Francisco Jose - Three Filipino Women

I called again that night and was told she was asleep — although it was only eight. She was avoiding me, she could have easily called. When school opened, I waited for her and this time, there was no escape. She was in the same jeans and formless blouse. She had grown darker and there was a look of unease about her.

“Why don’t you want to see me?” I asked bluntly.

She turned around. We were in the vicinity of the registrar’s office and students were milling about, looking at bulletin boards, checking their schedules. “I will see you in half an hour at the acacia,” she mumbled, her eyes downcast.

“No!” I was angry then. “I will not leave you. I’ll follow you till you tell me what is wrong.”

She bit her lip. She was in trouble and I wanted to help her, if she would only let me.

We walked out into the street, onward to the library, to our tree. The grass was green now, the dead brown of the dry season banished; the first rains of June had done their job and a freshness perfumed the air. Everything about the world seemed bright, except for this gloom which now encompassed us.

We sat on the old and twisted root. She began slowly. She had no more tears to shed. “They are dead, Teng-ga. All five of them. And I am the only one who got out.”

“Who are dead?”

“Bubut, Eddie, Lina, Tom and Alex …” She looked at me, beseeched me. I could not quite grasp it at first, but in the back of my mind was a huge, oncoming wave of fear. What had she done? What had she been sucked into?

They had gone to the south, somewhere in the mountains of Quezon, and joined another group for the duration of the school vacation. Familiarization and training, that is what they called it.

On their way back, they had been particularly careful because they were all unarmed. Alex, a medical student, was an old hand and their guide. They bivouacked in an abandoned farmhouse for the night with Alex outside as sentry. That early morning, a shout erupted from the surrounding green ordering them to come out. Even as they filed out of the hut, their hands in the air, they were mowed down.

Malu had dropped quickly to the ground in abject fear and that was how she was spared.

The armed men swarmed around them. A lean man in jeans, with crew cut, pulled her up from the grass where she was cowering. The men were laughing; they were not in uniform, but they were obviously a commando team. “Leave us alone for a moment,” the crew-cut man said, and the men dispersed to the bushes. The man yanked her inside the hut and told her to undress. She begged that she be allowed to look at her friends, they might still be alive, but he just laughed at her. “If they are, we will kill them all before we leave this place. And, of course, we will kill you, too.”

She said, “My first thought was one of shame. He started to touch me. I drew away and he barked: ‘One more move like that and I will shoot you.’ I tried to push him away but he was strong. He was laughing. He held my hands and repeated his threat. I wanted to live. It was painful at first and I thought I would not be able to endure it. But he took his time before he started pushing. I don’t know how long it took — I was afraid he would kill me when he got through. I thought I would cooperate so he would let me live. And I started pushing, too. He kissed me and I kissed back. I did! Oh, it was disgusting. He seemed surprised and pleased and he said he would not kill me because I was good, but that if I was not gone in another hour, his men would return and surely use me as he had done, then kill me.

“You just don’t know how I hated myself afterwards for doing what I had to do in order to live. Even now, when I remember, I am so ashamed of myself. How can I live with the thought that I am alive, that I was a coward? And after what had happened, I don’t want to see you, ever. I have nothing to give you now …”

Her hand was cold and trembling. I had listened with anger mingled with sorrow, anger at the men who had killed her friends without reason, at the man who had violated her, and even at Malu herself for having brought this upon herself; sorrow at the wrenching pain that she had to endure and which, I was sure, would scar her always. I wanted to scream at her, but she looked so helpless, like a child who needed sympathy, and I realized it was not just sympathy that I had to give; I loved her truly in a manner I had not realized. I could live with what had happened and help her live, too, if she would let me.

“Plat, the ring which you returned — I would like to give it to you still. I want to marry you. With me, nothing has changed.”

We went to the same motel and decided to get married—“live together” as she put it, with no particular obligations except that we would be faithful to each other. Mother was building a block of duplex apartments in our old compound in Santa Mesa and we could move into the first one finished. She knew of Malu from the beginning and had met her and liked her, but would not approve of the live-in arrangement and neither would her parents. We would lie to them, tell them we had gotten married by a judge in Pasig, that the church wedding would follow after she finished college and we would then leave for the States together.

Because of her trauma, I was prepared to suffer the coldness that she had hinted at. In the apartment, I could sense the tension in her labored breathing, the clamminess in her arms as they encircled me. She tried to be the woman I desired; her kisses, though not passionate, were woman enough, warm enough, and I savored them, gloried in them.

Soon, she began to relax, even to move sensuously. After a time, I throbbed to the strength of her embrace, the quickening thrust of her hips, the contracting and fluttering of her stomach, and the long drawn gasp at the peak — what I was finally giving her, getting from her. When her movements ceased and she came to rest, I drew away to look at her. Her eyes were bright with repressed laughter. I thought I would begin again; I could feel her twitching, pulsing, and roughly, she pushed me away, saying she was so sensitive she could not bear me moving inside her.

She had phoned home and said she’d be away the whole day. We talked far into the night. We had our meals brought in and after brief snatches of sleep, we sought each other again and again. I finally found the completeness that had eluded me all these years.

I promised not to ask what she did during those two months, who her friends were. My ignorance was protection for everyone, she explained. It was she who brought the sad news to the parents of her friends who, like her, lived very comfortably. They never understood why their children gave up their lives so recklessly.

I decided to draw her away from her commitment, to “domesticate” her, make her a mother and tie her to the home or to a normal career, perhaps dreary but safe and never again would she be close to the vortex of death.

I wanted to tell her father about us, but she refused. “I will just move in with you,” she said. “But let us draw some rules.” She said there would be a time when I would get bored with her. One night a week, I should go out, be on my own, do anything I liked. “Drag to bed any woman — even a whore — and you can tell me if you want to. I will not be angry. I promise. But do not take a mistress, do not get involved with any woman emotionally. And don’t bring home any bugs.”

I listened to her dumbly.

“Will you permit me to have a night out, too?”

That she asked me at all touched me. I had no choice. “But no affairs,” I said.

She nodded. “And someday,” she went on, reiterating what she told me earlier, “if we part, it should be as friends.”