Unkind Smiles
by Renato Gandia | From Issue One (Fall 2025)
The child didn’t cry right away.
He just went still—too still—for a toddler who’d been chasing pigeons outside a downtown Edmonton LRT station only minutes earlier. His dark blue mittens were damp, cheeks red from the cold, breath fogging up the stroller’s plastic shield. Mara had bent to unclip his homemade knitted scarf when the woman approached.
“What a cute boy,” the woman said, bending down too close. Her purple scarf was wrapped high over her nose, but her voice was too loud, too sweet, like syrup poured over something rotting. “Such big eyes! So serious, aren’t you?”
Mara offered a polite smile, the kind that meant thank you but please go away. She wheeled the stroller forward, the plastic wheels grinding softly against salted pavement. She didn’t look back.
It wasn’t until they reached the transfer stop, two buses, three stops, and a broken elevator later, that she noticed her nephew’s silence. No whine for snacks. No humming. No complaints.
At home, his body burned.
By bedtime, his skin was hot to the touch, his eyes glassy, unfocused. Ana, the toddler’s mom, fumbled with the Tylenol and the thermometer, muttering to herself in English while pacing the apartment.
Mara stood by the couch, heart lodged somewhere behind her collarbone, remembering suddenly what their lola used to say in Cavite: Hindi lahat ng ngiti galing sa mabuting kalooban. Not all smiles come from a kind place.
And then, almost too quietly to hear: Baka na-usog siya.
Ana had booked a last-minute appointment at 3 a.m. to the nearby urgent care clinic, bouncing between fever protocols and a parenting forum. The fever had eased a little by sunrise, but not enough to make either of them feel safe.
Mara hadn’t slept.
She’d offer to take the boy in. Not because Ana couldn’t. She could. But it had always been Mara who stayed calm in hospitals, who remembered dosages, who didn’t cry in front of doctors. And maybe, though no one had said it aloud, because she was the one without children, the one who had time.
She didn’t mind. Not really. The boy had learned to say “Tita” before he’d said “Mama.” That counted for something.
She’d always been there for her sister. After Ana’s partner left quietly, stupidly, in the middle of a long Edmonton winter, Mara packed her graphic design business and had flown out from Vancouver “just to help for a bit.” That was two years ago. She stayed to help raise her nephew, which was what Filipino families do for each other.
Their parents hadn’t come, even then. Not for the breakup. Not for the baby. Their father had stopped speaking to Ana after she refused to baptize her son. Their mother still sent money, sometimes, but always through Mara. As if she couldn’t bear to speak to the daughter who’d done things out of order.
There was no feud, exactly. Just silence that had gone on too long to call back from.
The nurse practitioner was kind, efficient, and absolutely unconcerned.
“It’s likely viral,” she said, eyes scanning the chart. “No rash, no cough, just fever and fatigue? Classic.”
“But it came on so suddenly,” Mara said. “One minute he was fine. Then just burning up.”
“That’s common too. Viruses don’t always ease up right away.”
“We haven’t been around anyone sick. I checked the daycare log.”
“Incubation periods vary.”
The nurse smiled, clicked to close the screen.
“If it doesn’t break in 72 hours, come back. You’re doing everything right. Rest, fluids, Tylenol.”
Mara nodded. Thanked her. Collected the boy’s jacket and shoes.
Ana, a firefighter for the city, was already at work. Mara waited near the clinic doors for their Uber. Her fingers tapped against her phone, though she wasn’t typing.
On the way back, sitting in the back seat, her eyes drifted to her nephew’s flushed face, damp curls sticking to his forehead. She remembered the stranger’s voice—too sweet, too close. The way the boy had gone quiet before he ever got warm. It wasn’t like a fever. It felt like… like something else had taken hold.
The memory clung like static.
Something transferred.
At home, while he napped, Mara opened her laptop and typed: Sudden fever Filipino child usog?
She didn’t expect results.
She got hundreds.
Mara had left her nephew sleeping on the couch, bundled under a light quilt, the tip of his nose still pink. She was making tea in the kitchen, her laptop still open to a half-read forum post: Usog symptoms? Old people still do this??
Her phone screen lit up with a Messenger call. She almost let it ring out, but something in her stomach twisted. Not fear, exactly, but pressure. Like a name she hadn’t spoken in years was rising in her throat.
She answered.
“Nakita ko sa panaginip,” her lola said. I saw it in a dream.
“Na-usog ang bata.”
Mara didn’t reply at first. She was deciding whether to speak to her lola in English or Tagalog. She had been only three years old when she left the Philippines, and somehow, she had unlearned the little Tagalog she once knew.
Mara’s fingers tightened around the mug. Behind her, the kettle clicked off.
“Did you…” she began. “Did you do something? Some kind of… prayer?”
There was the faint sound of birds in the background. A radio, too, playing something old and tinny. Her lola’s voice was steady, but Mara’s confusion escalated as she realized it was just a couple of hours past midnight in Cavite.
“Hindi ako ang kailangan. Ikaw,” said her grandma.
A memory surfaced, sharp and unbidden:
Mara at five, curled on a woven banig in her uncle’s house in Tondo. The windows open to the sound of jeepneys, her stomach twisted in knots. A visitor had passed through earlier that day, a man with big teeth and the kind of laugh that made walls vibrate. He’d called her ganda, ruffled her hair, too rough.
That night, the cramps began. Then the vomiting.
Her mother had panicked. Her father was gone. But her lola had arrived just before midnight, carrying a dish towel and a pouch of salt. No questions, no panic.
Mara remembered her lola’s thumb pressing into her temples. The sour scent of vinegar. A thumb wet with spit placed on her forehead.
“Pwera usog,” her lola had whispered, three times.
This one is spoken for.
Back at the kitchen in Edmonton, Mara blinked. She was still holding the phone. Her lola hadn’t hung up.
“You have to mark him,” her lola said.
“With your mouth. With your care. That’s the only way it leaves.”
“Lola, I—I don’t even remember the right way. I don’t even know if it’s real.”
“Not everything true is real,” she said gently. “But it still knows how to find children.”
Then she hung up.
That evening, the boy’s fever rose again.
Not as high as before, but enough to set Ana pacing. She wet a towel and dabbed at his temples, then stood by the couch, arms folded like she was bracing against something heavier than air.
“Did you give him more Tylenol?” Mara asked.
“Just now.”
“He’s still so warm.”
Ana didn’t answer. She walked to the kitchen, poured herself half a cup of coffee, then let it cool untouched. When she came back, she glanced at Mara’s phone on the coffee table—the screen still lit up with search results: usog symptoms, how to counteract usog.
Ana let out a short, tired laugh. “So this is what you’re doing. You’re actually looking up usog?”
Mara shifted in her seat. “Lola called.”
That made Ana’s eyebrows shoot up. “Of course she did. Probably saw it in a dream or one of her Espiritista Facebook groups.”
“She said it was me. That I have to do something.”
“You’re not even the mother.”
The words weren’t shouted. They didn’t need to be. They landed like something fallen off a high shelf—sharp and sudden.
Mara exhaled slowly. “I’m the one who was there when it happened. When that woman leaned in too close. He didn’t even blink.”
Ana shook her head, but she didn’t argue the details.
“We left all that behind,” she said. “Remember? That’s why we came here. No more gamot sa dahon, no more spit on the forehead. You want to bring it back now? You want to mark my son like some haunted heirloom?”
“It’s not superstition. It’s care.”
“No. It’s desperation.”
That last word clung in the air. Mara felt it in her jaw, behind her eyes. She looked over at the boy on the couch, his cheeks flushed, his fists curled against his chest.
“You weren’t there when he went quiet,” Mara said, softer now. “It didn’t feel like an illness. It felt like something had crossed a line and stayed.”
Ana’s face twisted, not in anger, but something closer to fear. She moved like someone who didn’t believe in ghosts but feared them anyway.
“Do whatever you want,” she said, setting the mug down too hard. “But not while I’m watching.”
The apartment was quiet again, the kind of quiet that hums.
The TV played something forgettable with the sound off. The air purifier clicked into night mode. Ana had fallen asleep on the armchair, her son’s tiny socks still balled up in her hand.
Mara moved like someone sneaking out, though she was only crossing the kitchen.
She poured a glass of water, not to drink, just to hold. She opened the spice drawer and found the salt. A small pinch in a red ramekin. She paused for a moment, then reached for a clean dishcloth.
Everything she remembered, she remembered with her hands.
The boy lay still on the couch, flushed and damp, a slight whistle in his breath. Mara knelt beside him. Her knees pressed into the floor. Her heart beat too hard in her throat.
“Sorry,” she whispered, her voice barely air. “I know you wouldn’t want this. But I do.”
She dipped her finger in the water and touched his forehead. One mark in the centre. Then one on each temple.
She didn’t know the prayer, not all of it. But she remembered the rhythm. The way her lola’s voice had dropped like soft stones in a river.
“Pwera usog… pwera usog… pwera usog.”
She kissed her thumb and marked the soft bend of his wrist.
This one is spoken for. This one is mine.
She scattered salt in a small line beneath the couch cushion. Then at the threshold of the front door. She folded the dishcloth into a triangle and slid it under the boy’s pillow.
When she sat back down, his breath had evened. His hands were no longer fists. The tension in his face had gone slack, like sleep had finally found him.
Mara didn’t cry. She didn’t feel triumphant. Just… steady.
She rose, rinsed the glass twice, and tucked the salt away. She returned to the window and watched the frost gather, fine and slow.
Behind her, Ana snored softly.
Ahead of her, morning waited to be proven wrong.
Morning came pale and still.
Mara woke to the sound of the kettle clicking off. The sun had just begun to slip through the blinds, casting soft lines of gold on the floor. She sat up slowly, muscles stiff from sleeping upright in the armchair.
The boy was still asleep on the couch, his lips parted slightly, one hand curled beside his cheek. His skin was no longer red. No longer damp. Just warm, the way a child should be.
A small line of drool marked the pillow.
Ana stood at the stove in her slippers, stirring oatmeal.
“Temperature’s down,” she said without turning. “Guess it really was just viral.”
Mara didn’t answer. She didn’t mention the water glass she had rinsed twice. The salt she had flushed down the toilet. The old cloth folded beneath the pillow, still faintly damp from her hands.
She just watched her nephew sleep. Not in triumph. Not even in relief.
Just in knowing.
Later that afternoon, after Ana bundled the boy into his snowsuit and took him out for a walk, Mara sat in the kitchen with a cup of reheated coffee. The window above the sink had fogged over, and she didn’t bother wiping it clear.
Her phone rang. It was her Messenger again.
She picked it up.
“He’s fine now,” her lola said. Not a question. A knowing.
Mara swallowed. “I didn’t do it right. I forgot the steps. I didn’t remember the prayer.”
“You remembered enough,” her lola said. “The rest is just words.”
Silence hovered between them—not awkward, not waiting. Just full.
“It listens to love,” her lola added, “not language.”
Then the call ended.
No goodbye. No click.
Just the sound of the line going still, like breath fading off glass.
Renato Gandia is a Filipino-Canadian writer based in Calgary, Alberta. Born and raised in the Philippines, he writes about identity, belonging, and the emotional complexity of contemporary queer and immigrant experiences. A former journalist, he reported on politics, crime, and immigration before transitioning into a career in corporate communications.
His work has been published in Magdaragat: an Anthology of Filipino-Canadian Writing, and will appear in forthcoming anthologies including Yay! All Queer: Free and Queer, Beyond the Concert Hall, and The Leaves Still Fallow.
He is currently working on a short story collection and a novel exploring LGBTQ themes and non-monogamous relationships. He holds a Master of Divinity and a BA in English and Philosophy, and is an active member of Alberta’s literary community through the Writers’ Guild of Alberta and the Alexandra Writers’ Centre Society.