Now/here no/where woman

The tips of Manang Cielo's slender fingers are cracked from all the work she does growing things. Wedged into the thin cracks of her fingertips there is always earth. Her home is surrounded by bamboo, pine trees, magnolia trees, and coffee planted by her parents and before them, her grandparents. Everything grows in wild profusion. There are always green shoots of one thing or another pushing through the perenially moist soil and, if you look closely, insects and worms of all colors and sizes bustle about everywhere. Plants and fallen leaves cover almost every inch of ground, except for in a wide circle swept daily around the old house, whose wooden floors are always shiny. Manang Cielo no longer bothers to go downtown. "There's no reason for me to go there," she says with disdain and a dismissive wave of her hand. "There" is just a ten-minute jeepney ride from where she lives on one of Baguio's hills. She says she sees enough of what's out "the...

Twice or thrice a week Manang Precious gets on a commuters' van in San Fernando, La Union and pays the reasonable fare for the ride up the mountains, to Baguio. She carries with her two basket-loads of fish, meat, and vegetables. On a typical day, one basket will contain at least three different kinds of fish from the San Fernando market. Once in a while Manang Precious, or Precy as we call her, brings octopus. She also sells longganisa, tinapa, pork chops, beef, eggplant, puto, kutchinta, mangoes, chicos, mushrooms, okra, and other lowland vegetables. My guess is that she begins her day with 6 to 8 kilos in each basket. She says a good day is when her baskets are empty before noon, and her purse is filled with bills and coins adding up to 1,500 to 2,000 pesos gross. Out of this amount, she gets a profit of about 150 pesos. The rest goes back to her suppliers. She lugs her baskets of goods from house to house in our neighborhood. Some of us have known her for years and are gratefu...

His father's name was Romeo. His mother's name was Annabelle. So they called him Romannce but he dropped the 'c' and the 'e' when the taunts got unbearable. Anyway, he didn't think it would get him anywhere with the girls. His ideals would, and so would his paintings, of course. Romann and I have been glassmates for at least 12 years now. We met at bonfires in camping sites, exhibit openings, concerts, anywhere we wanted a party to get started. Always it was gin, and if somebody had a fit of generosity or if Romann had just sold a painting, maybe we had a few rounds of beer. We would pass each other on the street some mornings, clear-eyed, sober, laughing about the last night's fuzzy memories. That was when there was enough space on Baguio's sidewalks for friends to spot one another from afar. He had a spring in his step, back then. Nowadays, he shuffles, mostly. I bumped into him downtown a week ago but instead of laughter there was a wall. No, not ...