PORTENTS by Jessica Zafra
Positive, she said cheerily, as if I shouldn’t
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 mouth—I ran to the
sink and heaved. Congratulations, it’s 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 I’d 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 wasn’t
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. That’s 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 husband’s watches. Or was it Mrs.
San Juan, I can never remember.
A nervous breakdown would’ve been in
order, or a fit of tears and keening, the kind
that comes with a runny nose and smeared
mascara. But I’ve 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
blanknesss—there are times when I just
don’t feel anything.
Ramon also claims he can read my thoughts
by looking at me—he says I’m transparent. I
hope so; it’s embarrassing to tell somebody
there’s 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 Michael’s
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
body—he 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 couldn’t
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.
“It’s 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, it’s
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 don’t think
St. Martin rode a horse.”
“No, stupid,” he said. “You’re thinking of
St. Martin de Porres. We’re 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 it’s really the end. I mean, I
don’t even have a kid yet.”
I looked away so he wouldn’t 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 abortionist’s 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 Wilma’s insides, as torn and bloody
as a battlefield. She said she’d regretted her
last abortion: it was a girl, she’s 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 she’d 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 he’d 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.
“It’s going to be bad,” he was saying. “By
next year the official exchange rate could be
28 pesos to the dollar. That’s a conservative
projection. We haven’t 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 wasn’t—I 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
Pavlov’s dogs. “I’m sorry,” he said. “I know
we haven’t seen each other much lately, but
it’s been hell at the office.” Without missing
a beat he slid his hand up my skirt. Boy, he
was smooth, no one would’ve 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 didn’t 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?”
“What’s the matter with you?” he said.
Funny he should use the exact same words
he said coming up to me at Diday’s 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 weren’t any
paper bags, and when he found a plastic
shopping bag I didn’t 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 wasn’t going to follow me,
he hated scenes—and 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 Lady’s Seven
Sorrows—white blouse, blue necktie, and a
navy-blue skirt—only 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 spanking—the
nuns were an enlightened bunch—but after
fifteen minutes of having guilt laid thickly
on you, you’d wish they’d give you ten
lashes instead and get it over with.
Corporal punishment would simplify
everything. For sleeping with a guy you
weren’t married to, you’d 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 I’d been
such a good girl too, until recently, anyway,
so I’d 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
couldn’t be said of a lot of things. Pro:
Maybe I’ll 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: I’m not sure I’d 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. She’s in California, running a
Filipino restaurant, and she’s always going
on about the decline of traditional Filipino
values. I don’t 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.
“What’s going on?” I asked Pocholo. He
was alternately squirting his asthma
medication into his mouth with an inhaler
and stuffing folders into his briefcase.
“There’s 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.
“That’s crazy,” I said. “You can’t 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, I’m not leaving,” I declared. “I’m not
going to fall for an idiotic prank.”
“This building could collapse!” he
screeched. “Like the Hyatt Terraces!”
“You can’t 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, “It’s almost time.”
“It’s a prank,” I said. “I’m not leaving.”
“They’re closing the building,” she said.
“Everyone’s getting out. Do you want to get
locked in?”
She had a point. I got my bag—I could use
the afternoon off, anyway.
I figured I’d 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 kid’s
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. I’ve 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
mother’s 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.
“You’re always home on Sunday.”
“It’s 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 O’s.
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 Pocholo’s 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 didn’t 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 didn’t need your own mother plotting to
get rid of you.
Ramon came in at six. His hair looked like
he’d 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.”
“Doesn’t it worry you?”
“It’s not like I can do anything about it. If
it’s true. What’s scary is being the last
person on earth,” Ramon said.
"Everyone else is dead, and you wander
around the rubble and slowly realize you’re
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. “We’re being morbid
tonight.”
“I can’t 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 sky—a 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. You’re seeing
things, I told myself. Pregnant women do it
all the time, it’s hormones or something.
“What’s wrong?” said Ramon.
“Nothing,” I said, and in the pit of my
stomach I felt a little kick.
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