Titser ni Liwayway Arceo

Ang nobelang Titser ni Liwayway Arceo ay sumesentro sa buhay ng mag-asawang Amelita at Mauro na kapwa pinili ang propesyon ng pagtuturo. Nakapokus ang naratibo sa mariing di-pagsangayon ni Aling Rosa, ang ina ni Amelita, sa pagsasamahan ng dalawa. Sapagkat ang kanyang apat na anak ay nakapagtapos sa kolehiyo ng may "titulo," tutol si Aling Rosa sa pagkuha ng kursong edukasyon ng kanyang bunso, dala na rin ng kaisipang hindi titulong maituturing ang pagiging "titser", bukod pa sa kakarampot na sweldong nakukuha ng anak. Gayunpaman, nakahanap ng pag-asa si Aling Rosa sa katauhan ni Osmundo, isang binata mula sa pamilya ng mga asendero na sumusuyo kay Amelita. Subalit nabigo muli si Aling Rosa sapagkat iba ang iniibig ng kanyang dalaga, at ito'y walang iba kung hindi si Mauro, isang ring guro sa pampublikong paaralan.

Ang nobelang Titser ni Liwayway Arceo ay sumesentro sa buhay ng mag-asawang Amelita at Mauro na kapwa pinili ang propesyon ng pagtuturo. Nakapokus ang naratibo sa mariing di-pagsangayon ni Aling Rosa, ang ina ni Amelita, sa pagsasamahan ng dalawa. Sapagkat ang kanyang apat na anak ay nakapagtapos sa kolehiyo ng may "titulo," tutol si Aling Rosa sa pagkuha ng kursong edukasyon ng kanyang bunso, dala na rin ng kaisipang hindi titulong maituturing ang pagiging "titser", bukod pa sa kakarampot na sweldong nakukuha ng anak. Gayunpaman, nakahanap ng pag-asa si Aling Rosa sa katauhan ni Osmundo, isang binata mula sa pamilya ng mga asendero na sumusuyo kay Amelita. Subalit nabigo muli si Aling Rosa sapagkat iba ang iniibig ng kanyang dalaga, at ito'y walang iba kung hindi si Mauro, isang ring guro sa pampublikong paaralan.

Nang malaman na ipapakasal siya ni Aling Rosa sa binatang si Osmundo, agad na nagkipagisang dibdib si Amelita kay Mauro. Dahil sa pagkabigo, at dahil na rin sa poot sa bunsong anak, umalis si Aling Rosa sa probinsya at nagbakasyon sa mga anak na nasa Maynila. Bagamat doon ay hindi siya inaaasikaso ng mga anak, labis pa rin ang kanyang kaligayahan dahil sa asensong tinatamasa ng mga ito, at ikinakatwiran na lamang sa sarili na talagang abala ang mga taong mauunlad ang buhay. Samantala, sa probinsya, nagdesisyon rin ang binatang si Osmundo na umalis na sa nayon at magtungo sa Estados Unidos. Ngunit bago mangyari ito ay gumawa siya ng maitim na plano laban sa mga bagong kasal. Inutusan niya ang isa sa mga katiwala na patayin si Mauro. Subalit wala sa kaalaman ni Osmundo na hindi ito ginawa ng kanyang inutusan sapagkat ang anak nito ay minsan ring pinagmalasakitan ng gurong si Mauro.

Nasa ikapitong buwan pa lamang ng pagdadalantao si Amelita nang ipinanganak ang kanilang anak na si Rosalida. Dahil kulang sa buwan ang bata ay kailangan nitong manatili sa ospital. Nalaman ito ni Aling Rosa at agad na binisita ang anak, sa kabila ng hinanakit. Kahit ganito ang sitwasyon, hindi pa rin tumitigil ang ina ni Amelita sa pagsasaring ukol sa mahirap na pamumuhay ng mag-asawa. Ipinamumukha pa rin niya ang matinding pagtutol sa manugang na si Mauro.

Lumipas ang ilang taon. Lumaki si Rosalida na isang mabait at matalinong bata. Isang araw ay nagbalik si Osmundo sa probinsya, at nagkaroon ng malaking pagdiriwang para sa kanyang pagdating. Doon muling nagkatagpo sina Mauro at Osmundo, subalit kinalimutan na ng dalawa ang nakaraan. Taliwas naman dito ang nadaramang pangamba ni Amelita sa pagbabalik ng masugid na panliligaw. Nararamdaman nitong may plano itong masama laban sa kanyang pamilya.

Hindi pa rin nawawala ang pag-ibig ni Osmundo kay Amelita, kahit na may asawa't anak pa ito. Nagkaroon ng pagkakataong makilala niya si Rosalida, at naging magaan ang loob nito sa bata. Isang araw ay naisipang ipasyal ni Osmundo si Rosalida sa kanyang hasyenda. Wala ito sa kaalaman nina Mauro at Amelita, at labis na nag-alala ang mag-asawa. Buong akala nila'y si Rosalida ang paghihigantihan ni Osmundo ngunit di naglaon ay nagbalik rin ang bata, ipinagmamalaki pa ang kabaitang ginawa ni Osmundo. Di nagtagal, napagkuro na rin ni Osmundo na tuluyan ng tumira sa ibang bansa at kalimutan ang minamahal na si Amelita.

Nagkaroon ng malubhang karamdaman si Aling Rosa. Hinanap niya ang kanyang mga anak ngunit wala ni isa mang dumating maliban kay Amelita na matiyagang nag-asikaso sa kanya. Pawang gamot at padalang pera lamang ang ipinaabot ng apat na anak. At doon natauhan ang matanda sa kanyang pagkakamali.

~~~~~~

Malinaw na ipinakita ng nobela ang agam-agam na kinakaharap ng bawat guro. Ano ang dapat piliin, ang makapaglingkod sa pamayanan kapalit ng isang kahig, isang tukang pamumuhay, o ang makatikim ng karangyaan kapalit ng pagtalikod sa propesyong nais na tahakin? Ang karakter ni Aling Rosa ang nagsilbing tagapag-tibay sa agam-agam na ito. Siya ang nagpamukha kay Amelita at Mauro ng magiging kapalit ng pagiging ideal ng mag-asawa: ang paghihikahos sa aspetong pinansyal, ang pagiging "Sampu, sampera."

Ang nobela ni Arceo, bagama't halos animnapung taon na ang nakaraan mula sa pagkakalathala nito, ay maliwanag pa ring sumasalamin sa kalagayan ng mga titser sa kasalukuyang panahon. Sila ang nagsisilbing tagapaghubog ng kaisipan ng susunod na henerasyon, ngunit sila'y binibigyan lamang na maliit na pahalaga. Isang patunay nito ang laganap pa ring paggigiit ng mga guro para sa mas mataas na sahod, na kung pagbigyan man ng pansin ng gobyerno'y di pa rin sapat para sa trabahong kanilang ginagawa.

Marahil luma na sa atin ang kasabihang, "kung ayaw mong maghirap, huwag kang magtitser." At ang kalumaan nito siguro ang naging dahilan kung bakit tinatanggap na lamang natin itong isang masakit na katotohanan na walang solusyon. "Ang pagtuturo'y isang bokasyon, hindi propesyon," wika nga. Ang kaisipang ito na rin marahil ang dahilan kung bakit pinipili ng ibang mga guro sa kasalukuyan ang magtrabaho sa ibang bansa kaysa sa sariling bayan: una'y nagagawa nila ang gusto nilang gawin, at ikalawa’y nagagawa nila ito ng may natatanggap na pagpapahalaga at pribilehiyo. Sa lipunang ito,marahil kailangan na nating buwagin ang kaisipang kailangang magsakripisyo ng mga guro. Marahil kailangan na nating bigyan ng mataas na pagtingin at kabayaran ang pagsisilbing ginagawa ng mga titser ng lipunan. Sila ang tagapaghulma ng mga susunod na "tituladong" mamamayang tinitingala ni Aling Rosa. Sila ang gagawa ng mga bagong "Dr.", "Atty.", "Engr.", "PhD" at iba pa. Bakit kailangan nilang maghirap pinansyal?

Pamagat: Titser
Awtor: Liwayway A. Arceo
Uri ng Panitikan: Nobela, isang serye mula sa magasing Liwayway noong 1950's
Wika: Pilipino
Taon ng Paglalathala: 1995
Tagapaglimbag: Ateneo de Manila University Press
Protagonista: Amelita Martinez at Mauro
Lugar: Isang pamayanan sa kanayunan
Punto de bista: Ikatlong Persona
Tema: pakikialam ng ina sa pag-aasawa at propesyon ng anak, pag-iibigan ng dalawang guro sa kabila ng kahirapan

UNDER THE MANGO TREE by Hugh Aaron

ONE would think we were a couple of returning heroes. “Americanos, Americanos,” the naked children shouted, zigzagging like circus clowns in mad circles around us as Billiard Ball and I ambled abreast down the beaten path through the shade of the green canopy. Heavy duffel bags hanging from our shoulders were laden with gifts: bottles of beer, cartons of cigarettes, cans of fruit juice. Repeatedly sweeping past us like zephyrs, each child snatched a bar of sweet chocolate from our extended hands. We were no less boisterous than they, shouting along with them, asking their names, having a good time ourselves, caught up in the infectious joy of their freewheeling abandon. Such was the character of our entry into Lubao time after time.
As we walked down the village street, people waved from their houses repeating our names, people we didn’t recognize from our earlier visit. “Hullo Beelyard Ball,” and “Al. Hullo. Comusta.”
Anita emerged from one of the houses to greet us. “You must both stay with my family,” she said. Then Alejandro appeared and said to Billiard Ball, “I have been waiting all week. Please, if you wouldn’t mind some metaphysical discussion I would be honored to have you as my guest.”
“How can I resist metaphysical discussion?” said Billiard Ball with a smile. As the two walked off, I heard Alejandro say, “And I imagine you have read Man’s Fate in the original French? How lucky! Malraux is right. For our time the answer lies in courageous action.” Had Billiard Ball found himself a revolutionary?
I followed Anita up the ladder to her family’s one-room house, similar in its simplicity to Rosalio’s but larger. Both had the same style cooking hearth near one wall, the split bamboo floor, the same immaculateness. Squatting before the hearth, Anita’s mother, looking in her fifties (but only in her thirties, I learned later), was preparing the noon meal. She acknowledged our entrance with a nod and a warm smile. Sitting cross-legged on a floor mat in a corner, Anita’s wispy maternal grandmother, her skin wrinkled like an elephant’s, grinned, showing toothless black gums. She mumbled something incomprehensible to me in Spanish. Shortly Mr. Quiboloy, wearing a wide-brimmed hat woven of jute, came in from the hot fields. We shook hands warmly. “Thank you for having me, Mr. Quiboloy,” I said.
“You may call me Lucio, now that we are old friends,” he responded. We all sat on the floor in a circle and ate brown rice and chicken from clay bowls while Mr. Quiboloy spoke of their lot in Lubao.
“I am only a small tenant farmer,” he said—to clarify his role, not to complain. “The family in the hacienda on the Bataan highway owns the land.”
“The fancy place we passed on the way?”
“Yes, the fancy place,” he said, and everyone laughed at my odd description. “I keep fifty percent for myself and fifty percent is for the landowner. The incentive is small, but what choice do we have?”
“The Hukbalahaps think we have one, Father,” said Anita.
“How dare you speak of them in our house,” Mr. Quiboloy said in a flash of anger. Turning to me, he explained. “The Huks are radicals, communists; they know only one way: violence.” Then, addressing Anita, he said, “Where do you get such foolish thoughts? Is that what you are learning in school? Is that what Alejandro teaches?”
“Where are the Huks from?” I asked.
“From everywhere,” Lucio replied. “Some dwell within our own barrio, but since I am not a sympathizer, I cannot be sure which ones they are. You see, I believe in Philippine democracy. I believe we should be like America, where everyone has an opportunity to succeed and live well.”
“But that’s not always true. You remember our discussion last weekend?” I said.
“Oh, yes, I have not forgotten. Still, you have not had to live through our poverty and pain. You have never had that in America.”
How could I argue? I knew of no pain first-hand. I never saw anyone starving. Through the desperate thirties there was always food on our table and ample clothes to wear and a snug apartment to sleep in. Although my father had lost the wealth gained during his most vigorous years, and he had lost his daring and capacity to dream for the rest of his life, he never lost his belief in America. In its worst times the nation somehow provided opportunity for survival.
When the meal was over, Anita handed me a sleeping mat, which I unrolled on the floor beside those of my hosts. It was too hot to be out in the high sun of the early afternoon. What could be more sensible than to have a cool siesta? In two hours Anita awakened me from a soft sleep. Lucio had returned to the field, her mother was elsewhere, and her grandmother squatted quietly in a corner weaving a mat. “My father has asked me to show you the mango tree,” she said. “Will you come with me, please?”
We walked down the path to the highway, at first side by side, but soon she fell behind. “Am I going too fast for you?”
“No, no,” she said, urging me to keep on ahead. She continued to linger behind.
“Are you tired?”
“No, no,” and she giggled in amusement. “It’s the custom in Lubao that I walk behind.”
Since the concrete highway was blistering, we walked along the narrow dirt shoulder, which was less hot but still burned through the soles of my GI boots. Anita, barefoot as usual, didn’t seem to mind. Nor, in her white dress and wide brimmed woven hat, did she seem bothered by the afternoon sun beating down on us, while I perspired heavily and had to stop to rest now and then under a tree. Although several passing ten-wheel army trucks offered us a lift, she refused them. Grudgingly I submitted to her wish. “We have only a few miles,” she said, a promise of small comfort. Soon we passed by the grand white stucco hacienda, a stark contrast to Anita’s house.
“So this is where the rich landowners live,” I said.
“Oh, but they are no longer rich, Hal. They have the land, but that is all. The Japanese took all the crops. The land is of little use without seed. And the Japanese removed all their possessions, leaving the house bare. They are mestizos and very proud, but the Japanese took that away too. A commander occupied the hacienda and humiliated the family, making them his servants. He hoped that by doing this, the rest of us would be pleased and that we would cooperate with him.”
“And weren’t the people happy to see the selfish landowner get what he deserved?”
“Oh, no, the Santoses are good people; they are always very kind. When we have malaria, they bring us quinine. When a typhoon ruins our crops, they give us rice to eat and new seed for the next planting. The Japanese commander had mistaken how we would feel. We knew he was cruel.”
At last we reached our destination, the small solitary thatched house on stilts beside the sluggish stream that I had observed on our first trip along the highway. We climbed the ladder to the house and entered its cool, dim interior, where I saw a mostly naked old man seated on the floor. “This is my grandfather,” said Anita as she uncovered a basket of fruit, vegetables, and rice that she had brought for him.
He reached for my outstretched right hand with his left; his other arm hung limp by his side. “Comusta ka,” he said in a clear, high voice.
“Comusta,” I said, returning the greeting. He then spoke to Anita in dialect, pointing to a small woven box beside his hearth, which she retrieved for him. From it he removed a GI dog tag, which he held suspended for me to see.
“It is an American soldier’s necklace,” said Anita.
“May I look at it closely?” I asked, astonished that he would have such a thing.
The dog tag bore the name Roger B. Anderson and his serial number and blood type. “Where did your grandfather get this, Anita?”
“From Lieutenant Anderson,” she replied plainly.
“I don’t understand. GIs don’t give away their dog tags.”
“Let us sit and I shall tell you about Lieutenant Anderson.” She peeled a banana for her grandfather, and handed me one with a dark green skin. “It is quite ripe even though it is green,” she said. It was, and tasted sweeter than any I had ever eaten. “He is there under my grandfather’s mango tree.” I followed her gaze through the doorway. Symmetrical and spreading, a low tree stood between the house and the stream, creating a cool, grassy oasis beneath its graceful branches.
Baffled by her indirection, I tried to deduce her meaning. “Buried? In a grave? Under the tree?”
Anita’s grandfather, having sense my sudden comprehension, broke into excited dialect, and struggled to rise. “My grandfather says that you may keep the necklace,” said Anita. She addressed him sternly and he sat down again. “My grandfather’s bones give him much pain. They never healed correctly after the Japanese broke them. He should stay with us in the barrio, but he refuses. My grandfather is a stubborn man.”
Later I learned that Anita made the trip to her grandfather’s house several days a week to bring him food and often to stay and cook for him. I could sense an unspoken bond between them, a mutual appreciation. Anita once confessed that she felt much closer to her grandfather than to her own father. The old and young are on common ground: Both are concerned only with the fresh simplicities of life, the very business of being alive.
Anita began her story: “The Japanese marched hundreds of American prisoners through Pampanga from Bataan, giving them no food or water, and whipping them when they fell behind. They made them walk on the hot concrete so that they left bloody footprints from their scorched and wounded feet.” I winced, recalling my recent distress walking under the sun, even along the cooler shoulder of the highway. Anita spoke with a chilling earnestness, as if she were describing a scene in progress, making no comment, stating only facts. “Some were already weakened from wounds in the battle on Bataan and could not keep up. Lieutenant Anderson was one of these. When the men fell and did not rise after being kicked and beaten, they were shot, and their bodies were collected on a wagon pulled by carabao that followed the marchers. Lieutenant Anderson was shot there at the edge of the road.” She stared out at the glaring white concrete. “But my grandfather and grandmother saw him move; he was still alive. So before the wagon passed they dragged him from the road and hid him under the trees by the stream in the field behind the house. They nursed his wounds for many weeks.” She interrupted her account to consult with her grandfather in dialect. “Yes, my grandfather says it was more than a month before the American opened his eyes and spoke.”
“Did you meet him?” I asked.
“Much later in the barrio,” she said, “but I was only a child.” I had failed to realize immediately that she had become a woman in the intervening four years.
“It was very dangerous for my grandparents. The Japanese often warned us not to help the Americanos or we would be shot. When the monsoon came and the land was covered with water, Lieutenant Anderson was moved to Reverend Mr. Corum’s house in Lubao. But soon the Japanese returned to search for the Americano, saying they had heard we were hiding one of the marchers. Someone, maybe from the barrio—we shall never know—had betrayed us. They entered my grandparents’ house and asked my grandfather to give them the Americano, but he would admit nothing. They broke his limbs and he passed out from the pain.” Tears welled up in her eyes at the thought of his suffering. “Then they took him and my grandmother to the barrio where all the people were gathered and they showed what they did to my grandfather and they threatened to kill us one by one until we gave them the Americano. My father and Reverend Mr. Corum replied to the Japanese commander that killing us would be useless.” She faltered; the words came hard. “The commander ordered a soldier to stand my Nanay by the wall of the church.” With tear streaked cheeks, she went on. “And he shot her. Oh, I loved my Nanay so very much.” She had to stop, and her grandfather reached for her with his one good arm and took her into it and comforted her with the soft words of his dialect as he, too, cried.
Her story was too appalling. I was speechless. I wanted to take on her pain, to share the suffering of her memory. But regaining her composure, she resumed. “After the commander killed my Nanay, the Americano, Lieutenant Anderson, appeared from Reverend Mr. Corum’s house. He had witnessed the commander’s cruelty and understood that others would also die unless he was found. The soldiers took him and flung him to the ground and beat him with their rifles. And then the commander ordered his soldiers to stand him by the wall of the church where my Nanay had stood. Blood was pouring from his head and they shot him. Then they left us.”
“What happened to the bodies of your Nanay and Lieutenant Anderson?”
“We took them and prepared them and, after a deep mourning, buried them side by side under the mango tree, as my grandfather wished.”
The sun appeared like an enormous orange balloon balanced at the apex of a faraway mountaintop. The heat of its slanting rays was now comfortably diminished in the late afternoon. “We must return to Lubao,” said Anita. Embracing her grandfather, she bid him good-bye and I shook his hand again. “Let me show you the graves.” Together we stood beside them, each marked by a simple boulder, nothing more. “The rounder rock is my Nanay’s grave.” The next few moments we shared in silence. Soon she raised her eyes and asked, “Do you like mangoes?” Taking one from the tree, she gave it to me. It was sweet and moist.
“Absolutely delicious,” I said.
“It is by far my favorite fruit,” she replied. “And don’t you think it is a beautiful tree? See how it spreads its branches like the arms of dancers; see how it shades the earth and makes it green.”
It was in the flash of that instant, transcending all feelings of desire, that I understood I had fallen in love with Anita. It was then I knew I had found someone who surpassed all I could ever hope to be. “Yes, it’s a beautiful and rare tree,” I answered.
During our walk back to Lubao we hardly spoke, save for one short exchange. “I have never been alone with a man, never with an Americano,” she said. “But my father said I could be with you, for he trusts you. At first I was very frightened, but now I am happy that we have spent this time together.”
“What are you afraid of? That I would bite you?”
She laughed. “No, no, of course not that.”
“What then?”
Delaying her reply, she slipped farther behind me as she pondered how best to express her thoughts. I stopped, waiting. “That I am not worthy,” she said. “That you would be ashamed of me. That we are like monkeys.”
“Oh, my God, Anita. Don’t you realize how beautiful you are?”
“Americanos are beautiful. Mestizos are beautiful.”
“No, you are.” I gently enclosed her hand in mine. It was the first time we touched.
“I hope you will come back often,” she said, hesitatingly withdrawing her hand.
“Nothing can stop me,” I promised.
That evening Billiard Ball and I had supper at the reverend’s. Anita, like soft music, was ever-present in the background, assisting Mrs. Corum. Afterwards we retired to the cozy living room, joined by Lucio, Anita’s father, and Hando. The gathering, being more intimate, dealt with both controversial and heartfelt matters, ranging from Shakespearean drama and symphonic music (Bartok no less), extolled by the uncommonly erudite Hando, to local politics and agrarian reform. Lucio, farmer and mayor, was a graduate of an agricultural college, a respected expert. “We must not be impatient and greedy,” he said, referring to a program he was promoting among his fellow farmers. “Rather than harvest all our rice for today’s consumption, we must set aside a portion for seed even if it means we will be hungry a while longer.” But few were paying heed to his recommendation. “It is not easy to believe in the future when the present is still so hard,” he sighed.
“Yes,” Hando agreed, “we must take the necessary steps now to become masters of the future. And we must be concerned with more than rice seedlings. Reform, dividing the haciendas and distributing the land, is essential.”
“Isn’t that what the Huks are striving to do?” I asked.
“But they are trying to do it by violent means,” said Lucio. “That is wrong.”
“Our people have been exploited for more than three hundred years,” said Hando with vehemence, his smooth, feminine amber skin taut and glistening. “The hacienda system is too firmly implanted. It will never submit to being destroyed peacefully.”
“But violence never knows where to stop. The innocent end up being victims,” Lucio countered with equal insistence. “If we expect to be independent, we must also have stability.”
“Perhaps America should be our model,” said the reverend, addressing Billiard Ball. “Unlike us, you do not kill your politicians over elections. You do not have our corruption. Sadly, we have few patriots and everyone is for himself.”
“But Roxas will unite us,” said Lucio, referring to the new presidential candidate in the elections to take place less than a year hence.
“Roxas was a collaborator; he betrayed us,” Hando said dourly.
Finding their intensity contagious, I listened, unable to decide who was right. With independence near at hand, at a crossroad in their history, they were contemplating the formation of the new nation and how best to correct ancient, firmly established inequities and injustice. Would their hopes and arguments ultimately be meaningless?
Would Billiard Ball and I care to attend church in the morning, asked Reverend Mr. Corum. We politely begged off, and he took no offense. “I have never met a Jew before,” he said. “but your religion and the history of your people are a part of my education as a clergyman. Do you attend your church?”
“Well, the truth is I don’t practice a religion,” I said sheepishly. “But I was born a Jew and I insist on belonging. The Jews have been a scapegoat ever since their exile from Babylonia over two thousand years ago. I can’t escape the past and I feel a duty to accept its consequences.”
“That’s very noble of you.”
“I don’t see it as noble. It is necessary for my self-respect.”
“But as a Jew you have nothing to fear in America,” said Hando, who was listening intently.
“Probably not. Tolerance is part of the American tradition,” I replied, “but I sometimes worry when I’m singled out and despised by prejudiced Gentiles. When I was a child I was often victimized by my schoolmates.”
“I see,” said Hando, “then you are a Jew first?”
“Hando, you are being discourteous to our guest,” said Reverend Mr. Corum.
“Please forgive him,” said Lucio. “He often oversteps decent bounds.”
“Really, I’d like to answer the question,” I said. Having ignored the reverend’s rebuke and Lucio’s apology, Hando kept his clear, penetrating, catlike eyes fastened on mine. “No, Hando, I am first an American.”
“Ah, what a lucky many you are. If only I could first be a Filipino.”
“And you, Billiard Ball, do you have a faith?” asked the reverend.
“I suppose I’m an atheist,” he replied, “but I don’t disapprove of religion, although it’s the major cause of war and misery throughout the history of civilized man.”
“Not religion itself, if you will forgive me for contradicting you,” said the reverend, holding up his finger pedantically, “but man, in the name of religion.”
“Yes, Reverend,” said Billiard Ball, nodding vigorously. “I stand corrected.”
Such were our conversations. They were of a depth and seriousness and range I had never experienced before. We discussed political systems, communism versus democracy, psychology, man’s startling discoveries of his hidden self, his search for meaning in life (There is none according to Billiard Ball), the crisis in physics, the pessimism of contemporary philosophers, the shocking renunciation of tradition in modern art and music, the truth of literature, and on and on. Billiard Ball and I found, in this comparatively primitive village, a gold mine of astounding sophistication. And who was the principal force behind all this magnificent cerebration? Reverend Mr. Corum, of course, supported by two lesser and opposing forces: Lucio and Hando.
The reverend was on an endless voyage in search of life’s truth. In an unobtrusive, self-effacing manner, he subtly enticed us to follow him, to think aloud without fear of criticism or reproof. But attacks on those personalities present or close to us were forbidden. Despite his extraordinary sophistication, there was a deceptive simplicity, a childlike quality, an innocence about him. His gentleness was saintly. I was always eager to be in his presence, to hear his views on any subject, to hear his questions. His quiet power was the source of the barrio’s pride in itself. It was he who made the barrio an enclave against alien influences. Admiring America, he distrusted Americans and their careless style. Loving God, he rarely invoked his name. And not once in conversation during the time I knew him, an all too brief five months, did he mention Lieutenant Anderson’s name, or speak of the cruel Japanese commander or refer to Nanay’s untimely death.
On a subsequent visit I vividly recall a discussion on the nobility of sacrificing oneself for another. “It is natural to the human spirit,” the reverend stated. “Don’t we place our children and all those we deeply love before ourselves? Hadn’t we practiced this spirit toward the prisoners of the Death March? And didn’t we bear witness to the highest form of sacrifice by the Americano? Yes, I believe that in the end our goodness will prevail, for it is the most universal human trait.”
“All of history disputes your thesis,” Billiard Ball retorted.
“May I say, if you wish to call up history, then we shall find support for any view of man’s nature,” replied the reverend.
“Checkmate,” I whispered to Billiard Ball.
That night Billiard Ball slept at Hando’s house, and I at Anita’s with three generations in a single room. Being a product of a comfortable urban middle class environment, certain practical questions came to mind. How did one have sex, unless perhaps very quietly; where did one find privacy, and where was the bathroom? I never found the answer to the first; wherever one could, and rarely, was the answer to the second, and to the third the answer was a question: What is a bathroom? One bathed in the local stream and went out in the field to defecate. I found this hard to cope with, but in the nick of time I learned that there was an outhouse behind Reverend Mr. Corum’s.
In the morning Anita served me the traditional rice, from America, she said, and eggs and some goat’s milk, a menu similar to that at Rosalio’s. On a like occasion during a later visit, to my awkward chagrin, she served me a bottle of Budweiser. Since beer was available only on the black market, it must have cost Lucio a large sum. Thinking back to our prior group discussion comparing the Filipino and American diets, I recalled mentioning that America’s favorite drinks were Coke and beer. But I did not explain that I cared for neither, particularly beer. The magnanimity of these people was unbounded. I could not fail to come to love them.
After church, which Billiard Ball and I did not attend, a volleyball net was set up across the width of the dirt street. One side of the street was bordered by banana trees and the other by the white stucco wall of the church, which still bore the chips and holes of spent bullets when Nanay and Lieutenant Anderson were murdered. The volleyball game, in which Hando, Billiard Ball, and I and other new friends participated, was an exciting, happy event, full of joking and laughter, and watched by everyone in the barrio. The prize for the winning team was a carton of Camels, donated by Billiard Ball. At one crucial stage I accidentally hit the net, costing our side the loss of the ball and, quickly, the game. My mortification at being responsible for the loss was so evident that the winners insisted upon splitting the carton of cigarettes equally with the opposing team. Their sensitivity to the feelings of others was beyond me.
Again, as on the previous weekend but more so, we departed that Sunday afternoon with unbearable sadness. But our hearts were also full of fresh pleasurable memories, and the prospect of more such visits. Tears filled Anita’s eyes as we said good-bye, and Hando embraced Billiard Ball. Reverend Mr. Corum held my hand in both of his, reluctant to let it go.
On the ride to Olongapo in back of an army truck, I told Billiard Ball Anita’s story of Lieutenant Anderson. “Poor devil, Anderson,” said Billiard Ball. “It was a heroic act, and it shouldn’t go unacknowledged. As soon as we get back to the base, I’ll report our discovery.”
“No, don’t,” I said belligerently. “Don’t you see he’s a symbol to the barrio people? They took an enormous risk in saving his life and keeping him. Christ, it cost them Anita’s grandmother’s life, and they were ready for anything rather than give him up. I’d hate to think what could have happened if Anderson hadn’t surrendered himself. He represents a victory to them. He gave them cause for self-respect while being humiliated by a cruel enemy. Look how Anita’s grandfather watches over and cares for the grave.”
Billiard Ball weighed my argument for several minutes. “I understand what you’re saying, Hal. You look upon these people as being like your own, don’t you?”
“It’s true, I’ve never felt so at home, so much a part of them, as if I belonged.”
“I can see that, but that isn’t what I mean.” Puzzled, I waited for him to continue. “They are like the Jews against the world. You, your people, and they have suffered and still suffer and refuse to submit. It is, I think, what attracts you to each other; it’s what you have in common.”
Confused, surprised, I stammered, “Maybe you’re right. I’m not sure. I have to think.”
“Getting back to Anderson, consider this, Hal,” said Billiard Ball. “Don’t you think Anderson’s family would like to have his remains? Shouldn’t they also know about his meritorious act of heroism, what a special individual he was? Maybe he left a wife or son behind to feel proud of him for the rest of their lives were they to know. And wouldn’t we also deprive our country of a chance to honor its best?” I stared at Billiard Ball in silence. By the time we reached the dock at Olongapo, we were no nearer to a resolution. “Okay, Hal,” he said, “I’m going to follow my own conscience. Like you, I think Anderson was first an American, and should go home. I’m going to report Anita’s story.”
He did, and I didn’t hold it against him.

SERVANT GIRL by Estrella D. Alfon

ROSA was scrubbing the clothes she was washing slowly. Alone in the washroom of her mistress’ house she could hear the laughter of women washing clothes in the public bathhouse from which she was separated by only a thin wall. She would have liked to be there with the other women to take part in their jokes and their laughter and their merry gossiping, but they paid a centavo for every piece of soiled linen they brought there to wash and her mistress wanted to save this money.
A pin she had failed to remove from a dress sank its point deep into her fin­ger. She cried to herself in surprise and squeezed the finger until the blood came out. She watched the bright red drop fall into the suds of soap and looked in delight at its gradual mingling into the whiteness. Her mistress came upon her thus and, shouting at her, startled her into busily rubbing while she tried not to listen to the scolding words.
When her mistress left her, she fell to doing her work slowly again, and sometimes she paused to listen to the talk in the bathhouse behind her. A little later her mistress’ shrill voice told her to go to the bathhouse for drinking water. Eagerly wiping her hands on her wet wrap, she took the can from the kitchen table and went out quickly.
She was sweating at the defective town pump when strong hands closed over hers and started to help her. The hands pressing down on hers made her wince and she withdrew her hands hastily. The movement was greeted by a shout of laughter from the women washing and Rosa looked at them in surprise. The women said to each other “Rosa does not like to be touched by Sancho” and then slapped their thighs in laughter. Rosa frowned and picked up her can. Sancho made a move to help her but she thrust him away, and the women roared again, saying “Because we are here, Sancho, she is ashamed.”
Rosa carried the can away, her head angrily down, and Sancho followed her, saying “Do not be angry,” in coaxing tones. But she went her slow way with the can.
Her mistress’ voice came to her, calling impatiently, and she tried to hurry. When she arrived, the woman asked her what had kept her so long, and without waiting for an answer she ranted on, saying she had heard the women joking in the bathhouse, and she knew what had kept the girl so long. Her anger mounting with every angry word she said, she finally swung out an arm, and before she quite knew what she was doing, she slapped Rosa’s face.
She was sorry as soon as she realized what she had done. She turned away, muttering still, while Rosa’s eyes filled with sudden tears. The girl poured the water from the can into the earthen jar, a bitter lump in her throat, and thought of what she would do to people like her mistress when she herself, God willing, would be “rich.” Soon however, she thought of Sancho, and the jokes the women had shouted at her. She thought of their laughter and Sancho following her with his coaxing tones, and she smiled slowly.
Getting back to her washing, she gathered the clothes she had to bleach, and piled them into a basin she balanced on her head. Passing her mistress in the kitchen, she said something about going to bleach the clothes and under her breath added an epithet. She had to cross the street to get to the stones gathered about in a whitened circle in a neighbor’s yard where she was wont to lay out the clothes. She passed some women hanging clothes on a barbed-wire fence to dry. They called to her and she smiled at them.
Some dogs chasing each other on the street, she did not notice because the women were praising her for the whiteness of the linen in the basin on her head. She was answering them that she hadn’t even bleached them yet, when one of the dogs passed swiftly very close to her. Looking down, she saw in wide alarm another dog close on the heels of the first. An instinctive fear of animals made her want to dodge the heedlessly running dog, and she stepped gingerly this way and that. The dog, intent on the other it was pursuing, gave her no heed and ran right between her legs as Rosa held on to the basin in frantic fear lest it fall and the clothes get soiled. Her patadiong was tight in their wetness about her legs, and she fell down, in the middle of the street. She heard the other women’s exclamations of alarm and her first thought was for the clothes. Without getting up, she looked at the basin and gave obscene thanks when she saw the clothes still piled secure and undirtied. She tried to get up, hurrying lest her mistress come out and see her thus and slap her again. Already the women were setting up a great to do about what had happened. Some were coming to her, loudly abusing the dogs, solicitousness on their faces. Rosa cried, “Nothing’s the matter with me.” Still struggling to get up, she noticed that her wrap had been loosened and had bared her breasts. She looked around wildly, sudden shame coloring her cheeks, and raised the wrap and tied it securely around herself again.
She could stand but she found she could not walk. The women had gone back to their drying, seeing she was up and apparently nothing the worse for the accident. Rosa looked down at her right foot which twinged with pain. She stooped to pick up the basin and put it on her head again. She tried stepping on the toes of her right foot but it made her wince. She tried the heel but that also made her bite her lip. Already her foot above the ankle was swelling. She thought of the slap her mistress had given her for staying in the bathhouse too long and the slap she was most certain to get now for delaying like this. But she couldn’t walk, that was settled.
Then there came down the street a tartanilla without any occupant except the cochero who rang his bell, but she couldn’t move away from the middle of the street. She looked up at the driver and started angrily to tell him that there was plenty of room at the sides of the street, and that she couldn’t move anyway, even if there weren’t. The man jumped down from his seat and bent down and looked at her foot. The basin was still on Rosa’s head and he took it from her, and put it in his vehicle. Then he squatted down and bidding Rosa put a hand on his shoulders to steady herself, he began to touch with gentle fingers the swelling ankle, pulling at it and massaging it. They were still in the middle of the street. Rosa looked around to see if the women were still there to look at them but they had gone away. There was no one but a small boy licking a candy stick, and he wasn’t paying any attention to them. The cochero looked up at her, the sweat on his face, saw her looking around with pain and embarrassment mingled on her face. Then, so swiftly she found no time to protest, he closed his arms about her knees and lifted her like a child. He carried her to his tartanilla, plumped her down on one of the seats. Then he left her, coming back after a short while with some coconut oil in the hollow of his palm. He rubbed the oil on her foot, and massaged it. He was seated on the seat opposite Rosa’s and had raised the injured foot to his thigh, letting it rest there, despite Rosa’s protest, on his blue faded trousers. The basin of wet clothes was beside Rosa on the seat and she fingered the clothing with fluttering hands. The cochero asked her where she lived and she told him, pointing out the house. He asked what had happened, and she recited the whole thing to him, stopping with embarrassment when she remembered the loosening of her patadiongand the nakedness of her bosom. How glad she was he had not seen her thus. The cochero had finished with her foot, and she slid from the seat, her basin on a hip. But he took it from her, asking her to tell him where the bleaching stones were. He went then, and himself laid out the white linen on the stones, knowing like a woman, which part to turn to the sun.
He came back after a while, just as Rosa heard with frightened ears the call of her mistress. She snatched the basin from the cochero’s hand and despite the pain caused her, limped away.
She told her mistress about the accident. The woman did not do anything save to scold her lightly for being careless. Then she looked at the swollen foot and asked who had put oil on it. Rosa was suddenly shy of having to let anyone know about her cochero, so she said she had asked for a little oil at the store and put it on her foot herself. Her mistress was unusually tolerant, and Rosa forgot about the slapping and said to herself this was a day full of luck!
It was with very sharp regret that she thought of her having forgotten to ask the cochero his name. Now, in the days that followed, she thought of him, the way he had wound an arm around her knees and carried her like a little girl. She dreamed about the gentleness of his fingers. She smiled remembering the way he had laid out the clothes on stones to bleach. She knew that meant he must do his own washing. And she ached in ten­derness over him and his need for a woman like her to do such things for him—things like mending the straight tear she had noticed at the knee of his trousers when her foot had rested on them; like measuring his tartanilla seat cushions for him, and making them, and stringing them on his vehicle. She thought of the names for men she knew and called him by it in thinking of him, ever afterwards. In her thoughts she spoke to him and he always answered.
She found time to come out on the street for a while, every day. Sometimes she would sweep the yard or trim the scraggly hedge of viola bushes; or she would loiter on an errand for tomatoes or vinegar. She said to herself, He dreams of me too, and he thinks of me. He passes here every day wishing to see me. She never saw him pass, but she said to herself, He passes just when I am in the house, that’s why I never see him.
Some tartanilla would pass, and if she could, as soon as she heard the sound of the wheels, she looked out of a window, hoping it would be Angel’s. Sometimes she would sing very loudly, if she felt her mistress was in a good humor and not likely to object. She told herself that if he could not see her, he would at least wish to hear her voice.
She longed no more to be part of the group about the water tank in the bathhouse. She thought of the women there and their jokes and she smiled, in pity, because they did not have what she had, some one by the name of Angel, who knew how to massage injured feet back to being good for walking and who knew how to lay out clothes for bleaching.
When they teased her about Sancho, who insisted on pumping her can full every time she went for drinking water, she smiled at the women and at the man, full of her hidden knowledge about someone picking her up and being gentle with her. She was too full of this secret joy to mind their teasing. Where before she had been openly angry and secretly pleased, now she was indifferent. She looked at Sancho and thought him very rude beside… beside Angel. He always put his hands over hers when she made a move to pump water. He always spoke to her about not being angry with the women’s teasing. She thought he was merely trying to show off. And when one day Sancho said, “Do not mind their teasing; they would tease you more if they knew I really feel like they say I do,” she glared at him and thought him unbearably ill-mannered. She spat out of the corner of her mouth, letting him see the grimace of distaste she made when she did so, and seeing Sancho’s disturbed face, she thought, If Angel knew, he’d strike you a big blow. But she was silent and proud and unsmiling. Sancho looked after her with the heavy can of water held by one hand, the other hand flung out to balance herself against the weight. He waited for her to turn and smile at him as she sometimes did, but she simply went her way. He flung his head up and then laughed snortingly.
Rosa’s mistress made her usual bad-humored sallies against her fancied slowness. Noticing Rosa’s sudden excursions into the street, she made remarks and asked curious questions. Always the girl had an excuse and her mistress soon made no further questions. And unless she was in bad temper, she was amused at her servant’s attempts at singing.
One night she sent the maid to a store for wine. Rosa came back with a broken bottle empty of all its contents. Sudden anger at the waste and the loss made her strike out with closed fists, not caring where her blows landed until the girl was in tears. It often touched her when she saw Rosa crying and cowering, but now the woman was too angry to pity.
It never occurred to Rosa that she could herself strike out and return every blow. Her mistress was thirtyish, with peaked face and thin frame, and Rosa’s strong arms, used to pounding clothes and carrying water, could easily have done her hurt. But Rosa merely cried and cried, saying now and then Aruy! Aruy!, until the woman, exhausted by her own anger left off striking the girl to sit down in a chair, curse loudly about the loss of such good wine, and ask where she was going to get the money to buy another bottle.
Rosa folded her clothes into a neat bundle, wrapped them in her blanket, and getting out her slippers, thrust her feet into them. She crept out of a door without her mistress seeing her and told herself she’d never come back to that house again.
It would have been useless to tell her mistress how the bottle had been broken, and the wine spilled. She had been walking alone in the street hurrying to the wine store, and Sancho had met her. They had talked; he begging her to let him walk with her and she saying her mistress would be angry if she saw. Sancho had insisted and they had gone to the store and bought the wine, and then going home, her foot had struck a sharp stone. She had bent to hold a foot up, looking at the sole to see if the stone had made it bleed. Her dress had a wide, deep neck, and it must have hung away from her body when she bent. Anyway, she had looked up to find Sancho looking into the neck of her dress. His eyes were turned hastily away as soon as she straightened up, and she thought she could do nothing but hold her peace. But after a short distance in their resumed walk home, he had stopped to pick up a long twig lying on the ground. With deft strokes he had drawn twin sharp peaks on the ground. They looked merely like the zigzags one does draw playfully with any stick, but Rosa, having seen him looking into her dress while she bent over, now became so angry that she swung out and with all her force struck him on the check with her open palm. He reeled from the unexpected blow, and quickly steadied himself while Rosa shot name after name at him. Anger rose in his face. It was nearly dark, and there was no one else on the street. He laughed, short angry laughter, and called her back name for name. Rosa approached him and made to slap him again, but Sancho was too quick for her. He had slipped out of her way and himself slapped her instead. The surprise of it angered her into sudden tears. She swung up the bottle of wine she had held tightly in one hand, and ran after the man to strike him with it. Sancho slapped her arm so hard that she dropped the bottle. The man had run away laughing, calling back a final undeserved name at her, leaving her to look with tears at the wine seeping into the ground. Some people had come toward her then, asking what had happened. She had stooped, picked up the biggest piece of glass, and hurried back to her mistress, wondering whether she would be believed and forgiven.
Rosa walked down street after street. She had long ago wiped the tears from her face, and her thoughts were of a place to sleep, for it was late at night. She told herself she would kill Sancho if she ever saw him again. She picked up a stone from the road, saying, I wish a cold wind would strike him dead, and so on; and the stone she grasped tightly, say­ing, If I meet him now, I would throw this at him, and aim so well that I would surely hit him.
She rubbed her arm in memory of the numbing blow the man had dealt it, and touched her face with furious shame for the slap he had dared to give her. Her fists closed more tightly about the stone and she looked about her as if she expected Sancho to appear.
She thought of her mistress. She had been almost a year in the woman’s employ. Usually she stayed in a place, at the most, for four months. Sometimes it was the master’s smirking ways and evil eyes, sometimes it was the children’s bullying demands. She had stayed with this last mistress because in spite of her spells of bad humor, there were periods afterward when she would be generous with money for a dress, or for a cine with other maids. And they had been alone, the two of them. Sometimes the mistress would get so drunk that she would slobber into her drink and mumble of persons that must have died. When she was helpless she might perhaps have starved if Rosa had not forcibly fed her. Now, however, thought of the fierce beating the woman had given her made Rosa cry a little and repeat her vow that she would never step into the house again.
Then she thought of Angel, the cochero who had been gentle, and she lost her tears in thinking how he would never have done what Sancho did. If he knew what had happened to her, he would come running now and take her to his own home, and she would not have to worry about a place to sleep this night. She wandered about, not stopping at those places where she knew she would be accepted if she tried, her mind full of the injustices she had received and of comparisons between Sancho and Angel. She paused every time a tartanilla came her way, peering intently into the face of the cochero, hoping it would be he, ready to break her face into smiles if it were indeed. She carried her bundle on her arm all this while, now clenching a fist about the stone she still had not dropped and gnashing her teeth.
She had been walking about for quite a while, feeling not very tired, having no urgent need to hurry about finding herself a place, so sharp her hopes were of somehow seeing her cochero on the streets. That was all she cared about, that she must walk into whatever street she came to, because only in that way would he see her and learn what they had done to her.
Then, turning into a street full of stores set side by side, she felt the swish of a horse almost brushing against her. She looked up angrily at the cochero’s laughing remark about his whip missing her beautiful bust. An offense like that, so soon after all her grief at what Sancho had done, inflamed her into passionate anger, and mouthing a quick curse, she flung the stone in her hand at the cochero on his seat. It was rather dark and she did not quite see his face. But apparently she hit something, for he suddenly yelled a stop at the horse, clambered down, and ran back to her, demanding the reason for her throwing the stone. She exclaimed hotly at his offense with the whip, and then looking up into his face, she gasped. She gasped and said, “Angel!”
For it was he. He was wearing a striped shirt, like so many other people were wearing, and he had on the very same trousers of dark blue he had worn when he massaged her foot. But he gazed at her in nothing but anger, asking whether her body was so precious that she would kill his horse. Also, why did she keep saying Angel; that was not his name!
Rosa kept looking up at him not hearing a word of his threats about taking her to the municipio, saying only Angel, Angel, in spite of his protests that that was not his name. At last she understood that the cochero did not even remember her and she realized how empty her thoughts of him now were. Even his name was not Angel. She turned suddenly to walk away from him, saying, “You do not even remember me.”
The cochero peered at her face and exclaimed after a while, “Oh yes! the girl with the swollen foot!” Rosa forgot all the emptiness, forgot the sudden sinking of her heart when she had realized that even he would flick his whip at a girl alone on the road, and lifted her smiling face at him, stopping suddenly to tell him her foot had healed very quickly. The cochero asked her after a while where she was going, and she said breathlessly, without knowing just why she answered so, “I am going home!” He asked no questions about where she had been, why she was so late. He bade her ride in his vehicle, grandly saying he would not make her pay, and then, with many a loud exclamation to his horse, he drove her to her mistress’ house.
Rosa didn’t tell him what had happened. Nor anything about her dreams. She merely answered the questions the cochero asked her about how she had been. “With the grace of God, all right, thank you.” Once he made her a sly joke about his knowing there were simply lots of men courting her. Rosa laughed breathlessly and denied it. She wished they would never arrive, but they soon did. The cochero waited for her to get out, and then drove off, saying “Don’t mention it” to her many thanks. She ran after the tartanilla when it had gone off a little way, and asked, running beside the moving vehicle, looking up into his face, “What is your name?”
The cochero shouted, without stopping his horse, “Pedro” and continued to drive away.
Rosa went into the house without hesitation, forgetting all her vows about never stepping into it again and wondering why it was so still. She turned on the lights and found her mistress sleeping at a table with her head cradled in her arms, a new wine bottle before her, empty now of all its contents. With an arm about the thin woman’s waist, she half dragged her into her bed. When the woman would wake, she would say nothing, remembering nothing. Rosa turned on the light in the kitchen and hummed her preparations for a meal.

BIG SISTER by Consorcio Borje

YOU can use this," said Inciang, smiling brightly and trying to keep her tears back. "It is still quite strong, and you will not outgrow if for a year yet."
Itong watched his sister fold his old khaki shirt carefully and pack it into the rattan tampipi, which already bulged with his clothes. He stood helplessly by, shifting his weight from one bare foot to the other, looking down at his big sister, who had always done everything for him.
"There, that's done," said Inciang, pressing down the lid. "Give me that rope. I'll truss it up for you. And be careful with it, Itong? Your Tia Orin has been very kind to lend it to us for your trip to Vigan."
Itong assented and obediently handed his sister the rope. His eyes followed her deft movements with visible impatience; his friends were waiting outside to play with him. He was twelve years old, and growing fast.
Sometimes when Inciang toiling in the kitchen, sweeping the house, or washing clothes by the well in the front yard held a long session with herself, she admitted she did not want Itong to grow. She wanted to keep him the boy that he was, always. Inciang had raised Itong from the whimpering, little, red lump of flesh that he was when their mother died soon after giving birth to him. She had been as a mother to him as long as she could remember.
"May I go out now and play, Manang?"
And Inciang heard herself saying, "It will be a year before you will see your friends again… Go now."
She listened to the sound of his footsteps down the bamboo ladder, across the bare earthen front yard. Then she heard him whistle. There were answering whistles, running feet.
"TELL him, Inciang," her father had said. That was about three months ago. Inciang was washing clothes by the well with Tia Orin.
"Yes, you tell him, Inciang," said Tia Orin. It was always Inciang who had dealt with Itong if anything of importance happened.
Inciang rose to her feet. She had been squatting long over her washtub and pains shot up her spine.
"Hoy, Itong," called Inciang. Itong was out in the street playing with Nena, Lacay Illo's daughter. "Hoy, Itong," called Inciang. "Come here. I have something to tell you."
Itong gave a playful push at Nena before he came running. He smiled as he stepped over the low bamboo barrier at the gate which kept the neighbors' pigs out. How bright his face was! Inciang's heart skipped a beat.
"You have something to tell me, Manang?"
Inciang brushed her sudsy hands against her soiled skirt. "Yes. It is about your going to Vigan."
Itong sat down suddenly on the barrier.
"Your are going to high school, after all, Itong," Inciang said. She said it defiantly, as if afraid that Itong would like going away. She looked up at her father, as if to ask him to confirm her words. Father sat leaning out of the low front window, smoking his pipe.
Itong looked at her foolishly. Inciang's heart felt heavy within her, but she said, with a little reproach, "Why, Itong, aren't you glad? We thought you wanted to go to high school."
Itong began to cry. He sat there in front of his father and his sister and his aunt Orin, and tears crept down his cheeks.
"The supervising principal teacher, Mr. Cablana," went on Inciang in a rush, "came this afternoon and told us you may go to high school without paying the fees, because you are the balibictorian."
Itong nodded.
"Now, don't cry," said his aunt Orin. "You are no longer a baby."
"Yes," added the father. "And Mr. Cablana also promised to give his laundry to Inciang, so you'll have money for your books. Mr. Cablana is also sure to get the Castila's laundry for Inciang, and that will do for your food, besides the rice that we shall be sending you. Stop crying."
"Your Tata Cilin's house is in Nagpartian, very near the high school. You will stay with him. And," Inciang said, "I don't have to accompany you to Vigan, Itong. You'll ride in the passenger bus where your cousin Pedro is the conductor. Your cousin Pedro will show you where your Tata Cilin lives. Your cousin Merto, son of your uncle Cilin, will help you register in school. He is studying in the same school. Will you stop crying?"
Itong looked at Inciang, and the tears continued creeping down his cheeks. Itong was so young. Inciang began to scold him. "Is that the way you should act? Why, you're old now!"
Then Itong ran into the house and remained inside. His father laughed heartily as he pulled at his pipe. Inciang started to laugh also, but her tears began to fall fast also, and she bent her head over her washtub and she began scrubbing industriously, while she laughed and laughed. Outside the gate, standing with her face pressed against the fence, was Nena, watching the tableau with a great wonder in her eyes.
Inciang had watched Itong grow up from a new-born baby. She was six years old when she carried him around, straddled over her hip. She kept house, did the family wash, encouraged Itong to go through primary, then intermediate school, when he showed rebellion against school authority. When he was in the second grade and could speak more English words than Inciang, her father began to laugh at her; also her Tia Orin and her brood had laughed at her.
"Schooling would never do me any good," Inciang had said lightly.
She watched Itong go through school, ministering to his needs lovingly, doing more perhaps for him than was good for him. Once she helped him fight a gang of rowdies from the other end of the town. Or better, she fought the gang for him using the big rice ladle she was using in the kitchen at the time.
And her father had never married again, being always faithful to the memory of Inciang's mother. The farm which he tilled produced enough rice and vegetables for the family's use, and such few centavos as Lacay Iban would now and then need for the cockpit he got out of Inciang's occasional sales of vegetables in the public market or of a few bundles of rice in the camarin. Few were the times when they were hard pressed for money. One was the time when Inciang's mother died. Another was now that Itong was going to Vigan.
Inciang was working to send him away, when all she wanted was to keep him always at her side! She spent sleepless nights thinking of how Itong would fare in a strange town amidst strange people, even though their parientes would be near him. It would not be the same. She cried again and again, it would not be the same.
WHEN she finished tying up the tampipi, she pushed it to one side of the main room of the house and went to the window. Itong was with a bunch of his friends under the acacia tree across the dirt road. They were sitting on the buttress roots of the tree, chin in hand, toes making figures in the dust. And, of course, Itong's closest friend, Nena, was there with them. Strange, Inciang thought, how Itong, even though already twelve years old, still played around with a girl.
And then, that afternoon, the departure. The passenger truck pausing at the gate. The tampipi of Itong being tossed up to the roof of the truck. The bag of rice. The crate of chickens. The young coconuts for Tata Cilin's children. Then Itong himself, in the pair of rubber shoes which he had worn at the graduation exercises and which since then had been kept in the family trunk. Itong being handed into the truck.
Lacay Iban, Tia Orin, and Inciang were all there shouting instructions. All the children in the neighborhood were there. Nena was there. It was quite a crowd come to watch Itong go away for a year! A year seemed forever to Inciang. Itong sat in the dim interior of the bus, timid and teary-eyed. Inciang glanced again and again at him, her heart heavy within her, and then as the bus was about to leave, there was such a pleading look in his eyes that Inciang had to go close to him, and he put his hand on hers.
"I'm afraid, Manang."
"Why should you be?" said Inciang loudly, trying to drown out her own fears. "This boy. Why, you're going to Vigan, where there are many things to see. I haven't been to Vigan, myself. You're a lucky boy."
"I don't want to leave you."
"I'll come to see you in Vigan." She had considered the idea and knew that she could not afford the trip.
"Manang," said Itong, "I have a bag of lipay seeds and marbles tied to the rafter over the shelf for the plates. See that no one takes it away, will you?"
"Yes."
"And, Manang, next time you make linubbian, don't forget to send Nena some, ah?"
Inciang nodded. "You like Nena very much?"
"Yes," coloring a little.
Itong had never concealed anything from her. He had been secretive with his father, with his aunt Orin, but never with her.
From Vigan, Itong wrote his sister only once a month so as to save on stamps and writing paper. His letters were full of expressions of warm endearment, and Inciang read them over and over again aloud to her father and to Tia Orin and her brood who came to listen, and when her eyes were dim with reading, Inciang stood on a chair and put the letters away in the space between a bamboo rafter and the cogon roof.
"My dear sister," Itong would write in moro-moro Ilocano, "and you, my father, and Tia Orin, I can never hope to repay my great debt to all of you." And then a narration of day-to-day events as they had happened to him.
And so a year passed. Inciang discussed Itong with her father every day. She wanted him to become a doctor, because doctors earned even one hundred pesos a month, and besides her father was complaining about pain in the small of his back. Lacay Iban, on the other hand, wanted Itong to become a lawyer, because lawyers were big shots and made big names and big money for themselves if they could have the courts acquit murderers, embezzlers, and other criminals despite all damning evidence of guilt, and people elected them to the National Assembly.
Itong's last letter said that classes were about to close. And then, one morning, when Inciang was washing the clothes of the supervising principal teacher, with a piece of cotton cloth thrown over her head and shoulders to shelter her from the hot sun, a passenger truck came to a stop beside the gate and a boy came out. He was wearing white short pants, a shirt, and a pair of leather slippers. It was Itong. But this stranger was taller by the width of a palm, and much narrower. Itong had grown so very fast, he had no time to fill in.
"Itong, are you here already?"
"It is vacation, Manang. Are you not glad to see me?"
They ran into each other's arms.
Father came in from the rice field later in the afternoon. "How is my lawyer?" he asked, and then he noticed Itong wore a handkerchief around his throat.
"I have a cold, Father," said Itong huskily.
"How long have you had it?"
"For several weeks now."
"Jesus, Maria, y Jose, Inciang, boil some ginger with a little sugar for your poor brother. This is bad. Are you sure your cold will not become tuberculosis?"
Itong drank the concoction, and it eased his sore throat a little. It seemed he would never get tired talking, though, telling Inciang and Lacay Iban about Vigan, about school, about the boys he met there, about his uncle Cilin and his cousin Merto and the other people at the house in Nagpartian.
He went out with his old cronies, but he had neglected his marbles. The marbles hung from the rafter over the shelf for the plates, gathering soot and dust and cobwebs. It was a reminder of Itong's earlier boyhood. And he did not go out with Nena any more. "Have you forgotten your friend, Nena, already?" Inciang asked him and he reddened. "Have you been giving her linubbian, Manang?" he asked. And when she said "Yes," he looked glad.
On those nights when he did not go out to play, he occupied himself with writing letters in the red light of the kerosene lamp. He used the wooden trunk for a table. Inciang accustomed to go to sleep soon after the chickens had gone to roost under the house, would lie on the bed-mat on the floor, looking up at Itong's back bent studiously over the wooden trunk.
Once she asked, "What are you writing about, Itong?"
And Itong had replied, "Nothing, Manang."
One day she found a letter in one of the pockets of his shirt in the laundry pile. She did not mean to read it, but she saw enough to know that the letter came from Nena. She could guess what Itong then had been writing. He had been writing to Nena. Itong had changed. He had begun keeping secrets from Inciang. Inciang noted the development with a slight tightening of her throat.
Yes, Itong had grown up. His old clothes appeared two sizes too small for him now. Inciang had to sew him new clothes. And when Itong saw the peso bills and the silver coins that Inciang kept under her clothes in the trunk toward the purchase of a silk kerchief which she had long desired, especially since the constabulary corporal had been casting eyes at her when she went to market, he snuggled up to Inciang and begged her to buy him a drill suit.
"A drill terno! You are sure a drill terno is what you want?"
Itong patted his throat, as if to clear it. "Please Manang?"
"Oh, you little beggar, you're always asking for things." She tried to be severe. She was actually sorry to part with the money. She had been in love with that silk kerchief for years now.
"Promise me, then to take care of your throat. Your cold is a bad one."
Another summertime, when Itong came home from school, he was a young man. He had put on his white drill suit and a pink shirt and a pink tie to match, and Inciang could hardly believe her eyes. She was even quite abashed to go meet him at the gate.
"Why, is it you, Itong?"
He was taller than she. He kept looking down at her. "Manang, who else could I be? You look at me so strangely." His voice was deep and husky, and it had queer inflections. "But how do I look?"
Inciang embraced him tears again in her eyes, as tears had been in her eyes a year ago when Itong had come back after the first year of parting but Itong pulled away hastily, and he looked back self-consciously at the people in the truck which was then starting away.
"You have your cold still, so I hear," said Lacay Iban, as he came out of the house to join his children.
"Yes," said Itong, his words accented in the wrong places. "I have my cold still."
Looking at Itong, Inciang understood. And Itong, too, understood. Lacay Iban and Inciang looked at each other, and when Inciang saw the broad grin spreading over her father's face, she knew he understood, too. He should know!
"Inciang," said Father gravely. Inciang wrested her eyes from Nena whom she saw was looking at Itong shyly from behind the fence of her father's front yard. "Inciang, boil some ginger and vinegar for your poor brother. He has that bad cold still."
Inciang wept deep inside of her as she cooked rice in the kitchen a little later. She had seen Itong stay at the door and make signs to Nena. She resented his attentions to Nena. She resented his height, his pink shirt, his necktie.
But that night, as she lay awake on the floor, waiting for Itong to come home, she knew despite all the ache of her heart, that she could not keep Itong forever young, forever the boy whom she had brought up. That time would keep him growing for several years yet, and more distant to her. And then all the bitterness in her heart flowed out in tears.
In the morning, when Nena came to borrow one of the pestles. "We are three to pound rice, Manang Inciang; may we borrow one of your pestles?" Inciang could smile easily at Nena. She could feel a comradely spirit toward Nena growing within her. After all, she thought, as she gave Nena the pestle, she never had a sister, she would like to see how it was to have a sister. A good-looking one like Nena. Inciang smiled at Nena, and Nena blushing, smiled back at her.
More from this author:Meeting
This story is from a 1941 book that was never published because the manuscript was lost.

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MEETING by Consorcio Borje

THE little church stood in the shadow of acacia trees. A narrow gravel path lined with cucharita hedges led from the street into its cool, quiet yard with the moss on the dim boles of the trees and the dew on the grasses. The roar of the dusty, blindingly white city surged and broke like a sea along the concrete pavements that skirted the churchyard, but went no farther.
At the whitewashed wooden gate, the young man stood diffidently. Nervously fingering his battered felt hat, he pushed in the gate, stepped inside, allowed it to swing back, and then slowly walked down the path.
The chilly dampness of the place rested like a cool hand upon his fevered brow, and he expelled a breath of relief. He walked as slowly as he could, savoring through all the pores of his lean young frame the balm of this sudden reprieve from the heat and brutal impersonality of the big city.
Three concrete steps led up into the vestibule. At the top step he saw the congregation inside the heavy hardwood doors, and hesitated.
"I beseech you therefore, brethren, by the mercies of God, that ye present your bodies a living sacrifice, holy, acceptable unto God, which is your reasonable service.
"And be not conformed to this world: but be ye transformed by the renewing of your mind, that ye may prove what is that , and acceptable, and perfect, will of God."
The voice was long and sonorous, and it struck a responsive chord in the young man's heart, but he could not see the speaker. The last pew hid the altar from him. Over the pew he could see the fluted row of organ pipes, the massive rivet-studded rafters, light that streamed down at a deep angle from a tall window of colored glass.
"For I say, through the grace given unto me, to every man that is among you, not to think of himself more highly than he ought to think; but to think soberly, according as God hath dealt to every man the measure of faith."
For perhaps an hour the young man stood at the door, feeling deeply unhappy, frightened, and lost. He dared not enter. He looked down at his torn, dusty shoes, his stained clothes, felt the growth of beard on his chin, and already he could feel the cold eyes of the people in the church examining him. He retired quietly to one side of the vestibule, where he could not be seen from the inside, and leaned against the wall to rest his trembling limbs.
And then the people began streaming out, and he felt relieved that they did not even glance his way. After a while, he looked into the door. There was no one in. He crossed himself quickly and entered.
For a long time he sat there staring dully at the sounding emptiness before him, for breaking against the wall still was the reverberation of bells tolled a long time ago.
Through all this he could hear his heart beating in a weak slow measure, and again the beatific sense of completeness and of being filled his soul like mellow wine. The seat was deep and restful. The wood was firm and cool. He sank back and fell asleep.
When he woke up, he saw that his hat had fallen to the floor. The five-centavo pancit mami that he had eaten last night had already evaporated, and he felt a shot of pain in his middle as he stooped down to recover his hat. After the pain, a weakness and trembling seized his limbs, and cold sweat beaded his forehead. The church swam before his eyes.
Sunlight streamed through the west windows. From its angle he knew it must be late in the afternoon. He had been asleep in the church for the greater part of the day, and now he felt again vaguely forsaken, and the chill and the solitude were no longer very soothing but were almost terrifying.
Rocking from one foot to the other, he got up hastily and made for the door, and it was then that he saw the girl standing at his back.
"I've been watching you," she said, smiling gently, and her hair looked like a halo for the sunlight crowned it with gold. "You've been asleep," she continued.
"I'm sorry," he began weakly. "I didn't mean to--"
"Yes? But let's take a seat, please."
He licked his dry lips. "I didn't mean to sleep here. I just fell asleep, that's all."
"There's no harm in that, I'm sure," she said reassuringly taking her seat beside him and pulling him down. "You're a stranger here?"
"I came to the city about a week ago."
"Staying with relatives?" Her voice was direct and cool.
"No relatives, ma'am. I thought I could get a job here. I had heard so much about opportunities here, and I wanted to work myself through college…"
She listened quietly. The quick responsive look in her eyes brought his confidence back and made him give details about his life and his recent misadventures he would not have revealed otherwise.
"We are from the same province as you," she said. "My father works in the city hall. He got transferred here because my mother wants to see us through school. Come home with me, ha? We want you to tell us about the province. It was five years ago when we were there last. Yes, they will like to see you. Don't be ashamed. You can't blame people for not knowing any one in the city."
She was only sixteen, or thereabouts, he could see in the calesa which they took; she was dressed in white, simply and cleanly, almost to the point of the anaesthetic severity of the nurse, but there was a subtle perfume about her like that of rosal and then again like that of sampaguita, and the lines of her face were clean and young and sweet.
"Why, I'd be ashamed--" he began again, looking at himself with horror.
"No more of that, ha?" She flashed a smile at him, her lips a light rose like her cheeks, her eyes crinkling at the corners.
The horses' hoofs beat a tattoo on the street cobbles, round this corner, round that corner, ancient Spanish houses under acacia trees, rows of tenements, sounding walls of old Intramuros, a tangle of horse-drawn and motor traffic.
Everything went suddenly white at once.
The first thing that he knew was the mildly pungent smell of rubbing alcohol and liniment. The place he was in was dark, except for a street light that came in through the billowing curtain in the window. He was in a bed, a deep wide bed, with mattress and cool covers fragrant with soap and starch and ironing. From beyond the darkness to one side came to him the faint sound of voices and the tinkle of a piano.
He jerked up with a great consciousness of guilt, but he sank back again, dizziness swamping him back and overpowering him. Lying back there, accusing himself of imposing on a stranger's hospitality, he began to cry, but he wiped away his tears quickly when he saw the door slowly open and a head showed in the opening.
"Oh, you're awake now."
It was the girl, and she ran softly in. He felt greatly disturbed within. She was looking down now and her hand was upon his brow and he could feel the warmth of her and get the smell of her.
"Good!" she exclaimed and ran lightly out, closing the door behind her. In a minute, she was back with two other persons. A switch clicked and the room sprang into light, and he could see there was an elderly woman whom she resembled closely, and an elderly man in pajamas.
"Well!" said the man heartily. He had a pipe gripped by the bowl in one of his hands. "So this is the cababayan. Well!"
The woman came over and laid her hand on his forehead. A wedding ring shone on one finger. He looked up into her eyes, and all at once he knew he need not be afraid…
The girl's parents, it later developed, were among the more influential of the parishioners, and he was able to get a job through them as church janitor, with bed and board provided free in the servants' quarters of the rectory. Besides sprucing up the church, he had charge of the lawn which he mowed and the hedges which he trimmed. Out of his pay of twenty pesos a month he managed to send home ten pesos to his mother in the month's-end mail.
"Good morning," he would say humbly to the girl, Lita, when Sundays came and she was in the church. Then he would hurry before her to dust the pew she always took with her parents.
"How do you do?" Lita would ask, and sometimes she would say, "Pedro, you must come and get your Sunday dinner with us. You don't do it so regularly, now."
From the back of the congregation, dressed in his best white-cotton suit, his eighty-centavo necktie, his tan-and-white Gandara shoes, he would listen raptly to her sing in the choir. He could always tell her voice, and he could always see her lovely radiant face magnified among the rows of others.
Three afternoons a week, a calesa would halt at the church gate, and Lita would alight in her plain white dress. She would come down the cucharita-lined path, and she would enter the church where for an hour she would sit or kneel, just looking at the altar, and her lips would move silently. Then would Pedro hush his steps, and he would put aside his lawnmower and his shears and look at Lita longingly through the window, at her profile outlined against the lighted side of the church.
On her seventeenth birthday, Lita gave Pedro a picture. It showed her with eyelashes swept up and lips half-parted in a smile. A stray lock fell against one cheek. One dainty end of a lace bow curled against the straight line of her throat, while the other reclined against the swell of her bosom.
"I can keep this?" asked Pedro wonderingly, and Lita said with a thrill of laughter. "Why yes, it's yours. Why do you have to ask?"
He had enrolled in a night collegiate course prepared especially for working students, but out of the money for school fees and books he managed to save as much as fifty centavos at a time. He spent his savings for a neat little picture frame, painted black and silver, and put Lita's picture before him as he pored over his textbooks at home.
"How are you getting along in school?" said Lita one afternoon, after she came out of the church.
"At least I passed in all my subjects last semester."
"That's fine. I'm sure you'll make an engineer yet." She hesitated at the gate, and turned back to him slowly. "Don't let anything distract you from your work," she said. "put your mind on it and keep it there."
He thought, she looks very young, but too deadly serious. That frown on her face. That mature cast of her mouth. But he only said, "Thank you, Miss Miel."
"Miss, still?" She laughed again, and the world was shining once more, no longer full of problems and dark and weighty hues, but full of the silvery ringing of bells and the light patter of dancing feet.
"I think I can help you," she went on. "About trigonometry now. It's my favorite subject."
"I cannot understand the cosine of--"
"You mean Thomas' theory? It's easy. Like this." And thereupon she knelt on the path and with a twig traced figures in the light fluff.
"You should make a good engineer, there are such things as women engineers, you know," he ventured.
"My father said I should," Lita confided. "But my greatest interest does not lie in that way, Pedro. It lies somewhere else. Should I tell you?" She crinkled her nose at him, but again she was suddenly grave. After a pause: "I've never wanted to grow up," she suddenly shot at him and hurriedly picked herself up, ran out of the gate, hailed a calesa and drove away.
Pedro's perplexity was solved the following afternoon when Lita came again to the church to pray. It was Saturday afternoon and Pedro was dusting. This time she had on a black veil that fell to the tip of her nose. She was a tiny figure kneeling at the far end of the church. Her head was bowed low, but he thought he could see her lips moving. He moved about on tiptoe, used his mop gently.
He was on the floor reaching under a remote corner when he heard her light "H'lo" behind him. He rose up hastily and nodded his greeting, "Good afternoon, Miss Miel."
"Good afternoon, Mister Deño."
"Er, Lita"
"That's better. Did I startle you yesterday afternoon?"
"You did."
Then Lita was telling him she was going to be a nun.
"But why?" asked Pedro incredulously.
"Does it sound foolish to you?" Her lashes swept down on her cheek, and for the first time he noticed that she had the pallid look as of one in cloistered, moss-grown nunneries.
"I don't know," he said, "I don't know." And then he went on, feeling foolish, "But you can't want to give up all this for life imprisonment."
"It is not life imprisonment," she said gravely, "but the essence of what I've always wanted. All my life I've wanted complete communion with God."
He shook his head to clear it of the cobweb of pain and dizziness, and her hand crept to his. The touch of it sent an electric shock through his whole frame.
"Even as a child," she went on, "I had always wanted to have a room that looked much like a church, with a hard, bare floor, and hard, bare seats, and an altar, and an image of Mother and Child."
She was looking down kindly at him, red spots in her white cheeks. "Now, as I live from day to day, it seems as if I'm being swept farther and farther away from that childhood dream. I want my childhood back. I hunger for its simplicity and its faith. It seems as if deep inside me I'm parched and thirsty, and I need the coolness and dampness of seclusion. You understand, don't you?"
Again it seemed as if the church rustled with the prayer and devoutness of a congregation, and there was again, that sonorous voice saying, "I beseech you therefore, brethren, by the mercies of God, that ye present your bodies a living sacrifice, holy, acceptable unto God."
"Good-bye," said Lita, her long, white, shapely fingers tightening on his rough, dark ones.
"I'll not see you again?"
She shook her head slowly. Suddenly she bent down and kissed him on the cheek, and as suddenly she ran down the aisle and out of the door.
As he sat in a pew, the bells were silent, but still they seemed to be tolling from far away, the air vibrating with their ringing. He sat in the pew and stared dully in front of him. Light streamed in from an eastern window. The ghostly congregation still rustled with its faith and sacrifice. On his cheek her lips were still warm.
But suppose, he thought, it had been some other way. Suppose:
"I'VE been watching you," she said, smiling gently, and her hair looked like a halo with the sunlight crowning it with gold. "You've been asleep," she continued.
"I'm sorry," he began weakly. "I didn't mean to--"
And then they were walking down to the whitewashed gate, and he was vaguely surprised that there was no calesa waiting there. But he went on to cross the street nevertheless, keeping in his eyes the slim, white figure, with the clean, young lines of face.
Outside the churchyard, the traffic was heavy as usual, and the lorry drivers swore mightily at the broken-down old man, with that vague half-smile on his face, who was crossing the street and breaking all rules of pedestrian traffic and all the laws of self-preservation.
"That engineer, Pedro Deño, you know," said one of a couple driving a car near the scene. "Dirty rich, but damned absent-minded, too."
"That's the matter with these successful people," said the other. "They put their mind on a thing and keep it there, to the exclusion of all others, even motor traffic."
"Yeh, Deño, for instance. Must be thinking of house plans and bridges."

STEALING A CHILD by Reine Arcache Melvin

O

ne last time. A man taking her just before dawn, in a house on stilts by the sea. He cups his hand over her mouth, turns her to her side, presses his chest against her naked back.
“Tell me what you want,” he whispers.
She does not answer.
The sun will come. In a moment, in an hour, the shadows will lift and she will see his face. She senses his head behind her, against her hair. She does not want to look at him; she knows what she will see: one eye replaced by glass, scars down his cheek, nose and lips that are almost but not quite those of the man she loved.
She stares out the window. A red sun crests over the edge of the frame. In a few minutes, the sun will float beyond the glass and it will be over. This is the moment of half-light, the world not yet awake. This is all she has wanted – a man pounding into her while she tries not to flinch.
“Does this hurt you?” he says.
She has lied to him. With her body, with her buttocks stretched apart by his hands. Only her back against him, this pounding that will not stop. He is making too much noise -- the child will not sleep through this. She starts to arch toward him, toward his heat and skin and sweat, urging him on, so she can be finished with him.
The cry of a gull. No one else can hear it. They are alone on this strip of the island.
When she opens her eyes, the red sun is gone and a dull light streams in through the window. He begins to emerge from the shadows, reaches for her amidst the pillows and white sheets. His arms tighten around her; his lips find her cheek. His breath is pungent, heavy on her skin. She pushes the sheets away from her and sits up.
She has wanted him and his child for years. She has spent a thousand nights staring at the ceiling and imagining his face over her. And now that he is hers, she cringes whenever he comes near her.
*
Her feet on the cool floor. In the gaps between the bamboo strips, she sees the blur of the sea. More than a dozen sharks are circling beneath the house, in a cage built from wire and rope and fastened to the stilts.
She first glimpsed the sharks a week ago, from the outrigger that carried them into the island. As the boatman tied the boat to the landing, she cradled the baby close to her and stepped tentatively onto the wooden pier. Her lover pulled off his shirt and dived from the boat into the sea. She watched him descend toward the sharks, his legs kicking slowly behind him.
When he surfaced, he was smiling. “Sixteen!” he shouted. “Come and see them.”
He was treading water, his strong shoulders crossed by scars, the sea a deep green around him.
She stood on the landing, the baby straddled over her hip. The heat from the wooden planks seeped into her sandals. “You’re crazy,” shesaid.
He laughed, shaking his wet hair. “Come on,” he said. “They’re only babies. They won’t bite.”
The child began to cry. The woman knelt down, pressing her hand against its cheek, watching the shadows gliding under the house.
“Are you sure they can’t get out?”
He grinned. “What do you think?”
She leaned over, trying to get a better view. After a moment, she said: “Where did you get them?”
“The fishermen in the village,” he replied. “Fifty pesos a shark.” He dipped his head into the water, then stared expectantly at her. His left eye was still the same – golden-brown and penetrating. If she looked only at it, she did not have to see the rest of him. “They’re happy,” he said. “I’m happy. No one’s died yet.”
She watched him hoist himself up to the landing beside her, his denim shorts dripping. He turned away from her, facing the sea. From behind, he was still an attractive man.
*
A chill in the room. She waits until she is sure he is asleep, then tiptoes across the room and peers out the window to the shore. The sky is overcast, the beach gray and damp after the night rains. The jungle begins just beyond the sand, a tangle of trees and bushes rising over the cliffs. She knows there is a path there, leading to the fishing village on the other side of the island, but from the window she sees only the wild growth, imagines it filled with snakes and malaria-bearing mosquitoes. She thinks of white-skinned friars arriving in these islands centuries ago, afraid and amazed by what they saw: statues that wept blood at night, cats that doubled in size, trees whose leaves suddenly lifted and took flight, disappearing into the sky.
His breathing is labored in the humid room.
Magic cannot save us now, she thinks.
She takes a few steps to the child’s cot and lifts the mosquito net. Black eyes stare up at her, the small face still flushed by sleep. When the girl first saw her father, after the accident, she buried her face in her mother’s shoulders. Now she has grown used to him, no longer cries when he comes near her.
“She knows who I am,” he said. “You can see it, in her eyes.”
The woman bends over the cot and takes the girl in her arms. The tiny mouth opens, but the girl says nothing.
“We have to keep talking to her,” he said. “Sooner or later, she’ll come back to us.”
He spoke to Aimee constantly, sang to her, played tapes of the music that used to make her smile. He wanted to hear the stream of syllables again, the teasing laughter that had delighted him before the accident. But the girl just watches him, her silence broken only by cries of hunger or fatigue.
The woman runs her fingers though the child’s hair. Still cool, the touch of night breezes not yet effaced by the rising sun. The girl twists her head, staring at a ray of light that streams across the shadowed room.
Nothing he says can wipe away what happened to this child.
She slips into a summer dress, prepares a bottle of milk, then carries the girl out to the terrace. Only the sea in front of them, calm and clouded after the night’s storm. She remembers the house rocking on its stilts, winds ripping against the windows, but there is no trace of that violence now. For a moment, she imagines the house adrift, floating toward the horizon.
She settles into a white plastic chair, slips a rubber nipple between the baby’s lips. Her thoughts drift to the sharks beneath her, then to her lover in his bed. She caresses the baby’s cheek, hoping for a smile. Empty eyes, scanning the empty sea. What will it take to bring this child back to her? To make her smile again, to make her run laughing into her arms.
The girl turns to her. The woman studies her face, alert for any change in gesture or expression. At times she thinks Aimee is the only person who sees into her heart, who forces her to be vigilant. She cannot lie to this child. One false feeling, one cruel thought, and the child is lost.
*
She returns to the darkened room. The air is stale now; she smells his body under the blankets. He snores softly, an arm thrown across his face.
She sets the baby on the floor. Thin legs, thin arms, only the stomach and cheeks are soft and round. The woman packs diapers into the baby bag, then adds a bottle of mineral water, formula, jars of baby food, feeding bottles. These will take her as far as she needs to go.
Slipping her feet into rubber thongs, the woman glances nervously at Aimee. The child will not cry, she tells herself -- she is used to being taken, she will not protest now.
She bends over the bed, her lips an inch away from his shoulder. Should she leave him a note? Tell him she is taking the baby?
He murmurs in his sleep, but does not waken.
She hoists the child over one hip, surprised as always by how light Aimee is, her arms and legs as fragile as a bird’s wings. The woman slings the bag over her shoulder and steps out to the landing. The beach in front of her, the sea behind her. No other house on this side of the island, no sign of the fishermen from the village.
She hurries across the wooden planks, a few hundred meters to the beach. The girl slips her hand under the woman’s collar, seeking a breast. They move unsteadily across the sand, toward a line of coconut trees. At the last moment, the woman turns around. The house stands small and forlorn on its stilts over the sea.
She begins to make her way through the jungle, searching for the path that will take her across the cliffs. In a few hours, if she can carry the baby that long, she will reach the village, find a fisherman to ferry her back to the mainland. She knows the village people will stare at her, the women in dark clothes whispering behind the men. These are his people; his family has been coming to this island for generations. They will send someone furtively back to the house to warn her lover, but by then it will be too late. She will be gone, and his child with her.
*
The jungle thickens, thorns scratch her bare calves, the sun burns the back of her neck. She stands at the edge of the cliff. The heat has reached its peak; even the monkeys are silent now. The baby sleeps against her shoulder. She studies the descent ahead of her – the journey will be easier on this side.
She leans against a tree, pours cool water into her free hand and moistens the baby’s hair and neck. Far below her, she sees the western side of the island – the fishing village nestled on one end, a deserted cove on the other. As soon as she sees the green waters of the cove, she knows she must go there.
Only a few minutes, she tells herself. A brief immersion in water, not deep enough to be seen by sharks or ghosts. Even the fishermen will not notice. She will dip the baby in the cool sea, calm the pounding in her own head.
She descends faster now, over the tangle of roots and dead leaves, giant plants brushing against her shoulder. She is afraid to look anywhere except right in front of her. One false move, and they will tumble into the thorns and bushes, the baby disappearing into the mouths of snakes and monkeys and razor-toothed flowers.
Mud oozes into the skin between her toes; her feet slide out of the slippers. She kicks off the thongs, digs her feet deeper into the earth and stones.
The child’s body presses against her, its face buried against her breast. “We’ll be safe soon,” she murmurs, kissing its soft hair.
*
She steps out of the jungle and into the cove. Dark clouds race across the sky. She watches them for a moment. She has never seen an island like this, constantly shifting from light to darkness, silence to storm.
A moist wind licks her bare arms. She wonders if he is still asleep.
Then she is running across the sand, each foot brushing the damp grains for only a moment. She steps into cool water; foam swirls over her ankles.
She throws her bag on the sand, unfastens the child’s diaper. She hesitates, then quickly unzips her dress and steps out of it. They are both naked now, a woman and a child facing the sea. She glances around her, wondering if anyone is watching. Rocky walls on two sides, the cliffs behind her; not even the fishing village is visible from here. For an instant, sunshine falls from between the clouds, warming her breasts, awakening the memory of other longings.
She crouches in the shallow water, waves lapping her legs. And then she is on her knees, wading out into the sea. The child clings to her neck, calmed by the rocking.
How far can they go?
Baby sharks are trapped in his part of the island. The larger ones will not drift into shallow water.
She walks deeper and deeper into the sea until there are only two heads over the surface. The tiny eyes, afraid now, watching her lips. She kisses the baby on the mouth.
The sand beneath her feet can give way suddenly, break into bottomless sea. She knows she can simply drift away, the baby in her arms, until the sea opens its heart and takes them in.
*
Her eyes blindfolded. He was leading her down a winding staircase to thebasement of a house she had never seen before, hours from Manila. She smelled the men even before she saw them. Their sweat, barely masked by the odors of after-shave and cigarettes.
He removed the blindfold, and she looked around her. A room lit by candles, dozens of men in expensive suits and a few women in evenings gowns, seated at small tables in a circle around a cage. Five naked girls inside the cage, their hands tied to bars over their heads, thrusting out their small, dark-nippled breasts. They could not be older than fourteen.
The music began – or did she only begin to hear it? A man untied the girls, and they shimmied out of the cage. Eyes downcast, red lips forced into smiles. They danced awkwardly around the room, circling the tables, looking both embarrassed and lascivious. Each paused occasionally to lift one leg and rest it on a table, thighs spread open, vagina clearly visible, as the men smiled tensely and the women laughed. Drunken men inserted various objects – rolled bills, the mouths of champagne bottles – into the girls. An elegant woman pulled her silk shawl around her bare shoulders, then reached out to squeeze a girl’s thigh. “I wish I could be that firm,” she said lightly, pinching the flesh with her manicured fingers and baring her pretty teeth. The people at her table laughed.
When the music stopped, the girls returned to the cage. Several heavy-set men in bathrobes descended the staircase. They entered the cage.
She shut her eyes. Her lover was standing behind her, his arms tight around her waist. He kissed her neck. His lips were surprisingly soft, almost like a baby’s.
“Look at them,” he said.
He held her more tightly, his heart pounding against her back. Her toes curled inside her shoes.
She opened her eyes.
The room was hushed except for the girls’ screams. The woman could not look at them. She watched the faces of the men watching the girls. No one, not even him, had ever looked at her that way.
How far?
*
The baby’s belly against her ribs, warmer than the sea. This small body, waiting to become someone else. The child will look like its mother -- the same small bones, delicate nose, wide eyes. A haunting, the woman thinks: the enemy inhabits this child’s body, and no one else can see it.
She lifts the baby onto her shoulders, walking further unto the sea. The water is just below her neck.
There was a time when she saw no ghosts. Now they are everywhere, even in the sea. Bodies floating past her, voices in her head that even the shrieking monkeys cannot dispel.
In the waves, broken images of the child sitting by its dead mother, small hands rubbing a pale cheek.
Aimee’s legs dangle over the woman’s shoulders, but the child says nothing. This is her gift, the reason the woman will not leave her.
Suddenly she swings around, her movement softened by water. Far away, along the shore, a line of bodies, watching her. She squints to see more clearly. Her clothes lie in a pile along the shore.
She panics. She cannot go back now, cannot walk naked out of the sea with a baby in her arms. And yet she does. Slowly against the waves, toward the shore, lifting first her breasts out of the sea, then her waist, her hips, her thighs. Her lover has given this much to her – a sense of her body, and with it, her ghosts.
Each step makes her stronger.
She steps out of the water and onto the sand, holding Aimee like a shield over her. The women are a few meters away. They step aside as she approaches.
She does not look at their faces, but she knows who they are. Village women. She will never see any of them again.
She picks up the bag, drapes her dress around her neck and walks toward the jungle.
*
Is he awake now? Has he begun to search for them?
The woman and the baby huddle under an umbrella in a motorboat, heading into deep sea. The mainland is three hours away. Black clouds billow over them; the wind lashes her skin.
The fisherman asks permission to return to the village. She stares coldly at him, and he turns away.
She imagines her lover out on the terrace, facing the darkening sea. He will go to the empty beach, call out her name. Then a radio call to the village, his men telling him she is gone. His anger.
His lips against hers, the first time. That rush in her head, in her breasts, in her thighs. After months of wanting, waiting, despairing – it came to this, her happiness.
How fragile they were. How fragile their loves, their longing, their children. Those moments in his arms, his sex in hers, when she thought she had everything she had ever wanted.
*
They turn back. Not because of the storm. She would gladly welcome the black sea, gladly ease herself into its arms. But it is the baby who wraps its hands around her neck and kisses her on the chin, and at that moment the woman wavers.
She no longer knows where this life ends and where hers begins. For so long she has tried to win back this child by becoming like her – watching, reacting, refusing to speak. She loves this child enough to know she has nothing to give it.
She tells the fisherman to change direction, circle the island, head toward the house of her lover.
The girl needs someone who asks no questions. Strength, power, the blind faith of her father. Fear again, she knows. All her life she has acted from anguish. But this fear now – of being alone with this child, of not being enough for this child – emboldens her, excites her, feels dangerously like an act of love.
He will take them back. He will be happy to see them.
The fisherman is shaking his head. “It’s too dangerous,” he says.
She opens her handbag and removes a few bills.
He stares at them, and hesitates.
Fifty pesos a shark, she tells herself. This time she will dive in, press her face against the cage.
The boatman reaches for the bills. His face is that of an old man, but his naked torso, burned almost black by the sun, is as sinewy as that of a young man. He glances at the sky, then shrugs and begins to turn the boat around.
The boat races against the storm, bouncing on the waves.
There are gods in these waters, kind gods who receive all those who seek them.
“Faster,” she tells him, watching the darkening sky.
The baby huddles in her arms, water splattered on her clothes and hair. The woman glances around: no lifejackets on the fisherman’s boat. An easy death, she asks. This is the season of storms. No telling where they will come from, nor whom they will hit.
The fisherman is scowling, but he keeps the boat steady, steering it over the surface of the erupting sea.
*
They reach the house just as the typhoon breaks. A curtain of white rain blinding her as she staggers out of the boat, still struggling to hold an umbrella over the child.
Then into the house. A moment before her eyes adjusts to the darkness. The curtains are drawn, the white sheets in a heap on the floor. She calls out for him, but the room is heavy with his absence.
At that moment she thinks she made a mistake. She has lost him now, for an instant of fear or folly, for an act she could not carry through. Andif she was wrong, if he will never see her or the child again, if he falls into the mouths of flowers and angry friars descend on him with their swords, then all this was for nothing, and she has destroyed the child by wanting to save it.
She sits on the bed, lays the child beside her and curls her body around it, lulling it back to sleep with her own fatigue.
He will come back, she tells herself. He cannot disappear. Lost in the jungle perhaps, but he will find shelter there, among the ceiling of leaves and the ghosts of white men the jungle ate alive.
Later she finds the fisherman huddled on the terrace, watching the storm. The house seems to shake on its stilts; she is afraid the winds will tear it loose and toss it into the sea. She asks the old man into the house, prepares him a cup of instant coffee. He helps her fasten thick plastic sheets over the windows. Rain pounds against the roof, small streams of water seep through holes in the ceiling; the walls shudder. The old man and young woman sit on the floor, heads resting on their knees, waiting for the storm to pass.