Different Countries

Chapter 3

3“IF SHE COMES, will you allow me to show her this place, our hide-out?”

“Who will come? When will she come? And why would she want to see our cave?”

Nora and Joaquin’s cave was actually a big burrow that could fit their small bodies in. It was an artificial cave, more like a well designed excavation that was a result of something not good—a big gorge created on the mountain’s cheek by the flash foods that carried down uprooted trees and those felled and left behind by the loggers the previous year. Two consecutive typhoons had ravaged the province before the hired men of logging companies could transport the timber out. Floods occurred more often during the rainy season since the logging companies had started operating in the village in the early 1990s. Many years after, there was hardly any original growth in the mountain, when as recently as a decade ago the province had been known for its hardwood. The logged areas had since been planted with bamboo, rattan, ipil-ipil, which grew faster and thus the waiting time for the timber business was shorter. These species were harvested and used mostly by the furniture industry within and outside the province. Even children like Nora and King knew about the effects of the logging operations. There was a time when they couldn’t swim in the river because of the felled trees that were rolled down from the mountain. But stumbling upon this secret haven was for the two kids a happy outcome of the outsiders’ unwelcome activities.

“My Tiya Cedes, of course. You already knew about what happened and still you ask all these who and when and what.”

“Por Diyos, por engkanto, Nora. You are not yourself again. I am afraid you are getting crazier everyday. She is not coming. Your parents will report to the police that she is a missing person. It had been two weeks since she was supposed to come and did not. In fact, her husband, your uncle, is arriving tomorrow to meet your parents. And my uncle said…”

“What did your uncle say?”

“Doesn’t matter; doesn’t concern you.”

King had been Nora’s friend for four years now. They constantly saw each other in school, but it was here in the village where they often got together. Nora hated King when he turned cryptic like now; and this often happened. He would say something she would not immediately understand, because there were some things only he seemed to be aware of. In the past when Nora would ask for more explanation, King either changed the subject of their conversation or would say that what it was not important anyway. King at fourteen was only almost two years older than Nora, but sometimes Nora regarded him as someone several years older. King had just finished sixth grade and in June he would be attending secondary school in the town proper. Nora believed that King acted beyond his age because he didn’t have brothers and sisters. He had been around old people, like his uncle and spinster aunt, since he was very young. King’s aunt was what folk in their village called old maid, a woman on whom fate had a gripe—that’s why she didn’t catch the last train to a wedding. The girl didn’t know that her father had been considered the equivalent of spinster before he got married. But unlike her father who caught the last train, no more trains would be coming for King’s aunt. The woman was known in the village as a kind person—everyone’s Ate or Manang; though Nora felt awkward when older people called King’s Tiya Edith “ate.” Nora’s baby sisters called her that, being the eldest. She imagined an Ate like her was supposed to be young, and was not someone whose age gap from her would be something like a math problem in school that she couldn’t solve. Even Estela, her mother, who was a lot younger than King’s aunt, couldn’t be called an Ate. Nora didn’t want to get into math problems, as Math was her least favorite subject in school. When she returns to school again—probably after her mother gave birth—it would still be the class she would dread.

Nora saw herself as King’s opposite. The boy was a reticent child with a serious expression on his face and a forehead that always creased. He had that brooding look that could be mistaken as an expression of anger or of being irritated with someone. If he didn’t appear sad, he looked angry. But Nora was talkative, to the point of being tactless and senseless. Even if she had to take care of her sisters, run errands for her father in the farm, and tackle other household chores, Nora chose to remain a jolly person. Nobody would know she was hungry because her mother didn’t give her coins before going to school, or that her mother cried at night after putting to sleep her two younger sisters who were cranky and fussy because they slept with empty stomachs. Nora spent recess just chatting and playing with schoolmates; there were only a few students who had something to eat during recess, and Nora wasn’t one of them.

King not entirely without parents, but they couldn’t take care of him now because the soldiers were after them. He had been left to the care of his Tiyo Rolly, the older brother of King’s mother who was the youngest among three siblings. King lived with his uncle in a one-room shanty on the slope of the mountain, among what used to be heavy growth before the loggers came and started cutting the trees. Not far from where the two lived was known as the hiding place of the New People’s Army—this was what Nora had been made to understand by her parents and the older folk who often gathered in front of Manang Edith’s tiny store. This was the only store in the village and the place where one saw everyone or heard the latest news from town.

Now King seemed privy to something that had not been part of the conversations at the pondahan and the boy wasn’t willing to share it with Nora. Nora was not about to let this pass. Any information about her Tiya Cedes was not to be neglected nor denied her. Nothing had occupied her thinking these past days more than the image of her aunt, a woman with no face. Nora decided she was prepared to fight with King today. She didn’t often do this because in the end it was she who initiated reconciliation if King didn’t want to, and even if she felt she had done nothing wrong. This afternoon she wanted to stand up to him. This tiny cave always affected her in a weird way. This was not only her and King’s secret haven; here, she was a different Nora.