Nanay

By:Marie Pascual

The walls of the Apple Store were white enough to forget.
Every Friday, Marites arrived before the music started — before the Genius Bar lit up like a spaceship and the glass doors yawned open to welcome the future. She liked it best this way: silent, still, cold enough to keep the ghosts tucked in.

Her cart creaked as she pushed it across the showroom floor. The store smelled like static and lemon cleaner. She bent to scrub a smudge off the baseboard and caught her reflection in the sleek aluminum. Hair pulled tight. Back hunched. Hands that no longer looked like hers.

She checked the time. Her shift was nearly done, but she lingered. Always lingered on Fridays.

Rumor was, the new manager transferred from the west end — Filipina, sharp, moved around a lot. Marites had heard things like that before. Whispers. False alarms. Still, she carried the weight of hope like an extra limb.

She opened her vest pocket and unfolded a worn photo: a toddler in pigtails, arms folded, expression mid-pout. Three years old. Taken in Darapidap, before Denmark. Before Germany. Before Greece, where she nursed a woman dying of bone cancer who reminded her of her own mother. Before Spain, where she’d scrubbed floors and slept in broom closets and ran, finally, in the middle of the night after her employer smashed a phone against the wall and called her a dog.

The only thing she took when she fled was this photo — creased and nearly rubbed blank at the edges.

She hadn’t spoken to her daughter since she was ten.

She remembered the balikbayan box she sent for her birthday: pastel backpacks, bangles, chunky costume jewelry, clothes one size too big, toys that lit up or talked — anything she thought a pre-teen might need. She packed it like it would stand in for her, like the softness of the fabric might make up for the years she’d missed.
She never heard back.

⸻

Mara adjusted the display phones for the third time. Fridays always smelled like lemon disinfectant. Sharp. Clean. Erasing everything that came before.

She’d been relocated again. Not unusual. Apple liked to move its managers around, like chess pieces or loose wires. Mara didn’t mind. It made things easier — less time for questions. Less time for people to think they knew her.

One of her staff waved her over. “Hey, there’s a cleaner out front trying to figure out the demo phone. Want me to handle it?”

Mara looked up. A short Filipina woman was tapping at the screen with hesitant fingers, brow furrowed like she was deciphering a secret code.

“I got it,” Mara said.

She approached with her best manager smile. “Hi there — we’re not quite open yet, but can I help you with something?”

The woman blinked, startled. “Ah… sorry. I was just looking. My phone is… very old. But someone told me you can use the internet now… on phones. You can search. Like… Google.”

Mara smiled, despite herself. “Yes, you can.”

The woman nodded. “I want to search for someone.”

Mara hesitated. “Family?”

“My daughter,” the woman said simply, like it was a name she wasn’t allowed to say aloud.

Something tightened in Mara’s chest.

“We have a few good models on sale,” she offered. “Or — actually — I’m upgrading this week. I can give you mine. No charge. It works great.”

The woman froze. “No, no — that is too much.”

“It’s fine,” Mara said, already heading to the back. “It’s better in someone’s hands than collecting dust.”

She didn’t know why she was doing it. Maybe because the woman reminded her of someone. Or maybe because there was a hollow space in her she hadn’t named yet, and generosity was a distraction.

⸻

Later that afternoon, she found a small plastic container in the back office fridge. No name. Just a piece of tape that said thank you.

Inside was macaroni salad — the kind with cubes of cheese, raisins, mayo that clung to each noodle like thick July air. She recognized it instantly. Not because of the ingredients, but because of the smell.

Memory hit her like a flicked light switch.

She was ten, standing barefoot in the tiled kitchen of her adopted parents’ house, holding a knife to a balikbayan box wrapped in twine. Inside: pastel backpacks, bangles, cheap necklaces, glitter pens, tube tops she was still too young for. A letter written in shaky cursive she couldn’t bring herself to finish.

She’d cried that night — not because of the gifts, but because she hadn’t heard her mother’s voice in years.
She wanted her mom, not the box.

And now, here it was again — this taste. That same sadness, sweetened and chilled.

She dropped the fork.

Her body moved on its own, out past the glass doors, across the showroom, searching.

“Where is she?” she asked the security guard. “The cleaner from this morning — the one from Fridays?”

The guard shrugged. “Already gone. They rotate locations. Sometimes come back. Why?”

But Mara was already gone too — halfway to the staff break room, back to the fridge, clutching the plastic container like a lifeline.

⸻

The next Friday, Marites arrived early again, same uniform, same silence.

This time, Mara was waiting.

“I think,” Mara said slowly, “that you used to make macaroni salad just like that when I was little.”

Marites froze. Her hand tightened around the cart. Her mouth parted, but no words came out.

Mara stepped closer. “I think… you sent me a box once. On my birthday. I didn’t say thank you.”

Tears welled in Marites’ eyes. “I didn’t know if you’d remember.”

“I didn’t,” Mara said. “Not for a long time. But now I do.”

She reached into her pocket and held up the phone. “This… I want you to keep it. Not just to search. To call. To message. To stay. My phone numbers already on speed dial.”

Marites opened her phone to one contact under the name “Anak”. She nodded, wordless.

The store opened a few minutes later, but neither of them moved.
The walls stayed white.
The past, at last, had somewhere to go.