Different Countries

Chapter 1

1IT WAS ON humid holy Wednesday, between noontime and around three in the afternoon, when Nora’s Aunty Cedes was believed to have disappeared in this small village off the highway connecting the seaside towns in this Philippine province. Nora had heard old people call that time of day the dead hour. It was not something to be feared; and had also nothing to do with Holy Week. For Nora, it was a time when everybody felt lethargic after a heavy meal of rice or grated coconut. Everyone would literally sleep the heat off. Even the farmers, Nora’s father being one of them, were compelled to go home or to take shelter in their lean-to under lanzones trees not very far from the rice fields to doze off. They would finish their work when the sun would no longer be as oppressive. It was the time of day when all activities stopped, to Nora’s despair, because she was not allowed to play and had to put to sleep her restless siblings.

It had been two days after that Wednesday, and the heat precipitated a downpour. It started raining this afternoon of Good Friday, after the hour of three. It was only several hours ago when the quivering voices of the village’s old men and women reciting the Pasyon had slowly faded. Since Wednesday, Nora had amused herself watching older folks gather in front of the pondahan to sing the Pasyon, a ritual which lasted until midnight. However much she tried listening to the incantations, Nora couldn’t be enamored by the sung prayers. Folks came and went, including Nora’s father to chant the story of Christ’s suffering. A temporary altar had been created in front of the miniature store, which was closed during Holy Week. There was a cross made from thin branches of a lanzones tree placed at the center of a wooden table; the cross was inside a mini-arch made from cut and twisted coconut leaves, which signified nothing about the Pasyon but fully served to enhance the almost bare altar.

As if on cue, the rains poured after the last word about the Lord’s suffering had been sung, and the people had gone back to their houses to mourn in silence. Any kind of rejoicing was prohibited until Sunday, the resurrection. The old womenfolk warned that the rains were tears from the skies, which grieved God’s death. It was sinful to feel what she felt, Nora thought, but she mourned for the Aunty Cedes she might never be able to meet and not for Jesus who suffered and died on the cross. For weeks before this, Nora had waited for the day of her Tiya’s coming, on the same spot by the door of their hut where she now watched the skies’s tears fall. Her unshod feet rested on the middle rung of the short ladder by the door. She didn’t mind the water flowing down from the edge of the thatched roof wetting her feet.

When she heard her father, Dante Marcial, reveal to her mother that a half-sister he had never seen was going to stay with them, Nora spent sleepless nights, imagining what her Aunty Cedes would be like. Will she take charge of Nora’s sisters and care for Nora as well though she’s not young anymore? Her parents often talked among themselves, excluding Nora and her sisters from the conversation, although always within the children’s hearing distance, because there was no other space in the house to conduct private exchanges. If only Nora would not be reprimanded if she initiated a direct conversation with her father, she would have asked him a lot of questions about this Aunty Cedes. Her father shared only little information about his new-found sister; the most that he knew was that their mother had given them up for adoption because of her leprosy. He didn’t know much about his own mother and this sister, except that they were supposedly both born in Culion Island, a place for people with said disease. He didn’t have any idea that Mercedes existed until last month when he received her letter. She did not include a picture of herself. Mercedes had been living in a neighboring island-province all these years.

Nora’s anticipation of her aunt’s arrival exceeded her father’s. She was suddenly interested in looking at the Philippine map in school, where she found that indeed where her aunty lived and the province where their village could be found were separated only by a small body of water. To her it looked so small in the map—she measured the entire distance with her forefinger— that she imagined crossing it. When the woman arrived, there would be someone to look after her—and not just someone, but a responsible, loving adult who would see her. That’s how Nora imagined her Aunty Cedes would be. Nora did most of the chores at home, especially when her mother got pregnant again. It had been three years since the birth of Claudine, their youngest and the one their father had hoped to be a boy. Nora cooked meals, fetched water, cleaned the house, took care of the two smaller girls, washed their clothes, attended to her mother who had been having a difficult pregnancy and rarely left her sleeping mat. Nora stopped going to school, for the second time that she was supposed to be in fourth grade. She should be in grade five when the school was to open in June. But all these things that Nora did could not equal what a son could do, Nora’s father often lamented—to help him in the farm and to protect the family, in case something happened to him.

Nora would tell her Tiya about these chores and the story behind her name; or maybe her aunt knew more about this former actress, the legendary Nora Aunor, the villagers’ favorite star. The woman would be the one to tell her stories. Nora anticipated feeling embarrassed when being introduced to her Aunty Cedes. She would not know how to talk to her, but she could imagine that when the woman called on her, she would not hesitate to come and sit by her side on their bamboo bench. This was their only furniture for the visitors while she and her sisters just sat on the bamboo floor. She would probably put her hand and arm on her Aunty Cedes’s lap or she would lean on the woman’s arm. But Nora did not plan to talk. She would definitely not intrude in the conversation between her father, mother, and Aunty Cedes. She was convinced though that the woman would not mind talking to a child like her. Aunty Cedes would be interested to find more about her, to talk to her and ask what grade she was in. What was it that she always did at home, where would she need help, and what were her favorite things? This last question would not be easy to answer. Nora hadn’t thought of what she wanted most of the time. But she might be able to think of an answer, maybe several answers, after a while.

She would tell her Tiya about King and that King’s name, Joaquin Amador, sounded more like an older person’s name. She would tell her that King was her playmate, friend and almost-brother. That King was the nephew of the village chief. But what would she say about her friend’s parents? The truth was she didn’t know much about King’s parents, only that they had left him when he was still very young to the care of his Uncle Rolly. King had once mentioned to her that his parents were with rebels living in the mountain, but Nora wouldn’t know how to explain to her aunt who or what they were. She only remembered that the children had been prohibited to talk about these people, especially when the soldiers roamed the village and inspected their houses because they were all suspected of hiding the armed ones. So much of these things she didn’t understand well. She would instead tell Aunty Cedes about her and King’s escapades. That they loved to go to the shallow part of the river at the foot of the mountain; that was always the best part of her daily errands, going there to wash their clothes, to swim and submerge her face into the water to look for tiny fishes. She often promised to bring one home to cook, but she never did. She and King just played. She would ask her aunt if she was interested in exploring the lower part of the mountain that was easier to reach; to see and know the different names of plants and trees, or to catch dragonflies with her. She would teach her how to cook meals using coconut milk, with fish and vegetables like malunggay or sili and gabi leaves as main ingredients. Or when there was no rice, how to set aside the dried and squeezed, grated coconut meat to be boiled, sprinkled with salt and eaten like rice and dish combined.

Her Aunty Cedes would like it here—Nora had predicted this the moment she came to know about the woman’s existence. She would love the people here and they would love her back; they would invite her to the pondahan for banter and to share laughs with them just before sunset. Nora wanted to watch more future scenes with her aunt in her mind, but sleep began to dull her imagination as she listened to the rain. She started feeling cold as she thought of so many other things she would be telling and doing with her Aunty Cedes if the woman presented herself at the doorstep this evening of Good Friday. She also planned to ask her about her hometown and for stories about her own childhood, was the last thought that entered Nora’s mind before she closed her eyes.