John Sayles - A Moment in the Sun

Señora Divinaflores had lost a girl to infection who was using sponges and beat Dionisia with a strap when she discovered the girl was pushing half of a cut lemon inside herself before each visitante . Instead, each week she made them all drink a tea made with hierbas prepared by her ancient friend Doña Hermanegilda, who even shy Keiko agreed was a witch. It tasted almost as bad as China medicine, which tastes like the ugly disease you are trying to kill, and Señora Divinaflores watched them swallow every drop.

“We are here to entertain the caballeros ,” she said, “not to produce their bastards.”

In the slow afternoons the Filipina girls liked to play cards together and Keiko embroidered handkerchiefs with flying sparrows, always sparrows, and Ling-Ling would sit out on the sill of the window under the Spanish flag, watching the world pass by. Señora Divinaflores allowed this as long as Ling-Ling dressed up in her working silks and wore makeup and oiled her hair so people passing would know hers was a high-toned establishment. The Filipina girls taught Ling-Ling to comb the cocoanut oil through her hair and her favorite part of the day was early afternoon when they would sit and do it for each other. Only Ynés, who was mestiza and had curly hair that was almost red, was left out of this pleasure, but she was the one the caballeros asked for the most. There were yang gweizi women in Manila doing the same as them, said Eulalia, but they could afford to entertain alone in their own houses.

It wasn’t long after Ling-Ling arrived in Sampaloc that the Comisaria de Vigilencia man came along with Señora Divinaflores’s lover, who was called Sargento Robles, to tell them that they had to be registered and inspected. They were brought to the Office of Public Hygiene and their photographs were taken. When the oficial asked her name she said Ling-Ling, just Ling-Ling. She was given a card that had writing on it and her photograph in the corner, and the Comisaria kept an identical card. Ling-Ling had never had her photograph taken before and did not like to look at the girl in the picture. At least it was only from her shoulders up and did not show her feet.

Twice a week they were supposed to either go to the hospital or let Dr. Apostol look inside them when he came by on his rounds through Sampaloc. It cost a Mexican silver if you went to the hospital or two if you waited for Dr. Apostol, money taken out of your pay by Señora Divinaflores.

They were paid in this house in Sampaloc, though after their food and lodging and hierbas and clothing and now medical examinations were taken out very little was left. The Filipina girls bought themselves things, sweets, pretty things, things you could buy on the street or from vendors who came calling under your window and would send your purchase up in a basket. Keiko gave her coins to a Dwarf Bandit man who came by once a week and who, she said, was sending it home to her parents. Ling-Ling kept hers in a wooden jewel box Eulalia had given her and never counted them. Eulalia had given her some gold earrings, too, and an ivory comb and a small icon, carved out of black stone, of a naked man with his hands and feet nailed to crossed planks. Ma had had something like that but one night when Baba was drunk and angry at the yang gweizi he threw it deep into the fire and wouldn’t let her reach in to pull it out. Sometimes in the mornings when Ling-Ling was lonely and sad Eulalia would come into her bed and hold her. Eulalia always smelled of cinnamon and cocoanut oil and gave Ling-Ling sarsaparilla wine to drink.

“The hierba tea only protects you against babies,” she said. “This will keep you from being infected.”

But even though they always drank a small bottle of it to make their mouths forget the taste of Doña Hermanegilda’s brew, one week Dr. Apostol said they had to go with Carmen to the Hospital San Juan de Dios to be cured. They were marched there by Sargento Robles and one of his fellow guardia and locked in a ward full of infected girls from all over Manila.

They had to lie on their backs three times a day and pour a cup of something that stung into themselves, holding it in till they could hold it no more and were allowed to run to the bench full of holes and pee it out. There was not much else to do and sometimes there were fights between the girls.

“Stay away from that one,” warned Eulalia, pointing to a hard-faced mestiza across the ward. “I was in Bilibid with her once. She hides a razor in her hair.”

“Why were you in prison?”

Eulalia raised her shoulders. “I argued with the ama at the house I was in before I came to Señora Divinaflores and she had me arrested. And even before that, on Thursdays and Sundays they let visitors into the cells, so we would go and entertain the prisoners who had money but no wives.”

In the evening the Daughters of Charity came in with their white hats spread out like the wings of flying fish, to pray for them and remind them that they were wicked women. The only one Ling-Ling liked was Sor Merced, who was young and would sit by her with her hands folded inside her robe and ask in Spanish what life was like for North China people. The robe was bluish-gray, the exact color of the cloth that Ma had woven so skillfully when she was still able to work a loom. Sometimes Sor Merced would tell stories about the life of San Vicente and sometimes even stories about herself when she was a girl and had a different name that Ling-Ling never asked her to reveal.

“Your sickness,” Sor Merced said, “is God’s warning that you are in peril. If you wish to lead a different life, perhaps I can help you.”

The Daughters of Charity were supposed to help the Poor and the Sick, and Ling-Ling was both of those. “But Sister,” she said shyly, “I am a pagana .”

Sor Merced looked at her for a long moment. “That does not mean I won’t help you,” she said.

But they were only at San Juan de Dios for a week when the doctor said they had been cured and something was written on the registration card with her photograph on it, both on hers and the one they kept, and she and Eulalia and Carmen were sent back to Señora Divinaflores.

“I kept your beds for you,” the ama told them. “You are in debt to me.”

Then there was a war between the government and the insurrectos , who were all Filipinos from Cavite, said Eulalia, who was from Ilocos, but after the very beginning it didn’t come too close to their house in Sampaloc. On the night before they were to be sent to fight, Rodrigo Valenzuela and many of his fellow junior oficiales de fusileros came to drink and sing and be entertained. Before he went to the room with Ling-Ling he pulled her out in front of the others.

“We have a wager,” he said. “A wager between caballeros . They say there is no china capable of this, that I am only a braggart and a fabulist.”

Ling-Ling stood looking down at her clown-feet, never happy to be the focus of so many eyes.

“Go ahead, querida . You know which one.”

And then Ling-Ling raised her head and covered her heart with her right hand and recited, trying to say the words with exactly the tone and exactly the rhythm that Rodrigo Valenzuela had taught her.

A mi alma enamorada—

— she cooed—

Una reina oriental parecía

Que esperaba a su mante

Bajo el techo de su camarín—

— the caballeros standing with their mouths hung open like carp in a too-small bucket—

— O que, llevada en hombros

La profunda extensión recorría