somewhere in it was a softness. The same softness that lay in her expression when she’d talked to Raffy earlier, smile struggling with her dead face.
“
ER
,” said Rosa, without turning from the window. “I’ll…”
Corazon’s footsteps hesitated.
“…come in later.”
“Don’t be too long. The hospital program starts in half an hour. You know I can’t watch it without you, or I don’t understand what’s going on.”
“Half an hour…”
Rosa’s mother left the room.
It came as a surprise. The headlights flaring on the road, everything etched in a sudden bright monochrome, with quick sliding shadows. A Mercedes with blacked-out windows, fast moving.
A few seconds, and it had passed.
Flower Power
1.
Barrio Sarap was as unlike Manila as a shark was a milkfish. Separated from the capital city by one hundred miles and the Sierra Madre mountains, the barrio sat on the eastern coastline of Luzon, gazing over the Pacific rather than the South China Sea. The only stone building was the church. Outside of the lumberyard, which had its own private generator, there was no electricity. There were no phone lines. There was no tarmac. There was only one tapped freshwater source, not counting the granite-filtered streams that ran down from the boondocks.
A hard rural life, but a resolutely siesta atmosphere—even the thud of a fisherman’s homemade dynamite or a metal screech from the sawmill seemed distant and unobtrusive. The only real disturbances in the barrio were occasional alcohol-fueled brawls and the late-summer typhoons, which would rip though the
nipa
huts, turn coconuts into cannonballs, and bring high tides that could suck palm trees down in their wake.
Unless, as a disturbance, one counted the kind of dramas that unfolded around adolescence, and adolescent preoccupations.
Premarital sex meant: Have sex, and you get married. Sex without marriage didn’t happen. Frustrated Sarap boys were forced to collect themselves into groups of threes or fours and make a trip into the mainland, where the girls were less stubbornly virginal. There they would head for the larger towns, prowl, and hope that their long and exhausting journey would be rewarded. That failing, they’d pool their money and hire a prostitute.
As for the boys from the mainland, they stayed where they were. No need to make the trip across the mountains. They knew that the coastline girls were provincial and conservative, and didn’t put out without a cast-iron commitment.
This was the power of the Sarap girls. In their own way, Sarap boys shared the same provincial values and were damned if they were going to end up marrying someone who’d already been laid. So, where a future was concerned, Sarap girls were the only option. Their power: A smile was a good reason for aboy to wait on a hot dusty road, hoping the smile might walk that way again; an indifferent turn of the head was an agony of rejection—and both could cause sleepless nights.
Sixteen years old, knee-length cotton dress with a sun-bleached floral pattern, schoolbooks under her arm. Rosa had silken hair that dropped to her shoulderblades and skin that was as deep in color as the sky. One day, a suitor would tell her that her beauty was as rare as her fingerprint, just before she rejected him.
2.
Her house was about two miles down the coastline from her school in Infanta, the nearest town. Making the journey home on cloudless afternoons, she’d walk along the road. It was longer than walking along the beach—the road meandered inland at some points, through hamlets and rice paddies—but most of the route was shaded by roadside palm trees. In the mornings, however, Rosa always followed the beach. At seven A.M. , the sun was too low in the sky to be any bother.
A boy said, “Look,” as she passed him. He was kneeling down a short distance away, with his back to her, beside six feet of fine netting to trap the milkfish fry that swam in the shallows. In front of
“
ER
,” said Rosa, without turning from the window. “I’ll…”
Corazon’s footsteps hesitated.
“…come in later.”
“Don’t be too long. The hospital program starts in half an hour. You know I can’t watch it without you, or I don’t understand what’s going on.”
“Half an hour…”
Rosa’s mother left the room.
It came as a surprise. The headlights flaring on the road, everything etched in a sudden bright monochrome, with quick sliding shadows. A Mercedes with blacked-out windows, fast moving.
A few seconds, and it had passed.
Flower Power
1.
Barrio Sarap was as unlike Manila as a shark was a milkfish. Separated from the capital city by one hundred miles and the Sierra Madre mountains, the barrio sat on the eastern coastline of Luzon, gazing over the Pacific rather than the South China Sea. The only stone building was the church. Outside of the lumberyard, which had its own private generator, there was no electricity. There were no phone lines. There was no tarmac. There was only one tapped freshwater source, not counting the granite-filtered streams that ran down from the boondocks.
A hard rural life, but a resolutely siesta atmosphere—even the thud of a fisherman’s homemade dynamite or a metal screech from the sawmill seemed distant and unobtrusive. The only real disturbances in the barrio were occasional alcohol-fueled brawls and the late-summer typhoons, which would rip though the
nipa
huts, turn coconuts into cannonballs, and bring high tides that could suck palm trees down in their wake.
Unless, as a disturbance, one counted the kind of dramas that unfolded around adolescence, and adolescent preoccupations.
Premarital sex meant: Have sex, and you get married. Sex without marriage didn’t happen. Frustrated Sarap boys were forced to collect themselves into groups of threes or fours and make a trip into the mainland, where the girls were less stubbornly virginal. There they would head for the larger towns, prowl, and hope that their long and exhausting journey would be rewarded. That failing, they’d pool their money and hire a prostitute.
As for the boys from the mainland, they stayed where they were. No need to make the trip across the mountains. They knew that the coastline girls were provincial and conservative, and didn’t put out without a cast-iron commitment.
This was the power of the Sarap girls. In their own way, Sarap boys shared the same provincial values and were damned if they were going to end up marrying someone who’d already been laid. So, where a future was concerned, Sarap girls were the only option. Their power: A smile was a good reason for aboy to wait on a hot dusty road, hoping the smile might walk that way again; an indifferent turn of the head was an agony of rejection—and both could cause sleepless nights.
Sixteen years old, knee-length cotton dress with a sun-bleached floral pattern, schoolbooks under her arm. Rosa had silken hair that dropped to her shoulderblades and skin that was as deep in color as the sky. One day, a suitor would tell her that her beauty was as rare as her fingerprint, just before she rejected him.
2.
Her house was about two miles down the coastline from her school in Infanta, the nearest town. Making the journey home on cloudless afternoons, she’d walk along the road. It was longer than walking along the beach—the road meandered inland at some points, through hamlets and rice paddies—but most of the route was shaded by roadside palm trees. In the mornings, however, Rosa always followed the beach. At seven A.M. , the sun was too low in the sky to be any bother.
A boy said, “Look,” as she passed him. He was kneeling down a short distance away, with his back to her, beside six feet of fine netting to trap the milkfish fry that swam in the shallows. In front of
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