Compilation of Literary Texts - 2019-2020

ADDU-SHS
ATENEO DE DAVAO UNIVERSITY
SENIOR HIGH SCHOOL
A.Y. 2019-2020
21 st Century Literature from the

Philippines and the World Literary Texts
1st Grading (Fiction and Drama)

Drifting House by Krys Lee
Leg Men by Dominique Cimafranca
A Very Old Man with Enormous Wings by Gabriel Garcia Marquez
The Man with his Back Turned by Agustin Cadena (Translated by Patrica Dubrava)
Louis Vuitton by Teresa May Mundiz
Limos by Chris David Lao
The Abortion Clinic by Javier Torregosa
2nd Grading (Essay and Poetry)

Exploring Identity Construction in Contemporary Young Adult Fiction: Excerpt Young Adult Literature in the 21 st
Century: Moving Beyond Traditional Constraints and Conventions by Jeffrey S. Kaplan
The Art of 'hugot' in our Republic of 'sawi' by Gideon Lasco
Si Barbie’g si Tarzan by Merlie Alunan
I, Higaonon by Telesforo Sungkit Jr.
And You Call Me Colored by Agra Gra
Salt by Anamika
Love Like Salt

1 ST GRADING (FICTION AND DRAMA)
DRIFTING HOUSE
By Krys Lee
The day the siblings left to find their mother, snow devoured the northern mining town. Houses loomed like
ghosts. The government’s face was everywhere: on the sides of a beached cart, above the lintel of the post office,
on placards scattered throughout the surrounding mountains praising the Dear Leader Kim Jong-il. And in the
grain sack strapped to the oldest brother Woncheol’s back, their crippled sister, the weight of a few books.
The younger brother Choecheol ran ahead. Like a child, Woncheol thought, frowning, though he too was still a
child, an eleven-year-old with a body withering on two years of boiled tree bark, mashed roots, the occasional
grilled rat and fried crickets on a stick. He picked across the public square, afraid to step where last month, the
town had watched two men dragged in necklaces of bones and then hung for cannibalizing their parents. They
passed a vendor and woman haggling as if on the frontier of madness. On the straw mat between them one
frozen flank of beef? Pork? Or human? No one knew any more, though they pretended to.
‘She’s slowing us down,’ Choecheol said as he circled back, his whine like a roomful of lost children. ‘We’ll be
dead before we reach China.’
‘Shut up.’ Woncheol tied his brother’s laces in symmetrical bows. For younger children obeyed the older one who
obeyed the mother who obeyed the father who obeyed the Dear Leader. For the school textbooks stated that a
swallow had descended from heaven at the Dear Leader’s birth, trees bloomed and snow melted in the Dear
Leader’s presence. He stubbornly ignored the salmon fishery and the town’s vegetable gardens that the soldiers
guarded, shooting intruders on sight. For there was an order to everything. Or there used to be.
Still, he soldiered his siblings up the mountain slope of granite and bare, spectral trees with the assurance of an
oldest son. So certain he did not slow, though his legs shook under her slight weight. The Tumen River to China
would be frozen for crossing, and he felt ready to make the necessary sacrifices.
Choecheol walked ahead, his nose close to the ground as he looked for acorns. He passed one near his shoe.
Woncheol picked it up, and waited until his brother was deep in the forest before he set his sister on a hillock of
granite. While he struck the nut against a rock, she watched with the expectancy of someone who knew she was
loved. And he fulfilled his promise, peeled the woody skin back a thin strip at a time. The acorn’s meat, wrinkled
and gray. The size of a rat’s brain. He broke it into nearly perfect thirds, and into her waiting, open mouth fed
Gukhwa the largest chunk. His hands were shaking. It was good, without insects.
‘ Obba , where are birds?’ Gukhwa said, her breath a sick hiss.
‘You babo , it’s too cold for birds.’ He was angry because she still trusted him.
Then he remembered her thirst and scooped up snow, which she licked off his palm.
‘ Obba , it hurts.’ She stuck her frozen yellowed tongue out for inspection. ‘ Obba ,’ she said again, and smiled, a
little, as if the words older brother were a song she liked to sing.
He cleaned her face with his mittens, softly scraped under her fingernails with pine needles. Reminded himself
again how impossible it was to carry her on the long walk to China. Then he closed his eyes, twisted their
mother’s scarf around Gukhwa’s neck and choked her. It was better this way, he was convinced, than to leave her
afraid, starving slowly to death. He did not let go until she stopped moving.
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21st Century Literature from the Philippines and the World
Oldest Son, please forgive my selfishness, his mother had written. You’re their mother and father now. No one
but them, in the town created after the Korean War for the wavering or hostile classes, were surprised when their
mother, rumoured to pollute her widowed flesh by selling herself to feed the three children, fled a week ago. She
was only following the thousands escaping to China after the government stopped food rations in their town
altogether. Hunger changed people, destroyed the strongest bonds between parents and children and young and
old, and a woman with disgraced flesh was already a broken woman. As the old saying went, If you starve three
days, there is no thought that does not invade your imagination. But Woncheol believed they would find her, the
way he believed in the sky and the snow, the American imperialists that the Dear Leader said were starving the
country out of existence. It was so inconceivable to be without his mother, he had even sacrificed his sister.
But the sack, now the weight of a house, a squid boat, Woncheol did not give up as planned. He lugged the sack
with her body across rock, ridge, his hands burning, until he couldn’t. In the white sun, his cheekbones were
nearly visible through the stretched skin. Gukhwa’s fingers were still haunting on his back.
‘What do we do?’ he said. ‘What did I do wrong?’
Choecheol’s face was blank with waiting because his hyeong , his older brother, always knew what to do.
But Woncheol only stared at the sack.

‘We can’t bury her,’ he finally said. ‘The ground’s all rock.’
The downbeat of his words skittered across the icy plain. Choecheol pivoted away. Eyes wild for escape.
He sang, ‘One dead American plus one dead American equals two dead Americans,’ while crushing snow into
powder, trying to distract Woncheol.
But it was time. Woncheol turned back the lip of the sack. She tumbled out. He moved his hands over Gukhwa’s
face, unable to comprehend what he had done. He could only look at her a fragment at a time. Her cheeks the
shade of boiled snails. Her arms two stiff twigs.
‘I can do my arithmetic,’ Choecheol sang. ‘One dead American –’
Woncheol forced his brother’s face close. Their sister’s forehead stippled with sores.
‘Look hard,’ he said. ‘She’s gone.’
His brother stopped. His eyes, as blank as coffin lids.
‘Ten comrades died this year,’ he said. He smiled so hard, he became teary from the effort. ‘If I don’t think about
her, she’s not there.’
Their baby sister. The sun, hot on Woncheol’s chilled face, changed her into polished bone. Into something
unworldly, numinous. He had fed and bathed her, had been her drifting house. Something stirred in him. A
memory of an earlier time. The trees, heavy with swallows. When the birds rose into the air, the trees lifting with
them. His sister’s feet the size of a swallow. Swallows, they could go anywhere, his mother had said, but they
returned because it was their home. Suddenly Woncheol was afraid.
‘I killed her.’ He said this with surprise, as if he had just realized it himself.
‘You – didn’t – kill – anyone!’ Choecheol covered his ears and began to sing.
Woncheol began folding the sack in neat creases. The praise of his teachers. His mother’s trust. Nothing could
help him now. He folded until Choecheol complained of the cold, his blue-tinted lips puckered like an
old halmeoni looking for her teeth.
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Only then, Woncheol took two fistfuls of snow. He smoothed it down over his sister and all his memories. Added
snow until a shape grew resembling the tumuli graves of their ancestors. He stepped back and circled the mound,
watching it.
Sooner or later, everyone in town heard the stories of those who crossed the border and returned with a miracle
of money and food. Of ironmonger Lee safe in the German Embassy, or rice-cake-turned-grass-cake vendor Miss
Han furtively married to a Chinese farmer, despite the Chinese government’s bounty on North Korean heads. But
Mrs Ku with child was beaten off the US Embassy gates by Chinese police. Woojin, a boy of eight, killed by
borders guards. Daejon’s uncle, drowned in the monsoon-swollen Tumen River to China. The young and beautiful
Soonah, raped but lucky to be alive. Thirteen-year-old Sora, caught and sold by Chinese traffickers. Which meant
rape too, Seungwoo’s aunt had said, but at least she’s in China. Whether any of this was actually true, no one
knew, the same way they silently speculated whether someone was an ally or informer, or whether someone who
disappeared in the night had been imprisoned in a concentration camp or had escaped to China, and they
watched and waited as the rumours turned into hardened truth.
Still, as the sun set, the two black dots moved across the great white back of the mountain’s summit. Past the last
stately granite boulders carved in with the Great Leader Kim il-sung’s and the Dear Leader Kim Jong-il’s epithets.
The brothers moved without knowledge in the path their mother had embarked on a month ago when she had
made her terrible decision, followed the ghostly steps of others whose hunger and despair had strained their
allegiances to family, to country, to love. Behind Woncheol, his brother struggled from rock to rock. So small,
Woncheol thought, so breakable, watching his brother’s back as if he would lose him if he stopped looking.
‘Careful!’ he said, afraid for him.
‘Yes, hyeong .’
After a few hours, they rested.

‘I’m wet all over,’ Choecheol complained, as he kept trying to strip, but Woncheol made sure his brother mittened
his hands in socks.
It happened when Woncheol looked for walking sticks. As he wandered between the trees, a white apparition
lumbered into him. Its sound, an unearthly menace. Fear hooked his throat like a fish bone and he screamed, his
hands helmeted his head. But it was Choecheol, laughing. His hair, shoulders, banked with crystals of snow, gave
him a phantom look.
‘ Babo ,’ Woncheol said, almost weeping from fear.
She was only four, she was his sister. He remembered loving her. He dumped an armful of snow on his brother’s
head. ‘You stink of American feet.’
‘I scared you.’ Choecheol’s voice fluttered with the nervous padding of birds. ‘There’s nothing to scare us, is
there?’
As they walked, the rocks took on shapes. ‘Over there,’ Woncheol said. ‘See the pigs?’
He pointed at the gray-pink ears pinned back as the fatty snouts rooted for food.
‘You mean that patchy one, that speckly runt?’ Choecheol pointed at a rock canopied in snow. ‘Kill it! Eat it!’
They giggled now, unable to stop.
‘And when he walks, his balls wiggle,’ Woncheol said. ‘They’re melons!’
His brother pantomimed a melon-balled, strutting pig.
Woncheol laughed, hot with happiness, until his thoughts migrated to his sister. He stopped laughing.
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They continued west. The wind was a bellow. The pine needles, tiny fingers. The crunch of snow, powdery bones.
Even with newspaper folded into his ears, he heard the whispering sounds of Obba. Obba. From all four sides,
she seemed to call him.
Other visions followed.
The bushes keened with animal sounds. He whirled, a rubber band out of his pocket ready to fire. But there was
no squirrel, no soldier casting a fatal shadow; only their sister. Her pallid skin. She leapt from rock to rock like a
fawn. She smiled and wiggled her tiny fingers at him in the air, showing him, no hands! His breath came in ragged
gasps. Still, her waifish figure stood before him. The gourd shape of her forehead. Her face, an ivory varnish. She
pulled a thread, unravelled her entire sweater before his next breath. Naked, her body flamed blue with heat. She
bent until the back of her head brushed her heel, made an exaggerated shiver. The same Gukhwa, comic even in
her revenge.
‘The most revered mountain in Joseon,’ Woncheol muttered. ‘Mountain Baeku, where our Great Leader Kim-Il
sung was born. The second-most worthy flower, Kimjongilia.’
The school routines, the lists of historical facts that he had recited faster than anyone in his class, helped
normalize his breathing.
But she was still there.
‘I’m a Joseon soldier,’ he said louder now. ‘I’m a fighting machine.’
He squinted, rubberband aimed.
His brother followed him the way he often did. He made his hands into a machine-gun, targeted a denuded fir
tree.
‘I’m getting myself a long-nose,’ he said, and popped off each potential American.
Woncheol aimed the rubber band, shot. She darted behind a tree; he hurtled behind a knot of rocks.
‘Are you scared?’ Choecheol looked ashamed for him. His legs spread out at an exaggerated distance as if to
show that he would not go hiding behind rocks. Then he clambered through her.
‘Watch out!’ Woncheol cried.
‘Watch what? The soldiers catch us, they kill us.’ Choecheol struck his foot outward in a crescent kick. ‘That’s all.’
‘It’s Gukhwa,’ Woncheol said.
His brother stiffened, stepped back. ‘There’s no ghosts here,’ he said loudly.
Woncheol shot again; it went straight through her. Gukhwa’s laugh was a baby’s gurgle that stopped abruptly. He
covered his face with his hands, seeing the lumpy grain sack.
‘We have to go back,’ Woncheol said. ‘We were crazy to try.’
‘Do you want to die?’ said Choecheol. His voice newly sharp. He stepped on his brother’s shadow. ‘I want to live.’
Woncheol looked west to China, a country where somewhere, he had a mother. Naked, her body flamed blue with
heat. There were a great many things he didn’t know, he realized, and as he gazed at the horizon of splintered
peaks, it seemed that his life, once of great import, shrank in significance. He squeezed his hands behind his
back until they stopped trembling. ‘Then let’s go,’ he said, forceful enough to reassure his brother.
Choecheol re-emerged, brambles in his hair. He stood at unsteady attention. A drunk cadet.
‘Yes, comrade!’ he cried. His voice ballooned with relief.
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The night was a black glove. The mountains, an endless rubble of loose stones. The stars, the eyes of the dead.
In the unnatural landscape, the one day felt as long as Woncheol’s entire life. None of this mattered when
Gukhwa began chanting his name.
He covered his ears. His mind wild with cannonball thoughts.
Gukhwa’s face was swollen like a pincushion, her ashen toes, braced against a tree root like a seagull perching
on a rock.
‘I want to sleep.’ Choecheol sat beside Gukhwa in the snow, his legs out like chopsticks. ‘I’ll do anything to sleep.’
‘If we sleep, we die.’ Woncheol stared at his two siblings, his loving burdens.
‘I want to sleep.’
‘A few minutes, then. Then we go.’
Woncheol drew a box in the whiteness around them. They huddled on that patch of dryness. Hugged for warmth.
‘We aren’t far,’ he said, though he did not know where they were. He spoke with the false calm of an older
brother.
‘I wish we had a big rat,’ said Choecheol. He looked up hopefully at Woncheol. ‘We could roast it on the fire.’
‘Me too.’
Woncheol tilted his head, filled his mouth with snow. The sting woke up his sleeping tongue, made it throb.
‘It tastes like cold rice,’ he said, though he did not remember the taste of rice.
‘If we had an ear of corn . . . two! Roasted.’
‘Don’t let’s talk about food.’
His brother picked his nose, considered the wet curl of mucus before twirling it into his mouth. He said, ‘Do
Chinese people really eat children’s brains?’
‘They don’t need to,’ he said. ‘They’re a land of rice bowls the size of you. That’s what people say.’
He said this, though he did not know who these people were, had only his mother’s word and the rumours spread
by other kids hustling in the market, a hope kindled, flickering dead, then kindled again by a snatch of a word, the
appearance of smuggled grain sold on the street.
‘It’s a special dish there. That’s what the older boys said.’
‘You saw what Omma brought back, the first time.’
‘Where is she?’ Choecheol hugged himself.

‘Nobody knows.’ Woncheol wrapped his arms around his brother and gazed over him west toward China. ‘Get
your rest.’
They slept. There was only the emptiness of sleep, a peaceful forever, as if Woncheol’s body desired to become
part of the snowy landscape and over time, become detritus for another generation. But a sharp movement like
teeth sinking into his arm ended the quiet.
He rolled Choecheol deep into a snowdrift. Then he jumped on the darkness, his boot smashed at where the nose
must be. Underneath him, his walking stick. His arms swung up, down. A pestle to corn. He struck and struck. He
could have stopped, but didn’t.
‘I was born a killer, too!’ Choecheol’s voice buckled. ‘I’m a fighting machine!’
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Only then Wonchoel stopped, looked at his brother’s head just above the snowdrift. A thread of mucus hung from
Choecheol’s nose. He was crying. His own brother, afraid of him. And below, there was nothing. Only the
shadows of trees. His own web of saliva in the moon. He stuffed snow in his mouth when a scream began.
Choecheol clumsily put his arms around him, but he pulled away.
‘We’ll never find her,’ Woncheol said. ‘ Omma left us. The way we left Gukhwa.’
‘ Hyeong , don’t say that!’
But Woncheol was crying because he knew it was true.

Choecheol kicked a stone downhill. It rolled until their sister stopped it with her feet. Powdered in snow, she
looked like a small, icy spirit. A chill smothered Woncheol.
‘There’s Gukhwa again,’ he said.
‘She’s a dead body.’ Choecheol shored himself up. ‘She’s someone who’s gone far away.’
‘She’s right there!’
‘There’s no such thing as ghosts!’ His brother charged ahead. ‘She’s dead, she’s dead, she’s dead!’
‘Wait for me!’ Woncheol cried.
The next morning, the Tumen River. There was the hike down, the dangerous rustle of leaves. Guards in outposts
or on patrol with Soviet machine guns and murderous boots. From an escarpment above, Woncheol watched.
Beyond was Yanji, a city where it was said the garbage could feed entire villages. Where streetlights actually
worked. There was also Gukhwa, as cold as stone. Their father, embalmed beneath the roof of coal that had
collapsed on him. The world, forever dark for them both. And Woncheol, still alive. He did not know why he
deserved this when they had not.
Noon. The brothers began the descent toward the river. Snow fell steadily, erasing their traces. The phalanx of
guards had their cozy outposts, their rice. Woncheol assumed that their uniforms would dry over lunch; they
would want to stay indoors, they would not want to get wet. Still, his heart was too fast. He muffled the sound with
his hands. They passed a glassy waterfall. Their fingernails chipped, their hands bled from the rocks. They moved
from root of spruce and fir. Slowly. The iciness in his feet traveled through his body.
Finally. Before them, a gray landscape. Meager shapes before they became a river, mountains, China. In the
distance were a desolation of cement buildings so tall, a person could disappear, never be found. The brothers
stood where so many had stood in the past five years. Felt the same fugitive fears and hopes, the same dim
sense that the world outstretched before them would never know or care about them.
‘You were a good hyeong. ’ Choecheol’s voice was as heavy as schoolbooks.
‘I’ll never make you eat arrowroot porridge again,’ Woncheol said. ‘We’ll live differently.’
He could not articulate his muddy love and fear for his brother, so he just held his hand tightly, then let go.
They ran. They pitched into the clearing. Dashed toward the river. When their feet touched the ice beneath the
snow, they skidded and fell.
‘Halt!’ A voice shouted. ‘ Meom-cheoh , or I’ll shoot!’
The man was small from a distance; he looked like a toy soldier in his earth-coloured uniform and starred cap, a
rifle slung over his shoulder like a school bag. He hefted the gun up. Stop, stop, Woncheol’s glottis throbbed. The
man aimed ahead at Choecheol, zigzagging across the ice, and pulled the trigger.
There was the sharp shriek of a bullet, then nothing. No one had been hit.
Woncheol choked.
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‘Run!’ he shouted as he slid across the plate of ice.
Choecheol looked back at him, now frozen.
‘ Hyeong ,’ he said. He was crying.
‘Your hyeong said run!’
And Choecheol ran, his light feet delicate on the ice. Each time he looked back, Woncheol shouted as he skidded
forward, until finally his little brother was too far ahead to see.
Woncheol continued to skid forward, heavier and slower than Choecheol. His sister bounded in front of him. Her
candle wax eyes, bright and white as the core of a fire. Her cheeks flamed – the only color in her stony face.
‘Please let me go,’ he begged.
Her tiny legs stayed squarely planted between him and China. He moved left; so did she. He moved right; she
mirrored him. When he stepped back, she relaxed into a smile. She did not want him to leave her. He saw this
now. His hand rose to strike her away, and her face rushed to a sad place. He could not do it. She was his sister,
so he extended his hands toward her ruined body.
Across the frozen river, the thud of approaching soldier’s steps faded as Woncheol now saw the phantom world
that had always been there. His schoolteacher scraped bark from the air. His best friend Gunhyeok, flush with his
good luck, roasted a squirrel by its tail. While the sun was eclipsed by his father’s swallows, their family home
drifted across the ice. The chimney smoke, it smelled of his mother’s vinegary cabbage, her loamy earth scent.
There was his father wearing his salty smile, strolling beside countless, diaphanous figures. And behind them,
finally, there were the shadows.
Leg Men
by Dominique Cimafranca
“There are three ways to deal with a manananggal,” said Cousin Omeng as he initiated me into the lore. “There's
the hard way, which is to go at it head-on with bolos and bamboo spears.” To emphasize this point, he brought his
bolo down on the head of a green bamboo stalk. With that one clean stroke he turned the stalk into a spear. He
charred the tip over burning coals to harden it. When it was sufficiently black, he showed his handiwork to me.
“Of course, that's not a very smart thing to do,” Cousin Omeng continued. “Remember: a manananggal is a
creature of flight. She can stay well out of the range that you can throw a spear. And if she does decide to fight —
” Cousin Omeng shuddered — “there's her powerful bat wings to reckon with.”
“I suppose it would work if there were a few dozen of us,” I pointed out.
“But there's not a dozen of us, is there?” Cousin Omeng countered, “it's just you and me. Now don't interrupt, or
we'll never get to the important parts.”
What prompted this hasty lesson was a series of manananggal sightings around our town of San Antonio. The
first one happened just the week before. Tiago and Teban, the village drunks, were staggering home from a late-
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night drinking spree. Tiago (so his story went) looked up and saw massive bat wings against the waxing moon.
Teban laughed at his friend's overactive imagination but when he looked up, he also saw those wings coming
down in a swoop.
Of course no one quite believed the town drunks. For the next two days, San Antonio had a few more jokes to
add about Tiago and Teban. But then the evening of that second day, Pedring, whom everyone knew was having
an affair with Rosa, ran screaming from their trysting place among the banana leaves. He said he saw the
manananggal fly by where he was waiting. (“Her eyes were as big as saucers!” Pedring had said, “and her tongue
waggled down to her neck!”)
Other accounts started pouring in. There was the story of Kulas, on an errand for his wife who had a midnight
craving for santol. He caught the manananggal's silhouette against the clouds. (“Her claws were razor-sharp!”
Kulas had said, “and she had fangs this long!”) Then there was the story of Berto, whose wife had banished him
from his house because he lost their savings at the cockpit, who said he saw the same. (“I could see her entrails
hanging from her waist!” Berto had said.)
All these reports sent our little town into a tizzy. The market and the plaza buzzed with rumors and tales. Young
men and women sought the village elders for half-remembered lore; the elders nodded sagely when their
prescriptions agreed, and argued fiercely when they didn't. Mothers admonished their children, wives admonished
their husbands: don't stay out too late or the manananggal will get you.
It was still several weeks till the harvest and the fiesta, but already San Antonio had come alive with the thrill of a
manananggal in our midst. Since the sightings, every day had become market day. Overnight, our reliable
vendors had discovered a lucrative market in protective charms and foul-smelling oils; and the townsfolk couldn't
buy them fast enough.
None, it seemed, was happier than Ong Teck, the Chinaman. At the first sign of trouble, the wily rascal had
cornered the market in garlic cloves and onions. When the demand went up, so did the prices. The people
grumbled, but they all bought from Ong Teck anyway.
All this would have been harmless fun until Rodrigo, the mayor's son and the manliest man in San Antonio, came
up with the brilliant idea of forming a posse to protect the town and go after the manananggal. (“We cannot allow
this beast to terrorize us!” he said in a rousing address. “Think of the children!”) Before long, he had gathered a
band of his lusty cohorts. (“We will deliver San Antonio from this creature!” he promised.) Ong Teck, who had also
cornered the market in bamboo stalks and torches, was ecstatic.
With such a brave group of men putting their lives on the line, the mayor and the village elders only saw it fit to put
together a princely bounty on the manananggal. Five thousand pesos! More than an ordinary farmer could make
in ten years. That figure sent San Antonio into an even bigger tizzy.
This is where my Cousin Omeng — and by association, I — came in. Since the announcement, everyone was
sure that the bounty would go to Rodrigo and his band. As such, they all flocked to the swain. “Rodrigo will save
us,” they said; and on the side, they whispered and winked: “Rodrigo, don't forget us, ha?”
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But not my Cousin Omeng.
Cousin Omeng was a tanner, and it was a trade that suited him well. He was strong. He was clever. He had
nimble hands. But to the people of San Antonio, all this counted for naught, because in all other respects, he was
the opposite of Rodrigo. Where Rodrigo was tall, he was short; where Rodrigo had a full head of hair, he was
going bald; where Rodrigo was handsome, he was homely. And to add to all that, between his shoulders was a
little bump, not too big, but noticeable. This, of course, marked him the village fool (and I, his loyal cousin, was his
heir apparent.) He could never be part of Rodrigo's band, even if he had wanted to.
As I said, Cousin Omeng was quite clever. When the town mayor announced the bounty, he set his eyes on the
prize. Over the years, he had collected quite a bit of lore; and among these were the ways with which to deal with
manananggal. Bound by friendship and blood, I was immediately drafted into his adventure. “I still don't see why
we have to go after her,” I said as I eyed the business end of the bamboo spear. “After all, she hasn't hurt
anyone.”
Cousin Omeng only grunted and shrugged. He made another spear from a second bamboo stalk. These had
been hard to get, seeing as how it spears were in such high demand. It seemed ridiculous, really: two spears, one
for Cousin Omeng and one for me, against the several dozen handed out among Rodrigo's band. But Cousin
Omeng was determined, and presently I saw why.
The silence of our labors was broken by a titter of chatter and giggles. Even before we spied them on the road,
we already knew who it was: Elisa and her court, on their way to join the festivities at the plaza.
Elisa was the fairest girl in San Antonio, and in fact, for several villages round. Every man had his eye on her,
wished to woo her and win her; all these she encouraged with her fluttering eyelids, only to dash their hopes with
her cruel mouth. And yet they persisted, even though they knew the coquette had eyes only for the handsome
Rodrigo.
“A very good morning to you, ladies,” Cousin Omeng said in his loudest, cheeriest voice. He leapt from our
roadside camp and bowed in courtly fashion at Elisa and her friends. Elisa did not take notice of my cousin;
instead, the sides of her lips curved up in a thin smile, and she held her head up higher. Rosa (the same one
trysting with Pedring) did cast a glance at Cousin Omeng; then, she said something to her friends that made them
burst in laughter. And so they went on, lace parasols twirling in the sun, until they disappeared around the bend.
“I don't see why you keep hoping,” I said. “She'll never look at the likes of us.”
“Have you seen her ankles?” Cousin Omeng said dreamily. “The prettiest I've seen.” How he knew despite the
long skirts all the women wore was beyond me. But that was my Cousin Omeng. “There are three ways to deal
with a manananggal,” repeated Cousin Omeng. “There's the hard way, with bolos and bamboo spears, as I said.
And then there's the easy way: with this.”
Cousin Omeng threw me a leather pouch about twice the size of my fist. The pouch was of his own make and
design, simple yet ingenious. There were no seams, it looked all of a piece. You could draw its mouth open and
close with its system of strings.
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The pouch was heavy and full, but its contents shifted easily. I opened it and looked inside.
“Salt?” I inquired.
“Yes, my cousin, salt!” Cousin Omeng said. Startled by his own exuberance, afraid that someone would hear, he
dropped his voice considerably. He went on to explain the scheme to me.
By day a manananggal was an ordinary woman, one as you may find walking in the plaza or shopping in the
market. They lived apart, though, because of their curse. Not all of them were manananggals by choice.
But in the dead of night, when the hunger came upon them, they would undergo a horrible transformation. Their
skin would melt, their hands became claws, their teeth grew into fangs. Bat wings would sprout from their backs.
Then, their bodies would split at the torso. The upper half would take flight in search of prey; but the lower half
was vulnerable.
“What does the salt have to do with it?” I asked.
“We find the manananggal's lower half and we spread salt all over it. Salt is their mortal enemy. With the lower
half destroyed, she can't come together anymore! And we can do it without even coming face-to-face with her.”
I was impressed by this strategy, until a flaw in the plan occurred to me. “Cousin Omeng,” I said, “won't it be a
problem to look for the lower half?” San Antonio itself wasn't very big, but we were surrounded all around by hills
and forests.
Cousin Omeng, though, had an answer to this objection. From his own pouch, he took out a branch from what
must have been a very ugly plant. Its length was hooked with barbs, and its leaves and buds were a dark shade
of purple. “A branch from the sidlakan plant,” he explained; “where it grows, the manananggal can't be far.”
Thus began our quest for the manananggal of San Antonio. Our search was methodical. We followed the reported
sightings and scoured the areas around for any signs of the sidlakan bramble.
The story, according to Cousin Omeng, was this: the blood of the manananggal was poison of the foulest kind.
Where it fell it would kill the plants around it. From that spot on the earth, the sidlakan would grow; where it grew
in profusion was where the manananggal effected her transformation. The sidlakan was so named because it
gave off an eerie purple glow in the dark, an astonishing property my cousin demonstrated to me with his
specimen.
Our first forays into the forests turned up nothing. We searched until early evening and turned back before it
became too dark. After all, we were going for the second, easy way (so my cousin claimed) of dealing with the
manananggal.
When we returned to San Antonio, it was with downcast hearts. Not only did we arrive empty-handed, we also
came back to an early fiesta. So sure were the townsfolk of Rodrigo's success that they roasted pigs and roasted
a calf; and since it was unthinkable to eat these delicacies alone, they also prepared the sweet sticky rice, the
fragrant spicy noodles, the strong coconut wine, and treats of every sort. To round out the affair, the rondalla band
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came to play. The whole town came alive. With their merry noise would have scared away even the most
fearsome manananggal; and if the manananggal did indeed come, they would have been too drunk to notice.
It was fiesta alright, but a fiesta to which we were not invited.
Still Cousin Omeng and I soldiered on. Come morning the usual quiet of the land would return, and Cousin
Omeng and I would find ourselves in a cheerier mood. We set off again on our hunt. The sun was high, but not
hot; the breeze from the sea blew gently on our faces and rustled the trees in whispered song. The trees were in
full leaf, their fruits ripe and heavy for the picking. The night's foul mood forgotten, Cousin Omeng would regale
me with other legends he heard, for he was a treasure trove of lore. And when that thread of conversation ran
stale, we began to make fun of Rodrigo, of his friends, of his father the blowhard mayor. And when there were no
more horrid names to throw at Rodrigo and his kinsmen, we turned to the beautiful belles of San Antonio. Elisa, of
course, was at the head of Cousin Omeng's list; and for that I made a face. How could he like such a haughty
beauty? I myself preferred Maria, because I had a weakness for pouty lips and big breasts.
We ran through the list of the girls in San Antonio. At the end of it, we hit some disappointment: however high or
low we set our sights, we were doomed to be bachelors. There we were: Cousin Omeng the hunchback, and me,
the village idiot.
Only once in our hunt for sidlakan did our conversation turn back to the manananggal, and I remember it was I
who prompted him that time.
“Cousin, you said there were three ways to deal with a manananggal,” I said when we paused to rest by the
Baniko River. “There was the hard way, and there's the easy way. But that's only two. What's the third?”
Cousin Omeng shuddered. “Oh, it's too horrible to mention,” he said.
“Hey, come on, tell me!”
He looked at me solemnly, and said: “A man has to sacrifice himself.”
“Sacrifice himself? How?”
He whispered the answer in my ear. I stared at him in disbelief; my hair stood on end.
“You're kidding!”
He shook his head in all seriousness.
Other than that, it did not feel like we were hunting the manananggal at all. It was at dusk of the third day when
we stumbled upon the manananggal's lair.
Our searches along the Baniko River and the paths through the Ypil Forest had been fruitless. We were about to
head home when, from the corner of my eye, I spotted a faint purple glow through the trees in the distance. I
gripped Cousin Omeng's arm and pointed. He nodded; he saw it too.
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We wended our way through the ypil-ypil trees. The sun was setting, painting the horizon behind us in warm
orange hues; but under the heavy cover of leaves, we were already in the shadow of the growing darkness. To
the left, to the right, we saw the glow of the scattered sidlakan plants. They made a trail that led deep into the
forest.
The sun had gone down by the time we reached a clearing in the woods. In its place was the rising full moon. The
area was aglow, not only with the light from the moon, but from the sidlakan that grew thick on the ground.
At the far end of the clearing, there was a lonely nipa hut, dark inside but for the faint glow of candlelight.
Cousin Omeng motioned me to squat, and he did likewise. We hid behind the trunk of a giant acacia tree. We
stole quick glances at the hut, then ducked for cover lest we be seen.
At first it was hard to breathe. My heart beat like thunder and my chest felt tight. My mouth was dry. I would have
keeled over from fright had it not been, ironically, for the gently soothing fragrance of the sidlakan that bloomed all
around us. It was sweet yet light, unlike anything I had ever smelled. Presently, I calmed down, as did my cousin.
I don't know how long we waited. The light inside the hut flickered yet remained. Cousin Omeng and I would take
turns spying round the trunk to see if anyone had come out.
And then, Cousin Omeng whispered: “The light is out.”
I peeked at the hut. Indeed, the open window had gone black. Momentarily, we heard a sound. A figure emerged
from the door. It was a woman.
I could not quite make out her face; all I could see was that her hair was long and that her frame was tall. From
the way she moved and carried herself, I guessed that she was quite young. She climbed down the steps in
dainty steps, as women in skirts often did. I stole a glance at Cousin Omeng, and I could see that he, too, was
captivated by the sight.
Then the most amazing thing happened: the woman turned into a manananggal.
How shall I describe the transformation? It was neither sudden nor violent as I thought it would be. The woman
looked to the sky, then bent her head down as if to pray. She held her arms across her chest, then leaned
forward. Her blouse parted at the back, and from the opening emerged, ever so shyly, the hint of a wing. It was
like a buttefly emerging from a cocoon.
I felt like an intruder at a solemn ceremony; had I not been so entranced, I would have looked away in shame.
Slowly, the wings spread out until they fully extended in their magnificence. They fluttered once, twice, testing the
air. Then, reacquainted with their element, they flapped with zealous joy.
Then she was off, like a bird freed from her cage. She dashed up to the sky, propelled by those mighty wings. In
mere moments, she was a bat-like silhouette against the light of the moon. So sudden was her flight, I did not
even see the moment of separation. I only realized it when, having lost sight of the manananggal in the clouds,
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my eyes settled on the waist that stood on legs in the middle of the clearing. The legs were long, because the
manananggal was tall; around the waist was wrapped a malong of intricate design, held in place by a knot. Along
the side ran a long slit that revealed the skin of the leg all the way to the thigh. From the neck of the malong skirt I
could see part of the abdomen that ended at the navel. And above that: nothing.
I was amazed, but Cousin Omeng transfixed; I hissed to remind him of our mission.
“Now, Cousin Omeng?”
“Not yet. The manananggal might still be close. If we strike too soon, she could catch us. Let's wait till the moon is
higher.”
And so we waited, and an interminably long wait it was. The leaves rustled in the wind, the crickets chirped, but
the world, it seemed, had frozen. The only mark to the passage of time was the ever rising moon which took
forever to climb to its place.
Finally, Cousin Omeng drew me close and outlined his plan. We would approach the legs from opposite
directions. I would stay where I was, he would circle round. At his signal, we would move towards our target.
It was a good plan, one that required the minimum of stealth. After all, there were no ears to hear. As he said,
Cousin Omeng circled to the other side, and I waited until I saw the sparks from his flint. Perhaps it would all have
gone accordingly had I not stepped on a dry branch that gave an earsplitting crack; so loud was it that the crickets
stopped their song.
The legs must have sensed it, perhaps through the vibrations in the ground. They jumped up with a start, then
began to shuffle to the side, away from the line that Cousin Omeng and I made.
We had been discovered. It was now or never.
I rushed the legs, as did Cousin Omeng. Sensing our footfalls, the legs veered away, heading towards the woods.
The slit of the malong flapped wildly in the wind, but otherwise the skirt held.
Cousin Omeng had covered quite a distance before we were found out, and so he was closer. He leapt and
tackled the walking horror, and caught it around its thighs. He lifted the legs off the ground in a tight embrace. The
legs flailed wildly.
I had freed the pouch from belt and its neck lay open in my hand. The white salt came pouring out into my palm.
“Hold her steady!” I cried as I flung the first handful towards the kicking monstrosity. When the grains touched the
opening, it would be the beginning of the end.
I was not prepared for what happened next.
“No!”
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Cousin Omeng twisted away so his body shielded the waist. My volley instead caught him on his back. Why did
he do that? Was he possessed?
“Hold still,” I shouted as I prepared another round.
“Stop! We can't—!”
I had moved far too close. The legs flailed so wildly they twisted Cousin Omeng this way and that. With a massive
kick, a foot caught me on the nose. I fell over backwards, as did Cousin Omeng.
And now the legs were free; they ran towards the forest.
“What are you doing?” I spat. But he was on his feet now, chasing after the fleeing legs. I followed after him.
For all the trouble they caused, I'll admit it was quite a feat. No eyes to guide them, no hands for balance, it was
amazing how far a pair of legs could carry a waist. We would have lost them in the forest were it not for the rocky,
uneven ground underneath the clearing. A foot must have stumbled on a rock or a hole, because the legs fell
forward and rolled — once, twice, a third time — before finally coming to rest.
“O-oooh,” Cousin Omeng moaned pitifully.
“Is it dead?” I asked.
We drew in close. The legs did try to move, but all it could manage was a twitch.
Again my hand went for the salt pouch, but Cousin Omeng pushed it away.
“Are you out of your mind?” I demanded. “Quick! Before the manananggal comes back!”
“We can't,” Cousin Omeng said. The moonlight reflected in the tears welling up in his eyes. “Don't you see? This
is...perfection.... it would be a crime!” Cousin Omeng picked up the legs and cradled them in his arms. Whether
they were hurt from the fall, or sensed that Cousin Omeng meant no harm, the legs no longer struggled. Cousin
Omeng carried them with utmost care back to the hut. Dumbstruck, I could do nothing else but follow.
We entered the hut, and Cousin Omeng directed me to light some candles. Thus illumined, we saw what few men
have seen: the lair of the dreaded manananggal which, as it turned out, was not so dreadful at all.
As we saw from its exterior, the walls were made of nipa; the floor, of bamoo slats. It was extraordinary in that it
was — ordinary. In fact, it was remarkably clean, much cleaner than the hovel that Cousin Omeng and I kept. On
the windows were lace curtains with ribbons, on the table was a woven runner, and over to the side rested a
porcelain vase with flowers.
Cousin Omeng, though, was too preoccupied to take notice. He set the legs down on the floor and ran his nimble
fingers gently down the calf.
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“Not broken,” he sighed with relief, “just a twisted ankle.”
From his pouch he produced some bayabas leaves and chewed them to make a paste. He massaged the ankle
with the paste at some length. Then he wrapped it tight with a clean strip of cloth. For a flourish, he made a tiny
bow by the foot.
“Please, please, please, Cousin Omeng,” I said as I stamped my feet and pulled my hair, “I don't understand.” Or
maybe I did, but I did not want to admit it.
Cousin Omeng sat the waist on a chair and stretched the sprained leg to rest on the table. “Don't you see?” he
said. He stroked the shin ever so lightly; the leg quivered, but did not resist. “These legs...they're perfect! The
proportions! Look! The breadth of the thigh. The way the calf curves so, like a gentle sloping dune. Look at the
angle it makes down to the ankle. And the skin, so soft and creamy! And look at the feet, so dainty!” At that, the
manananggal's red-painted toes wiggled slightly.
Any moment now the manananggal would come swooping in. We would both die, but that would be a welcome
end to the embarrassment I felt.
No manananggal came, though, and finally, Cousin Omeng decided it was time to go. He took one last long look
at the legs with much hesitation. In the end, he worked up the nerve: he brushed his hand against a knee and
brought it up as high along the thigh as he dared. The leg quivered, and responded with a gentle kick to his shin.
My cousin chortled with glee.
When we left the hut, the moon was on its way down. The clearing was as much as we had seen it, still aglow
with the purple sidlakan aura. The trees swayed gently in the wind, the night birds hooted and honked. I scanned
the skies for signs of the manananggal; there was none.
We made our way back to San Antonio. Cousin Omeng was in a very light mood. Hands in his pockets, he
whistled as he walked.
Overhead, the leaves rustled. I thought I could hear a giggle. I woke with a start the following morning. I felt for my
bed, my blanket, and my pillows. Oh, yes, I was home alright. Had I simply dreamed the events of the past night?
Cousin Omeng was up and about. He was already bathed and dressed. He moved with a spring his steps. “Good
morning, cousin!” he greeted me heartily. He thumped me on my shoulder.
“Where are you doing?” I asked.
“Can't chat, cousin, I have a busy day ahead of me.” And with that he was out the door.
He came back a little after lunch, flowers in one hand, a basket in the other. In the basket were sweets and treats,
trinkets, and colorful cloths. In it, too, were new and expensive-looking shirts. All afternoon long, he was a
whirlwind around the house, cleaning this corner and that, wrapping up presents, and whistling with abandon. By
late afternoon, he had bathed once more and drowned himself in perfume. To complete his transformation, he put
on a new shirt and pants. Then he was out the door.
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“Don't wait up, I might be late,” he called from the yard. I buried my head in my hands, not knowing what to do.
As it turned out, other events were in motion. If things were looking up for Cousin Omeng, it was quite the other
way for the rest of the town. As I wandered into the square, I could sense the foul mood of people around me.
People were scowling and frowning; not a few threw dagger looks in my direction.
Apparently, just the night before, the village elders had finally seen through Rodrigo's carousings. The fiesta mood
had gone far too long; the pigs and the cows had been slaughtered, but the manananggal had not yet been killed.
Already, the bill for the festivities had far exceeded the reward. That brought all the creditors down on Rodrigo's
head. The ultimatum was clear: put up, or pay up.
Sensing this sordid turn, I decided to make myself scarce. I casually made my way out of the square, but as I
rounded the corner, I found my path blocked by Rodrigo and his friends.
“Ah, Omeng's cousin,” Rodrigo said through his perfect smile. He held me tight around the shoulders. Two more
of his friends surrounded me. “Any luck with the manananggal hunt?”
“No, no luck at all,” I said. It did not feel like a lie. “Gave up, actually.”
“Really now? Where were you last night? We didn't see you come home.”
“We got lost.”
“Maybe you should show us where you got lost, so you know...we don't get lost ourselves.”
They gathered their ropes and knives and spears and torches. It was a right and proper posse that had formed,
now of all times. We hustled out of town, with me at the head of the mob.
I wanted to lead them far away from last night's clearing. However, Berto had seen us return from Baniko River,
from which there was only one path. My ruse was discovered quickly. Rodrigo held a knife close to my throat, a
warning that he would brook no trickery.
Night had fallen on the Ypil Forest, but no peace came with it. Instead, the woods were alive with the noise of
angry men bearing torches. The torches, thankfully, overwhemed the light of the sidlakan plants, so there was no
chance of accidental discovery. As for me, I feigned ignorance of the way to the clearing. We travelled up and
down the main forest path several times.
Finally, Rodrigo lost patience with me.
“Listen, you little fool,” he growled, “you take us to Omeng right now, or we'll burn the forest down.” He jabbed the
tip of his knife against my rib.
Suddenly, someone shouted: “I see something!” More shouts.
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I twisted free from Rodrigo's grip, and knocked down the men around me. They were all distracted by the
commotion and paid me no heed. I escaped into the forest and hid behind a tree. The shouts from the posse grew
louder. “There it is! I see it!”
“Kill it! Kill it!”
“Ha! Tiago has hit it!”
“No! It was my spear!”
“Watch out! It's still alive!”
“Wait! What is that?”
“You fool! It's just a bat!”
“Where's the village idiot?”
“I thought you had him!”
“Spread out! Find him! He can't have gone very far!”
I was never more frightened in my life, not even of the manananggal. And we were so close to the clearing. Even
if I managed my escape, they were likely to come across the hut. Would they find the manananggal? I didn't care.
But if they found Cousin Omeng there, they would tear him to pieces.
I had no choice. I had to outrun them. I had to find Cousin Omeng. I had to warn him about Rodrigo and his men.
The trunks of the trees whizzed by. Again I followed the glow of the sidlakan. I only hoped I wouldn't stumble.
I found my way to the clearing. On the far side, I saw the hut, much as it was the night before. The windows were
dark. Perhaps Cousin Omeng wasn't there after all. I paused to catch my breath. Then from behind me, I heard
loud curses. They were too close!
Torches began to emerge from the trees around the clearing. Angry feet trampled the sidlakan field. Driven by
instinct, I ran for the hut. “Omeng! They're here!” I cried. “I'm sorry, I tried to lead them away....”
A flickering light came to life inside the hut. A window swung open. A bleary head popped: it was Cousin Omeng!
“What is the meaning of this?!” Cousin Omeng thundered. It was so loud it echoed through the forest. The
converging posse stopped in its tracks.
“It's Rodrigo and his men!”
A stream of curses erupted from Cousin Omeng's mouth. Even in the darkness I could see his face was red. He
stamped through the hut and came out the door. A blanket just barely covered his naked chest. One hand held up
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his pants. I would have laughed if he wasn't so angry.
“What is the meaning of this?” Cousin Omeng repeated.
Rodrigo finally managed a sheepish answer. “Omeng, we're after the manananggal....”
“Manananggal?! What rubbish!” Cousin Omeng shouted. “Can't you leave a man in peace with his woman?”
A tousle-haired woman peered shyly out the window. She held a blanket round tightly round her chest. I
recognized her immediately. It was the manananggal from last night! She ran inside but soon emerged behind
Cousin Omeng. No bat wings, no split torso. She was whole.
I couldn't believe my eyes; neither could the men around me, but not, I think for the same reason.
“What are you looking at, you louts?” barked Cousin Omeng. “Get out of here! Don't make me come down!”
Thus chastised, the band dispersed and headed back into the forest. The men grumbled and shook their heads. I
saw Rodrigo, who looked like a chick doused in water. I stuck my tongue out at him.
When everyone had gone, I ran up to the hut to Cousin Omeng and the woman.
“I'm so sorry, cousin,” I said, tears streaming down my eyes. “They were so close, I had to come to warn you.”
“Not your fault,” he said, patting my shoulder. “In fact, I'm glad it turned out the way it did.”
“But...what about...her?”
“Ah, yes, her. My woman. My one true love.” He pecked at the woman's cheek. The woman blushed and giggled.
“Remember the third way of dealing with a manananggal?”
“You didn't!”
“Oh, yes I did. I married her.”
“But...but...married? How could you do that? There's no church! There's no priest!”
He winked at me, and grinned.
“Ah, my poor innocent cousin, there's more than one way to get married, you know. Now if you'll excuse us, we're
going to get married again...and again...”
That would have been the end of my story, but there was still the matter of the reward. Five thousand pesos was
five thousand pesos, after all. Cousin Omeng wanted to collect. He deserved to collect.
What was needed was proof, and that he managed to procure. You see, when Cousin Omeng, er, married
Milagros — that was the manananggal's name — it had the effect of shedding her wings. It was a shame, really,
because they were quite majestic. Twelve feet each wing spanned, and along the ridges stretched a fine black
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skin covered with silky down. But it was just as well, because there was no way anyone could claim it was a fake.
We brought the wings before the council. After careful examination of the evidence, they awarded us the bounty.
No one asked about the beautiful woman who never left Cousin Omeng's side. Rodrigo and his men, after that
evening's tongue lashing, were meek as lambs and raised no hue. Besides, they had their creditors to worry
about.
Cousin Omeng graciously gave me half the reward; in turn, I offered it back as a wedding present to Milagros and
him. After all, it was all his sacrifice, though in the end, no one can say that he suffered very much for it.
I left San Antonio not long after to seek my fortunes elsewhere. A few years later, my travels brought me back to
the town. I went to visit Cousin Omeng and Milagros.
By then Cousin Omeng had grown rich, second only to old Ong Teck. Cousin Omeng had not squandered the
reward money. He invested in what he knew best: a tannery. He partnered with Ong Teck, who turned out to be a
decent fellow. Shrewd, yes, but fair and generous. Later on, the partners expanded their venture into a factory.
Cousin Omeng and Milagros, in fact, are quite famous, and I am certain you have heard of them. It is known far
and wide, after all, that they make the finest and most exquisite ladies' shoes this side of the galleon trade.
A Very Old Man with Enormous Wings

by Gabriel Garcia Marquez (Translated by Gregory Rabassa)
On the third day of rain they had killed so many crabs inside the house that Pelayo had to cross his drenched
courtyard and throw them into the sea, because the newborn child had a temperature all night and they thought it
was due to the stench. The world had been sad since Tuesday. Sea and sky were a single ash-gray thing and the
sands of the beach, which on March nights glimmered like powdered light, had become a stew of mud and rotten
shellfish. The light was so weak at noon that when Pelayo was coming back to the house after throwing away the
crabs, it was hard for him to see what it was that was moving and groaning in the rear of the courtyard. He had to
go very close to see that it was an old man, a very old man, lying face down in the mud, who, in spite of his
tremendous efforts, couldn’t get up, impeded by his enormous wings.
Frightened by that nightmare, Pelayo ran to get Elisenda, his wife, who was putting compresses on the sick child,
and he took her to the rear of the courtyard. They both looked at the fallen body with a mute stupor. He was
dressed like a ragpicker. There were only a few faded hairs left on his bald skull and very few teeth in his mouth,
and his pitiful condition of a drenched great-grandfather took away any sense of grandeur he might have had. His
huge buzzard wings, dirty and half-plucked, were forever entangled in the mud. They looked at him so long and
so closely that Pelayo and Elisenda very soon overcame their surprise and in the end found him familiar. Then
they dared speak to him, and he answered in an incomprehensible dialect with a strong sailor’s voice. That was
how they skipped over the inconvenience of the wings and quite intelligently concluded that he was a lonely
castaway from some foreign ship wrecked by the storm. And yet, they called in a neighbor woman who knew
everything about life and death to see him, and all she needed was one look to show them their mistake.
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“He’s an angel,” she told them. “He must have been coming for the child, but the poor fellow is so old that the rain
knocked him down.”
On the following day everyone knew that a flesh-and-blood angel was held captive in Pelayo’s house. Against the
judgment of the wise neighbor woman, for whom angels in those times were the fugitive survivors of a celestial
conspiracy, they did not have the heart to club him to death. Pelayo watched over him all afternoon from the
kitchen, armed with his bailiff’s club, and before going to bed he dragged him out of the mud and locked him up
with the hens in the wire chicken coop. In the middle of the night, when the rain stopped, Pelayo and Elisenda
were still killing crabs. A short time afterward the child woke up without a fever and with a desire to eat. Then they
felt magnanimous and decided to put the angel on a raft with fresh water and provisions for three days and leave
him to his fate on the high seas. But when they went out into the courtyard with the first light of dawn, they found
the whole neighborhood in front of the chicken coop having fun with the angel, without the slightest reverence,
tossing him things to eat through the openings in the wire as if he weren’t a supernatural creature but a circus
animal.
Father Gonzaga arrived before seven o’clock, alarmed at the strange news. By that time onlookers less frivolous
than those at dawn had already arrived and they were making all kinds of conjectures concerning the captive’s
future. The simplest among them thought that he should be named mayor of the world. Others of sterner mind felt
that he should be promoted to the rank of five-star general in order to win all wars. Some visionaries hoped that
he could be put to stud in order to implant the earth a race of winged wise men who could take charge of the
universe. But Father Gonzaga, before becoming a priest, had been a robust woodcutter. Standing by the wire, he
reviewed his catechism in an instant and asked them to open the door so that he could take a close look at that
pitiful man who looked more like a huge decrepit hen among the fascinated chickens. He was lying in the corner
drying his open wings in the sunlight among the fruit peels and breakfast leftovers that the early risers had thrown
him. Alien to the impertinences of the world, he only lifted his antiquarian eyes and murmured something in his
dialect when Father Gonzaga went into the chicken coop and said good morning to him in Latin. The parish priest
had his first suspicion of an imposter when he saw that he did not understand the language of God or know how
to greet His ministers. Then he noticed that seen close up he was much too human: he had an unbearable smell
of the outdoors, the back side of his wings was strewn with parasites and his main feathers had been mistreated
by terrestrial winds, and nothing about him measured up to the proud dignity of angels. Then he came out of the
chicken coop and in a brief sermon warned the curious against the risks of being ingenuous. He reminded them
that the devil had the bad habit of making use of carnival tricks in order to confuse the unwary. He argued that if
wings were not the essential element in determining the different between a hawk and an airplane, they were
even less so in the recognition of angels. Nevertheless, he promised to write a letter to his bishop so that the
latter would write his primate so that the latter would write to the Supreme Pontiff in order to get the final verdict
from the highest courts.
His prudence fell on sterile hearts. The news of the captive angel spread with such rapidity that after a few hours
the courtyard had the bustle of a marketplace and they had to call in troops with fixed bayonets to disperse the
mob that was about to knock the house down. Elisenda, her spine all twisted from sweeping up so much
marketplace trash, then got the idea of fencing in the yard and charging five cents admission to see the angel.
The curious came from far away. A traveling carnival arrived with a flying acrobat who buzzed over the crowd
several times, but no one paid any attention to him because his wings were not those of an angel but, rather,
those of a sidereal bat. The most unfortunate invalids on earth came in search of health: a poor woman who since
childhood has been counting her heartbeats and had run out of numbers; a Portuguese man who couldn’t sleep
Page | 21
because the noise of the stars disturbed him; a sleepwalker who got up at night to undo the things he had done
while awake; and many others with less serious ailments. In the midst of that shipwreck disorder that made the
earth tremble, Pelayo and Elisenda were happy with fatigue, for in less than a week they had crammed their
rooms with money and the line of pilgrims waiting their turn to enter still reached beyond the horizon.
The angel was the only one who took no part in his own act. He spent his time trying to get comfortable in his
borrowed nest, befuddled by the hellish heat of the oil lamps and sacramental candles that had been placed along
the wire. At first they tried to make him eat some mothballs, which, according to the wisdom of the wise neighbor
woman, were the food prescribed for angels. But he turned them down, just as he turned down the papal lunches
that the pentinents brought him, and they never found out whether it was because he was an angel or because he
was an old man that in the end ate nothing but eggplant mush. His only supernatural virtue seemed to be
patience. Especially during the first days, when the hens pecked at him, searching for the stellar parasites that
proliferated in his wings, and the cripples pulled out feathers to touch their defective parts with, and even the most
merciful threw stones at him, trying to get him to rise so they could see him standing. The only time they
succeeded in arousing him was when they burned his side with an iron for branding steers, for he had been
motionless for so many hours that they thought he was dead. He awoke with a start, ranting in his hermetic
language and with tears in his eyes, and he flapped his wings a couple of times, which brought on a whirlwind of
chicken dung and lunar dust and a gale of panic that did not seem to be of this world. Although many thought that
his reaction had not been one of rage but of pain, from then on they were careful not to annoy him, because the
majority understood that his passivity was not that of a hero taking his ease but that of a cataclysm in repose.
Father Gonzaga held back the crowd’s frivolity with formulas of maidservant inspiration while awaiting the arrival
of a final judgment on the nature of the captive. But the mail from Rome showed no sense of urgency. They spent
their time finding out if the prisoner had a navel, if his dialect had any connection with Aramaic, how many times
he could fit on the head of a pin, or whether he wasn’t just a Norwegian with wings. Those meager letters might
have come and gone until the end of time if a providential event had not put and end to the priest’s tribulations.
It so happened that during those days, among so many other carnival attractions, there arrived in the town the
traveling show of the woman who had been changed into a spider for having disobeyed her parents. The
admission to see her was not only less than the admission to see the angel, but people were permitted to ask her
all manner of questions about her absurd state and to examine her up and down so that no one would ever doubt
the truth of her horror. She was a frightful tarantula the size of a ram and with the head of a sad maiden. What
was most heartrending, however, was not her outlandish shape but the sincere affliction with which she recounted
the details of her misfortune. While still practically a child she had sneaked out of her parents’ house to go to a
dance, and while she was coming back through the woods after having danced all night without permission, a
fearful thunderclap rent the sky in two and through the crack came the lightning bolt of brimstone that changed
her into a spider. Her only nourishment came from the meatballs that charitable souls chose to toss into her
mouth. A spectacle like that, full of so much human truth and with such a fearful lesson, was bound to defeat
without even trying that of a haughty angel who scarcely deigned to look at mortals. Besides, the few miracles
attributed to the angel showed a certain mental disorder, like the blind man who didn’t recover his sight but grew
three new teeth, or the paralytic who didn’t get to walk but almost won the lottery, and the leper whose sores
sprouted sunflowers. Those consolation miracles, which were more like mocking fun, had already ruined the
angel’s reputation when the woman who had been changed into a spider finally crushed him completely. That was
how Father Gonzaga was cured forever of his insomnia and Pelayo’s courtyard went back to being as empty as
during the time it had rained for three days and crabs walked through the bedrooms.
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The owners of the house had no reason to lament. With the money they saved they built a two-story mansion with
balconies and gardens and high netting so that crabs wouldn’t get in during the winter, and with iron bars on the
windows so that angels wouldn’t get in. Pelayo also set up a rabbit warren close to town and gave up his job as a
bailiff for good, and Elisenda bought some satin pumps with high heels and many dresses of iridescent silk, the
kind worn on Sunday by the most desirable women in those times. The chicken coop was the only thing that didn’t
receive any attention. If they washed it down with creolin and burned tears of myrrh inside it every so often, it was
not in homage to the angel but to drive away the dungheap stench that still hung everywhere like a ghost and was
turning the new house into an old one. At first, when the child learned to walk, they were careful that he not get
too close to the chicken coop. But then they began to lose their fears and got used to the smell, and before they
child got his second teeth he’d gone inside the chicken coop to play, where the wires were falling apart. The angel
was no less standoffish with him than with the other mortals, but he tolerated the most ingenious infamies with the
patience of a dog who had no illusions. They both came down with the chicken pox at the same time. The doctor
who took care of the child couldn’t resist the temptation to listen to the angel’s heart, and he found so much
whistling in the heart and so many sounds in his kidneys that it seemed impossible for him to be alive. What
surprised him most, however, was the logic of his wings. They seemed so natural on that completely human
organism that he couldn’t understand why other men didn’t have them too.
When the child began school it had been some time since the sun and rain had caused the collapse of the
chicken coop. The angel went dragging himself about here and there like a stray dying man. They would drive him
out of the bedroom with a broom and a moment later find him in the kitchen. He seemed to be in so many places
at the same time that they grew to think that he’d be duplicated, that he was reproducing himself all through the
house, and the exasperated and unhinged Elisenda shouted that it was awful living in that hell full of angels. He
could scarcely eat and his antiquarian eyes had also become so foggy that he went about bumping into posts. All
he had left were the bare cannulae of his last feathers. Pelayo threw a blanket over him and extended him the
charity of letting him sleep in the shed, and only then did they notice that he had a temperature at night, and was
delirious with the tongue twisters of an old Norwegian. That was one of the few times they became alarmed, for
they thought he was going to die and not even the wise neighbor woman had been able to tell them what to do
with dead angels.
And yet he not only survived his worst winter, but seemed improved with the first sunny days. He remained
motionless for several days in the farthest corner of the courtyard, where no one would see him, and at the
beginning of December some large, stiff feathers began to grow on his wings, the feathers of a scarecrow, which
looked more like another misfortune of decreptitude. But he must have known the reason for those changes, for
he was quite careful that no one should notice them, that no one should hear the sea chanteys that he sometimes
sang under the stars. One morning Elisenda was cutting some bunches of onions for lunch when a wind that
seemed to come from the high seas blew into the kitchen. Then she went to the window and caught the angel in
his first attempts at flight. They were so clumsy that his fingernails opened a furrow in the vegetable patch and he
was on the point of knocking the shed down with the ungainly flapping that slipped on the light and couldn’t get a
grip on the air. But he did manage to gain altitude. Elisenda let out a sigh of relief, for herself and for him, when
she watched him pass over the last houses, holding himself up in some way with the risky flapping of a senile
vulture. She kept watching him even when she was through cutting the onions and she kept on watching until it
was no longer possible for her to see him, because then he was no longer an annoyance in her life but an
imaginary dot on the horizon of the sea.
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The Man with His Back Turned
By Agustin Cadena (Translated by Patricia Dubrava)
Daniela bought the mirror at the flea market one Saturday when she was passing by in her older brother's car,
and for no other reason but to make him mad, insisted on stopping. The mirror was 12 inches long by 8 inches
wide at its base, and the upper part was finished with a Gothic arch. The brass frame was scratched and dented
in places, but in general still pretty, with vine reliefs and floral motifs. The mirror itself was rose-tinted, an antique
glass in which things were reflected as if blurred by the mist of the years, as if they were reflections from the past,
from long ago, not from today. Dani loved it. She didn't have enough money to buy the mirror, but what she had
was enough so that the vender agreed to hold it for her.
When she got home, she begged her father for a little, asked her grandmother for a loan and then at school sold
some CDs to a few of her classmates. The next Saturday she went to get the mirror. She didn't find the vender,
just his wife, an autumnal blond with a witchy look. When Dani told her why she was there, the woman took the
mirror out of a cardboard box where they'd hidden it. Excited, Dani paid the balance due and ran home with her
treasure. She already had a place picked out for it in her bedroom.
The trouble started that same afternoon. Not every time someone looked in the mirror, but often, they saw in the
background, behind the normal reflections, a man with his back to the mirror. It was fearsome, strange. Because
no one was standing there, and nothing else in the room could reflect such an image. The worst was that
sometimes it was there, sometimes not. And it always happened that only one person at a time could see him.
How then could they be sure of anything?
The first hypothesis was that there was a ghost in the house and it could only become visible through the rose
mirror. But when they took the mirror to other locations, the figure facing away remained the same.
The family was mystified. They wanted to find an explanation for this thing. Finally they arrived at a conclusion:
the man with his back turned lived in the mirror.
They didn't want to know more. All they wanted was to get rid of him. Dani went to sell the mirror back to the
vender from whom she'd bought it. He looked at her steadily with an enigmatic smile and offered her less than
half what she'd paid for it. But Daniela wasn't inclined to bargain. She was already walking away from the booth
when she chanced to hear the man murmuring, as if talking to the mirror: "Back again."
Louis Vuitton
By Teresa May Mundiz
My mother’s boss, Louie Vergara, called home looking for my mother. It was nine in the evening and my younger
sister had just fallen asleep. My father who works night shift in one of the posh hotels in our city had left earlier in
the evening.
So it was only me and Mother who were still up and awake in the house. I was zipping the back of her gown when
the phone rang. Father usually calls home to check on us. But it would be much later.
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Lately, Mother has been attending business meetings with her boss, she told me one time when I was putting
away her make up kit, that I would often think she must be a very good employee.
Mother shooed me to pick up the phone.
“Tell him I’m coming!” Mother shouted as she slipped her right foot in the soft material of her red stiletto. “Tell him
I’m coming!”
Her boss must have heard her because only a loud beep was audible on the other end when I held the receiver to
my ears.
Mother hurriedly dabbed her lipstick and made a popping sound as she rubbed her lips. She looked good in her
gown. She always does in anything she wears. Her friends often remarked how identical we are. Maybe that is
what keeps me to her every night before she leaves. I always wanted to wear the gowns and shoes she had—
maybe someday. But for now, I could only look down at the red stilettos, which perfectly fit her tiny feet.
“It’s a gift.” Mother said, a smile forming her lips.
“Missy, I have to go. I don’t want our boss waiting. Don’t wait up.” She kissed my forehead then strutted towards
the door of our living room. A car honked outside our house.
The house was silent after Mother closed the door behind her. It was nine thirty in the evening and I was feeling
tired. I dragged myself back to the bedroom I shared with my younger sister. But it seemed that my mother forgot
to close their bedroom door just across ours.
I stepped inside and saw a Louis Vuitton shoe box on their bed.
On the floor, I picked up a small card signed: Baby, wear this for me tonight. Louie V.
Limos
By Chris David Lao
Mga Tauhan:
Rick, 25, nars, nagtrabaho sa call center pero agad nag-resign
Nimfa, 28, pulubi, nagkukunwaring bulag
Mga taong dumadaan
Lugar:
Hapon. Sa labas ng simbahan. Sa may bangketa. May lata sa harap ng nakaupong pulubi. Tumutugtog siya
gamit ang harmonika. May mga dumadaan na mga tao. Paminsan-minsan sila ay naghuhulog ng barya sa lata. At
paminsan-minsan din ay palihim na nagrereklamo si Nimfa sa mga baryang hinulog.
Nimfa: (Sa sarili.) Ang babarat naman! Ang gagara ng mga damit pero singkwenta sentimos lang ang binibigay.
Pero ayos na rin ‘to kaysa wala. (Bibilangin ang mga barya at mabilis silang ibubulsa.)
Page | 25
(Mapapadaan si Rick sa harap ng pulubi. Mahahalata niya ang ginagawa nito. Mapapansin ni Nimfa kaya’t
pasimpleng hihirit ng…)
Nimfa: Limos… Palimos po… Maawa po kayo…
Rick: Anong palimos-palimos ka diyan? Hey! I saw you. I saw what you just did, Ate. Kitang-kita ng dalawang
mata ko. Binibilang mo yung mga coins.
Nimfa: Kuya… Konting tulong lang po…
Rick: Aba, aba, kunwari pa ‘to. Eh hindi naman totoong bulag. Style niyo po bulok. Nanloloko po kayo ng kapwa.
Masama po yun. At sa labas pa talaga ng church?
Nimfa: Eh, ano bang problema mo, ha? Naghahanapbuhay ako dito. Alis ka nga diyan.
Rick: See? Sindikato ka siguro, ano? Style niyo yang ganyan eh.
Nimfa: Ay, ewan ko sa ’yo. (Dadamputin ang harmonika at tutugtugin ito.)
Rick: Hey, hey! Listen. Tingnan mo nga ako. Nagtatrabaho nang maayos. Disente. Nurse ako, nurse, but I worked
as a call center agent because I am so good. Biro mo yun. Pero pinagpapaguran ko yung perang kinikita ko. Hindi
katulad mo, bulag-bulagan para kaawaan?
Nimfa: Bakit, pinipilit ba kita?
Rick: Hindi. Pero ganun na rin yon.
Nimfa: Umalis ka na nga!
Rick: Maswerte ka Ate, good mood ako ngayon. I have just resigned from my job. Pero may hinihintay naman
akong tawag galing sa agency ko. Ilang buwan na lang at makakapag-Canada na rin ako. Narinig mo yun? Ca-
na-da. Ay, hindi mo naman pala alam kung saan yung Canada. Anyways, kung matanggap man ako, at alam
kong matatanggap ako kasi nakapagtapos ako, makaka-alis na rin ako sa pobreng country na ‘to. At malayo sa
mga dukha’t manggagantsong katulad mo. Kaya hindi tayo umaasenso eh. All you know is make limos.
Nimfa: Hoy! Dati akong labandera ‘no. Eh, kasalanan ko bang binayo ng bagyo ang lugar namin, ha? Inanod ng
baha ang lahat sa amin. Walang natira. May mga anak ako. Tatlo. Gustuhin ko mang magtrabaho, wala akong
mapasukan. Mabuti na ‘to kaysa mang-hold-up ako.
Rick: Really? Like, who cares, Ate? Alam mo, ang drama mo. Eh dati ka pa dito, di ba? Palagi kaya akong
napapadaan dito. And I always see your freaking face.
Nimfa: Ay, ewan ko sa ’yo. Sira ulo. (May dadamputin sa pitaka.) O, heto ang isang daan, pang-istarbucks mo. At
utang na loob, umalis ka na. Naghahanapbuhay ang tao. Bunubuking mo pa eh. Istorbo! (Tatayo. Hahanap ng
ibang pwesto na mapaglilimusan.)
Page | 26
Rick: (Hahawakan ang kaliwang braso ni Nimfa.) Hey, hey! Where do you think you’re going, ha? You can’t just
leave.
Nimfa: Bitiwan mo nga ako!
Rick: Ay, puta! Ang baho na nga ng hitsura mo, ang baho pa ng hininga mo. Pati imburnal mahihiya sa ‘yo.
Nimfa: Ang sakit mong magsalita! Akala mo ang linis-linis mo?
Rick: Shut up! (Hihilain sa Nimfa.)
Nimfa: Arraay! Nasasaktan ako. Saan mo ba ako dadalhin?
Rick: Saan pa? Eh di kung saan ka nababagay. Sa presinto, ulol. Tingnan natin kung makapanggantso ka pa
dun. (Kakaladkarin si Nimfa.)
Nimfa: Teka, teka. Sira ulo ka. Bitiwan mo ako! (Kakagatin ang braso ni Rick.)
Rick: Araaay! Punyeta ka! (Mabibitawan niya si Nimfa.)
Nimfa: Sige! Subukan mo pang lumapit, sisigaw ako ng “rape”.
(Biglang tutunog ang cell phone ni Rick. Tatakbo palayo si Nimfa.)
Rick: Hoy! Bumalik ka dito, unggoy! (Kukunin ang cell phone sa bulsa.) Oh god! Oh god! This is it. Canada here I
come! (Sasagutin niya ito. Magalang. Mahinahon.) Hello. Good afternoon, sir. Yes. This is Rick. What can I do for
you? Ha? (Manlulumo.) What do you mean I failed the psychological exam? (Pause.) Sir naman. I left my first job
for this. And you promised me… (Pause.) Hey! What do you think of me, sira ulo? You’re the one who’s sira ulo,
not me! (Pause.) Damn you! Punyeta! (Ihahagis ang cell phone. Mangiyak-ngiyak. Mapapapa-upo si Rick.)
(May mapapadaan at maghuhulog ito ng barya sa lata. Aalis. Hahagulgol si Rick.)
Page | 27
The Abortion Clinic
By Javier Torregosa
CHARACTERS:
Beverly Pritchard – 19 years old, slim, blonde, average height
Doctor Nesbit – a doctor in a clinic
Sally – Doctor Nesbit’s office staff
SETTING
Doctor Nesbit’s Office
TIME
Day
INT. DOCTOR NESBIT’S OFFICE – DAY
DOCTOR NESBIT sits in his office behind the desk whilst he reads from a file.
KNOCK, KNOCK
He fails to look up.
DOCTOR NESBIT:
(Grumbles)
Come in.
BEVERLY (19) slim, blond, average height, opens the door and takes a few steps inside.
Page | 28
BEVERLY:
(Hesitant)
Doctor Nesbit?
DOCTOR NESBIT:
(Impatient)
Yes! I see you can read the door sign. Take a seat.
He closes the file.
She closes the door, takes the seat opposite him; and sits on the edge of the chair.
DOCTOR NESBIT:
How may I help you today?
BEVERLY:
Its Beverly Pritchard, I booked a few days ago to come and see you for a check-up before I have the termination.
Doctor Nesbit stands up.
DOCTOR NESBIT:
Ah yes, let me get your file. Take a seat.
Doctor Nesbit heads over to a filing cabinet to retrieve her file, situated behind himself.
Page | 29
DOCTOR NESBIT (OS):
Been here before?
BEVERLY:
No, it’s my first time.
He fingers through her file as he turns around to return back to his seat.
DOCTOR NESBIT:
(Whispers)
You look like the type.
BEVERLY:
Excuse me?
Doctor Nesbit sits down while he covers his mouth coughing the words-
DOCTOR NESBIT:
Never mind.
He reaches for a glass of water as Beverly suspiciously looks at him.
DOCTOR NESBIT:
Does anyone know you have came here today?
BEVERLY:
Page | 30
No. I want to keep this a secret.
DOCTOR NESBIT:
But the father surely knows you’re here, right?
BEVERLY:
Not his decision.
DOCTOR NESBIT:
You are about to murder his child. I think he has as much right to know what’s going on. Don’t you think?
BEVERLY:
Wrong. My body, my decision. And that’s final.
DOCTOR NESBIT:
My my, have you woke up on the wrong side of the bed?
BEVERLY:
What are you saying?
DOCTOR NESBIT:
I don’t want you to rush into this.
Maybe I should let you go home to think about this some more. And you can let me know what’s your intentions
later on.
BEVERLY:
I’ve done all that. It was an easy decision.
Page | 31
Doctor Nesbit scans Beverly’s file with his index finger, and then taps the page.
DOCTOR NESBIT:
Says here you’re 19. Maybe you should sit down with your parents.
And see what they think?
BEVERLY:
I’m sure my parents will side with me. That man’s a monster.
DOCTOR NESBIT:
It sounds like you hold a lot of anger in your heart. Maybe you’re right not to bring this child into your home.
BEVERLY:
And what do you mean by that?
DOCTOR NESBIT:
You know what I mean. Quite frankly young lady I’ve seen this behaviour before and you’ll only end up in the
gutter.
BEVERLY:
What!
DOCTOR NESBIT:
Next it will be drugs, drink, prostitution. You name it, and you’ll be there.
BEVERLY:
This is ridiculous, I want a second opinion.
Page | 32
Doctor Nesbit presses the intercom button on his desk.
DOCTOR NESBIT:
Sally, please come in here.
SALLY knocks on the door briefly before opening and peering in.
SALLY:
You asked for me Doctor?
DOCTOR NESBIT:
Sally, this young lady wants to have an abortion without telling her parents and the father. What is your opinion?
Sally walks into the office to stand side on with Doctor Nesbit’s desk.
SALLY:
Strictly speaking from a non- medical standing. I think she should let everyone know what is going on.
DOCTOR NESBIT:
See, what did I tell you?
SALLY:
But it’s her body, so it’s her choice.
Beverly sits back into her chair smiling.
Page | 33
DOCTOR NESBIT:
What? Get out! I’ll have words with you later.
Sally leaves the office and slams the door behind her.
DOCTOR NESBIT:
Dismiss her last comment. She’s new here.
BEVERLY:
Sounds like you need to get your staff into order. And show them a firm hand.
DOCTOR NESBIT:
What?
BEVERLY:
Looks like your staff haven’t been provided with enough training. They don’t know how to answer in a way you
want them too.
DOCTOR NESBIT:
Let’s take a step back. I’m starting to notice a little hostility. How did your pregnancy come about?
BEVERLY:
I was at a party with some friends. I had hardly touched a drop of alcohol and before I knew it, it was the morning.
That was a month ago.
DOCTOR NESBIT:
Page | 34
I see. Alcohol was the problem.
BEVERLY:
No, rohypnol was.
DOCTOR NESBIT:
Oh.
A long pause follows before Doctor Nesbit studies Beverly’s file closely one last time.
DOCTOR NESBIT:
I can’t see that mentioned here. Bloody tempts.
Beverly exhales as she rolls her eyes.
BEVERLY:
And I thought I was going to have to spell it out to you. A wry smile creeps onto Doctor Nesbit.
DOCTOR NESBIT:
I’ve got you booked in for ten o’clock Monday morning. Is that fine?
BEVERLY:
Great. See you there.
THE END.
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2 ND GRADING (ESSAY AND POETRY)
Exploring Identity Construction in Contemporary Young Adult Fiction

By Jeffrey S. Kaplan
Exploring Identity Construction in Contemporary Young Adult Fiction
Excerpt Young Adult Literature in the 21st Century: Moving Beyond Traditional Constraints and Conventions
Finally, in “Developing Students’ Critical Literacy: Exploring Identity Construction in Young Adult
Fiction,” authors Thomas W. Bean and Karen Moni challenge how young adult literature is traditionally read
and taught in most secondary classrooms. As Bean and Moni state, most adolescent readers view
characters in young adult novels as living and wrestling with real problems close to their own life experiences
as teenagers. At the center of all these themes are questions of character and identity and values. They
1 argue that an alternative way of looking at these novels, and perhaps, a more engaging technique in a
postmodern world, is an exploration through a critical literacy framework. Bean and Moni argue that a critical
stance in the classroom empowers students to consider “what choices have been made in the creation of
the text” (Janks and Ivanic, 1992, p. 316). Their argument is that, through discussion of such choices, young
adults may also better understand how they, as teenagers, are being constructed as adolescents in the texts
they are reading, and how such constructions compare with their own attempts to form their identities.
The apparent need to shape a different critical look at young adult literature, insist Bean and Moni,
is driven by, of all things, dramatic world changes. The world globalization of markets, they underscore, has
resulted in the challenging of long-established ideologies and values related to the traditional ideals of work
2 and family. In a world of constant movement and flow, media images of advertising and commerce seep
into our lives and strongly influence identity development. Hence, young adult literature and our
interpretation of it as a genre of literary study have been profoundly altered as a result of this dramatic shift
in world affairs.
Bean and Moni begin their intriguing look at the changing nature of critical theory and young adult
literature by first examining the many theories of identity development prevalent in literary circles.
Enlightened views of identity development, as Bean and Moni write, are based on the somewhat fixed social
structures and actions of class differences. The “enlightened myth” of the rugged individualist struggling to
3 get ahead in society has been the predominant social and literary theory of the modern age. Bean and Moni,
however, conclude that in recent years, this rugged individualist stance has been challenged by a
postmodern view, almost Marxist in its orientation, that says that power is the driving force in shaping identity.
Furthermore, Bean and Moni argue, even this proposition has been somewhat challenged by cultural
theorists who argue that the quest for power has been successfully supplanted by consumerism. “We now
live in a world dominated by consumer, multinational or global capitalism, and the older theoretical models
that we relied on to critique established systems no longer apply” (Mansfield, p. 163).
Urban teens navigate through shopping malls, train stations, airports, freeways, and the Internet.
As Beam and Moni write, these fluid spaces are disorienting, dehumanizing any fixed sense of place, and
subsequently, this feeling of emptiness and displacement spills over into adolescents’ interior worlds.
4 Institutions like family, schools, and communities are being replaced by malls, television, and cyberspace.
Identity in these contemporary worlds, writes Bean and Moni, is constructed through the consumption of
Page | 36
goods with selfhood vested in things. And because these worlds are ephemeral and ethereal, feelings of
panic and anxiety flow into teens’ lives.
The question for Bean and Moni is that, given this postmodern world of convenience and transience,
how do young people find themselves? For if traditional avenues of self-expression are no longer valid—
home, school, church, etc.,—how do young people find who they are if they live in seemingly rootless social
5 world? In essence, write Bean and Moni, youths no longer live life as a journey toward the future but as a
condition. Young people today live in two different worlds—the world of home and school and the world of
culture and commerce. Although in America this has been always been true, today, Bean and Moni insist,
this chasm between conformity and modernity is ever more present due to the conflicting social arena in
which most teenagers live.
Bean and Moni focus in on life for the urban Australian teenager in their discussion of the
aimlessness of today’s youth, but their observation can apply most anywhere. Young people face a world
where unskilled laborers rarely can find meaningful work. Instead, in a postmodern world where the stability
6 of life as a factory worker as experienced by their working class parents or life in a town where everybody
grows up and nobody leaves, has been replaced by a life of constant change and uncertainty. Much of
contemporary teenagers day, write Bean and Moni, is spent in “non-places,”— like the mall and cyberspace.
Moreover, assert Bean and Moni, the places in which teenagers dwell are sanitized and kept free
of the poor. Thus, for many young people, their displacement as marginalized members of society is only
7 aggravated by the increasingly complex and global world of market-driven consumerism. This, as Bean and
Moni insist, might seem miles away from the world of young adult literature, but they conclude, its influence
cannot be denied. Literacy, they write, especially through multicultural young adult novels, provides a forum
upon which teenagers can build cosmopolitan worldviews and identities.
In today’s times, teenagers do everything on the run. Hence, this new dynamic—true, always
present in the lives of young adults since the end of the second World War, but now ever heightened by
8 modern technology—governs their lives. So, this new life-force of power shaped by social forces beyond
traditional boundaries, as Bean and Moni underscore, demands a new language to interpret what students
are reading, and more importantly, how they interpret what they read. The language is embedded in a new
dialogue for literary interpretation called Critical Discourse Analysis (CDA).
CDA asks the reader to look at the novel as a novel, and not just a work in which to identify with the
9 lead characters. In a new postmodern age, where cyberspace is often more important than “real” space,
readers are asked to look at a novel in much the same way that a contemporary teen would look at a
computer—not as a living, breathing thing, but as a machine with moving parts capable of transforming their
temporary world into an ever-engaging ethereal world. The novel becomes, thus, a vehicle for transformative
change, and not just a search for identity.
True, there is nothing dramatically new here. As Bean and Moni assert, critical analysis of novels
has long been a staple of literary critics. Yet, what makes Critical Discourse Analysis so vital to today’s
young adults is that the context in which they live their lives—electronically, globally, and instantly—makes
this an even more imperative approach to understanding who they are in their search for personal and
10 spiritual identity. Asking questions about the novel itself—where does the novel come from? What social
function does the novel serve? How does the adult author construct the world of adolescence in the novel?
Who is the ideal reader of the novel? Who gets to speak and have a voice in this novel—and who doesn’t?
How else might these characters’ stories be told? And these characters inhabit certain places and spaces
where they construct their identities. What alternative places and spaces could be sites for constructing
identity?
These intriguing questions are different from the standard fare of asking students if they identify with
the characters in the story and why. They presuppose that students are sophisticated enough to look at a
novel as an object in a given time and place, filled with all settings and vagaries of the particular time frame
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in which the novel occurs. They also assume that young people can examine a work of art as both a thing
11 of feeling and a thing of context. To be sure, this is no easy task, but as Bean and Moni assert, in today’s
contemporary world of ever changing dynamics and global constructs, of technological marvels and
instantaneous gratification, and of changing lifestyles and alternative world views, perhaps, it is time that the
young adult novel be analyzed in a new light. Perhaps, young people can see art for what it is—a reflection
of the times in which we live.
The art of ‘hugot’ in our republic of sawi’

By Gideon Lasco
DATELESS AND LOVELESS, I tried to avoid this year’s Valentine’s Day by boarding a plane to Tacloban and
backpacking in Eastern Visayas until the craze subsided. In what turned out to be a roadtrip with my Tacloban-
based friends, we ended up climbing three mountains - Mt. Kali overlooking the San Juanico Bridge; Mt.
Pangasugan in the wilderness east of Baybay City; and, on February 14 itself, Cabalian Volcano in Anahawan,
Southern Leyte. With no cellphone signal and roads so rough that it tested the limits of our pick-up truck before
the trail itself would test our legs, the volcano was the farthest place I could ever hope to be: deep in communion
with nature; lost in its verdant beauty. But if I had expected that it would make me forget about the ‘Day of Hearts’,
I was gravely mistaken, for the crater lake at the end of the trail was shaped like a heart.
I would later find out in social media that I wasn’t alone in being reminded of my lovelessness. In fact, there was
as much noise on Facebook about being single as there was about being with someone. And the viral videos and
posts that people were talking about were not so much about professions of love accompanied by chocolates and
flowers; rather, they were about sorrow and tears. It was tablea, not Toblerone; roses with thorns, not just petals.
One of videos, “Crush”, was a story of unrequited love: The protagonist has had many years of sweet moments
with his beloved, but in the latter’s wedding, he turns out to be a guest, not the groom - the proverbial best friend
who would have preferred to be the boyfriend. Another video, “Vow,” was that of love lost to the unexpected but
inevitable finitude of life itself. Dying of terminal illness, the protagonist-husband nonetheless manages to live on
in a most bittersweet way: by carefully choreographing his wife’s first Valentine’s Day without him.
All those videos, and all my friends’ posts about how alone (but not necessarily lonely) they are, hint at a different
kind of love being celebrated in Valentine’s: one that grows - not diminishes - in the face of obstacles both
surmountable and insurmountable. Recently in my hometown of Los Baños, Laguna, people were intrigued by the
mystery guy who put up pink tarpaulins everywhere that read: “Will you marry me again, Ms. Janeth?”; my friends
marveled at the “sweetness” and diskarte of the guy despite the anticipated futility of his efforts.
Shakespeare, of course, touched on the theme of uncertain love ("For never was a story of more woe / Than this
of Juliet and her Romeo.”); so did Miguel de Cervantes (hence poor Don Quixote) and, for good measure, J.R.R.
Tolkien, whose great hero Aragorn spurned the love of Eowyn, shield-maiden of Rohan. In Yukio Mishima’s
“Spring Snow”, the beautiful Satoko foretells the doom of her relationship with her sweetheart Kiyoaki:
The path we’re taking is not a road, Kiyo, it’s a pier, and it ends someplace where the sea begins.
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But while it is also true for other cultures, I suspect that the trope of uncertain love has particular resonance in the
Philippines. Our very first novel, Pedro Paterno’s “Ninay” (1885), involved not one, but two tales of ill-fated love.
Jose Rizal, who wrote of the failed romance between Crisostomo Ibarra and Maria Clara, himself experienced
what loss of love felt like when he and his childhood sweetheart Leonor Rivera were prohibited from seeing each
other by their families, effectively dooming their relationship.
Then there's our original genre of love songs - the kundiman - said to derive from "kung hindi man" (if it's not
meant to be): both a reference and tribute to the uncertainty of love. The lyrics of some of the most famous
kundimans are revelatory of this inclination to delve in the sorrowful and the tearful. For instance, in Nicanor
Abelardo “Nasaan ka Irog?” (1923), the singer searches in vain for his beloved, who seems to have abandoned
him. But even so, he pledges undying affection:
Tandaan mo irog / Irog ko'y tandaan

Kung ako man ay iyong ngayo’y siniphayo,
Manga sumpa’t lambing pinaram mong buo
Ang lahat sa buhay ko ay hindi maglalaho’t
Magsisilbing bakas ng nadgdaang tang pagsuyo
(remember, my beloved)
Even if today you have given me pain
And have banished our promises and care
All shall not vanish from my life and
Shall remain footprints of our foregone love
Many years later, in a more upbeat tempo, Eraserheads would echo the same sentiments of loss and longing.
“Magasin” (1994) is a reminiscence of a love affair with a girl who later becomes a famous model. Although she
is already beyond his reach, the singer tries to relive their relationship, even joking - quite poignantly - that she
was “still a bit ugly back then”. The band's most iconic song, “Ang Huling El Bimbo” is likewise of a love that is not
realized. In that song, the protagonist relives the past as a way of preempting the future, and the ‘huling El Bimbo’
- the last dance - is the one that plays forever in the protagonist’s head.
Today our popular culture remains full of references and tributes to uncertain love. A few years ago, egged on by
a romantic comedy starring Jennylyn Mercado and Jericho Rosales, everyone began debating about the
existence of a love that is “forever”. The debate rages on today, but many seem firmly on the side of “walang
forever”: a phrase that I see even in jeepney art- a decent barometer of the times.
Then there’s the recent emergence of “hugot lines”: sentimental expressions 'pulled' from our deep reservoir of
emotions that use everyday experiences as metaphors for one's ill-fated romance. This genre, whose genealogy
can be traced not just to the kundiman, but also to the bugtong, has been embraced by people from all walks of
life - a testament to its wide appeal. Here are a couple of examples:
Sana ang tao parang cellphone, namamatay nang kusa kapag nagloloko. (I wish people were like cellphones,
they automatically die when they go crazy)
Ampalaya: minsan gulay, minsan ako. (Bitter gourd, sometimes a vegetable, sometimes myself)
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The witticism of hugot draws from its double entendres, the invocation of words that are both emotional and
physical attributes (i.e. ‘bitter’ and ‘sweet’) - else, human and non-human (a cellphone that ‘goes crazy’ is one that
‘hangs’; a person who ‘goes crazy’ doesn’t necessarily hang himself).
It takes some talent to come up with a successful ‘hugot line’; it works best if it flows seamlessly from everyday
conversations and draws from people’s shared experiences. After a magnitude-5.4 quake shook parts of Luzon, I
checked my Twitter account to confirm whether what I felt was indeed an earthquake, and here’s the first thing I
saw:
Buti pa yung lindol, naramdaman mo, ako hindi. (I envy the earthquake, at least you felt it - unlike me.)
As a hiker, I have witnessed how these ‘hugot lines’ have become everyday fare in the trails - not just in Mt. Sawi
in Gabaldon, Nueva Ecija - a recently-opened hiking destination whose christening was not spared from the
zeitgeist of the times. As we were trekking in that volcano in Southern Leyte, our guide warned us to take care,
lest we be pricked by the rattan thorns. Trying my hand in hugot-speak, I ventured:
Okay lang sa akin ang ma-tinik. Sanay naman ako na masaktan. (Getting pricked is fine with me. I’m used to
getting hurt.)
Part of it is of course just for show: Filipino humor has always involved a certain degree of self-deprecation. But
there is oftentimes a grain of truth to one’s ‘hugot lines’; one’s own love life is recruited as a subtext that makes
them all the more funny and meaningful. Hugot, indeed, allows us not just to pay tribute to the importance of love
in our lives, but also to romanticize our states of lovelessness.
II.
WHY IS IT that the state of being sawi (literally ‘Ill-fated’ or ‘doomed’, but nowadays more commonly referring to
‘ill-fated in love’) resonates with many Filipinos? I have a feeling that our collective hugot runs deeper than our
personal experiences and draws from something larger that ourselves.
Our very nation, for instance, can be seen as sawi in the sense of the ill-fated loves we’ve had for the people who
led or ruled over us. Viewed in this lens, our first love was Spain, which, from the very beginning of our colonial
relationship, we looked up to, if not politically or ecclesiastically, then culturally and aesthetically. The ladino
Tomas Pinpin reports that as early as the 16th century, Filipinos were copying Spanish ways:
No doubt you like and imitate the ways and appearance of the Spaniards in matters of clothing and the bearing of
arms and even of gait, and you do not hesitate to spend a great deal so that you may resemble the Spaniard.
Many years later, Donya Victorina, the wig-wearing, powder-applying social climber in El Filibusterismo, would
serve to personify this enduring aspiration. Not surprisingly, her ambition was to have a European husband:
All she really wanted was to “Europeanize” herself…thanks to a few finaglings she had gradually succeeded in
transforming herself so much that by now even Quatrefages and Virchow together would not know where to
classify her among the known races.
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The Filipino regard for Spain, however, was not requited; in exchange for our admiration of their ways, we
received heavy taxation and bondage; we called Spain ‘mother’, but she never really thought of us as her beloved
child. Thus we were drawn to Jose Rizal, and later, the indios bravos of the Philippine Revolution. But alas, all of
them would fail us - or fall into the hands of the enemy. Rizal, who inspired an entire generation to take up arms,
was felled by the Spanish in the park that now bears his name. Only a few years after Filipinos got introduced to
him and his extraordinary life, the man who represented so much of our aspirations was dead, leaving us with his
final love letter:
My idolized Country, for whom I most gravely pine,

Dear Philippines, to my last goodbye, oh, harken
There I leave all: my parents, loves of mine…
Andres Bonifacio, the “Father of the Revolution” who idolized Rizal, was himself ignominiously executed by his
fellow revolutionaries in a mountain in Cavite, with not even a grave to mark his remains. And who can forget the
“Boy General”, Gregorio del Pilar, dead at 24? His farewell note, written in a cave in Tirad Pass on the eve of his
death, may not be as literary as Rizal’s, nor his death as glorious, but it is equally haunting:
The General has given me a Platoon of available men and has ordered me to defend this Pass. I am aware what
a difficult task has been given me. Nevertheless, I feel that this is the most glorious moment of my life. I am doing
everything for my beloved country. There is no greater sacrifice.
They were, as ill-fated lovers, too young to die.
From the heartache of the Philippine Revolution and the ensuing loss of so many of our best and brightest men,
we tried to move on, and it was during this time that America seduced us with promises of prosperity and
modernization. And like a lover who will sacrifice even her own identity for her beloved, we embraced America’s
ways, adopted its customs and language: we were afflicted with what historian Vicente Rafael calls “white love”.
It was an unequal, and in many ways unrequited, love to begin with (they patronizingly called us ‘little brown
brothers’), but we still pressed on in our adulation of Uncle Sam, with some going as far as to campaign for the
Philippines’ inclusion as a state among the ‘United States of America’. Though far away from snow, we dreamt of
White Christmas; though far away from apple orchards we allowed an apple to stand for the first letter in our
alphabet, ignoring the more common (and more delicious) atis. In her moments of lucidity, my late grandaunt -
who was incidentally a case of sawi because she refused to elope with her lover to her eternal regret - would sing
the ‘Star-Spangled Banner’, the anthem they used to sing in flag ceremonies, with no small nostalgia.
The Japanese were too violent, their occupation too short, to be considered a love - theirs were a lust for territory
and power. Consequently, our response was resistance, not romance. It was only many years later, when they
came in the form of emotional and loveable anime characters, and when we had learned to love sushi, ramen and
of late, matcha, that we were able to embrace the land of cherry blossoms. The face of that new Japan was not
Musashi, master of combat, but Murakami, master of prose - and himself a master of hugot. World World II,
indeed, remained a chapter in our love affair in our America: the most trying and yet the most noble. No longer
“little brown brothers”, we were made to feel that we were true comrade-at-arms fighting side by side with the
Americans.
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After the war, we were free at last from foreign rule. But the ones who took their place - our own leaders - likewise
failed us, either by choice or tragic circumstance. Ramon Magsaysay, our best hope, was doomed by a plane
crash in Cebu. The word “sayang” defies translation, and is the only fitting word to describe moments that are
characterized, all at once, by loss, regret, disappointment, and sorrow; it was what the people must have felt
when they mourned their “guy” in Malacañang.
Ferdinand Marcos was another bright hope who orated in his inaugural speech that “this nation can be great
again”. At first many believed him, but he was ultimately corrupted not so much by lupus but by his lust for power.
And so we were once again sawi in our hopes, a state made all the more bitter by our being overtaken, one by
one, by our neighbors: first Singapore, then Malaysia and Thailand, and now, even Vietnam.
  Indeed, the leaders that we were enamored of failed us, but even so, our capacity for faith and love has
remained boundless. In our refusal to give up, we render ourselves vulnerable to false love, but at the same time,
open to the true one. Will somebody come to rightfully deserve our affection? Some say that he has already come
in the form of the current president, but for many others, the search continues.
III.
OF COURSE, POLITICS alone cannot explain our feeling of being sawi; I also think that it has something to do
with the circumstances of many Filipino.
In the first place, inequity - i.e. the differences between the rich and the poor - is so wide that many lovers must
have to first and foremost bridge the socio-economic gulf between them and their families. Abelardo’s “Nasaan Ka
Irog” and the same-titled film that grew out of it are based on the true story of a thwarted love affair between an
impoverished maiden and a rich heir - Abelardo’s friend. This trope of wealth differences between lovers:
housemaid and haciendero’s son, houseboy and rich heiress, has been carried on by various actors and
actresses, from Nora Aunor to Nadine Lustre.
The primacy of family in Philippine society is also why our love affairs are often beyond our control, and hence,
prone to failure. The now-defunct practice of pagtatanan was a sanctioned form of defiance that gave space for
lovers to override the dictates of their parents, but it is ultimately successful only after their eventual sanction.
That our national hero himself, Jose Rizal, failed to overcome the wishes of Leonor Rivera’s parents speaks of the
paramount importance of family. Years after his heartbreak, he would plead for his sisters to accept his beloved
Josephine Bracken.
Then there is also the diaspora that displaces lovers, husbands and wives, parents and children, the Filipino and
motherland; a diaspora that drove Joma Sison to write of his longing for mangoes - and the Pinoys of Winnipeg to
brave a frigid winter day for the opening of a Jolibee store. In our Internet age, virtual connections sometimes
suffice to take the place of physical togetherness: Once, someone posted an endearing photo on Facebook of a
man gazing intently at his iPad, his face betraying the joy of talking with someone he loves.
But just as frequently, physical separation leads to an emotional one: as I have experienced the hard way,
willingness to travel from Manila to New York can water down to a point that traveling from one end of Manhattan
to the other is too much of an inconvenience. Indeed, feelings are like sand: you can build them into a fairy-tale
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castle but they can wash away as soon as the ramparts take their final form.
Finally, our country’s being beset with calamity further adds to the uncertainty of our loves and our futures.
Yolanda, alas, has been politicized beyond recognition, but to the people of Tacloban, it remains raw - and is
populated not by politicians that marred the relief efforts but loved ones that they lost - or lived through the
situation with. Indeed, what they remember the most is not the foul stench of corruption, but that of dead bodies
lying on the streets for several weeks. After we arrived in Tacloban from that volcano with a heart-shaped crater,
my hosts recounted tales of heartbreak, like that of a young man who couldn’t hold on to his wife’s hand as the
fierce waves swept away their house and overwhelmed them. Hours later, after having lost consciousness, the
man wakes up and finds his wife lifeless. He cries an anguished farewell:
I should have been the one swept away by the waves! I wish I were the one who perished because I can’t live
without you.
Because the Filipino condition is so fraught - difficult, diasporic, disaster-prone - love has always been a risky
proposition. Our loves, like our lives, are full of uncertainty, and while for some of us, love endures, for many
others, it succumbs to the exigencies of fate. Remarkably, however, we are able to say “Bahala na si Batman!”
with a sigh and keep going. “It was fun, too,” my friend said of Yolanda as we drank tuba in their house in
Tacloban. “We were huddled together in one room, our entire barangay. We had nothing to eat and had to scour
the warehouses and desperately wait for the relief goods, just like everybody else. But it was also fun, she
narrated, managing to laugh even as she fought the tears.
Diskarte - the art of ‘making do’ with whatever resources are available - plays a big role in dealing with these
struggles, which range from the existential to the romantic. Coming home from Tacloban to Los Baños, I was
surprised to see that alongside the pink tarpaulins for Ms. Janeth, another set of tarpaulins have cropped up in
response: “Mr. Rodel, Yes na yes! I will marry you again!” Against all odds, it seemed that love has won.
Can my own sense of diskarte redeem me from my own state of lovelessness? When I think of Yolanda and its
enormous human toll - as well as the profound heartaches of people all around me - I realize that my struggles
are nothing, but at the same time, their life stories give me hope that the heart-shaped lake at the end of the trail
is not the end of my journey. Surely, I too can overcome the obstacles that lie ahead.
And when all else fails, I guess there’s always hugot, which may not be a way to find love, but can help find a way
out of it - and perhaps back again.
IV.
THE STATE OF being sawi does not diminish a person’s worth; if anything, it only enhances his stature in the
eyes of others. Our heroes, thus, could easily be the guys who failed to realize their loves - not just the victors.
Similarly, the underdog-ness of the Filipino makes his achievements all the more remarkable, like the security
guard who becomes a cum laude graduate in the very school where he goes on duty; the tricycle driver’s son who
tops the medical board exams, or the lover who manages to win over his beloved not because of his wealth or
physical superiority - but because of his love itself: its passion, its ingenuity, and its capacity to transcend even its
perceived limits.
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I would like to think that the same is true with our nation. We carry on: a people full of hope, made richer - not
poorer - by the tragedies and disappointments we've faced and the handicaps we’ve had to deal with. Through
kundiman lyrics past and ‘hugot lines’ present, our emotions have been transmuted into humor and sublimated to
art. Undeterred by our failings, we continue; unencumbered by the weight of our feelings, we press on. But even
as we move on, we keep holding on to the memory of a past that may yet return in the future - and to the hope of
a future that we can almost experience, even as it never seems to arrive.
For the Filipino, indeed, possibility can just be as real as certainty, and memory can just be as palpable as the
here and the now. In tapping into this view, the person who does hugot reveals the depth of his emotions and in
the process shows his heart intact: an open invitation to those who are willing and able to fill it. Similarly, for all
our nation’s hurts and pains, we remain ready to hope, ready to believe, and ready to love.
And therein, I suppose, lies the strength of our republic of sawi.
Si Barbie’g Si Tarzan
by Merlie Alunan
(Original Version) (translated version)
Pastilan, kini si Barbie Doll bisa’g asa na lang nako Pastilan, I fin’ dis Barbie Doll all ober de place.
punita. Sometimes under the sofa, playing de mouse
Usahay sa ilawom sa sopa, gikawras-kawras anang with dat wild cat Catullus.
banbanong Sometimes all bundle’ up with’ dirty laundry.
si Catullus kung wa siyay minyak nga madakpan, usahay You jus’ kick her around’, or sweep her up
napiko-piko uban sa mga labhanan. Matumban naman, an’ put wit’ de garbage. Der in de veranda she is,
masilhigan, mahitipon sa mga basura. Karon, tua sa all crumple’ up, poor raggedy t’ing.
balkon, ay,
bulingit sa nangamatay, mora’g sagmon, gum-os She’s Amirkano,no? Jus’ look at dat face
intawon. (but wipe it up a bit first). See dat yello’ hair,
curly lashes, eyes like glass, like a fairy she is.
Her waist, ay, so tiny. Wow legs, too, smoot’ as a
Merkano si Barbie, ‘sa no? Tan-awa, way makatupong candle.
sa iyang kagwapa (hilam-osi) una. Buraw’g buhok, No Barbie for me when I was young, my doll, too
bawod ug pilok, silhag og kalimutaw, mora’g diwata. heavy,
Iyang hawakan baling gamitoya. Wow legs, kandilaon pee an’ crap for real, an’ yell w’en I put him down –
ang porma. dat’s your Tatay Ponso, my younger broder –
Wa koy Barbie sa gamay pa ko, akong monyika arang because
bug-ata, Nanay, always in the fields dat time, or looking for
mangihi, malibang, motiyabaw kong akong ibutang – clams
mao na si inyong Iyo Ponso, manghod nako – kay si to sell in the taboan. In dos days, my father always
Nanay fishing,
kanunay darohan, o nanginhas para itindahay sa taboan. or playing wit’ his gray cock, the bulanting, always
Adtong panahona akong Tatay, kun di mangisda, massage, exercise, blowing tobacco smoke on its
tua sa iyang buwanting hiniktan, maghapyod-hapyod, face.
magtugpo-tugpo, magpabuga’g aso. Maayo pa mo,
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may Barbing tinuod, gasa ni Tita Penny nga tua You lucky to have a real Barbie, a gift from Tita
s’Canada. Penny
Tan-awa o, kadaghan niya’g ilisan, may pangkatulog, from Canada. See dis Barbie? She got plenty of
pangsimba, pang-ballroom dancing pa. clothes –
Dagha’g sapatos, ariyos, kwintas, may kotse pa gyud. for sleeping, for going to de Church, for ballroom
dancing.
Apan nganong mora’g wa man moy gana niya? Ay, also lots of shoes, earrings, necklace, and a
Aw, hinuon, tinganlig nangigi ram o sa iyang kagwapa car, too!
(labi na adtong bag-o pa). Naibog mo sa iyang ilong
taliwtiw, hamis nga panit, lawas coca-cola. Kay kamo, Why you not like her?
pislat man, itomon, lawas pandak, panit kagiron, Aw, is it because she more pretty dan you?
wa gyuy itsura intawon. Unsaon, naa ra man inyong Yah, you be jealous of her cute pointy nose,
nawong Smoot’ skin, coca-cola body. Because, you
sa kamaisan, mangguna, mananggi, magpugas, flat-nose, black skin, your body, ay, pandak,
mamanglin your skin rough, you no-good looking intawon.
og gabi, mopas-an og sako, angat sa bakilid, lukdo’g Nah, but dat’s because all de time you in de
tubig cornfields,
para ilung-ag. Hinuon, naa, lig-on mo’g abaga, kusga’g weeding, harvesting, sowing, digging for de yams,
liog, carrying sacks on your head, climbing up de hill
tul-id og likod, dasok ang mga bat-ang, mga paa tigson, wit’ water for cooking de rice, so yo’ shoulders
daw batang sa hamurawon. Wa sad si Barbie ana. wide,
Mga Pinay, porbida, di gyud hitupngan sa panlimbasog. yo’ neck strong, yo’ spine straight, hips tight,
your t’ighs hard like de hamurawon.
Mag-unsa si Barbie, ‘sa no, kun anhi siya sa atoa? Oh none o’ dos for Barbie, you bet.
Lagmit mapaig sad sa init, kublan sad iyang panit.
Hayan gutomon kay di makamaong mobayo, motil-ag, We Pinays, we hardworking, no one can top us.
mangalayo. Kun tinuod pa siya nga tawo, ug simba ko, Now if Barbie living wit’us, na, she’ll burn in our
anhi siya sa atoa mahitipon, gawas nato mutsatsa niya, sun,
“Paypayi ko bi, init kaayo.” “Kawsi’g tubig, maligo ko.” her skin also become thick. Maybe she become
“Kuhiti’g luto, mokaon ko. Ham en eggs akong gusto, hungry, eh,
butter en toast, orange juice.” ‘cause she not know how to pound rice, to winnow,
to cook in wood fire. If she real and living here,
Ay, tara! Pinisting dako, Oh, pity us, Lor’, we become her slaves, she be
asa gud tawon na pangahoya? Lawlaw’g bahaw ra may asking us,
atong nailhang pamahaw. Kun gabii lugaw’g asin, “Please, fan me, so hot,” or “Get me water for my
pamira ra sa habol ba. Hah, katawa man mo. bath,”
Ay na, wa ko maglagot, uy! Pananglitan ra man ba. or “Only rice for breakfas’?” But I wan’ ham en
Ay’ ko ninyo kataw-i lagi. Hisgot-hisgot ra ning atoa. eggs,
Bitaw, no, og maingon, kadakong dimalas intawon. butter en toas’, orens juice. . .”
Oy, ‘Day, si Barbie, ‘Day, si Barbie. Ay, tara! Curse de evil luck!
‘Day, lagi, dali, gitangag ni Tarzan si Barbie. Where in dis part of de woods can we fin’ that?
Si Tarzan ba, kadtong iro ni Hulyan Dumpol, All we know for breakfas’ is cold rice an’ lawlaw,
Atong silingang hugador. salted fish.
Hoy, hoy, Tarzan, hoy! Tarzan, boy, balik ngari! At night for supper lugaw an’ salt, jus’ enough food
Matigbak kang iroa ka! Balik! Balik! to draw up the blanket up, you kno’.
Ibalik among Barbie! Hah, why you laugh? Ay na, me not angry, uy.
Dat’s only for example. Ay, do not laugh at me,
Ay, pastilan! lagi.
Tua, mingsutoy man hinuon. We just talking talking here. . . Bitaw, no?
Da uy! Mirisi. What if she live wit’ us, very bad luck for us ‘tawon.
Uy, ‘Day, look at Barbie,

‘Day, there goes our Barbie.
Page | 45
‘Day, lagi, Tarzan got our Barbie in his mout’.
Tarzan, ba, Julian cutprick’s dog,
Dat no-good gambler neighbor of ours.
Hoy,hoy, Tarzan, hoy, come back her’!
May you die, you evil dog! Come back her’!
Give us back our Barbie!
Ay, pastilan! Der he goes,
running fas’ as he can.
Da, serves her right, uy –
I Higaonon
by Telesforo Sungkit Jr.
I.
I you call pagan,
you say pagan is bad people.
You say you is Christian
and Christian is good people.
You laugh I kneel on big rock
or I pray before big tree.
You angry I call Migbaya,
you say my God is devil.
I not laugh you kneel on dead tree
or you pray to hanging God there.
I not angry you call your God,
and I not call Him devil.
I angry you get my lands,
I angry you get my golds,
I angry you burn my wood books,
but you say I should love enemy.
You say love enemy
but you killed grandpa baylan,
you killed grandma bae,
you killed uncle bagani,
you killed even dog talamuod.
II.
I you call savage
you say savage is bad people.
You say you is civilized
and civilized is good people.
You laugh I speak wrong your tongue
or I not knowing you say.
You angry I speak my tongue,
you say I silent I not speak your tongue.
I not laugh you speak in your noses
Page | 46
or you kalamura speak my tongue.
I not angry you speak your tongue,
I not say you silent you not speak my tongue.
I angry you kill my datus,
I angry you burn my house,
I angry you get my honey,
I angry you get my sakop,
but you say I should know democracy.
You say know democracy
but you commanding all
you telling I not speak
you forcing I live near plantations
You making all us sakop
you killing my brothers not liking you.
III.
I you call brother
you say brother skin also brown.
You say you is my brother
and brother is good people.
You laugh I kneel on big rock
or I pray before big tree.
You laugh I speak wrong your tongue
or I not knowing you say.
You angry I call Migbaya,
you say my God is devil.
You angry I speak my tongue,
you say I silent I not speak your tongue.
I not laugh you kneel on dead tree
or you pray to hanging God there.
I not angry you call your God,
and I not call Him devil.
I not laugh you speak in your teeth
or you kalamura speak my tongue.
I not angry you speak your tongue,
I not say you silent you not speak my tongue.
I angry you get my lands,
I angry you get my golds,
I angry you dishonor my sisters,
but you say I should love brother, skin also brown.
You say love brother, skin also brown
but you help kill grandpa baylan,
you help kill grandma bae,
you help kill uncle bagani,
you help kill dog talamuod,
you help kill even my balangkawitan rooster.
I angry you help kill my datus,
I angry you help burn my house,
I angry you help steal my honey,
I angry you paying cheap my abaka, coffee, coconut, banana, etc.
but you say I should know government.
You say know government
but you commanding all
you telling I not speak
Page | 47
you forcing I live near plantations
you making us all sakop
you killing us not liking you.
IV.
I pagan?
I savage?
I brother?
V.
I knowing gooder, I knowing bad.
I knowing badder, I knowing good.
I knowing brother, I knowing stranger.
I knowing things yesterday, today, tomorrow.
I ancient.
I Higaonon.
—
And you call me colored

by Agra Gra
When I was born I was black

When I was sad I was black
When I was hot I was black
When I was sick I was black
When I was scared I was black
When you was born you was pink

When you was sad you was blue
When you was hot you was red
When you was sick you was green
When you was scared you was yellow
And you call me colored.
Salt
by Anamika
Salt is earth’s sorrow and its taste.

Earth’s three-fourths is brackish water,
Page | 48
and men’s heart a salt mountain.
Weak is salt’s heart,
very quickly it melts,
it sinks in shame
when plates are flung
due to salt’s varied strength.
There stands –
a government building –
like a salt shaker –
shakes with much sophistication, sprinkles
salt in my wound.
Women are the salt of the earth,
they have all the salt in the mould of their face.
Ask those women
how heavy it feels –
their saline faces?
All those determined to pay the salt’s price,
all those who couldn’t betray their masters
have annoyed the seven seas and
the revolutionaries.
Gandhi knew the salt’s worth
as the girl-guava-sellers.
Whether or not something
stays in the world,
there shall always be salt.
God’s tears and man’s sweat –
this is salt
that balances the earth.
Translation from the Hindi
By Sudeep Sen
Anamika is an established Hindi poet and essayist.
(Philosophical importance of salt)
Love Like Salt
A king had three daughters. He wanted to test their love for him. He called them and asked them, “Tell me how
much do you love me.”
The eldest daughter said, “Father, I love you like jewellery.” The king was pleased with her as he was very fond of
gold and jewels and had a large collection of exquisite jewellery in his palace. The second daughter said, “Father,
I love you like the bestwine!” The king was happy to hear this as he was addicted to wines and other alcoholic
drinks.
Then the youngest daughter replied, “Dear Father, I love you like salt”. The king became furious on hearing this
reply. Angrily, he shouted, “What do you mean, you mean creature? Salt is a useless, cheap, and ordinary object
which you can find even in the poor slums of my kingdom. I know you don’t love me. I don’t want to see you
again. Go away.”
Page | 49
But the youngest daughter met the palace chef and requested him to avoid salt in all the dishes to be served
during the royal feast on the next day. The old chef had a special affection to the youngest princess as she was
simple, humble and innocent. He agreed to do as she wished.
During the feast, the king tasted his favourite dishes and cried aloud, “What is this? It has not taste at all! He
summoned the chef and questioned him. The wise chef answered, “Oh, Sir, I was afraid to include salt in the royal
dishes because yesterday you declared in the court that salt was a useless and ordinary article. I avoided it.”
The king learned a lesson. He realized the importance of salt and asked the youngest daughter to forgive him for
his harsh remarks and rash behavior. He understood the extent of her love towards him and embraced her.
Page | 50

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ADDU-SHS

ATENEO DE DAVAO UNIVERSITY

SENIOR HIGH SCHOOL

21 st Century Literature from the

1st Grading (Fiction and Drama)

Leg Men by Dominique Cimafranca

A Very Old Man with Enormous Wings by Gabriel Garcia Marquez

Louis Vuitton by Teresa May Mundiz

Limos by Chris David Lao

The Abortion Clinic by Javier Torregosa

2nd Grading (Essay and Poetry)

The Art of 'hugot' in our Republic of 'sawi' by Gideon Lasco

Si Barbie’g si Tarzan by Merlie Alunan

I, Higaonon by Telesforo Sungkit Jr.

And You Call Me Colored by Agra Gra

Love Like Salt

But Woncheol only stared at the sack.

After a few hours, they rested.

‘ Babo ,’ Woncheol said, almost weeping from fear.

‘You saw what Omma brought back, the first time.’

‘Where is she?’ Choecheol hugged himself.

‘ Hyeong , don’t say that!’

But Woncheol was crying because he knew it was true.

‘You were a good hyeong. ’ Choecheol’s voice was as heavy as schoolbooks.

‘Halt!’ A voice shouted. ‘ Meom-cheoh , or I’ll shoot!’

‘ Hyeong ,’ he said. He was crying.

‘Your hyeong said run!’

“What does the salt have to do with it?” I asked.

It was fiesta alright, but a fiesta to which we were not invited.

Cousin Omeng shuddered. “Oh, it's too horrible to mention,” he said.

“Hey, come on, tell me!”

He looked at me solemnly, and said: “A man has to sacrifice himself.”

“Sacrifice himself? How?”

He shook his head in all seriousness.

“Now, Cousin Omeng?”

We had been discovered. It was now or never.

I was not prepared for what happened next.

“Hold still,” I shouted as I prepared another round.

“O-oooh,” Cousin Omeng moaned pitifully.

“Is it dead?” I asked.

“Where are you doing?” I asked.

“We got lost.”

Finally, Rodrigo lost patience with me.

Suddenly, someone shouted: “I see something!” More shouts.

“Kill it! Kill it!”

“Ha! Tiago has hit it!”

“No! It was my spear!”

“Watch out! It's still alive!”

“Wait! What is that?”

“You fool! It's just a bat!”

“Where's the village idiot?”

“I thought you had him!”

“Spread out! Find him! He can't have gone very far!”

“It's Rodrigo and his men!”

“What is the meaning of this?” Cousin Omeng repeated.

“Oh, yes I did. I married her.”

“But...but...married? How could you do that? There's no church! There's no priest!”

He winked at me, and grinned.

A Very Old Man with Enormous Wings

Mother shooed me to pick up the phone.

“It’s a gift.” Mother said, a smile forming her lips.

Nimfa: Limos… Palimos po… Maawa po kayo…