PORTENTS by Jessica Zafra

Positive, she said cheerily, as if I shouldnt go out and hang myself this instant. I held
on to the phone for a long time; I was sure that if I let go I would fall down. The
coffee turned to mud in my mouthI ran to the sink and heaved. Congratulations, its
a fetus. You frigging idiot.

Afterwards I sat at the kitchen table and tried to make sense of the stuff swirling
around in my head. Visions of blood and umbilical cords and feeding bottles whirled
before my eyes like malevolent frisbees. The newspaper was lying next to the platter
of toast; I read the headline about two hundred times. May use poison gas, Iraq
warns. Next to it a picture of a dead Kurdish woman clutching the body of her dead
child. Mother. Child. I felt like throwing up all over again. I imagined a creature
ripping out of my stomach in a gory mess, like the monster in Alien.

There was a Post-it note on the mirror: Lunch with Lawrence, 12:30, Lawrence
being a fifty-fifty candidate for the father. I painted a face on and stared at the mirror.
I saw my belly swelling up, my clothes rising like a circus tent, and all I could think
about was the ten pounds Id just lost, and the new dress I bought to mark the
occasion. Finally I got my new dress out of the closet and put it on while it still fit.

In the elevator my next-door neighbor smiled and said Good morning. She had this
sort of knowing smile, and I found myself wondering if she knew about me. I wasnt
just being paranoid; this is Manila, the neighbors know everything. They are
extremely sympathetic, and if you let them they will take over your life. It turned out
she was just trying to sell me a watch. Her husband had managed to get out of Kuwait
by driving across the desert, and when he got home the banks refused to change his
Kuwaiti dinars. Thats why she was selling his watches. I felt kind of sorry for Mrs.
Santos, setting out with her imitation Gucci handbag and several dozen gold bracelets
to sell her husbands watches. Or was it Mrs. San Juan, I can never remember.

A nervous breakdown wouldve been in order, or a fit of tears and keening, the kind
that comes with a runny nose and smeared mascara. But Ive never been one for
hysterics. Thanks to my parents, by the time I was eight, the sight of a chair being
hurled across the room was no longer cause for alarm. Maybe there is something to be
said for a lousy home life. Ramon says my emotional range is limited to rage, guilt,
and occasional hilarity. He neglected to mention blanknesssthere are times when I
just dont feel anything.

Ramon also claims he can read my thoughts by looking at mehe says Im
transparent. I hope so; its embarrassing to tell somebody theres a fifty per cent
chance that he may be a father in several months.

By the time it occurred to me to catch a ride I was halfway to my office and decided
to walk the rest of the way. I was swallowed up by the crowd of people hurrying to
work; rising above the din of traffic, their footfalls sounded like the marching of a
distant army.

In front of the church where rosaries and good-luck charms were sold under the
baleful stare of the Archangel Michaels statue, a strange figure appeared on my right;
a filthy man with long, matted hair. A tattered bag was slung across his bare chest,
upon which his ribs protruded like spikes. A thick layer of soot covered his emaciated
bodyhe looked like a walking pile of ashes. He started speaking to me in urgent
tones, as if he were revealing important secrets, and there was a crazy glint in his
eyes. I understood nothing. He was speaking either in dialect of in gibberish, I
couldnt tell, I looked on stupidly. People stared, expecting perhaps that he would
produce a cleaver and hack me to death. The man went on with his weird recitation;
why he chose me I had no idea, maybe he could see past the designer clothes into my
dark and grimy soul. After a while he frowned like a teacher who had just given up on
a particularly moronic student. Then he wheeled and dashed into the church, stopping
a moment to rub with his filthy hand the scowling face of the Archangel Michael.

Through the glass I could see the cashier, Wilma, on the telephone, spewing vile
words like poisoned toads into the receiver. She was screaming at some poor bastard
who owed her money. Across from me, Pocholo, in his pink shirt and red paisley
necktie, sat flipping through the morning papers.

Its exactly as Nostradamus said, Pocholo said. He predicted earthquakes signaling
the end of the world, and we had that big one last month. Then he said a leader from
the Middle East would launch a world war. I thought it would be Khadaffi but no, its
Saddam Hussein.

Sure, I said. I watched Wilma slam the phone so hard it fell to the floor. Cursing
mightily, she stopped to pick it up. On this particular day she was clad in polyester
cloth abloom with pink and purple flowers, which made her look like a demented
sofa.

Anyway, Pocholo continued, my aunts say they saw this vision in Taal. His voice
dropped to a whisper. They saw a horseman in the sky.

A what?

A man on a horse. Riding across the sky. A hundred schoolchildren saw it.
According to my aunt it looked like the statue of St. Martin that stands in their
church.

St. Martin on a horse? I said. Maybe it was St. George or Joan of Arc. I dont think
St. Martin rode a horse.

No, stupid, he said. Youre thinking of St. Martin de Porres. Were elating about
St. Martin of Tours. And you know what? My aunt says they saw the same vision just
before World War II. Then the Japanese arrived. He ran his fingers through his
artfully moussed and tousled hair. Oh my God, what if its really the end. I mean, I
dont even have a kid yet.

I looked away so he wouldnt see me grimace, and was just in time to see Wilma
spitting into her wastebasket.

All morning I wondered whether I should ask Wilma for her abortionists address.
She would give the address, I knew, even accompany me to the place. Probably some
decrepit wooden house in the fetid alleys of Tondo, where the gangs hunted each
other down with homemade revolvers. Wilma hid nothing, she wore her brazen
honesty like a soiled and rusty halo. She had had four abortions, she told me casually
while I was brushing my teeth in the bathroom; the washerwoman down her street
performed the operation, she owed Wilma money. I imagine Wilmas insides, as torn
and bloody as a battlefield. She said shed regretted her last abortion: it was a girl,
shes always wanted a baby girl. She put the fetus in a jar of formalin and kept it in
the drawer where her wedding dress, which had outlasted her marriage, lay yellowing
among mothballs and dead flowers.

The others shed flushed down the toilet.



Lawrence ate his lunch the way he lived his life: very carefully, as if he would choke
on it. Everything about him was resoundingly correct, from his hair to his Italian
shoes, from the schools hed attended to the fashionable gym where he wrestled with
machines three times a week. I knew that as he read the menu he was figuring out
how much cholesterol, how much sodium and fat were in the entrees.

Its going to be bad, he was saying. By next year the official exchange rate could
be 28 pesos to the dollar. Thats a conservative projection. We havent considered oil
prices and the damage from the earthquake. Daintily, he chewed on his vegetable.
Inflation will go through the roof, he added, almost with relish.

While he delivered his analysis of the economy, I twirled the noodles around my fork
but I hardly ate anything. No appetite. Idly, I wondered if Lawrence was sleeping with
someone else. One of the girls from his office, someone tall and svelte who worked in
PR, shopped in Hong Kong, and wore linen suits with tiny skirts. I concluded that he
wasntI had no illusions about his undying love and fidelity, but I trusted his fear of
AIDS.

Am I boring you? he said at last. Mr. Sensitive. He put his hand on my knee
maybe he expected me to salivate like one of Pavlovs dogs. Im sorry, he said. I
know we havent seen each other much lately, but its been hell at the office.
Without missing a beat he slid his hand up my skirt. Boy, he was smooth, no one
wouldve suspected that the earnest-looking young man in the pinstripe shirt could be
doing something as ignoble as giving a girl a feel in a restaurant. That guy from the
head office is a major asshole. Goes around trying to catch people loafing. The office
feels like a...

Abruptly he withdrew his hand and stood up. A large, red-nosed white man in an ill-
fitting brown suit was approaching our table.

Mr. Fowler, said Lawrence.

Alvarado, said the man, shaking the hand Lawrence extended.

How was the beach? Lawrence said. I had to restrain myself from calling the waiter
and asking for a receptacle I could puke into.

Fine, said Fowler, Well. Enjoy your meal.

Is that the asshole from the main office? I said.

Sssh, Lawrence hissed. He might hear you.

Let him. I reached over with my fork and speared food off his plate. He hated it
whenever I did that. Lawrence had a very definite concept of mine. For instance, all
his books were stamped Private Library of Lawrence R. Alvarado. The strange
thing was, he didnt even read his books. They were lined up according to height on
his antique bookshelf, neatly covered in plastic. One time I took a book out of the
shelf, and it had been there unopened for so long the pages stuck together.

Anyway, Lawrence said, where were we?

You mean until your sahib came along?

Whats the matter with you? he said. Funny he should use the exact same words he
said coming up to me at Didays birthday party while I stood in a corner holding my
breath to get rid of my hiccups. He said he was Lawrence and I should breathe into a
paper bag, so we went into the kitchen and rummaged in the closets. There werent
any paper bags, and when he found a plastic shopping bag I didnt need anymore, my
hiccups were gone. He got my name and my telephone number, it was as easy as that.

Miggy, he said. Miggy, for Chrissakes. I knew Lawrence wasnt going to follow
me, he hated scenesand I walked out of the restaurant, it was as easy as that.

I wandered around the mall for a while. I went into stores and looked at things. There
was this outfit that looked like our uniform at the Academy of Our Ladys Seven
Sorrowswhite blouse, blue necktie, and a navy-blue skirtonly the skirt was too
short. At Seven Sorrows, skirts had to cover the entire knee area. If your knees were
exposed the nuns would give you a lecture on modesty. There was no spankingthe
nuns were an enlightened bunchbut after fifteen minutes of having guilt laid thickly
on you, youd wish theyd give you ten lashes instead and get it over with.

Corporal punishment would simplify everything. For sleeping with a guy you werent
married to, youd get, say, five hundred lashes. For sleeping with two guys, neither of
whom you were married to, one thousand lashes. For even thinking about abortion,
ten thousand lashes. And Id been such a good girl too, until recently, anyway, so Id
probably get five hundred extra lashes for being such a disappointment.

I made a mental list of the reasons for and against having this baby. Pro: This child
would be mine, really truly mine, which couldnt be said of a lot of things. Pro:
Maybe Ill turn out to be a genius who will invent something beneficial to mankind,
like a device that would cause world leaders to self-destruct if they got the urge to
wage war.

Anti: Im not sure Id be such a hot parent. I have serious deficiencies in the
responsibility department, as the credit card people will attest. Anti: The lack of a
husband, the resulting social stigma, and if not that, my own paranoia. I would drive
myself crazy wondering if someone was going to cast stones at me. Anti: my mother
would freak. Shes in California, running a Filipino restaurant, and shes always going
on about the decline of traditional Filipino values. I dont think she would appreciate
having me prove her theories. I can just see her talking to my father, blaming him for
dying young and leaving her to raise his daughter to adulthood (I was always his
daughter everytime I screwed up).

When I got back to the office people were scurrying about like newly-beheaded
chickens.

Whats going on? I asked Pocholo. He was alternately squirting his asthma
medication into his mouth with an inhaler and stuffing folders into his briefcase.

Theres going to be a big earthquake at 2:30, he said, only there were no pauses
between his words.

Says who? I demanded.

It was on the radio, he said. He snapped his briefcase shut. People were running into
elevators. Wilma let loose a steady stream of obscenities while she stuffed into
shopping bags the fake Benetton shirts she sold on installment.

Thats crazy, I said. You cant predict exactly when an earthquake will happen.

"It was on the radio, Pocholo repeated, as if media coverage were an infallible
confirmation of truth. 2:30. Powerful earthquake, intensity nine.

Well, Im not leaving, I declared. Im not going to fall for an idiotic prank.

This building could collapse! he screeched. Like the Hyatt Terraces!

You cant predict an earthquake exactly.

What if there is one? Be reasonable!

Reasonable! I nearly laughed at that. Pocholo gave up, gathered his briefcase and
inhaler, and ran to the elevator.

Come on, said Wilma, Its almost time.

Its a prank, I said. Im not leaving.

Theyre closing the building, she said. Everyones getting out. Do you want to get
locked in?

She had a point. I got my bagI could use the afternoon off, anyway.



I figured Id go home and get some sleep; maybe when I woke up this whole thing
would turn out to be a bad dream like the one that killed my Uncle Danding. One
night he ate too much rice and stewed pork, then went to bed and started screaming
horribly in his sleep. They slapped him, poured cold water on him, pounded and bit
him, but he never woke up. He died uttering strange garbled noises. The official cause
of death was cardiac arrest, but everyone said it was bangungot, the sleeping sickness.

It did seem like a dream, the crowd of people gathered at the parking lot and looking
at the building, waiting for the swaying to start. Idiots, I muttered, as I flagged down a
taxi.

Where to? the driver snarled.

Salcedo, I said.

Too near, he snapped, zooming off before I could get in the cab. Taxi drivers! This
was not a great moment for humanity: everyone was being an idiot or an asshole.

All the taxis were taken, and the buses were so full people were sprouting out the
windows. I could see the passengers crammed together like fillings in an enormous
sandwich, bumping and rubbing against each other with every lurch of the bus.
Maybe if something asks who my kids father is, I could say I took a really crowded
bus and got knocked up.

By the time I got back to my apartment my feet were throbbing. A menu from a pizza
parlor that delivered had been shoved under my door; reading it I had a sudden wild
craving for anchovy pizza. Pregnant women are supposed to have these wild cravings,
but I was slightly worried. Ive heard old people say that what you crave during
pregnancy determines how your child will turn out. For instance, if you crave guavas,
your child will be stubborn. My friend claims her clumsiness was caused by her
mothers fondness for noodles. And singkamas is supposed to produce fair-
complexioned children, no matter how dark their parents are. I thought, if I ate a lot of
anchovies, would my child have scaly skin, or look like a fish?

I phoned the pizza place anyway, and when I put the phone down it rang. Hi, said
Ramon.

How did you know I was home? I said.

Youre always home on Sunday.

Its Monday.

Oh. Are you going out tonight? he said. Can I come over?

Okay.

When I hung up I noticed how quiet the building was. No radios blaring, no TV, no
brats squalling down the hall. For a second I wondered if there really was an
earthquake. The last time, when the tremors started there was a stunned silence. The
phones stopped ringing, the printers stopped whirring, conversations paused in mid-
sentence; everyone sat gripping their desks, their eyes wide open and their mouths
shaped into Os. Then people dove under tables and Wilma was saying
OhGodOhGodOhGod and there was a loud wailing in the air. When the tremors
stopped I heard Pocholos radio, and the B-52s were singing, Cosmic! Cosmic!

I switched the TV on. There was this soap opera about a little girl whom everyone
maltreated. The actress was played by a little girl was so good at being a martyr, it
was as if she had a sign on her forehead that said, Kick me. The soap was
interrupted by a news broadcast: 262 more Filipinos had fled Kuwait. A middle-aged
woman told a reporter she had been raped by Iraqi soldiers. Why should I be
ashamed, she said, I didnt want it to happen. It was amazing how casual she was.
How could she be so cool? War could break out any second, and that madman could
use chemical weapons. I thought of worldwide recession, rioting for food, and
pictures I had seen of Hiroshima after that blast.

Maybe Pocholo and his aunt were right, the world was coming to an end. What a
lousy time it was to be born, with madmen waiting to gas you or blow you away, and
the earth opening up to swallow you. On the other hand, with everything going
against you, you didnt need your own mother plotting to get rid of you.



Ramon came in at six. His hair looked like hed cut it himself, which he often did. He
brought a take-out box of friend noodles and a videotape of Road Runner cartoons. I
heated the pizza leftovers and he ate them on the card table on the terrace.

He looked exhausted. I stayed up late filling out the forms for my grant, he
explained, rubbing his eyes.

I had a weird day, I said. I told him about the street crazy in front of the church, and
his strange message.

He rubbed a spot of sauce off my chin with his thumb. Maybe it was an obscene
proposal. Or maybe he was speaking Aramaic. Repent or else.

My officemate says the world is ending, I said.

He ate the last crumb of pizza. Maybe.

Doesnt it worry you?

Its not like I can do anything about it. If its true. Whats scary is being the last
person on earth, Ramon said.

"Everyone else is dead, and you wander around the rubble and slowly realize youre
alone.

God, I said. What would you do?

Keep looking for another survivor. Try to go crazy, he reached over and picked a
noodle from my plate. Were being morbid tonight.

I cant help it, I said. All this talk about war.

It started to rain, so we got up and went inside. As I closed the door to the terrace I
thought I saw something in the skya man on a black horse, riding through the rain.

You want some coffee? Ramon called from the kitchen.

Yes, please, I said. My knees were wobbly, I had to sit down. Youre seeing things,
I told myself. Pregnant women do it all the time, its hormones or something.

Whats wrong? said Ramon.

Nothing, I said, and in the pit of my stomach I felt a little kick.