TODAY WE TAKE MANUEL’S BEAT-UP VAN AND HEAD FOR THAT OLD hotel near the airport. From there, the island is a short pumpboat ride away. The sea between is calm, flecked with foam and flying fish. The island sand is soft and cream-colored, cool and forgiving to the soles of the feet, even in the heat of day. We shed our clothes as soon as we reach the white beach face and we bare ourselves to the sun in shorts, bikinis, halters and cut-offs, occasionally swimming out into the sea in gentle arcs, skimming the line where the shallow cup of green borders the blue of deeper water.
After our swim, we run across the sand, laughing, pale, lean and happy. The six of us cram ourselves into the hazy mottled shape of a shady refuge, arms and legs lightly touching, and easily slip into an afternoon siesta. During our rest nothing moves, only the sun and the shadows. We rise only when the moon is on its way up, to return to the boat and the van.
In three days, it will be Grace’s eighteenth birthday. This year it falls on Black Saturday. Today she received a letter from her grandmother, Lola Alma, inviting all of us to her house in Sta. Ana for the Holy weekend and her birthday party.
The town is about four or five hours away. I’ve been there, though I’ve forgotten exactly when. The next morning we pack sheets and pillows and food for the road, and speed off just before the light comes. For two hours there is nothing on either side of us but streaks of raw, unbroken darkness, turning green and luminous with the sudden dawn. Bambi puts on a Chicane CD and we fall into a reverie. Suddenly, we’re looking at the sky, bright and unfolded before us.
Manuel drives and I ride shotgun. We’re listing with the creaking body of the ten-year old van. Grace sits between us, shaking a leg to the trance music. Bambi is behind us, asleep, and Manuel, Eric and Ella are smoking and looking out the window.
Manuel’s driving brings us to Sta. Ana in under three hours, which, as far as we can remember, is record time. A few kilometers after the welcome arch, the green is finally broken by houses, gasoline stations, police outposts, and finally, the town’s cemetery, like white bones spilled over the side of a wide, green hill. Grace has fallen asleep again. Her thin dark hair is scattered over my shoulder. Her hands are strewn across my lap.
Another cement arch, and we’re in the town proper, where the roads are narrow and crooked, walled with houses of grey cement and old wood.
“Where to now, Gracia?”
Grace stirs, lazily looks out the window. “Lola Alma’s house is three houses from the church. You turn right at a big acacia tree into a driveway and it opens up into a compound.”
Manuel puffs up a cloud of smoke and heads for a cross on a low dome, rising above the metal rooftops. Soon we reach the town’s center, with the church and the town plaza strung with lights and paper bunting.
Lola Alma has always lived alone in Sta. Ana. Her sister, Teresa, Grace’s maternal grandmother, moved down to Manila as soon as she got married. The only nearest relatives, Tiyo Serafin and Tiya Karen, passed away some years ago, leaving her to tend their corner of the family compound. “They say I’m the one who looks like her,” Grace says, and I look at her and try to imagine her sixty or seventy years older.
“This is it, Manuel. You turn here.” Old men and women follow us with their eyes. Young boys playing on the street pause to squint curiously. “It’s the last house on the right.”
The compound holds two rows of houses, huddled over a narrow driveway. Lola Alma’s house is the smallest, hidden at the farthest end behind a wall of sad-looking trees. An old man is sweeping dead leaves from the grass. When we drive up to the house he glances at us with thick glasses and a pained expression on his face. Grace waves from the van and he manages a slow smile.
“I thought you said your lola lived alone?” Manuel asks.
“That’s Manong Carpio, the caretaker.”
“Doesn’t seem like he’s capable of taking care of anything,” Manuel quips.
“Well, they say he’s been looking after the house ever since.’’
We alight quickly, uncoiling ourselves in the midmorning sun. Manong drops walis tingting and dustpan and disappears into the house. He returns silently with Lola Alma. From how I remember her: she looks the same, like any other grandmother, stooped, wrinkled, trembling but always smiling. Grace greets her with genuine enthusiasm and makes a weak explanation for her mother’s absence. I am surprised to find that her grandmother still remembers me. The last time was just Grace and me and we were just passing through on the way to a research site for our History class. We were just friends then, freshmen.
Lola Alma reaches out and I bend down and offer my cheek for her to kiss: a warm, fragrant, bony moment of contact, marked by a sharp sniff, as though she were smelling for drugs or sucking the life out of me.
Lola Alma’s house is everything we expected. It’s old and haphazardly decorated, smelling of dust and the dry air. Manong shows us around as Lola Alma and Grace catch up on old times in the living room. The kitchen opens up into a small farm. On the second floor are the bedrooms, one for the boys and the other for the girls, with a single bathroom in between. At the end of the hall is Lola Alma’s room. At the other end, a wide balcony looks over fields and rooftops.
Manong Carpio retreats downstairs, leaving us to explore rooms that are full of thick, still air. We unload our stuff and open the closets. One contains old beddings and heaps of old clothes. When we open the other we are greeted by a man, frozen stiff, glaring at us with big eyes.
Bambi shrieks in horror. I look a little longer and realize it is the statue of a saint, with the posture and proportions of a department store mannequin, wrapped in clear plastic.
Bambi can’t bear to look at it. She slams the closet door shut and lets out a nervous laugh. “What is that for? Why do they put it in a closet?”
“That’s for tomorrow,” Grace explains as she walks in. She’s changed into a halter top and short shorts. “Each family sponsors a saint. On Good Fridays they take it out for the procession on the river.”
“Gives me the creeps,” Ella whispers.
“You should see Saint Ignatius. They make his statue ride a real horse.”
“Fuck!” Bambi exclaims, then snorts in laughter.
We head downstairs and visit the small backyard farm, where Manong is busy preparing for the birthday celebration. He is sitting on a low stool, bent over a pail heaping with small dead birds. He is pulling feathers of the little rubbery bodies. A small pig is tied to a post, nuzzling the mud. Smoke wafts from the remains of a nearby fire, its red embers glowing with the stray breezes.
Manong Carpio speaks randomly, to me or anyone who’ll listen. Sta. Ana is a miraculous city, having remained largely untouched through the war. The bombs fell harmlessly in the surrounding fields. What the town did attract was money, with the Chinese settling in during peacetime, setting up businesses around the town square, and with Spanish-Filipino families building big resthouses in the quieter corners of town. Even poorer families found room, setting up shops and small restaurants in between.
By the afternoon there is nothing left to do. Lola Alma has disappeared into her room for a nap. Eric puts on Bob Marley. But we’re still restless.
Not far from the house is a river, thickened by mud from the mountains. We can see it from the balcony, a faint, glistening line at the edge of town marking the border between houses and the dark shapes of the forest and the mountains beyond.
As we walk through Sta. Ana the townfolk look at us and immediately know we’re from the city, most likely by our schoolgirl Taglish, our city strut, our sunglasses, our bright colors and cross-trainers.
The part of the river bank we reach is the outer curve of a sharp bend. The water rolls quietly and curls around rocks and roots of trees. A little farther down, the river is spanned by a small wooden bridge that leads us into a thick growth of trees. We follow the trail as far as we can. Manuel uses a bolo to cut through entanglements of vines. We turn our handkerchiefs into bandanas. We cut our faces on the brambles and see nothing but trees and rocks and pools of dirty water. On the second hour Bambi begins to complain of fatigue and exhaustion.
To distract her Manuel and I sing an old song, “Balong Malalim” by the Juan dela Cruz Band. We don’t know all of it so we sing just two parts, the first verse and the chorus. Soon everyone is singing. The rhythm of the song matches Manuel’s hacking cadence at the head of the line.
Eric’s voice cuts through our song, now in its third reprise. “I think I saw a clearing over there. I think if we go this way we’ll get there.”
The song is ended, the trail is renegotiated and Manuel’s bolo picks up the pace. Soon enough, we come to the end of the bush, and reach a small bare area, covered only by tall grass and sudden sunlight, its silence silencing us in turn. Eric rolls a couple of joints and we feel our muscles relax and hear the sounds of the forest return. Grace sits next to me, her long white legs drawn up in the grass. The skin of her face and neck has reddened and her lips are parted with exhaustion.
We spend a couple of hours in the clearing, smoking, talking and laughing. Then we take the path back to the edge of the forest. When we reach the bridge it is almost evening. Our voices are drowned in the sound of crickets.
When we reach the house, Manong Carpio is already cooking dinner. The old woman is watching a soap on TV. The gang takes turns showering in the one bathroom. I go in after Grace, and as I enter I smell her body and feel her heat, closing in on me, sucking me in.
When I come out the table has been set, with fried chicken, steamed fish, monggo, dried fish, sukang tuba and brown rice. There is a bottle of red wine, Coke in a green glass pitcher, and for afterward there is leche flan on a raised dessert plate. There are also pineapples, oranges, mangosteen, fresh bananas in a basket. In a glass bowl there are more bananas, chilled in sweet, heavy brown syrup.
The old woman eats very little and talks a lot. She speaks of the river as though it were still the highway where all commerce flowed and from which all village order radiated. Tomorrow it will be filled with procession boats carrying the saints to the church.
When she speaks of neighbors or cousins or friends she remembers energetic young men and women in the place of the old, the sick and the dead, suspending them in time and place, tracing their origins before they came here before the war, when her small farm was still a garden, and the river and the forest were extensions of her backyard. It’s old people talk—about the old town, the old time, when everybody knew everyone else and everybody was related to everyone else.
After dinner and dessert, our breaths taste sour and sweet, and our fingers are stained from the mangosteen and smelling of dried fish and vinegar. Lola Alma pours coffee and tells us about hearing the first bombs drop, a few days after the retreat of the USAFFE, among them Lola Alma’s first love. “A soldier, of all things!’’ Grace says.
Lola Alma is quick to defend herself. What else was there, anyway, during the war? But this one was different. “He was a doctor—a surgeon. Captain of his detachment. In the army they make you captain if you’re a doctor.’’
Victor Jones was an American mestizo who waved to the nurses as he drove through the plaza in his USAFFE jeep, but always reserved a special, secret smile for her as he rode past the compound.
‘’We had big open-air parties in the compound. He was there in almost every gathering because he was a friend of a friend. Or someone’s cousin, I think.”
Ella grins. “So, ’la, did you get anywhere with this guy?”
“Well, we danced!”
We erupt into laughter.
“He was handsome. He had an American father who I think had moved in at the turn of the century, to start fresh. And maybe a mother with Spanish blood. Doc was tall and he had eyes that were bluer-than-blue, that seemed to look straight at you wherever you stood.’’
Before anything could happen, Dr. Jones disappeared, along with the rest of the USAFFE, just before the Japanese trucks rolled into Sta Ana. Lola Alma thinks he might have gone to the mountains, to fight with the guerillas. They needed doctors more because they saw fighting everyday. He never returned. Soon after that, her sister—Grace’s grandma—got married. To a soldier, too.
After dinner, Manuel and Eric secure some gin, rum and lime juice and we sit on the balcony. Manong Carpio brings a guitar and some leftover fried chicken and earns his place in our circle. We hear more stories from the old man about Japanese times. He tells us of how the Japs flooded the town with tanks, trucks and hundreds of footsoldiers. They gathered all the townfolk in the plaza, made a few announcements in Japanese, English and Tagalog. Rules were set, boundaries were laid, and examples were made of a few unfortunate men.
Manuel lights the last of our joints and passes it around. Manong Carpio takes a drag, coughs and chuckles a little bit, and places his tumbler on the floor and clasps the soles of his feet. He laughs a little more, and thanks Manuel for the treat. The sound of crickets is everywhere around us.
There was no procession during the war. When the troops came to the compound they ordered everyone out to the inner road and went through the houses one by one. They kicked open doors and ransacked closets and cupboards. They slashed paintings, ripped clothes. They took radios and record players. They even broke the cooking and bathing pots. But the statues were buried deep in the earth or under heaps of mulch and pigfeed.
By four in the morning Eric and Manuel are sprawled on the floor. Manong Carpio is nowhere to be seen. The moon is still full and round but the sound of the crickets has stopped. Grace lights a cigarette for us to share. We speak in smoky whispers. She looks up at the darkness, thinking and remembering.
Grace can’t recall when she first met her grandmother. She remembers feeling very close to her, during the summers she spent in Sta. Ana. She tells me how the town was the same then.
She shifts her body and slides a leg over me. She sticks the half-spent cigarette in my mouth and closes her eyes. I look at her as she relaxes and her smile unclenches. I murmur into her ear, invite her to walk with me. We slip down the stairs, unbolt the door and step out of the house in shirts, shorts and slippers. The night is hot, but on the rare breeze, I can smell her skin, her sweat, a clean sharp smell coming off her neck and her hair. In the spaces between the breezes we hear the soft, flowing sound of water.
The town is quiet now, the streets half-lit by lamps that are too far apart. The moon fills in the blanks, along with our spotty daytime memory. As we retrace our steps through the town I hear her slow slim thighs rubbing against each other and the soft slap of her slippers, taking long strides in the dark. I can feel the sweat on the palm of her hand. Our pace gradually picks up, and soon we reach the blind bend. At night it seems more violent, its bank vibrating as it tries to contain the curving rush of water.
Grace stands trembling on the trembling ground, shaken by the darkness and the chaotic landscape. I reach for her, part her hair, kiss her on her feverish nape and whisper words into her skin. She turns to face me and we kiss.
On our way back we pass a group of men sitting in a tight circle over bottles of gin, looking at us with glassy eyes. One of them gives another a half-smile, throws his cigarette to the ground and shouts something at me.
I freeze and my shoulders tense, but Grace pulls me forward. We pick up our pace until we’re running fast and hard, the sounds of our slippers tight and frantic and their growing taunts snapping at our heels. “Old men––they’re harmless!” she shouts, grinning. Her hand grips mine tightly. As we run I catch a flash of her teeth in the moonlight: she is smiling, laughing even, quietly and breathlessly. Soon we lose our slippers and sprint the rest of the distance without them, feeling the pavement hard on the balls of our feet. By the time we reach the compound we are both laughing like maniacs.
We reach the refuge of the front yard, the foyer, the upper floor and the empty boys’ room. On the eve of her birthday we are aching with fear and want. Our bodies slip and slide over fabric and wooden flooring.
The next morning, Lola Alma asks me to walk her to church. Manong Carpio, she explains, is busy preparing for the procession.
Like many old women, she has a clear memory of the past and a spotty image of the present time. As she leads me down their street past the rusty gate of their compound, she tells me to me how everything was laid out differently during the war. The basketball court was once a tiled area with gazebos and trellises lending shade in the hot afternoons. Where the columbarium now stands, there was a little garden with green paths between the gravestones. She makes a litany out of old people, people I have never met and who are long gone: Tiyo Filo, Tiya Bebeng, Tiyo Karo. And Pandoy, Nonoy and Ben who are in Daly City still waiting for their Veteran’s pension, their American citizenship.
“My feet, my joints, my insides. All of them ache now,” she says. “The older I get, the more I feel every part of my body.”
By now we are at the gate of the churchyard. The church bell is ringing and the townfolk are arriving for the mass.
“You’re lucky, you know. Such a handsome boy. With your whole life ahead of you, with everything you want around you.”
I am sweaty and slightly out of breath from the walk and from her weight bearing down upon my arm. Before entering the church she turns to give me that old woman’s kiss, and I’m afraid she might pick up Grace’s scent from my cheek and my mouth.
LOLA ALMA TELLS ME THAT WHEN THE AMERICANS FINALLY CAME, AT the end of everything, they were welcomed like they were angels, like gods. All the big wooden saints that survived the occupation were dug up and brought out, and the Sta. Ana priests and elders decided to hold the procession ahead of time, rounding up all the small boats and rafts the town could salvage.
In the morning, we take places among the thick morning crowds at the river bend. Manong Carpio said this was the best spot to watch from, where the boats move slowest as they negotiate the shallow turn. By the time we get a good view half the procession has passed.
“There’s our guy!’’ Bambi says.
We don’t even know who our saint is. But he is there, standing proud and broad-shouldered in his boat, protected from the sun by Manong Carpio, who stands behind him in a long-sleeved shirt, shiny dark blue pants and leather shoes, holding up an umbrella over his wooden head. Lola Alma is beside him, freshly made up, her hair in a tight bun.
The statue’s skin is freshly polished, his cheekbones and lips pinkish, with the kindest, gentlest doll’s eyes and a trace of a smile.
“He’s so gwapo!’’ Ella exclaims.
On the next day awake early, to loud squealing sounds from the backyard farm. When we get there the pig is already dead, its young, bright red blood spilling at our feet. Mang Carpio greets Grace solemnly.
Throughout the afternoon the house is overrun by forgotten and distant relatives. Grace’s birthday party has turned into a homecoming of sorts. The rest of the gang is exiled to the balcony, where Marley is playing again and Manong Carpio has installed a table that duplicates the feast downstairs, complete with lechon, of course, and dinuguan, and the fried quail, with embotido and fried tilapia, and pancit for long life. There are bottles of beer in a cooler and a pitcher of Coke.
In the late afternoon Lola Alma brings us to the six o’clock mass for thanksgiving, and we come home to a simple supper of rice, dried fish and pork and beans from a can. At dinner’s end Lola Alma thanks us and tells us she is too exhausted to get up early and bid us goodbye, so we make our goodbyes at the table.
In two weeks we are broke again and back at our island, skimming the water with half-naked, knifelike bodies. Today the sea is choppy, unpredictable, its dips and swells random and unplanned. Our pumpboat pilot, by way of apology and explanation, says that tomorrow, when we return, the weather will have turned and we will have a calmer crossing.
At night the island transforms into a cold, windswept, lonely place. Happy voices become dislocated in the blue light and turn absurd and lonely, like things spoken offstage, absorbed by the darkness and the waves. In the flicker of fires, faces become shiny, and bodies become tired and sandy. In the middle of the darkness someone lights a thick joint and we bob and weave with the waves, suddenly surrounded by molecules of sound, big and loud. Soon, the moonlight makes us glow with the light of ethereal beings.
Mosquitoes buzz over our head through the night, keeping us awake. We trade ghost stories. We’re like islands ourselves, and the water erodes all there is around us. •