Francisco Jose - Three Filipino Women

She led me across the wide expanse of carpet and upholstered furniture and all that “burgis crockery” as she described it, to the library. By an old writing desk with several tape recorders, Malu’s father sat on an overstuffed leather easy chair. His dark glasses were not on and when he looked at me, his eyes had that blank, unseeing stare. He must have felt that I was standing for he said, “Please sit down,” pointing to the rattan chair before him.

He asked if I was served something and when he was assured that I was, he sighed, “I had this headache again and Malu is the only one who can relieve me of it.”

“She is a wonderful girl, sir.”

He nodded. “She has special gifts. She is the brightest of my children. I know her values are right. She tells me about those teach-ins, those demonstrations, the idealism of it all. I worry about her, her safety, her well-being. If she were only a boy — do you understand what I am trying to say?”

“Yes, sir.”

“Do you believe in what she is doing?”

“Not all the way, sir,” I said. “Neither demonstrations nor guns will do away with the injustice around us. Education will — I told her that.”

He slapped his thigh as if he agreed, drew his chest in and breathed deeply. He was past sixty, but there was still stamina in him. “But how can I dissuade her? I believe in her goals, too, and that is why I am worried. But I’m glad that you are rooted in solid ground and you can be some sort of anchor to … reason and sanity. Now, let me tell you something you don’t know. She is also a spiritista. Do you know what that is?”

“Yes, sir. She let me read a paper she wrote which she did not want published.”

He shook his head, sadly. “Since 1949—nothing but darkness. Many specialists, even in Europe, have seen me. Do you understand? I was prepared for a life of darkness. I have even forgiven the Japanese for it. I have adjusted to it, although I miss many things. The shape of trees, of houses, the colors … and Malu — my dear child! I have never seen her. If only I could! Sometimes, I touch her face, imagining how she looks. She always tells me she is ugly.”

“No, sir,” I said quickly. “She is the prettiest girl I know. Her eyes, her cheeks …” I was gushing and pitying him at the same time. And I was glad that I could see her and hoped to God that I would know her far better, know the grace that suffused her personality.

“You love her?”

“Very much, sir.”

“We all love her,” he said. “But I have a feeling that we will lose her.”

“Oh, no!”

The sightless eyes locked with mine. “You may not know it, but when she became a spiritista two years ago … Oh — I never found out how she got into it and she has not told me yet. During this last year that she began ministering to me, touching my eyes, praying for me … I could not believe it at first. After all those years of total darkness. But now, I can tell when it is daylight. The reds come flooding into my eyes. Do you know what this means? For a man who knew nothing but night for more than twenty years? I have hope again. And now, when I sit in front of a window, when people pass in front of me, I see shadows. Shadows!”

Malu came to the acacia after her last class; she wore the same old jeans and loose blouse — they were her uniform. She shared with me the chocolate cake her mother had baked and when we were finished, I asked about the spiritistas in Navotas.

“And why are you so interested in them all of a sudden?”

“I want to find out what is in them that attracts you. What are you really looking for? What do you want?”

“Hey!” She playfully shoved a fist into my stomach. “One at a time. I am no computer. What do you want me to be?”

“My wife,” I said immediately. “I want you to raise my children, to keep house, help me be what I want to be …”

“How conventional,” she sighed. “The woman’s place is in the home.”

“It is a major responsibility, Plat. No small matter.”

“I don’t deny that,” she said. “But it is like condemning a woman to prison.”

“A home a prison? Do you want to be free like a bird? But even birds have nests.”

“I know, but you asked what I want. I want peace.”

“It is so abstract, Plat. It is like saying I want truth, beauty …”

“I want those, too, and they are not abstract.”

“Tell me, are you uncomfortable in Dasmariñas Village?”

She did not speak. I had touched the root of it all. She turned to me and said evenly, “My father did not cheat anyone. He worked very hard all his life. My mother, too. I don’t have to explain our kind of life.”

“I am not asking you to,” I said. “People deserve the fruits of their labor.”

“That’s what Father said. The only things I knew were parties, clothes. Oh, yes, Father told us about the poor, but I was protected from real knowledge. Then, when I was a junior in high school, I had a very good teacher in literature. She made us read Rizal, all those stories by our own writers that would waken us. We asked questions. She took us to the Philippine General Hospital and saw all those people in the corridors who were going to die because they had no money. I have been only to the best hospitals — the Makati Center, those in the United States. We read stories about the slums, so we visited — not Tondo — but Malibay in Pasay. And you know, what I used to spend for one dress — that was what one family needed to live on for three months! I was shocked. I felt guilty that I had so much, that I was comfortable and there are so many people who are not. And my teacher, when the nuns learned about what she was doing, they fired her. I really hated them for that.”

“You cannot be Santa Claus,” I said. “This is a job for government. Besides, the poor will always be with us.”

“They are people !” she said emphatically. “That I cannot forget. I wanted to think only of myself, of the fun I used to have. I just couldn’t anymore. And that was when I went into meditation. To ease my mind — not to run away or to seek some enlightenment. Don’t you have mental or emotional problems at all?”

“Yes,” I said. “Lots of them. But the one that gives me the most frustration — is you.”

Her brows arched in mock surprise. “You trouble me a lot, too,” she said. “We should meditate together then. I have my own mantra which is just like saying the rosary over and over.”

“Om ni pad ni om …”

“Not that esoteric,” she said. “What I want the world to have: love … light, love … light.”

She said there must be a way the sick can be helped without going to fancy hospitals and buying those expensive medicines. Many of man’s diseases were psychosomatic and most ailments could be cured by the human body itself. She went searching for faith healers, found most of them were fakes taking advantage of the ignorant, just as many specialists in medicine took advantage of their patients.

All these led her to the spiritistas.

“Can you take me to Navotas to see them?”

“So you can laugh at us, or look at us as if we were freaks?”

I told her then what her father had told me.

“I believe, Plat,” I said simply.

We reached Barrio Santa Clara late in the day. It was not a long way from the boulevard that skirted the bay. We passed new housing areas that were being built on land that was once fish ponds. We turned right into a narrow, cemented street, the wooden houses intruding into the street itself. I drove slowly for people had spilled out into the street, loafing, taking in the late afternoon sun.

The chapel was within a compound of shoddy wooden frame houses and we parked in the driveway cluttered with laundry lines, empty fish baskets, and old lumber. Beyond the driveway, the chapel was just another decrepit building with an open foyer through which I could see no pews but an enclosure with several women and men. They greeted Malu warmly. She introduced me as her future husband and they beamed at me and shook my hand.