Plot Diagram Example of "The Wedding Dance"

Exposition
The setting is a mountain village of the Philippines where Awiyao has been remarried.

Conflict
Awiyao has left his wife Lumnay, whom he loved very much. However, she couldn’t give
him a child. He has now married Madulimay in hopes to have a son, who will continue his
legacy. This is something Awiyao expresses as important in his culture. However, Lumnay
is upset because she loves Awiyao and doesn’t want this separation.

Rising Action
Outside, the villagers are dancing in celebration of the wedding. Awiyao leaves to try and
comfort Lumnay. He offers her many items of the life that they built together. Lumnay
refuses them and clings to Awiyao, wishing he would stay.

Climax
Awiyao finally leaves to re-join the wedding and Lumnay runs into the hills.

Falling Action
Lumnay sits on the side of the mountain overlooking the blazing fire and dancing women,
thinking about how her life has changed. She has a sense of desperation, isolation, and
worthlessness.

Resolution
The reader is left not knowing what will become of Lumnay.
 Wedding Dance
By Amador Daguio

Awiyao reached for the upper horizontal log which served as the edge of the
headhigh threshold. Clinging to the log, he lifted himself with one bound that
carried him across to the narrow door. He slid back the cover, stepped inside,
then pushed the cover back in place. After some moments during which he
seemed to wait, he talked to the listening darkness.

"I'm sorry this had to be done. I am really sorry. But neither of us can help it."

The sound of the gangsas beat through the walls of the dark house like
muffled roars of falling waters. The woman who had moved with a start
when the sliding door opened had been hearing the gangsas for she did not
know how long. There was a sudden rush of fire in her. She gave no sign that
she heard Awiyao, but continued to sit unmoving in the darkness.

But Awiyao knew that she heard him and his heart pitied her. He crawled on
all fours to the middle of the room; he knew exactly where the stove was.
With bare fingers he stirred the covered smoldering embers, and blew into the
stove. When the coals began to glow, Awiyao put pieces of pine on them, then
full round logs as his arms. The room brightened.

"Why don't you go out," he said, "and join the dancing women?" He felt a
pang inside him, because what he said was really not the right thing to say
and because the woman did not stir. "You should join the dancers," he said,
"as if--as if nothing had happened." He looked at the woman huddled in a
corner of the room, leaning against the wall. The stove fire played with
strange moving shadows and lights
upon her face. She was partly sullen, but her sullenness was not because of
anger or hate.

"Go out--go out and dance. If you really don't hate me for this separation, go
out and dance. One of the men will see you dance well; he will like your
dancing, he will marry you. Who knows but that, with him, you will be
luckier than you were with me."
"I don't want any man," she said sharply. "I don't want any other man."

He felt relieved that at least she talked: "You know very well that I won't want
any other woman either. You know that, don't you? Lumnay, you know it,
don't you?"

She did not answer him.

"You know it Lumnay, don't you?" he repeated.

"Yes, I know," she said weakly.

"It is not my fault," he said, feeling relieved. "You cannot blame me; I have
been a good husband to you."

"Neither can you blame me," she said. She seemed about to cry.

"No, you have been very good to me. You have been a good wife. I have
nothing to say against you." He set some of the burning wood in place. "It's
only that a man must have a child. Seven harvests is just too long to wait. Yes,
we have waited too long. We should have another chance before it is too late
for both of us."

This time the woman stirred, stretched her right leg out and bent her left leg
in. She wound the blanket more snugly around herself.

"You know that I have done my best," she said. "I have prayed to Kabunyan
much. I have sacrificed many chickens in my prayers."

"Yes, I know."

"You remember how angry you were once when you came home from your
work in the terrace because I butchered one of our pigs without your
permission? I did it to appease Kabunyan, because, like you, I wanted to have
a child. But what could I do?"

"Kabunyan does not see fit for us to have a child," he said. He stirred the fire.
The spark rose through the crackles of the flames. The smoke and soot went
up the ceiling.

Lumnay looked down and unconsciously started to pull at the rattan that kept
the split bamboo flooring in place. She tugged at the rattan flooring. Each time
she did this the split bamboo went up and came down with a slight rattle. The
gong of the dancers clamorously called in her care through the walls.

Awiyao went to the corner where Lumnay sat, paused before her, looked at
her bronzed and sturdy face, then turned to where the jars of water stood
piled one over the other. Awiyao took a coconut cup and dipped it in the top
jar and drank. Lumnay had filled the jars from the mountain creek early that
evening.

"I came home," he said. "Because I did not find you among the dancers. Of
course, I am not forcing you to come, if you don't want to join my wedding
ceremony. I came to tell you that Madulimay, although I am marrying her,
can never become as good as you are. She is not as strong in planting beans,
not as fast in cleaning water jars, not as good keeping a house clean. You are
one of the best wives in the
whole village."

"That has not done me any good, has it?" She said. She looked at him lovingly.
She almost seemed to smile.

He put the coconut cup aside on the floor and came closer to her. He held her
face between his hands and looked longingly at her beauty. But her eyes
looked away. Never again would he hold her face. The next day she would
not be his any more. She would go back to her parents. He let go of her face,
and she bent to the floor again and looked at her fingers as they tugged softly
at the split bamboo floor.

"This house is yours," he said. "I built it for you. Make it your own, live in it as
long as you wish. I will build another house for Madulimay."

"I have no need for a house," she said slowly. "I'll go to my own house. My
parents are old. They will need help in the planting of the beans, in the
pounding of the rice."
"I will give you the field that I dug out of the mountains during the first year
of our marriage," he said. "You know I did it for you. You helped me to make
it for the two of us."

"I have no use for any field," she said.

He looked at her, then turned away, and became silent. They were silent for a
time.

"Go back to the dance," she said finally. "It is not right for you to be here. They
will wonder where you are, and Madulimay will not feel good. Go back to the
dance."

"I would feel better if you could come, and dance---for the last time. The
gangsas are playing."

"You know that I cannot."

"Lumnay," he said tenderly. "Lumnay, if I did this it is because of my need for

a child. You know that life is not worth living without a child. The man have
mocked me behind my back. You know that."

"I know it," he said. "I will pray that Kabunyan will bless you and
Madulimay."

She bit her lips now, then shook her head wildly, and sobbed.

She thought of the seven harvests that had passed, the high hopes they had in
the beginning of their new life, the day he took her away from her parents
across the roaring river, on the other side of the mountain, the trip up the trail
which they had to climb, the steep canyon which they had to cross. The
waters boiled in her mind in forms of white and jade and roaring silver; the
waters tolled and growled,
resounded in thunderous echoes through the walls of the stiff cliffs; they were
far away now from somewhere on the tops of the other ranges, and they had
looked carefully at the buttresses of rocks they had to step on---a slip would
have meant death.
They both drank of the water then rested on the other bank before they made
the final climb to the other side of the mountain.

She looked at his face with the fire playing upon his features---hard and
strong, and kind. He had a sense of lightness in his way of saying things
which often made her and the village people laugh. How proud she had been
of his humor. The muscles where taut and firm, bronze and compact in their
hold upon his skull---how frank his bright eyes were. She looked at his body
the carved out of the mountains
five fields for her; his wide and supple torso heaved as if a slab of shining
lumber were heaving; his arms and legs flowed down in fluent muscles--he
was strong and for that she had lost him.

She flung herself upon his knees and clung to them. "Awiyao, Awiyao, my
husband," she cried. "I did everything to have a child," she said passionately
in a hoarse whisper. "Look at me," she cried. "Look at my body. Then it was
full of promise. It could dance; it could work fast in the fields; it could climb
the mountains fast. Even now it is firm, full. But, Awiyao, I am useless. I must
die."

"It will not be right to die," he said, gathering her in his arms. Her whole
warm naked naked breast quivered against his own; she clung now to his
neck, and her hand lay upon his right shoulder; her hair flowed down in
cascades of gleaming darkness.

"I don't care about the fields," she said. "I don't care about the house. I don't
care for anything but you. I'll have no other man."

"Then you'll always be fruitless."

"I'll go back to my father, I'll die."

"Then you hate me," he said. "If you die it means you hate me. You do not
want me to have a child. You do not want my name to live on in our tribe."

She was silent.

"If I do not try a second time," he explained, "it means I'll die. Nobody will get
the fields I have carved out of the mountains; nobody will come after me."

"If you fail--if you fail this second time--" she said thoughtfully. The voice was
a shudder. "No--no, I don't want you to fail."

"If I fail," he said, "I'll come back to you. Then both of us will die together.
Both of us will vanish from the life of our tribe."

The gongs thundered through the walls of their house, sonorous and faraway.

"I'll keep my beads," she said. "Awiyao, let me keep my beads," she half-
whispered.

"You will keep the beads. They come from far-off times. My grandmother said
they come from up North, from the slant-eyed people across the sea. You keep
them, Lumnay. They are worth twenty fields."

"I'll keep them because they stand for the love you have for me," she said. "I
love you. I love you and have nothing to give."

She took herself away from him, for a voice was calling out to him from
outside. "Awiyao! Awiyao! O Awiyao! They are looking for you at the dance!"

"I am not in hurry."

"The elders will scold you. You had better go."

"Not until you tell me that it is all right with you."

"It is all right with me."

He clasped her hands. "I do this for the sake of the tribe," he said.

"I know," she said.

He went to the door.

"Awiyao!"

He stopped as if suddenly hit by a spear. In pain he turned to her. Her face

was in agony. It pained him to leave. She had been wonderful to him. What
was it that made a man wish for a child? What was it in life, in the work in the
field, in the planting and harvest, in the silence of the night, in the
communing with husband and wife, in the whole life of the tribe itself that
made man wish for the laughter and speech of a child? Suppose he changed
his mind? Why did the unwritten law demand, anyway, that a man, to be a
man, must have a child to come after him? And if he was fruitless--but he
loved Lumnay. It was like taking away of his life to leave her like this.

"Awiyao," she said, and her eyes seemed to smile in the light. "The beads!" He
turned back and walked to the farthest corner of their room, to the trunk
where they kept their worldly possession---his battle-ax and his spear points,
her betel nut box and her beads. He dug out from the darkness the beads
which had been given to him by his grandmother to give to Lumnay on the
beads on, and tied them in place. The white and jade and deep orange
obsidians shone in the firelight. She suddenly clung to him, clung to his neck
as if she would never let him go.

"Awiyao! Awiyao, it is hard!" She gasped, and she closed her eyes and huried
her face in his neck.

The call for him from the outside repeated; her grip loosened, and he buried
out into the night.

Lumnay sat for some time in the darkness. Then she went to the door and
opened it. The moonlight struck her face; the moonlight spilled itself on the
whole village.

She could hear the throbbing of the gangsas coming to her through the
caverns of the other houses. She knew that all the houses were empty that the
whole tribe was at the dance. Only she was absent. And yet was she not the
best dancer of the village? Did she not have the most lightness and grace?
Could she not, alone among all women, dance like a bird tripping for grains
on the ground, beautifully
timed to the beat of the gangsas? Did not the men praise her supple body, and
the women envy the way she stretched her hands like the wings of the
mountain eagle now and then as she danced? How long ago did she dance at
her own wedding? Tonight, all the women who counted, who once danced in
her honor, were dancing now in honor of another whose only claim was that
perhaps she could give her
husband a child.

"It is not right. It is not right!" she cried. "How does she know? How can
anybody know? It is not right," she said.

Suddenly she found courage. She would go to the dance. She would go to the
chief of the village, to the elders, to tell them it was not right. Awiyao was
hers; nobody could take him away from her. Let her be the first woman to
complain, to denounce the unwritten rule that a man may take another
woman. She would tell Awiyao to come back to her. He surely would relent.
Was not their love as strong as the
river?

She made for the other side of the village where the dancing was. There was a
flaming glow over the whole place; a great bonfire was burning. The gangsas
clamored more loudly now, and it seemed they were calling to her. She was
near at last. She could see the dancers clearly now. The man leaped lightly
with their gangsas as they circled the dancing women decked in feast
garments and beads, tripping on the ground like graceful birds, following
their men. Her heart warmed to the flaming call of the dance; strange heat in
her blood welled up, and she started to run. But the gleaming brightness of
the bonfire commanded her to stop. Did anybody see her approach?
She stopped. What if somebody had seen her coming? The flames of the
bonfire leaped in countless sparks which spread and rose like yellow points
and died out in the night. The blaze reached out to her like a spreading
radiance. She did not have the courage to break into the wedding feast.

Lumnay walked away from the dancing ground, away from the village. She
thought of the new clearing of beans which Awiyao and she had started to
make only four moons before. She followed the trail above the village.

When she came to the mountain stream she crossed it carefully. Nobody held
her hand, and the stream water was very cold. The trail went up again, and
she was in the moonlight shadows among the trees and shrubs. Slowly she
climbed the mountain.

When Lumnay reached the clearing, she cold see from where she stood the
blazing bonfire at the edge of the village, where the wedding was. She could
hear the far-off clamor of the gongs, still rich in their sonorousness, echoing
from mountain to mountain. The sound did not mock her; they seemed to call
far to her, to speak to her in the language of unspeaking love. She felt the pull
of their gratitude for her
sacrifice. Her heartbeat began to sound to her like many gangsas.

Lumnay though of Awiyao as the Awiyao she had known long ago-- a strong,
muscular boy carrying his heavy loads of fuel logs down the mountains to his
home. She had met him one day as she was on her way to fill her clay jars
with water. He had stopped at the spring to drink and rest; and she had made
him drink the cool mountain water from her coconut shell. After that it did
not take him long to decide to throw his spear on the stairs of her father's
house in token on his desire to marry her.

The mountain clearing was cold in the freezing moonlight. The wind began to
stir the leaves of the bean plants. Lumnay looked for a big rock on which to sit
down. The bean plants now surrounded her, and she was lost among them.

A few more weeks, a few more months, a few more harvests---what did it
matter? She would be holding the bean flowers, soft in the texture, silken
almost, but moist where the dew got into them, silver to look at, silver on the
light blue, blooming whiteness, when the morning comes. The stretching of
the bean pods full length from the hearts of the wilting petals would go on.

Lumnay's fingers moved a long, long time among the growing bean pods.

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 adoniemar story collection
Wednesday, July 7, 2010
Scent of Apples Bienvenido N. Santos

Scent of Apples
Bienvenido N. Santos

When I arrived in Kalamazoo it was October and the war was still
on. Gold and silver stars hung on pennants above silent windows of
white and brick-red cottages. In a backyard an old man burned
leaves and twigs while a gray-haired woman sat on the porch, her
red hands quiet on her lap, watching the smoke rising above the
elms, both of them thinking the same thought perhaps, about a tall,
grinning boy with his blue eyes and flying hair, who went out to
war: where could he be now this month when leaves were turning
into gold and the fragrance of gathered apples was in the wind?
It was a cold night when I left my room at the hotel for a usual
speaking engagement. I walked but a little way. A heavy wind
coming up from Lake Michigan was icy on the face. If felt like winter
straying early in the northern woodlands. Under the lampposts the
leaves shone like bronze. And they rolled on the pavements like the
ghost feet of a thousand autumns long dead, long before the boys
left for faraway lands without great icy winds and promise of winter
early in the air, lands without apple trees, the singing and the gold!
It was the same night I met Celestino Fabia, "just a Filipino farmer"
as he called himself, who had a farm about thirty miles east of
Kalamazoo.
"You came all that way on a night like this just to hear me talk?"
"I've seen no Filipino for so many years now," he answered quickly.
"So when I saw your name in the papers where it says you come
from the Islands and that you're going to talk, I come right away."
Earlier that night I had addressed a college crowd, mostly women.
It appeared they wanted me to talk about my country, they wanted
me to tell them things about it because my country had become a
lost country. Everywhere in the land the enemy stalked. Over it a
great silence hung, and their boys were there, unheard from, or
they were on their way to some little known island on the Pacific,
young boys all, hardly men, thinking of harvest moons and the
smell of forest fire.
It was not hard talking about our own people. I knew them well and
I loved them. And they seemed so far away during those terrible
years that I must have spoken of them with a little fervor, a little
nostalgia.
In the open forum that followed, the audience wanted to know
whether there was much difference between our women and the
American women. I tried to answer the question as best I could,
saying, among other things, that I did not know that much about
American women, except that they looked friendly, but differences
or similarities in inner qualities such as naturally belonged to the
heart or to the mind, I could only speak about with vagueness.
While I was trying to explain away the fact that it was not easy to
make comparisons, a man rose from the rear of the hall, wanting to
say something. In the distance, he looked slight and old and very
brown. Even before he spoke, I knew that he was, like me, a
Filipino.
"I'm a Filipino," he began, loud and clear, in a voice that seemed
used to wide open spaces, "I'm just a Filipino farmer out in the
country." He waved his hand toward the door. "I left the Philippines
more than twenty years ago and have never been back. Never will
perhaps. I want to find out, sir, are our Filipino women the same
like they were twenty years ago?"
As he sat down, the hall filled with voices, hushed and intrigued. I
weighed my answer carefully. I did not want to tell a lie yet I did
not want to say anything that would seem platitudinous, insincere.
But more important than these considerations, it seemed to me that
moment as I looked towards my countryman, I must give him an
answer that would not make him so unhappy. Surely, all these
years, he must have held on to certain ideals, certain beliefs, even
illusions peculiar to the exile.
"First," I said as the voices gradually died down and every eye
seemed upon me, "First, tell me what our women were like twenty
years ago."
The man stood to answer. "Yes," he said, "you're too young . . .
Twenty years ago our women were nice, they were modest, they
wore their hair long, they dressed proper and went for no monkey
business. They were natural, they went to church regular, and they
were faithful." He had spoken slowly, and now in what seemed like
an afterthought, added, "It's the men who ain't."
Now I knew what I was going to say.
"Well," I began, "it will interest you to know that our women have
changed--but definitely! The change, however, has been on the
outside only. Inside, here," pointing to the heart, "they are the
same as they were twenty years ago. God-fearing, faithful, modest,
and nice."
The man was visibly moved. "I'm very happy, sir," he said, in the
manner of one who, having stakes on the land, had found no cause
to regret one's sentimental investment.
After this, everything that was said and done in that hall that night
seemed like an anti-climax, and later, as we walked outside, he
gave me his name and told me of his farm thirty miles east of the
city.
We had stopped at the main entrance to the hotel lobby. We had
not talked very much on the way. As a matter of fact, we were
never alone. Kindly American friends talked to us, asked us
questions, said goodnight. So now I asked him whether he cared to
step into the lobby with me and talk.
"No, thank you," he said, "you are tired. And I don't want to stay
out too late."
"Yes, you live very far."
"I got a car," he said, "besides . . . "
Now he smiled, he truly smiled. All night I had been watching his
face and I wondered when he was going to smile.
"Will you do me a favor, please," he continued smiling almost
sweetly. "I want you to have dinner with my family out in the
country. I'd call for you tomorrow afternoon, then drive you back.
Will that be alright?"
"Of course," I said. "I'd love to meet your family." I was leaving
Kalamazoo for Muncie, Indiana, in two days. There was plenty of
time.
"You will make my wife very happy," he said.
"You flatter me."
"Honest. She'll be very happy. Ruth is a country girl and hasn't met
many Filipinos. I mean Filipinos younger than I, cleaner looking.
We're just poor farmer folk, you know, and we don't get to town
very often. Roger, that's my boy, he goes to school in town. A bus
takes him early in the morning and he's back in the afternoon. He's
nice boy."
"I bet he is," I agreed. "I've seen the children of some of the boys
by their American wives and the boys are tall, taller than their
father, and very good looking."
"Roger, he'd be tall. You'll like him."
Then he said goodbye and I waved to him as he disappeared in the
darkness.
The next day he came, at about three in the afternoon. There was a
mild, ineffectual sun shining, and it was not too cold. He was
wearing an old brown tweed jacket and worsted trousers to match.
His shoes were polished, and although the green of his tie seemed
faded, a colored shirt hardly accentuated it. He looked younger than
he appeared the night before now that he was clean shaven and
seemed ready to go to a party. He was grinning as we met.
"Oh, Ruth can't believe it," he kept repeating as he led me to his
car--a nondescript thing in faded black that had known better days
and many hands. "I says to her, I'm bringing you a first class
Filipino, and she says, aw, go away, quit kidding, there's no such
thing as first class Filipino. But Roger, that's my boy, he believed
me immediately. What's he like, daddy, he asks. Oh, you will see, I
says, he's first class. Like you daddy? No, no, I laugh at him, your
daddy ain't first class. Aw, but you are, daddy, he says. So you can
see what a nice boy he is, so innocent. Then Ruth starts griping
about the house, but the house is a mess, she says. True it's a
mess, it's always a mess, but you don't mind, do you? We're poor
folks, you know.
The trip seemed interminable. We passed through narrow lanes and
disappeared into thickets, and came out on barren land overgrown
with weeds in places. All around were dead leaves and dry earth. In
the distance were apple trees.
"Aren't those apple trees?" I asked wanting to be sure.
"Yes, those are apple trees," he replied. "Do you like apples? I got
lots of 'em. I got an apple orchard, I'll show you."
All the beauty of the afternoon seemed in the distance, on the hills,
in the dull soft sky.
"Those trees are beautiful on the hills," I said.
"Autumn's a lovely season. The trees are getting ready to die, and
they show their colors, proud-like."
"No such thing in our own country," I said.
That remark seemed unkind, I realized later. It touched him off on a
long deserted tangent, but ever there perhaps. How many times did
lonely mind take unpleasant detours away from the familiar winding
lanes towards home for fear of this, the remembered hurt, the long
lost youth, the grim shadows of the years; how many times indeed,
only the exile knows.
It was a rugged road we were traveling and the car made so much
noise that I could not hear everything he said, but I understood
him. He was telling his story for the first time in many years. He
was remembering his own youth. He was thinking of home. In these
odd moments there seemed no cause for fear no cause at all, no
pain. That would come later. In the night perhaps. Or lonely on the
farm under the apple trees.
In this old Visayan town, the streets are narrow and dirty and
strewn with coral shells. You have been there? You could not have
missed our house, it was the biggest in town, one of the oldest,
ours was a big family. The house stood right on the edge of the
street. A door opened heavily and you enter a dark hall leading to
the stairs. There is the smell of chickens roosting on the low-topped
walls, there is the familiar sound they make and you grope your
way up a massive staircase, the bannisters smooth upon the
trembling hand. Such nights, they are no better than the days,
windows are closed against the sun; they close heavily.
Mother sits in her corner looking very white and sick. This was her
world, her domain. In all these years, I cannot remember the sound
of her voice. Father was different. He moved about. He shouted. He
ranted. He lived in the past and talked of honor as though it were
the only thing.
I was born in that house. I grew up there into a pampered brat. I
was mean. One day I broke their hearts. I saw mother cry
wordlessly as father heaped his curses upon me and drove me out
of the house, the gate closing heavily after me. And my brothers
and sisters took up my father's hate for me and multiplied it
numberless times in their own broken hearts. I was no good.
But sometimes, you know, I miss that house, the roosting chickens
on the low-topped walls. I miss my brothers and sisters, Mother
sitting in her chair, looking like a pale ghost in a corner of the room.
I would remember the great live posts, massive tree trunks from
the forests. Leafy plants grew on the sides, buds pointing
downwards, wilted and died before they could become flowers. As
they fell on the floor, father bent to pick them and throw them out
into the coral streets. His hands were strong. I have kissed these
hands . . . many times, many times.
Finally we rounded a deep curve and suddenly came upon a shanty,
all but ready to crumble in a heap on the ground, its plastered walls
were rotting away, the floor was hardly a foot from the ground. I
thought of the cottages of the poor colored folk in the south, the
hovels of the poor everywhere in the land. This one stood all by
itself as though by common consent all the folk that used to live
here had decided to say away, despising it, ashamed of it. Even the
lovely season could not color it with beauty.
A dog barked loudly as we approached. A fat blonde woman stood
at the door with a little boy by her side. Roger seemed newly
scrubbed. He hardly took his eyes off me. Ruth had a clean apron
around her shapeless waist. Now as she shook my hands in sincere
delight I noticed shamefacedly (that I should notice) how rough her
hands were, how coarse and red with labor, how ugly! She was no
longer young and her smile was pathetic.
As we stepped inside and the door closed behind us, immediately I
was aware of the familiar scent of apples. The room was bare
except for a few ancient pieces of second-hand furniture. In the
middle of the room stood a stove to keep the family warm in winter.
The walls were bare. Over the dining table hung a lamp yet
unlighted.
Ruth got busy with the drinks. She kept coming in and out of a rear
room that must have been the kitchen and soon the table was
heavy with food, fried chicken legs and rice, and green peas and
corn on the ear. Even as we ate, Ruth kept standing, and going to
the kitchen for more food. Roger ate like a little gentleman.
"Isn't he nice looking?" his father asked.
"You are a handsome boy, Roger," I said.
The boy smiled at me. You look like Daddy," he said.
Afterwards I noticed an old picture leaning on the top of a dresser
and stood to pick it up. It was yellow and soiled with many
fingerings. The faded figure of a woman in Philippine dress could yet
be distinguished although the face had become a blur.
"Your . . . " I began.
"I don't know who she is," Fabia hastened to say. "I picked that
picture many years ago in a room on La Salle street in Chicago. I
have often wondered who she is."
"The face wasn't a blur in the beginning?"
"Oh, no. It was a young face and good."
Ruth came with a plate full of apples.
"Ah," I cried, picking out a ripe one. "I've been thinking where all
the scent of apples came from. The room is full of it."
"I'll show you," said Fabia.
He showed me a backroom, not very big. It was half-full of apples.
"Every day," he explained, "I take some of them to town to sell to
the groceries. Prices have been low. I've been losing on the trips."
"These apples will spoil," I said.
"We'll feed them to the pigs."
Then he showed me around the farm. It was twilight now and the
apple trees stood bare against a glowing western sky. In apple
blossom time it must be lovely here. But what about wintertime?
One day, according to Fabia, a few years ago, before Roger was
born, he had an attack of acute appendicitis. It was deep winter.
The snow lay heavy everywhere. Ruth was pregnant and none too
well herself. At first she did not know what to do. She bundled him
in warm clothing and put him on a cot near the stove. She shoveled
the snow from their front door and practically carried the suffering
man on her shoulders, dragging him through the newly made path
towards the road where they waited for the U.S. Mail car to pass.
Meanwhile snowflakes poured all over them and she kept rubbing
the man's arms and legs as she herself nearly froze to death.
"Go back to the house, Ruth!" her husband cried, "you'll freeze to
death."
But she clung to him wordlessly. Even as she massaged his arms
and legs, her tears rolled down her cheeks. "I won't leave you," she
repeated.
Finally the U.S. Mail car arrived. The mailman, who knew them well,
helped them board the car, and, without stopping on his usual
route, took the sick man and his wife direct to the nearest hospital.
Ruth stayed in the hospital with Fabia. She slept in a corridor
outside the patients' ward and in the day time helped in scrubbing
the floor and washing the dishes and cleaning the men's things.
They didn't have enough money and Ruth was willing to work like a
slave.
"Ruth's a nice girl," said Fabia, "like our own Filipino women."
Before nightfall, he took me back to the hotel. Ruth and Roger stood
at the door holding hands and smiling at me. From inside the room
of the shanty, a low light flickered. I had a last glimpse of the apple
trees in the orchard under the darkened sky as Fabia backed up the
car. And soon we were on our way back to town. The dog had
started barking. We could hear it for some time, until finally, we
could not hear it anymore, and all was darkness around us, except
where the headlamps revealed a stretch of road leading somewhere.
Fabia did not talk this time. I didn't seem to have anything to say
myself. But when finally we came to the hotel and I got down, Fabia
said, "Well, I guess I won't be seeing you again."
It was dimly lighted in front of the hotel and I could hardly see
Fabia's face. Without getting off the car, he moved to where I had
sat, and I saw him extend his hand. I gripped it.
"Tell Ruth and Roger," I said, "I love them."
He dropped my hand quickly. "They'll be waiting for me now," he
said.
"Look," I said, not knowing why I said it, "one of these days, very
soon, I hope, I'll be going home. I could go to your town."
"No," he said softly, sounding very much defeated but brave,
"Thanks a lot. But, you see, nobody would remember me now."
Then he started the car, and as it moved away, he waved his hand.
"Goodbye," I said, waving back into the darkness. And suddenly the
night was cold like winter straying early in these northern
woodlands.
I hurried inside. There was a train the next morning that left for
Muncie, Indiana, at a quarter after eight.
We Filipinos Are Mild
Drinkers, by Alejandro R.
Roces
We Filipinos are mild drinkers. We drink for only three good reasons. We drink when we are
very happy. We drink when we are very sad. And we drink for any other reason. When the
Americans recaptured the Philippines, they built an air base a few miles from our barrio. Yankee
soldiers became a very common sight. I met a lot of GIs and made many friends. I could not
pronounce their names. I could not tell them apart. All Americans looked alike to me. They all
looked white.

One afternoon I was plowing our rice field with our carabao named Datu. I was barefooted and
stripped to the waist. My pants, that were made from abaca fibers and woven on homemade
looms, were rolled up to my knees. My bolo was at my side.

An American soldier was walking on the highway. When he saw me, he headed towards me. I
stopped plowing and waited for him. I noticed he was carrying a half-pint bottle of whiskey.
Whiskey bottles seemed part of the American uniform.

“Hello, my little brown brother,” he said patting me on the head.

“Hello, Joe,” I answered.

All Americans are called Joe in the Philippines.

“Any bars in this town?” he asked.

That was usually the first question American soldiers asked when they visited our barrio.

“I am sorry, Joe,” I replied. “There are no bars in this barrio.”

“Oh, hell! You know where I could buy more whiskey?”

“No, Joe. I am sorry. We do not drink whiskey.”

“Here, have a swig. You have been working too hard,” be. said, offering me his half-filled bottle.

“No, thank you, Joe,” I said. “We Filipinos are mild drinkers.”

“Well, don’t you drink at all?”

“Yes, Joe, I drink, but not whiskey.”

“What the hell do you drink?”

“I drink lambanog.”

“Jungle juice, eh?”

“I guess that is what the GI’s call it.”

“You know where I could buy some?”

“I have some you can have, but I do not think you will like it.”

“I’ll like it all right. Don’t worry about that. I have drunk everything—whiskey, rum, brandy,
tequila, gin, champagne, saki, vodka…” He mentioned many more that I can not spell.

“Say, you sure drink a lot, don’t you?”

“I not only drink a lot, but I drink anything. I drank Chanel Number 5 when I was in France. In
New Guinea I got soused on Williams’ Shaving Lotion. When I was laid up in the hospital I got
pie-eyed with medical alcohol. On my way here in a transport I got stoned on torpedo juice. You
ain’t kidding when you say I drink a lot. So let’s have some of that jungle juice, eh?”

“All right,” I said. “I will just take this carabao to the mudhole, then we can go home and drink.”

“You sure love that animal, don’t you?”

“I should,” I replied. “It does half of my work.”

“Why don’t you get two of them?”

I did not answer.

I unhitched Datu from the plow and led him to the mudhole. Joe was following me. Datu lay in
the mud and was going: “Whooooosh! Whooooosh!”

Flies and other insects flew from his back and hovered in the air. A strange warm odor rose out
of the muddle. A carabao does not have any sweat glands except on its nose. It has to wallow in
the mud or bathe in a river about every three hours. Otherwise it runs amok.

Datu shook his head and his widespread horns scooped the muddy water on his back. He rolled
over and was soon covered with slimy mud. An expression of perfect contentment came into his
eyes. The he swished his tail and Joe and I had to move back from the mudhole to keep from
getting splashed. I left Datu in the mudhole. Then, turning to Joe, I said: “Let us go.”
And we proceeded towards my house. Joe was curiously looking around.

“This place is full of coconut trees,” he said.

“Don’t you have any coconut trees in America?” I asked.

“No,” he replied. “Back home we have the pine tree.”

“What is it like?”

“Oh, it is tall and stately. It goes straight up to the sky like a skyscraper. It symbolizes America.”

“Well,” I said, “the coconut tree symbolizes the Philippines. It starts up to the sky, but then its
leaves sway down to earth, as if remembering the land that gave it birth. It does not forget the
soil that gave it life.”

In a short while, we arrived in my nipa house. I took a bamboo ladder and leaned it against a
tree. Then I climbed the ladder and picked some calamansi.

“What’s that?” Joe asked.

“Philippine lemon,” I answered. “We will need this for our drinks.” “Oh, chasers.”

“That is right, Joe. That is what the soldiers call it.”

I fill my pockets and then went down. I went to the garden well and washed the mud from my
legs. Then we went up a bamboo ladder to my hut.

It was getting dark, so I filled a coconut shell with coconut oil, dipped a wick in the oil and
lighted the wick. It produced a flickering light. I unstrapped my bolo and hung it on the wall.

“Please sit down, Joe,” I said.

“Where?” he asked, looking around.

“Right there,” I said, pointing to the floor.

Joe sat down on the floor. I sliced the calamansi in halves, took some rough salt and laid it on the
foot-high table. I went to the kitchen and took the bamboo tube where I kept my lambanog.

Lambanog is a drink extracted from the coconut tree with pulverized mangrove bark thrown in to
prevent spontaneous combustion. It has many uses. We use it as a remedy for snakebites, as
counteractive for malaria chills, as an insecticide and for tanning carabao hide.

I poured some lambanog on two polished coconut shells and gave one of the shells to Joe. I
diluted my drink with some of Joe’s whiskey. It became milky. We were both seated on the
floor. I poured some of my drink on the bamboo floor; it went through the slits to the ground
below.

“Hey, what are you doing,” said Joe, “throwing good liquor away?”

“No, Joe,” I said. “It is the custom here always to give back to the earth a little of what we have
taken from the earth.”

“Well!” he said, raising his shell. “Here’s to the end of the war!”

“Here’s to the end of the war!” I said, also lifting my drink.

I gulped my drink down. I followed it with a slice of calamansi dipped in rough salt. Joe took his
drink, but reacted in a peculiar way. His eyes popped out like a frog’s and his hand clutched his
throat. He looked as if he had swallowed a centipede.

“Quick, a chaser!” he said.

I gave him a slice of calamansi dipped in unrefined salt. He squirted it in his mouth. But it was
too late. Nothing could chase her. The calamansi did not help him. I don’t think even a coconut
would have helped him.

“What is wrong, Joe?” Tasked.

“Nothing,” he said. “The first drink always affects me this way.”

He was panting hard and tears were rolling down his cheeks.

“Well, the first drink always acts like a mine sweeper,” I said, “but this second one will be
smooth.”

I filled his shell for the second time. Again I diluted my drink with Joe’s whiskey. I gave Joe his
shell. L-noticed that he was beaded with perspiration. He had unbuttoned his collar and loosened
his tie. Joe took his shell but did not seem very anxious. I lifted my shell and said: “Here is to
America!”

I was trying very hard to be a good host.

“Here’s to America!” Joe said.

We both killed our drinks. Joe again reacted in a funny way. His neck stretched out like a
turtle’s. And now he was panting like a carabao gone amok. He was grasping his tie with one
hand. Then he looked down on his tie, threw it to one side, and said: “Oh, Christ, for a while I
thought it was my tongue.”

After this he started to tinker with his teeth.

“What’s wrong, Joe?” I asked, still trying to be a perfect host.

“Plenty, this damned stuff had loosened my bridgework.”

As Joe exhaled, a moth flying around the flickering flame fell dead.

He stared at the dead moth and said: “And they talk of DDT.”

“Well, how about another drink?” I asked. “It is what we came here for.”

“No, thanks,” he said, “I’m through.”

“Surely you will not refuse my hospitality?”

“O.K. Just once more.”

I poured the juice in the shells and again diluted mine with whiskey I handed Joe his drink.

“Here’s to the Philippines,” he said.

“Here’s to the Philippines,” I said.

Joe took some of his drink. I could not see very clearly in the flickering light, but I could have
sworn I saw smoke out of his tears.

“This stuff must be radioactive,” he said.

He threw the remains of his drink on the nipa wall and yielded: “Blaze, goddamn you, blaze!”

Just as I was getting in the mood to drink, Joe passed out. He lay on the floor flat as a starfish.
He was in a class all by himself.

I knew that the soldiers had to be back in their barracks at a certain time. So I decided to take Joe
back. I tried to lift him. It was like lifting a carabao. I had to call four of my neighbors to help me
carry Joe. We slung him on top of my carabao. I took my bolo from my house and strapped it on
my waist. Then I proceeded to take him back. The whole barrio was wondering what had
happened to the big Amerikano.

After two hours I arrived at the air field. I found out which barracks he belonged to and took him
there. His friends helped me take him to his cot. They were glad to see him back. Everybody
thanked me for taking him home. As I was leaving the barracks to go home, one of his buddies
called me and said:

“Hey, you! How about a can of beer before you go?”

“No, thanks,” I said. “We Filipinos are mild drinkers.”

2

The Small Key

Paz Latorena
(1907 - 1953)

Paz Latorena was born in Boac, Marinduque in 1907. At a young age she was brought to
Manila where she completed her basic schooling, first at St. Scholastica and later at South
High School. In 1925 she enrolled at the University of the Philippines for a degree in
education. Working by day as an elementary school teacher, she attended evening classes.
One of these was a short story writing class conducted by Mrs. Paz Marquez Benitez. It
was not long before Mrs. Benitez invited Latorena to write a column in the Philippines
Herald, of which she was then literary editor. In 1927 Latorena joined some campus
writers to form the U.P. Writers Club and contributed a short story, “A Christmas Tale”
to the maiden issue of “The Literary Apprentice. That same year, her short story “The Small
Key” won third place in Jose Garcia Villa’s Roll of Honor for the year’s best short stories.
Some of her other stories received similar prizes over the next several years.

In her senior year, Latorena transferred to the University of Sto. Tomas, from which
institution she graduated in 1930 and where she subsequently enrolled for graduate
studies. Her dissertation entitled “Philippine Literature in English: Old Voices and New”
received a grade of sobre saliente, qualifying her for a doctoral degree in 1934. By this time,
Latorena had already joined the faculty, earning a reputation as a dynamic teacher.
Among her many students were then-aspiring writers Juan Gatbonton, F. Sionil Jose,
Nita Umali, Genoveva Edroza Matute and Zeneida Amador. Increasingly involved in
academic work, Latorena wrote fewer stories and at longer intervals, publishing her last
known story, “Miguel Comes Home”, in 1945. In 1953 while proctoring a final
examination, Latorena suffered a cerebral hemorrhage which proved fatal.

Thirty-five of her stories have recently been collected in a single volume: Desire and Other
Stories, edited by Eva V. Kalaw (U.S.T., 2000).

The Small Key

Paz Latorena

It was very warm. The sun, up above a sky that was blue and tremendous and beckoning to birds ever on
the wing, shone bright as if determined to scorch everything under heaven, even the low, square nipa
house that stood in an unashamed relief against the gray-green haze of grass and leaves.
It was lonely dwelling located far from its neighbors, which were huddled close to one another as if for
mutual comfort. It was flanked on both sides by tall, slender bamboo tree which rustled plaintively under a
gentle wind.

On the porch a woman past her early twenties stood regarding the scene before her with eyes made
incurious by its familiarity. All around her the land stretched endlessly, it seemed, and vanished into the
distance. There were dark, newly plowed furrows where in due time timorous seedling would give rise to
sturdy stalks and golden grain, to a rippling yellow sea in the wind and sun during harvest time. Promise
of plenty and reward for hard toil! With a sigh of discontent, however, the woman turned and entered a
small dining room where a man sat over a belated a midday meal.

Pedro Buhay, a prosperous farmer, looked up from his plate and smiled at his wife as she stood framed
by the doorway, the sunlight glinting on her dark hair, which was drawn back, without relenting wave, from
a rather prominent and austere brow.

“Where are the shirts I ironed yesterday?” she asked as she approached the table.

“In my trunk, I think,” he answered.

“Some of them need darning,” and observing the empty plate, she added, “do you want some more
rice?”

“No,” hastily, “I am in a burry to get back. We must finish plowing the south field today because tomorrow
is Sunday.”

Pedro pushed the chair back and stood up. Soledad began to pile the dirty dishes one on top of the
other.

“Here is the key to my trunk.” From the pocket of his khaki coat he pulled a string of non descript red
which held together a big shiny key and another small, rather rusty looking one.

With deliberate care he untied the knot and, detaching the big key, dropped the small one back into his
pocket. She watched him fixedly as he did this. The smile left her face and a strange look came into her
eyes as she took the big key from him without a word. Together they left the dining room.

Out of the porch he put an arm around her shoulders and peered into her shadowed face.

“You look pale and tired,” he remarked softly. “What have you been doing all morning?”

“Nothing,” she said listlessly. “But the heat gives me a headache.”

“Then lie down and try to sleep while I am gone.” For a moment they looked deep into each other’s eyes.

“It is really warm,” he continued. “I think I will take off my coat.”

He removed the garment absent mindedly and handed it to her. The stairs creaked under his weight as
he went down.

“Choleng,” he turned his head as he opened the gate, “I shall pass by Tia Maria’s house and tell her to
come. I may not return before dark.”

Soledad nodded. Her eyes followed her husband down the road, noting the fine set of his head and
shoulders, the case of his stride. A strange ache rose in her throat.
She looked at the coat he had handed to her. It exuded a faint smell of his favorite cigars, one of which he
invariably smoked, after the day’s work, on his way home from the fields. Mechanically, she began to fold
the garment.

As she was doing so, s small object fell from the floor with a dull, metallic sound. Soledad stooped down
to pick it up. It was the small key! She stared at it in her palm as if she had never seen it before. Her
mouth was tightly drawn and for a while she looked almost old.

She passed into the small bedroom and tossed the coat carelessly on the back of a chair. She opened
the window and the early afternoon sunshine flooded in. On a mat spread on the bamboo floor were
some newly washed garments.

She began to fold them one by one in feverish haste, as if seeking in the task of the moment in refuge
from painful thoughts. But her eyes moved restlessly around the room until they rested almost furtively on
a small trunk that was half concealed by a rolled mat in a dark corner.

It was a small old trunk, without anything on the outside that might arouse one’s curiosity. But it held the
things she had come to hate with unreasoning violence, the things that were causing her so much
unnecessary anguish and pain and threatened to destroy all that was most beautiful between her and her
husband!

Soledad came across a torn garment. She threaded a needle, but after a few uneven stitches she pricked
her finger and a crimson drop stained the white garment. Then she saw she had been mending on the
wrong side.

“What is the matter with me?” she asked herself aloud as she pulled the thread with nervous and
impatient fingers.

What did it matter if her husband chose to keep the clothes of his first wife?

“She is dead anyhow. She is dead,” she repeated to herself over and over again.

The sound of her own voice calmed her. She tried to thread the needle once more. But she could not, not
for the tears had come unbidden and completely blinded her.

“My God,” she cried with a sob, “make me forget Indo’s face as he put the small key back into his pocket.”

She brushed her tears with the sleeves of her camisa and abruptly stood up. The heat was stifling, and
the silence in the house was beginning to be unendurable.

She looked out of the window. She wondered what was keeping Tia Maria. Perhaps Pedro had forgotten
to pass by her house in his hurry. She could picture him out there in the south field gazing far and wide at
the newly plowed land with no thought in his mind but of work, work. For to the people of the barrio whose
patron saint, San Isidro Labrador, smiled on them with benign eyes from his crude altar in the little chapel
up the hill, this season was a prolonged hour during which they were blind and dead to everything but the
demands of the land.

During the next half hour Soledad wandered in and out of the rooms in effort to seek escape from her
own thoughts and to fight down an overpowering impulse. If Tia Maria would only come and talk to her to
divert her thoughts to other channels!

But the expression on her husband’s face as he put the small key back into his pocket kept torturing her
like a nightmare, goading beyond endurance. Then, with all resistance to the impulse gone, she was
kneeling before the small trunk. With the long drawn breath she inserted the small key. There was an
unpleasant metallic sound, for the key had not been used for a long time and it was rusty.
That evening Pedro Buhay hurried home with the usual cigar dangling from his mouth, pleased with
himself and the tenants because the work in the south field had been finished. Tia Maria met him at the
gate and told him that Soledad was in bed with a fever.

“I shall go to town and bring Doctor Santos,” he decided, his cool hand on his wife’s brow.

Soledad opened her eyes.

“Don’t, Indo,” she begged with a vague terror in her eyes which he took for anxiety for him because the
town was pretty far and the road was dark and deserted by that hour of the night. “I shall be alright
tomorrow.”

Pedro returned an hour later, very tired and very worried. The doctor was not at home but his wife had
promised to give him Pedro’s message as soon as he came in.

Tia Maria decide to remain for the night. But it was Pedro who stayed up to watch the sick woman. He
was puzzled and worried – more than he cared to admit it. It was true that Soledad did not looked very
well early that afternoon. Yet, he thought, the fever was rather sudden. He was afraid it might be a
symptom of a serious illness.

Soledad was restless the whole night. She tossed from one side to another, but toward morning she fell
into some sort of troubled sleep. Pedro then lay down to snatch a few winks.

He woke up to find the soft morning sunshine streaming through the half-open window. He got up without
making any noise. His wife was still asleep and now breathing evenly. A sudden rush of tenderness came
over him at the sight of her – so slight, so frail.

Tia Maria was nowhere to be seen, but that did not bother him, for it was Sunday and the work in the
south field was finished. However, he missed the pleasant aroma which came from the kitchen every time
he had awakened early in the morning.

The kitchen was neat but cheerless, and an immediate search for wood brought no results. So
shouldering an ax, Pedro descended the rickety stairs that led to the backyard.

The morning was clear and the breeze soft and cool. Pedro took in a deep breath of air. It was good – it
smelt of trees, of the ricefields, of the land he loved.

He found a pile of logs under the young mango tree near the house and began to chop. He swung the ax
with rapid clean sweeps, enjoying the feel of the smooth wooden handle in his palms.

As he stopped for a while to mop his brow, his eyes caught the remnants of a smudge that had been built
in the backyard.

“Ah!” he muttered to himself. “She swept the yard yesterday after I left her. That, coupled with the heat,
must have given her a headache and then the fever.”

The morning breeze stirred the ashes and a piece of white cloth fluttered into view.

Pedro dropped his ax. It was a half-burn panuelo. Somebody had been burning clothes. He examined the
slightly ruined garment closely. A puzzled expression came into his eyes. First it was doubt groping for
truth, then amazement, and finally agonized incredulity passed across his face. He almost ran back to the
house. In three strides he was upstairs. He found his coat hanging from the back of a chair.
Cautiously he entered the room. The heavy breathing of his wife told him that she was still asleep. As he
stood by the small trunk, a vague distaste to open it assailed to him. Surely he must be mistaken. She
could not have done it, she could not have been that… that foolish.

Resolutely he opened the trunk. It was empty.

It was nearly noon when the doctor arrived. He felt Soledad’s pulse and asked question which she
answered in monosyllables. Pedro stood by listening to the whole procedure with an inscrutable
expression on his face. He had the same expression when the doctor told him that nothing was really
wrong with his wife although she seemed to be worried about something. The physician merely
prescribed a day of complete rest.

Pedro lingered on the porch after the doctor left. He was trying not to be angry with his wife. He hoped it
would be just an interlude that could be recalled without bitterness. She would explain sooner or later, she
would be repentant, perhaps she would even listen and eventually forgive her, for she was young and he
loved her. But somehow he knew that this incident would always remain a shadow in their lives.

My Father Goes To Court (Carlos Bulusan)

When I was four, I lived with my mother and brothers and sisters in a small town on the island of
Luzon. Father’s farm had been destroyed in 1918 by one of our sudden Philippine floods, so several
years afterwards we all lived in the town though he preferred living in the country. We had as a next
door neighbour a very rich man, whose sons and daughters seldom came out of the house. While we
boys and girls played and sang in the sun, his children stayed inside and kept the windows closed. His
house was so tall that his children could look in the window of our house and watched us played, or
slept, or ate, when there was any food in the house to eat.

Now, this rich man’s servants were always frying and cooking something good, and the aroma of the
food was wafted down to us form the windows of the big house. We hung about and took all the
wonderful smells of the food into our beings. Sometimes, in the morning, our whole family stood
outside the windows of the rich man’s house and listened to the musical sizzling of thick strips of bacon
or ham. I can remember one afternoon when our neighbour’s servants roasted three chickens. The
chickens were young and tender and the fat that dripped into the burning coals gave off an enchanting
odour. We watched the servants turn the beautiful birds and inhaled the heavenly spirit that drifted
out to us.

Some days the rich man appeared at a window and glowered down at us. He looked at us one by one,
as though he were condemning us. We were all healthy because we went out in the sun and bathed in
the cool water of the river that flowed from the mountains into the sea. Sometimes we wrestled with
one another in the house before we went to play. We were always in the best of spirits and our
laughter was contagious. Other neighbours who passed by our house often stopped in our yard and
joined us in laughter.

As time went on, the rich man’s children became thin and anaemic, while we grew even more robust
and full of life. Our faces were bright and rosy, but theirs were pale and sad. The rich man started to
cough at night; then he coughed day and night. His wife began coughing too. Then the children started
to cough, one after the other. At night their coughing sounded like the barking of a herd of seals. We
hung outside their windows and listened to them. We wondered what happened. We knew that they
were not sick from the lack of nourishment because they were still always frying something delicious to
eat.

One day the rich man appeared at a window and stood there a long time. He looked at my sisters, who
had grown fat in laughing, then at my brothers, whose arms and legs were like the molave, which is the
sturdiest tree in the Philippines. He banged down the window and ran through his house, shutting all
the windows.

From that day on, the windows of our neighbour’s house were always closed. The children did not
come out anymore. We could still hear the servants cooking in the kitchen, and no matter how tight
the windows were shut, the aroma of the food came to us in the wind and drifted gratuitously into our
house.

One morning a policeman from the presidencia came to our house with a sealed paper. The rich man
had filed a complaint against us. Father took me with him when he went to the town clerk and asked
him what it was about. He told Father the man claimed that for years we had been stealing the spirit
of his wealth and food.

When the day came for us to appear in court, father brushed his old Army uniform and borrowed a pair
of shoes from one of my brothers. We were the first to arrive. Father sat on a chair in the centre of the
courtroom. Mother occupied a chair by the door. We children sat on a long bench by the wall. Father
kept jumping up from his chair and stabbing the air with his arms, as though we were defending
himself before an imaginary jury.
The rich man arrived. He had grown old and feeble; his face was scarred with deep lines. With him was
his young lawyer. Spectators came in and almost filled the chairs. The judge entered the room and sat
on a high chair. We stood in a hurry and then sat down again.

After the courtroom preliminaries, the judge looked at the Father. “Do you have a lawyer?” he asked.

“I don’t need any lawyer, Judge,” he said.

“Proceed,” said the judge.

The rich man’s lawyer jumped up and pointed his finger at Father. “Do you or you do not agree that
you have been stealing the spirit of the complaint’s wealth and food?”

“I do not!” Father said.

“Do you or do you not agree that while the complaint’s servants cooked and fried fat legs of lamb or
young chicken breast you and your family hung outside his windows and inhaled the heavenly spirit of
the food?”

“I agree.” Father said.

“Do you or do you not agree that while the complaint and his children grew sickly and tubercular you
and your family became strong of limb and fair in complexion?”

“I agree.” Father said.

“How do you account for that?”

Father got up and paced around, scratching his head thoughtfully. Then he said, “I would like to see
the children of complaint, Judge.”

“Bring in the children of the complaint.”

They came in shyly. The spectators covered their mouths with their hands, they were so amazed to see
the children so thin and pale. The children walked silently to a bench and sat down without looking up.
They stared at the floor and moved their hands uneasily.

Father could not say anything at first. He just stood by his chair and looked at them. Finally he said, “I
should like to cross – examine the complaint.”

“Proceed.”

“Do you claim that we stole the spirit of your wealth and became a laughing family while yours became
morose and sad?” Father said.

“Yes.”

“Do you claim that we stole the spirit of your food by hanging outside your windows when your servants
cooked it?” Father said.

“Yes.”

“Then we are going to pay you right now,” Father said. He walked over to where we children were
sitting on the bench and took my straw hat off my lap and began filling it up with centavo pieces that
he took out of his pockets. He went to Mother, who added a fistful of silver coins. My brothers threw in
their small change.

“May I walk to the room across the hall and stay there for a few minutes, Judge?” Father said.

“As you wish.”

“Thank you,” father said. He strode into the other room with the hat in his hands. It was almost full of
coins. The doors of both rooms were wide open.

“Are you ready?” Father called.

“Proceed.” The judge said.

The sweet tinkle of the coins carried beautifully in the courtroom. The spectators turned their faces
toward the sound with wonder. Father came back and stood before the complaint.

“Did you hear it?” he asked.

“Hear what?” the man asked.

“The spirit of the money when I shook this hat?” he asked.

“Yes.”

“Then you are paid,” Father said.

The rich man opened his mouth to speak and fell to the floor without a sound. The lawyer rushed to his
aid. The judge pounded his gravel.

“Case dismissed.” He said.

Father strutted around the courtroom the judge even came down from his high chair to shake hands
with him. “By the way,” he whispered, “I had an uncle who died laughing.”

“You like to hear my family laugh, Judge?” Father asked?

“Why not?”

“Did you hear that children?” father said.

My sisters started it. The rest of us followed them soon the spectators were laughing with us, holding
their bellies and bending over the chairs. And the laughter of the judge was the loudest of all.
My Brother’s Peculiar
Chicken, by Alejandro R.
Roces
My brother Kiko once had a very peculiar chicken. It was peculiar because no one could tell
whether it was a rooster or a hen. My brother claimed it was a rooster. I claimed it was a hen. We
almost got whipped because we argued too much.

The whole question began early one morning. Kiko and I were driving the chickens from the
cornfield. The corn had just been planted, and the chickens were scratching the seeds out for
food. Suddenly we heard the rapid flapping of wings. We turned in the direction of the sound and
saw two chickens fighting in the far end of the field. We could not see the birds clearly as they
were lunging at each other in a whirlwind of feathers and dust.

“Look at that rooster fight!” my brother said, pointing exactly at one of the chickens. “Why, if I
had a rooster like that, I could get rich in the cockpits.”

“Let’s go and catch it,” I suggested.

“No, you stay here. I will go and catch it,” Kiko said.

My brother slowly approached the battling chickens. They were so busy fighting that they did
not notice him. When he got near them, he dived and caught one of them by the leg. It struggled
and squawked. Kiko finally held it by both wings and it became still. I ran over where he was
and took a good look at the chicken.

“Why, it is a hen,” I said.

“What is the matter with you?” my brother asked. “Is the heat making you sick?”

“No. Look at its face. It has no comb or wattles.”

“No comb and wattles! Who cares about its comb or wattles? Didn’t you see it in fight?”

“Sure, I saw it in fight. But I still say it is a hen.”

“Ahem! Did you ever see a hen with spurs on its legs like these? Or a hen with a tail like this?”

“I don’t care about its spurs or tail. I tell you it is a hen. Why, look at it.”
The argument went on in the fields the whole morning. At noon we went to eat lunch. We argued
about it on the way home. When we arrived at our house Kiko tied the chicken to a peg. The
chicken flapped its wings and then crowed.

“There! Did you hear that?” my brother exclaimed triumphantly. “I suppose you are going to tell
me now that hens crow and that carabaos fly.”

“I don’t care if it crows or not,” I said. “That chicken is a hen.”

We went into the house, and the discussion continued during lunch.

“It is not a hen,” Kiko said. “It is a rooster.”

“It is a hen,” I said.

“It is not.”

“It is.”

“Now, now,” Mother interrupted, “how many times must Father tell you, boys, not to argue
during lunch? What is the argument about this time?”

We told Mother, and she went out look at the chicken.

“That chicken,” she said, “is a binabae. It is a rooster that looks like a hen.”

That should have ended the argument. But Father also went out to see the chicken, and he said,
“Have you been drinking again?” Mother asked.

“No,” Father answered.

“Then what makes you say that that is a hen? Have you ever seen a hen with feathers like that?”

“Listen. I have handled fighting cocks since I was a boy, and you cannot tell me that that thing is
a rooster.”

Before Kiko and I realized what had happened, Father and Mother were arguing about the
chicken by themselves. Soon Mother was crying. She always cried when she argued with Father.

“You know very well that that is a rooster,” she said. “You are just being mean and stubborn.”

“I am sorry,” Father said. “But I know a hen when I see one.”

“I know who can settle this question,” my brother said.

“Who?” I asked.
“The teniente del Barrio, chief of the village.”

The chief was the oldest man in the village. That did not mean that he was the wisest, but
anything always carried more weight if it is said by a man with gray hair. So my brother untied
the chicken and we took it to the chief.

“Is this a male or a female chicken?” Kiko asked.

“That is a question that should concern only another chicken,” the chief replied.

“My brother and I happen to have a special interest in this particular chicken. Please give us an
answer. Just say yes or no. Is this a rooster?”

“It does not look like any rooster I have ever seen,” the chief said.

“Is it a hen, then?” I asked.

“It does not look like any hen I have ever seen. No, that could not be a chicken. I have never seen
like that. It must be a bird of some other kind.”

“Oh, what’s the use!” Kiko said, and we walked away.

“Well, what shall we do now?” I said.

“I know that,” my brother said. “Let’s go to town and see Mr. Cruz. He would know.”

Mr. Eduardo Cruz lived in a nearby town of Katubusan. He had studied poultry raising in the
University of the Philippines. He owned and operated the largest poultry business in town. We
took the chicken to his office.

“Mr. Cruz,” Kiko said, “is this a hen or a rooster?”

Mr. Cruz looked at the bird curiously and then said:

“Hmmm. I don’t know. I couldn’t tell in one look. I have never run across a chicken like this
before.”

“Well, is there any way you can tell?”

“Why, sure. Look at the feathers on its back. If the feathers are round, then it’s a hen. If they are
pointed, it’s a rooster.”

The three of us examined the feathers closely. It had both.

“Hmmm. Very peculiar,” said Mr. Cruz.

“Is there any other way you can tell?”

“I could kill it and examined its insides.”

“No. I do not want it killed,” my brother said.

I took the rooster in my arms and we walked back to the barrio.

Kiko was silent most of the way. Then he said:

“I know how I can prove to you that this is a rooster.”

“How?” I asked.

“Would you agree that this is a rooster if I make it fight in the cockpit and it wins?”

“If this hen of yours can beat a gamecock, I will believe anything,” I said.

“All right,” he said. “We’ll take it to the cockpit this Sunday.”

So that Sunday we took the chicken to the cockpit. Kiko looked around for a suitable opponent.
He finally picked a red rooster.

“Don’t match your hen against that red rooster.” I told him. “That red rooster is not a native
chicken. It is from Texas.”

“I don’t care where it came from,” my brother said. “My rooster will kill it.”

“Don’t be a fool,” I said. “That red rooster is a killer. It has killed more chickens than the fox.
There is no rooster in this town that can stand against it. Pick a lesser rooster.”

My brother would not listen. The match was made and the birds were readied for the killing.
Sharp steel gaffs were tied to their left legs. Everyone wanted to bet on the red gamecock.

The fight was brief. Both birds were released in the centre of the arena. They circled around once
and then faced each other. I expected our chicken to die of fright. Instead, a strange thing
happened. A lovesick expression came into the red rooster’s eyes. Then it did a love dance. That
was all our chicken needed. It rushed at the red rooster with its neck feathers flaring. In one
lunge, it buried its spurs into its opponent’s chest. The fight was over.

“Tiope! Tiope! Fixed fight!” the crowd shouted.

Then a riot broke out. People tore bamboo benches apart and used them as clubs. My brother and
I had to leave through the back way. I had the chicken under my arm. We ran toward the coconut
groves and kept running till we lost the mob. As soon as we were safe, my brother said:
“Do you believe it is a rooster now?”

“Yes,” I answered.

I was glad the whole argument was over.

Just then the chicken began to quiver. It stood up in my arms and cackled with laughter.
Something warm and round dropped into my hand. It was an egg.

With the permission of Alejandro R. Roces’ family

LOVE IN THE CORNHUSKS by Aida L. Rivera

January 7, 2011ischoolsericsonalietoLeave a commentGo to comments
Tinang stopped before the Señora’s gate and adjusted the baby’s cap. The dogs that came to bark at
the gate were strange dogs, big-mouthed animals with a sense of superiority. They stuck their heads
through the hogfence, lolling their tongues and straining. Suddenly, from the gumamela row, a little
black mongrel emerged and slithered through the fence with ease. It came to her, head down and
body quivering.
“Bantay. Ay, Bantay!” she exclaimed as the little dog laid its paws upon her shirt to sniff the baby on
her arm. The baby was afraid and cried. The big animals barked with displeasure.
Tito, the young master, had seen her and was calling to his mother. “Ma, it’s Tinang. Ma, Ma, it’s
Tinang.” He came running down to open the gate.

“Aba, you are so tall now, Tito.”

He smiled his girl’s smile as he stood by, warding the dogs off. Tinang passed quickly up the veranda
stairs lined with ferns and many-colored bougainville. On landing, she paused to wipe her shoes
carefully. About her, the Señora’s white and lavender butterfly orchids fluttered delicately in the
sunshine. She noticed though that the purple waling-waling that had once been her task to shade
from the hot sun with banana leaves and to water with mixture of charcoal and eggs and water was
not in bloom.
“Is no one covering the waling-waling now?” Tinang asked. “It will die.”
“Oh, the maid will come to cover the orchids later.”

The Señora called from inside. “Tinang, let me see your baby. Is it a boy?”

“Yes, Ma,” Tito shouted from downstairs. “And the ears are huge!”

“What do you expect,” replied his mother; “the father is a Bagobo. Even Tinang looks like a Bagobo
now.”

Tinang laughed and felt warmness for her former mistress and the boy Tito. She sat self-consciously
on the black narra sofa, for the first time a visitor. Her eyes clouded. The sight of the Señora’s
flaccidly plump figure, swathed in a loose waist-less housedress that came down to her ankles, and
the faint scent of agua de colonia blended with kitchen spice, seemed to her the essence of the
comfortable world, and she sighed thinking of the long walk home through the mud, the baby’s legs
straddled to her waist, and Inggo, her husband, waiting for her, his body stinking of tuba and sweat,
squatting on the floor, clad only in his foul undergarments.
“Ano, Tinang, is it not a good thing to be married?” the Señora asked, pitying Tinang because her
dress gave way at the placket and pressed at her swollen breasts. It was, as a matter of fact, a dress
she had given Tinang a long time ago.
“It is hard, Señora, very hard. Better that I were working here again.”

“There!” the Señora said. “Didn’t I tell you what it would be like, huh? . . . that you would be a slave
to your husband and that you would work a baby eternally strapped to you. Are you not pregnant
again?”

Tinang squirmed at the Señora’s directness but admitted she was.

“Hala! You will have a dozen before long.” The Señora got up. “Come, I will give you some dresses
and an old blanket that you can cut into things for the baby.”
They went into a cluttered room which looked like a huge closet and as the Señora sorted out some
clothes, Tinang asked, “How is Señor?”

“Ay, he is always losing his temper over the tractor drivers. It is not the way it was when Amado was
here. You remember what a good driver he was. The tractors were always kept in working condition.
But now . . . I wonder why he left all of a sudden. He said he would be gone for only two days . . . .”

“I don’t know,” Tinang said. The baby began to cry. Tinang shushed him with irritation.

“Oy, Tinang, come to the kitchen; your Bagobito is hungry.”

For the next hour, Tinang sat in the kitchen with an odd feeling; she watched the girl who was now in
possession of the kitchen work around with a handkerchief clutched I one hand. She had lipstick on
too, Tinang noted. the girl looked at her briefly but did not smile. She set down a can of evaporated
milk for the baby and served her coffee and cake. The Señora drank coffee with her and lectured
about keeping the baby’s stomach bound and training it to stay by itself so she could work. Finally,
Tinang brought up, haltingly, with phrases like “if it will not offend you” and “if you are not too busy”
the purpose of her visit–which was to ask Señora to be a madrina in baptism. The Señora readily
assented and said she would provide the baptismal clothes and the fee for the priest. It was time to
go.
“When are you coming again, Tinang?” the Señore asked as Tinang got the baby ready. “Don’t forget
the bundle of clothes and . . . oh, Tinang, you better stop by the drugstore. They asked me once
whether you were still with us. You have a letter there and I was going to open it to see if there was
bad news but I thought you would be coming.”

A letter! Tinang’s heart beat violently. Somebody is dead; I know somebody is dead, she thought. She
crossed herself and after thanking the Señora profusely, she hurried down. The dogs came forward
and Tito had to restrain them. “Bring me some young corn next time, Tinang,” he called after her.

Tinang waited a while at the drugstore which was also the post office of the barrio. Finally, the man
turned to her: “Mrs., do you want medicine for your baby or for yourself?”

“No, I came for my letter. I was told I have a letter.”

“And what is your name, Mrs.?” He drawled.

“Constantina Tirol.”
The man pulled a box and slowly went through the pile of envelopes most of which were scribbled in
pencil, “Tirol, Tirol, Tirol. . . .” He finally pulled out a letter and handed it to her. She stared at the
unfamiliar scrawl. It was not from her sister and she could think of no one else who could write to her.

Santa Maria, she thought; maybe something has happened to my sister.

“Do you want me to read it for you?”

“No, no.” She hurried from the drugstore, crushed that he should think her illiterate. With the baby on
one arm and the bundle of clothes on the other and the letter clutched in her hand she found herself
walking toward home.

The rains had made a deep slough of the clay road and Tinang followed the prints left by the men and
the carabaos that had gone before her to keep from sinking mud up to her knees. She was deep in the
road before she became conscious of her shoes. In horror, she saw that they were coated with thick,
black clay. Gingerly, she pulled off one shoe after the other with the hand still clutching to the letter.
When she had tied the shoes together with the laces and had slung them on an arm, the baby, the
bundle, and the letter were all smeared with mud.

There must be a place to put the baby down, she thought, desperate now about the letter. She walked
on until she spotted a corner of a field where cornhusks were scattered under a kamansi tree. She
shoved together a pile of husks with her foot and laid the baby down upon it. With a sigh, she drew
the letter from the envelope. She stared at the letter which was written in English.

My dearest Tinay,
Hello, how is life getting along? Are you still in good condition? As for myself, the same as usual. But
you’re far from my side. It is not easy to be far from our lover.
Tinay, do you still love me? I hope your kind and generous heart will never fade. Someday or
somehow I’ll be there again to fulfill our promise.
Many weeks and months have elapsed. Still I remember our bygone days. Especially when I was
suffering with the heat of the tractor under the heat of the sun. I was always in despair until I imagine
your personal appearance coming forward bearing the sweetest smile that enabled me to view the
distant horizon.
Tinay, I could not return because I found that my mother was very ill. That is why I was not able to
take you as a partner of life. Please respond to my missive at once so that I know whether you still
love me or not. I hope you did not love anybody except myself.
I think I am going beyond the limit of your leisure hours, so I close with best wishes to you, my
friends Gonding, Sefarin, Bondio, etc.
Yours forever,
Amado
P.S. My mother died last month.
Address your letter:
Mr. Amado Galauran
Binalunan, Cotabato
It was Tinang’s first love letter. A flush spread over her face and crept into her body. She read the
letter again. “It is not easy to be far from our lover. . . . I imagine your personal appearance coming
forward. . . . Someday, somehow I’ll be there to fulfill our promise. . . .” Tinang was intoxicated. She
pressed herself against the kamansi tree.
My lover is true to me. He never meant to desert me. Amado, she thought. Amado.

And she cried, remembering the young girl she was less than two years ago when she would take food
to Señor in the field and the laborers would eye her furtively. She thought herself above them for she
was always neat and clean in her hometown, before she went away to work, she had gone to school
and had reached sixth grade. Her skin, too, was not as dark as those of the girls who worked in the
fields weeding around the clumps of abaca. Her lower lip jutted out disdainfully when the farm hands
spoke to her with many flattering words. She laughed when a Bagobo with two hectares of land asked
her to marry him. It was only Amado, the tractor driver, who could look at her and make her lower
her eyes. He was very dark and wore filthy and torn clothes on the farm but on Saturdays when he
came up to the house for his week’s salary, his hair was slicked down and he would be dressed as well
as Mr. Jacinto, the schoolteacher. Once he told her he would study in the city night-schools and take
up mechanical engineering someday. He had not said much more to her but one afternoon when she
was bidden to take some bolts and tools to him in the field, a great excitement came over her. The
shadows moved fitfully in the bamboo groves she passed and the cool November air edged into her
nostrils sharply. He stood unmoving beside the tractor with tools and parts scattered on the ground
around him. His eyes were a black glow as he watched her draw near. When she held out the bolts, he
seized her wrist and said: “Come,” pulling her to the screen of trees beyond. She resisted but his arms
were strong. He embraced her roughly and awkwardly, and she trembled and gasped and clung to
him. . . .

A little green snake slithered languidly into the tall grass a few yards from the kamansi tree. Tinang
started violently and remembered her child. It lay motionless on the mat of husk. With a shriek she
grabbed it wildly and hugged it close. The baby awoke from its sleep and cries lustily. Ave Maria
Santisima. Do not punish me, she prayed, searching the baby’s skin for marks. Among the cornhusks,
the letter fell unnoticed.