The Samsons: Two Novels; (Modern Library) (55 page)

He was now grinning. “Oh, no … no, I will not tell anyone. But,
hoy
, you should really be a Tayo-Tayo. You will be a very useful member. You can teach us many things.”

“What will the others say?” I asked. “You have been calling Toto and me
syoki
^*
 … maybe you should join the Brotherhood instead.”

He squirmed, obviously embarrassed. “I will explain. That’s what we call all sacristans anyway,” he said. “As for your group, maybe I became religious. Ha! Father Jess asked me. And who can refuse Father Jess? Why don’t you ask him to invite us for
merienda
at the
kumbento
?”

“
Lutong macao
,” I said. “Can I ask you for other things?”

“Anything. As long as I can do it.”

“You can,” I said. “First, we should form a basketball team. Then we will cement the basketball court so we can play the whole year. We can also use it for meetings. For dances. Your boys should really
try to police the whole village—I mean, do the work of real policemen so that there will be no thieves, at least in our place. And our women will be safe. Then we will cement the walks so they will not be muddy.”

He looked at me, eyes blinking.

“You will make a good president, Roger. You have organizational ability. Anyone who can organize your boys the way you have has real talent. I can be your secretary and Toto—you know he is very honest—can be the treasurer. And when everything is ready, we will have a program. Perhaps a dance. But you will have to make a speech. All presidents do.…”

I was going too fast, hindsight told me this; he was grinning, then his face clouded. “But my men, you know, they are not educated.”

“They will be members, but this group will be called the Brotherhood. There will be younger people—Ilocanos, Bikolanos, Pampangos, not just Bisaya. And there will be girls.…”

He laughed. I ordered another
siopao
, which he now devoured. When he boarded the jeepney back to Tondo, although he had not had even a sip of gin, he was so talkative he could have been mistaken for a drunk.

But Roger did not support the Brotherhood immediately, as I had hoped he would. Looking back, I now realize I had underestimated the native and intuitive wisdom that made him a leader. He did not put it to me directly, how my book learning, my karate, and my being a student were of no consequence, if not utterly useless, in the treacherous and slimy world he knew and dominated through his cunning.

In the weeks that followed I was to catch stray glimpses of it in conversations when he dropped by the
kumbento
for a cup of coffee and crackers with Tia Nena’s blessings. I had first thought of their rituals, of their secret tattoos, as juvenile antics until I learned they were invoked as a matter of life and death. For it was with these that the gang was welded together in a far more stringent way than the Brotherhood could ever unify its members.

I once told him of my escape from the maniacal drug addict whose car I jumped from, and he had merely smiled patronizingly
and said that I had been in no real danger. We talked about how it was in Muntinlupa, what solitary confinement for a month was, the beatings, the sordid indignities; karate was useless, for when one was killed in the penitentiary for infringing on the gang taboos, he was disposed of with skill, the victim unaware. And bloodshed—had I ever seen a man who was being punished, forced to eat his own ears, which he himself had to broil before his judges? And had I ever played bowling with a decapitated head in the cell block alley during a prison riot? The perversion of Kuya Nick … ha! Did I know that sodomy was practiced as a matter of course in the penitentiary?

I had considered all these at first as macho drivel, but knowing that Roger did not have that kind of fetid imagination, I soon came to believe his stories and marvel at how he had lived through them without going insane.

Now, at least, his relations with me were warmer, and he was less pugnacious. Maybe Roger was always patronizing toward Toto because Toto never crossed his path, but as I see it now, he was protective of Toto. Roger could talk condescendingly to him, but only Roger did that, no one in his group had that privilege. I did not understand why until Toto told me that Roger had also come from the Hospicio, but had strayed too far. Toto was the key. But the lock was never turned until much, much later, and when it was finally done, when Roger and his group finally joined, the cost was too great.

After I had set up the Brotherhood in the Barrio I had more time for Lily. She had been reluctant to join and be an auditor, for, as she said, she already had a past—an illegitimate baby that had died, fathered by an American she no longer saw. She was a salesgirl at a Chinese store in Avenida and was away all day, from early morning, when she would battle for a seat on a jeepney at Bangkusay. She attended our Sunday meetings during which we worked out athletic and social programs and even an excursion to Bataan across the bay.

She was out in the alley once, in a printed green dress that had known many washings yet was so becoming, and I wondered aloud why all that beauty was going to waste.

“She would make a good bed partner,” I said more to myself than to anyone, but Toto heard and the ferocity of his reaction surprised me.

“Animal!” he screamed and I turned around to see him glaring at me, his face contorted with rage. “Can there be no other thing but filth in your mind? Don’t you ever know how to show respect? Have you never learned that?”

I rose, and still in a jocular tone said, “Friend, I was just making an observation. Don’t be so angry. I have not done anything to you.”

Then it struck me; all through the days that I had known him, this girl often drifted into our conversation and I had missed it all. Quickly, I added, “Sorry, Toto, I had forgotten you love her.”

He sat down on my cot, his voice quickly drained of anger. “Yes, yes, I love her—and there is nothing I can do.”

And much, much later, I learned how he would have married her had she permitted it because he wanted to give her child a name, his name, although everyone knew the baby was not his.

I once visited her at the Avenida dry goods store where she was supposed to receive eight pesos daily, the minimum wage, but actually got only six. Her shoes and clothes were more expensive for they were all bought on installment. But even in her plain cottons, she was the prettiest in that shop, in the Barrio even, and I often wondered if her Chinese boss molested her. Her
disgracia
was brought about by a lonely Peace Corps volunteer named Paul Simpson, and it was possible that Lily may have thought that the American was the key to the good life, to America and its cornucopia of Avon cosmetics, double knits, and Detroit excesses that clotted Manila’s streets. Escape from poverty was often possible only through migration to the United States, but the quotas were full, the visas were difficult to get, and thus, whether it was in the anonymity of some rural village or in Tondo itself, it was many a girl’s dream to be married to an American. And those Angeles bar waitresses—dark and homely and raucous—were actually envied when, through some inexplicable alchemy, they were able to entice their American lovers into marrying them. Not so with middle- and upper-class women; while they liked American men, they often balked at the idea of getting married to them, not so much because there was no genuine emotion involved, but because they would be excoriated, mistaken for prostitutes and washerwomen with whom the Americans in the bases trucked.

“But it did not begin that way,” Lily explained. “He was a teacher’s aide, and after he taught school, he organized this youth
dance to which we contributed. That was when we started going out.”

When his term ended, Simpson returned to the United States by a circuitous route through Europe. Lily had written to him at the addresses he had left, but not once did he reply. When the baby came, someone told her to seek assistance at the American embassy, but she was too shy to do that. She had, of course, the ultimate proof in her arms—a handsome mestizo baby with brown hair and eyes that were blue “like his father’s.” The baby did not live long.

In spite of motherhood, Lily had not lost her girlish charm or the innocence in her eyes. If only she had better food, her skin would be much clearer and there would be no blemishes on her arms or legs. It was a minor miracle how they managed—four children, two of them in high school, with her mother making only so much by taking in washing and peddling vegetables door-to-door.

Their most intimate conversations floated across the alley to us; seldom could we hear the hiss of the frying pan to know that they were eating something more substantial than boiled vegetables and the scraps of fish that her mother could no longer sell.

Lily’s mother coughed interminably and the younger kids always had skin sores. Then, one evening, Lily came home with two grocery bags and two smaller, oily ones, which, she said, contained fried chicken. Her face was flushed and happy when she passed me at the open window where I was reading, and she smiled at me before going up the stairs. Her brothers were squealing and the older ones, Boyet and Nanet, were full of questions. Her mother had started to cough again. She asked where she got the money to buy all that food and Lily was laughing and saying, “Mama, I have a new job and it pays better, much better than that store in Avenida. I am now a waitress in Makati. The tips alone! But I have to work starting at eleven until late at night.”

A month later, Lily could no longer attend our programs or our Sunday meetings; she had to work on Sundays, too, and it was only on Tuesday, her day off, that she was free. For several days I had wanted to go out with her, just the two of us, before she got this Makati job. On those instances that I was free from school early, I even detoured to Avenida and went home to Bangkusay with her after the store closed. On this Tuesday afternoon, as I was starting for school, she also got out, not by coincidence, I now realize.

“I am going shopping,” she said. We walked toward Bangkusay, avoiding the puddles in the alleys, and, once in the plaza where no one could hear, she said, “Pepe, I have something important to tell you. There is no one I can talk to.”

“We can go see a movie now, if you wish,” I said.

I had always wanted to be close to her in the dark so I could hold her, but then I remembered I had only fare money. “The devil—I don’t have money. Why don’t we just go to the Luneta and sit under the trees?”

She smiled, “No, too many people there. Yes, we can go to a movie—let me pay.”

“I will not permit that,” I said, but she won out, for I wanted to hold her.

We got off at Recto. She gave me ten pesos to buy tickets, balcony, she insisted, so that we would be up there by ourselves. “You can still attend one of your classes,” she said. “I don’t want you to lose your scholarship.”

It was one of those kung fu movies, but no matter how well Bruce Lee fought, he could not distract me from this girl. Once settled in our seats I put an arm around her. I tried to reach down her neckline, but she held my hand firmly and said, “Now, Pepe, don’t do that. What pleasure would you have holding a mother’s breast?”

We laughed, then she started talking somberly, slowly, as if she were telling me her one and only secret, and perhaps it was.

“Pepe, I do not know what to do.”

“I know,” I said.

“Do not talk nonsense now.”

“I am serious,” I said.

“Don’t make jokes. You know it’s impossible with us. Please help me, tell me what I should do.”

“Tell me your problem.” I held her closer and kissed her cheek.

“Promise you will not tell anyone in the Barrio, not even Toto.”

“I promise.”

She paused, then said simply: “I am working in a massage parlor, Pepe … not in a restaurant.”

For some time I did not know what to say and, noting my silence, she quickly added, a hint of irritation in her voice: “Now … now, don’t think what you are thinking. I am not a prostitute. The money I make … I get it straight, not even petting. I do not let them.”

“I do not believe you,” I said hotly, then I was sorry I said it.

She drew away, fury in her eyes. “I made a mistake in trusting you. If I can trust you, why can’t you trust me? You know that I cannot give you any proof.”

I was silent.

She continued, the anger in her voice had ebbed and in its place, this sorrow. “Did you know that until I got this job, we sometimes ate only once a day? And my baby, did you know he died because I had no money for medicine? You know that Mother makes so little, that Boyet and Nanet do not earn—and those two small ones …”

I drew her to me, “Lily, forgive me.”

Though not a sound escaped her, she was crying. I tilted her face and kissed her, saying, “Lily, I can do nothing to help you. Yet I cannot think of you in that place, with all those hands pawing you.”

Her crying subsided and we were silent for some time. We even tried to watch the movie, but it was useless—we had to talk.

She said, “Mother is getting suspicious, and I do not know what to do. Once, she said she wanted to come and see the restaurant. Boyet and Nanet do not care as long as they have something to eat. But Mother— I don’t know what to tell her. I never lied to her before, not even when I got pregnant.”

I wanted to know the nature of her work, how much money she made, what she did with the money.

“For the first time in our lives,” she said, “we are eating well. And I have saved a little. I have money in a savings bank in Makati, and I keep the bank book in my locker in the Colonial. For the job, I trained for two weeks at the Hospital Ng Maynila. That was not very difficult, and I can really give a good massage—a hard one if you wish. Someday, I will give you one, specially when you are tired.”

“What else do you give?”

Without hesitation, “Sensation—no more. The management wants us to give it if the customer asks. But not if he does not want it.”

I pretended ignorance and was sorry afterward, for I was degrading her by asking her to explain.