Different Countries

Chapter 2

2KATHERINE ROQUE sat on the grass beside her Lola Alma’s grave. She was mulling over the new project being offered to her, but from time to time she looked absentmindedly at Dennis and Phirun, who were inspecting other graves. It was a peaceful afternoon; even the trees and wind hardly created noise as if they too had agreed to take a nap in the late afternoon. The word “family” wanted to pop up in her mind as Katherine looked at her husband and the boy, but she pushed it down. It was too soon, she thought. She was not ready to accept Phirun as her own child. Maybe she didn’t even want to be ready.

It was Dennis who had adopted the orphaned boy, and Katherine could have told her husband outright that she didn’t agree with him. But she had kept quiet and nurtured the hurt inside; some of her anger had actually been directed at herself although she blamed Dennis too, and often not silently. The boy was the son of the laundry woman in the staff house where Dennis had stayed with three other Filipinos. They were then working at the Cambodian office of the non-government organization Oxford International Support. Dennis told Katherine that adopting Phirun as a brother was him being considerate of how Katherine would feel. He did not expect her to be a mother to an adopted eight-year-old boy. It was a time when the two of them were not even sure if there was a marriage to work on, and forcing on her the adoption of a son would have destroyed any hope that they could stay together.

Katherine had lived most of her life by the code of her causes and political beliefs. In her mind, she knew that she would be advancing the interest of Phirun, a child with a right, but there was something not settled inside her that she continued to ignore and allowed to fester. This time the non-government organization Protect Children International in Manila heard about the work Katherine did in Phnom Penh as a volunteer teacher in a village pre-school. She had taught basic reading in English; she even found out, and felt good about it, that she could be a good storyteller. She not only had a knack for telling stories but for creating them. Katherine learned how to use stories to help children and their mothers cope with stress related to poverty and conflicts in the family and community. Since Katherine had returned to Manila with Dennis and Phirun several months ago, Katherine acquired the image of being a child rights advocate. Organizations heard about the adoption of the Cambodian boy. But this made Katherine feel dishonest. Katherine knew she still needed to mature as a human rights defender. She wanted to get more involved in projects for children. She hadn’t returned to media work, and for a long time Katherine thought she missed it, that there would be no alternative job for her. But she slowly, tentatively made the transition to another career and was actually pleased about it. This new project involving children would be propitious. It would distract her again from thinking about a particular boy—and a particular childhood, a voice in her head added. It would be easier for her to deal with these things when she looked at them as a matter of social issue and not as part of her chaotic past.

So here she was regularly visiting her grandmother, believing that communing with the dead could resolve her inner conflicts. But with her mother, who had been calling her, she refused to talk. It was convenient to arouse guilt from her mother than deal with the painful past.

From a blazing orange, the sun was now beginning to lose its glare; the breeze was cooler, causing the hair on Katherine’s arms to tingle. Katherine saw Dennis and Phirun approaching her, the vanishing sun behind them. She stood up to meet the two halfway.