Three Filipino Women (18 page)

“But not in the farms where your uncle sent us.”

“They are not his farms. All of us, we give justice to our workers.”

“They work very hard,” she went on. “Without rest, and when all is done, there is still very little for them.” Then she challenged me. “I bet you have never been in a slum, you have never been inside a poor man’s house, in Tondo or anywhere.”

She trapped me, all right, and that very afternoon, it was my turn. We drove to Barrio Magsaysay where her group was organizing action teams.

We parked in the bay boulevard because we could not get through the maze of alleys. It was late November, the rains had paused; otherwise, as she explained it, we would have to wear boots because the alleys became rivulets of fetid mud. When we got there, what disturbed me really was not the sorry construction, the pigsty atmosphere—it was the eagerness, the dedication on her face as we entered this misshapen world of people who greeted her with warmth.

She introduced me to Charlie—a frail boy of fifteen who looked much older, and like all youths in the slum, he had dirty skin and bad teeth. He was in faded shorts and his rubber slippers were about to break apart. Wherever we went, he followed. He adored Malu and for a while, I was jealous.

“He is the brightest boy in the Barrio,” she said, enthusiastically. He had organized the youngsters and got them to clean the alleys, keep order. He was out of school; he would have been a high school junior had he enrolled, but his tuition money went to the hospital when his father fell ill. He helped at a stall in Divisoria, got three pesos a day plus some leftover, wilted vegetables.

There were many things that Malu could have done for them but she felt they must do a lot for themselves and I agreed. Still I knew that someday, if it had not already happened, they would possess her and I did not want that. I coveted her.

It was late afternoon when we left the Barrio. We went to the Hilton. I had thought of walking around the Luneta but she was hungry.

We sat together in the coffee shop and I held her hand under the table. Her closeness was intoxicating, an invitation; I was now sure she had some affection for me. I relished that Sunday morning when I visited her, warmed to the memory of her pinching me when I told her father how serious my intentions were. I just loved looking at her, the sinuous line of her jaw, those eyes, expressive of joy and yet seeing sorrow everywhere. I loved listening to her even when she was like some broken record repeating the same phrases about the oppression of the poor which, really, no single person could change for as long as we lived within the iron logic of capitalism.

“I am miserable, Teng-ga,” she said, pressing my hand. “I can’t find peace of mind. Oh, no, not the spiritual kind. It seems as if I’m at ease only when I am trying to help people.”

She moved closer. I desired her then, imagined her naked under me, crushing those lips in a kiss. Looking at her, composed and serene, I wondered how she would look in surrender, her self-assurance completely sundered.

I did something stupid that day which, as it turned out, was a revelation not only about myself but about her. We had finished our hamburgers. The late afternoon was untarnished and driving along the boulevard, the smell of the sea wafting into the car, she sat close to me, silent, as if her mind were far away. Soon, it would be dark. As we turned left through Cuneta to get to Makati, the motels lined up on both sides on the narrow road.

“Let’s go into one,” I said, and before she could object, I had turned left to an entrance. She tugged at my sleeve briefly as if to stop me, but it was too late. I swung the car to an open garage which one of the boys who had risen from a bench pointed to.

I had expected her to object, perhaps just a little. She looked at me, shaking her head, then she rolled up the window and together, we went up the stairs. It was obviously her first time in a motel and now, she was all curiosity as she studied the room, the huge mirrors that surrounded the wide bed, the knobs that controlled the red lights and the piped-in music. When the buzzer rang and the boy came, she went out to the anteroom and watched me sign the smudged register with a fictitious name.

After the boy had gone, she sat on the wide bed, looked disapprovingly at me, and asked, “Are you going to rape me?”

I shook my head. “I am not going to do anything you don’t want.”

“I am glad you said that,” she said, “because I’m not ready for this. Oh, I know that by the time you are a junior in the university, you are no longer supposed to be a virgin. But I still am—whatever you may think of my manners.”

“And you’re proud of holding on to it?”

“Maybe, but that is not the reason. I would like to give it to someone I really care for.”

I do not know of her intention but what she said dampened my ardor.

“I suppose I am not the first girl you brought to a motel?”

“No,” I said with some honesty.

“I am getting to like you,” she said with a slight laugh. “And who knows …” she stood up, came to me, and kissed my cheek. I flung my arms around her, kissed the lobes of her ears, felt her body warm and close, her silky thighs. But she was like a block of wood. I let her go.

“You’re a tease,” I said. “You lead me on and let me think …”

“I am not a tease,” her voice rose. “Can’t you see that I like you, but not enough to engage in simple fornication? That is what you want—and if you love me, then you know that love is more than that.”

“Shit,” I said, turning. “Even the church dissolves a marriage if it is not consummated. Spiritual love—that is foolish, for nuns. And even nuns have physical needs. Don’t you realize that I want to marry you?”

“Thank you for the nice thought.” Her tone changed immediately. She shucked off her shoes, then lay down. “Come,” she said. “Let’s not waste this bed and all these mirrors. Let us just talk.”

I could not help but laugh. Desire had really cooled. I lay beside her and gazed at the mirror in the ceiling, at the two of us, fully clothed.

“No one would believe this,” I said. Then I asked her what it was that she really wanted to do.

“To be alive,” she said quietly. “To see that time is not wasted. I don’t want to grow old without having lived usefully.”

“Loving is living,” I said. “So I love you and in loving you I
am
alive.” I lay still, her hand warm and soft in mine, the blisters from Albay already gone. “But suppose I died tomorrow; what is it that you will remember of me?”

She turned on her side and pressed her hand quickly to my mouth. “Don’t talk like this. As if you always look at the dark side of things.”

“There can be a car accident tomorrow. Or a building may collapse on me. These we cannot foresee. Living is always risking.”

She lay back. Even when we did not speak, I could feel myself flow out to her in calm, blue waves. We reminisced about ourselves, her childhood, those days when she had been so self-conscious with her father and how, by that experience, she had learned to use her eyes better and see beneath the patina, the superficiality of appearances and of speech. It was deeds that mattered.

I reiterated; I would soon be through with school and would then take on more duties in our business. It was time to get married.

And that was when she said we could just live together and find out if we were compatible so that, afterwards, if we weren’t, or if we outgrew each other, we could always part and still be friends.

I was shocked. She was a modern, liberated woman, but I did not know she thought so lightly of the institution of marriage.

“You are fooling, Plat.”

“No,” she said amiably. “Marriage is a lifetime commitment and that is what I want to make when I am sure.”

The telephone jangled. The clerk said our “short time” was up. Four hours! Time had gone so fast, it was almost midnight. I wanted to stay longer since there were many things still unsaid, many questions unasked.

We put on our shoes. She brushed her hair and straightened her blouse. I went behind her and encircled her waist. Turning to me, she kissed me again lightly, this time on the lips.

“So, at least,” she whispered, “you will not say that nothing happened.”

We drove to Dasmariñas hardly talking. Her mother opened the door saying, “Hurry, your father needs you.”

I was uneasy, wondering what scolding she would get. Her mother asked me to stay for a cup of coffee. She was a handsome woman in her fifties, without the matronly bulge of most women her age. In her blue housedress, there was a patrician quality about her, and her eyes, like Malu’s, were alive. Look at a girl’s mother, I remember reading, and this is how the daughter will look.

I asked permission to leave, but Malu returned to the living room and told me to wait, her father wanted to talk with me.

“I told him we went to a motel,” she said, laughing.

Her mother must have seen me blush. She smiled at my discomfiture and said Malu was always making those risque jokes. But she is a good girl, she assured me.

“I know that, Ma’am” I said.

She left for the kitchen and returned with the coffee and a piece of chocolate cake.

“She is giving her father a head massage,” she explained. “He is not feeling well.”

“I did not know she was also a masseuse.”

“Not really,” she explained. “She just lays her hand on her father’s brow then prays.”

I wanted to know more, but by then Malu came out and said I should talk with her father. I was nervous—did she
really
tell him we went to a motel? And would he tell me now never again to come to this house?

She led me across the wide expanse of carpet and upholstered furniture and all that “burgis crockery” as she described it, to the library. By an old writing desk with several tape recorders, Malu’s
father sat on an overstuffed leather easy chair. His dark glasses were not on and when he looked at me, his eyes had that blank, unseeing stare. He must have felt that I was standing for he said, “Please sit down,” pointing to the rattan chair before him.

He asked if I was served something and when he was assured that I was, he sighed, “I had this headache again and Malu is the only one who can relieve me of it.”

“She is a wonderful girl, sir.”

He nodded. “She has special gifts. She is the brightest of my children. I know her values are right. She tells me about those teach-ins, those demonstrations, the idealism of it all. I worry about her, her safety, her well-being. If she were only a boy—do you understand what I am trying to say?”

“Yes, sir.”

“Do you believe in what she is doing?”

“Not all the way, sir,” I said. “Neither demonstrations nor guns will do away with the injustice around us. Education will—I told her that.”

He slapped his thigh as if he agreed, drew his chest in and breathed deeply. He was past sixty, but there was still stamina in him. “But how can I dissuade her? I believe in her goals, too, and that is why I am worried. But I’m glad that you are rooted in solid ground and you can be some sort of anchor to … reason and sanity. Now, let me tell you something you don’t know. She is also a
spiritista.
Do you know what that is?”

“Yes, sir. She let me read a paper she wrote which she did not want published.”

He shook his head, sadly. “Since 1949—nothing but darkness. Many specialists, even in Europe, have seen me. Do you understand? I was prepared for a life of darkness. I have even forgiven the Japanese for it. I have adjusted to it, although I miss many things.
The shape of trees, of houses, the colors … and Malu—my dear child! I have never seen her. If only I could! Sometimes, I touch her face, imagining how she looks. She always tells me she is ugly.”

“No, sir,” I said quickly. “She is the prettiest girl I know. Her eyes, her cheeks …” I was gushing and pitying him at the same time. And I was glad that I could see her and hoped to God that I would know her far better, know the grace that suffused her personality.

“You love her?”

“Very much, sir.”

“We all love her,” he said. “But I have a feeling that we will lose her.”

“Oh, no!”

The sightless eyes locked with mine. “You may not know it, but when she became a
spiritista
two years ago … Oh—I never found out how she got into it and she has not told me yet. During this last year that she began ministering to me, touching my eyes, praying for me … I could not believe it at first. After all those years of total darkness. But now, I can tell when it is daylight. The reds come flooding into my eyes. Do you know what this means? For a man who knew nothing but night for more than twenty years? I have hope again. And now, when I sit in front of a window, when people pass in front of me, I see shadows. Shadows!”

Malu came to the acacia after her last class; she wore the same old jeans and loose blouse—they were her uniform. She shared with me the chocolate cake her mother had baked and when we were finished, I asked about the
spiritistas
in Navotas.

“And why are you so interested in them all of a sudden?”

“I want to find out what is in them that attracts you. What are you really looking for? What do you want?”

“Hey!” She playfully shoved a fist into my stomach. “One at a time. I am no computer. What do you want me to be?”

“My wife,” I said immediately. “I want you to raise my children, to keep house, help me be what I want to be …”

“How conventional,” she sighed. “The woman’s place is in the home.”

“It is a major responsibility, Plat. No small matter.”

“I don’t deny that,” she said. “But it is like condemning a woman to prison.”

“A home a prison? Do you want to be free like a bird? But even birds have nests.”

“I know, but you asked what I want. I want peace.”

“It is so abstract, Plat. It is like saying I want truth, beauty …”

“I want those, too, and they are not abstract.”

“Tell me, are you uncomfortable in Dasmariñas Village?”

She did not speak. I had touched the root of it all. She turned to me and said evenly, “My father did not cheat anyone. He worked very hard all his life. My mother, too. I don’t have to explain our kind of life.”