentimental idiot, so I went with “Whatever. I’ll make up for lost time by swearing in your face as soon as you wake up.”
Tàiyáng seemed to understand what I meant.
“I love you too.”