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Bagyo - Typhoon Season

3/31/2013

http://www.voanews.com/content/typhoon-pounds-philippines-on-way-to-taiwan-okinawa-128520213/144374.html

"Name the Bagyo" Contest 1999
PAGASA: Philippine Atmospheric, Geophysical and Astronomical Services Administration
(pagasa translates as "hope")

Winners

Years 2001, 2005, 2009, 2013:
Auring, Barok, Crising, Darna, Emong, Feria, Gorio, Huaning, Isang, Jolina, Kiko, Labuyo, Maring, Nanang, Ondoy, Pabling, Quedan, Roleta, Sibak, Talahib, Ubbeng, Vinta, Wilma, Yaning and Zuma.

Years 2002, 2006, 2010, 2014:
Agaton, Basyang, Caloy, Dagul, Espada, Florita, Gloria, Hambalos, Inday, Juan, Kaka, Lagalag, Milenyo, Neneng, Ompong, Paeng, Quadro, Rapido, Sibasib, Tagbanwa, Usman, Venus, Wisik, Yayang and Zeny.

Years 2003, 2007, 2011, 2015:
Amang, Batibot, Chedeng, Dodong, Egay, Falcon, Gilas, Harurot, Ineng, Juaning, Kabayan, Lakay, Manang, Niña, Onyok, Pogi, Quiel, Roskas, Sikat, Tisoy, Ursula, Viring, Wang-wang, Yoyoy and Zigzag.

Years 2004, 2008, 2012, 2016:
Ambo, Biday, Cosme, Dugong, Enteng, Flor, Giling, Hataw, Inggo, Julian, Kenkoy, Lawin, Manoy, Nonoy, Osang, Pandoy, Quinta, Rigodon, Sigla, Totoy, Usa, Viajero, Wasiwas, Yoyong and Zosimo.

Filipino names of typhoons, Queena N. Lee-Chua, Inquirer News Service, http://www.inq7.net/globalnation/sec_fea/2003/jan/30-04.htm

Dading

http://biodataofdrvhp.blogspot.com/2012/08/monsoon-rain-floods-manila.html

“There is the early rain and the latter rain.” Joel 2:23

The early rains are gentle. They arrive after the worst of the heat. The first rain spatters and steams on hot asphalt, evaporating so quickly the road is dry again. When the asphalt melts to the color of charcoal, you know the rain has won. Our parched world softens, drinking in a green so deep it shoots to your groin. You can taste the rich chocolate earth. Nestled in the soft twilight, cicada chirp contentedly and city frogs retrieve their voices. This beautiful wet darkness nestles in your belly and sleeps there.

It is the latter rain that worries us. After a month or two of early rain (drenching, misty, wild, drizzle), a musty scent of fungus settles over everything. Book covers curl, leather shoes turn green. Then typhoon season begins. Air darkens before the real winds come as the sky thickens and clots with ironwood clouds. Then sharp rain arrives, slanting sidewards. The typhoons swing in over the wind-wracked easternmost islands of Leyte and Samar. June through November, we go through the alphabet: Asiang, Biring, Konsing, Dading. Sometimes the winds are brisk like the wag of a wary dog. But the wicked ones are wild and reckless, and their names are “retired.”

There are two ways to know a typhoon is coming. You can watch the leaves of a star apple tree turn upside down, since the underside is purple. That will tell you a bad typhoon is coming. Or you can listen for the signals. Typhoon Signal No. 1 always begins low, droning and ominous. It takes its time, slowly rising to an arch of a wail that ripples the back of Manila. At its peak it hovers for a long breath and then descends, down down down. As the Signal drops, all the heads of the schoolchildren in their classrooms rise, hands clutching pencils or ballpoint pens poised on lined paper, waiting. If there is a mating call, a second wail that rises as the first descends, they will be sent home. Typhoon Signal No. 2’s are the furies that banish electricity, kill phones, uproot trees, collapse shanties and turn avenues to brown lakes that stall cars, offering cigarette boys a second income. Typhoon Signal No. 3 brings disaster. Dading was a Signal No. 3 in late June 1964, the worst typhoon in almost 100 years.

Annie nudges me, “Kerry, a bad typhoon is coming.”
“How come? There’s no signal.” It’s gusty and gray, but Annie is always right.
“Kita mo doon, star apple tree? Leaves are purple.”

I peer through the fence where the star apple and Phyllis live. It’s in the far corner of their yard near the wall. The wind is ruffling its leaves like a skirt turned up and you can see the purple undersides.
In an hour, we hear Typhoon Signal Number One, then Number Two.
When we’re all in the house, Annie looks at me meaningfully.

http://www.theatlantic.com/infocus/2012/08/monsoon-rain-floods-manila/100349/

When Dading crashed through Manila at 150 miles an hour, (slow compared to today's super-typhoons)) all the star apple trees must have shaken their purple leaves with warning, but I didn’t see them.

All the adults in the home have materialized. We have a typhoon routine. Mother says quietly, “Dolly, look for the candles” and “Kerry, Johanna, go get the towels.” We will roll the tall wooden capiz inlaid shutters over our large screen windows only when the rain banks towards us, the house becomes a wooden cave with the windows closed. Then we wedge the towels between the wooden windows and the ledge to catch rain leaking and keep the windows from rattling. In typhoon season, one is always prepared. The cook rummages through the refrigerator before the lines go down. She checks our stock of corned beef, spam and Vienna sausages. But like everyone we have a gas butane stove, so there will be hot food. We fill the buckets in the bathrooms with water for bathing and the toilet. No electricity, no water. No phones either.

Now, with nothing to do while the storm encircles us, we pick up our usual pattern. When we're younger, we pull out the dress up suitcase and we play cinderella, a princess, gypsy travellers. Now we play Parcheesi or Come to Capernium.

Dading’s purple clouds swell through Luzon and then fill the Manila sky with a big black bruise. The super typhoon like ‘the wrath of God’ lashes out with a great gnashing fury against everything in its path. Blades of sharp rain whip our house sidewards first one way and then another. It bangs and pummels our galvanized iron roof. The radio tells us, “keep inside, keep inside,” but too many people are losing their homes. Where can they go in the wild winds? Shuddering and wailing, all the trees swing back and forth in the wind as though they were on rubber bands. It goes on and on. Crash! An acacia limb hits the ground. Crash! Another on the street. The rain, the rain, the rain, we are soggy in the dark with the candles flickering since the electricity has been off all day.

“Go to bed.” Dad’s tired voice settles the creepy dark. Maybe the anitos, old spirits who lived in this place before World War II, bounce against the walls of our house. Tiny scratching claws walk on the roof, so I pull the sheet over my head. Nobody can save me from this dread. When I wake in the pungent dark of drenched wood, the winds are no longer screeching but broken branches are still skipping across our roof. The follow-up winds have arrived and they are grumbling to themselves as they sweep up after their fierce cousin. I fall asleep again and wake into a velvet quiet after the fury.

The next morning, Manila is roused to its post-catastrophe routines. We emerge, dazed and ready to get busy. No school, no work, no electricity, no newspapers, no phones, and sometimes, no house. Later we will learn that Dading tore homes from 400,000 and left 40 dead. Scott and I climb around entangled broken branches in the front yard. There are downed trees everywhere, we see some farther down our street, thankfully not my favorite kalachuchi that peeks up past the peach colored compound walls on the corner. Its soggy five-petal yellow and white flowers float amidst the papers, plastic bags, leaves, twigs and other debris in the brown water of our flooded street. We join our neighbors wading by the Reyes Sari Sari store on Indiana which is open for business since the owner lives above the store. We can see from here that even Taft Avenue is a wide rushing river. It draws all of us like a wet magnet.

We join a crowd who linger at the corner of Indiana and Taft. “Kita mo ‘yon,” someone mutters to his kasama, who makes tsk tsk sounds and shakes his head. We turn and gasp—two blocks down from us, a mammoth acacia that shaded the entry to PGH is down on the ground. Vendors and neighbors mutter to themselves as the water runs around our legs. What kind of evil winds were these? As far as we can see down Taft, the huge gentle acacias lie sprawled in muddy pools as awkward as fallen elephants, their leafy crowns cracked and twisted. They seem ashamed of their nakedness, their enormous root systems gaping and helpless against the cheerful blue sky. Dading’s name is retired.

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King Solomon’s syota

3/26/2013

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The beige naked pretty woman holds a curly flame above her curly hair. She's eternally poised at the end of our street on the PGH compound, which is the general hospital. She should be the syota of the naked man statue at UP Dilliman, his arms flung out like he just finished his homework. We never look too close. She's bomba, but not in a bad way.

This takes me to our discovery of the bomba book in the bible. Our barkada plays “church” in the empty Ellinwood sanctuary on Saturday. It’s my turn to be preacher, so I skip to the high pulpit. The congregation of three squirm in the front pew below. We always just crack open the humongous bible on the pulpit and start,
“I am reading today from, ah…Song of Solomon, chapter…uh…4, verse…1.” (I keep place with my finger.)
“How beautiful you are, my love, how very beautiful. Your eyes, behind your veil, are doves behind your veil….Uh… Your hair is like a flock of goats moving down the slopes of... Gil-lad.”
The congregation shifts and giggles at the goats.
“Your teeth are like a flock of shorn …uh…eh-hwes.”
“Eh-hwe? Ano ba ‘yon?” Bengbeng asks in a loud whisper,
“Shhh!”
“Your two breasts are two fawns. HuH?”
“Whah?!” My congregation sputters.
“See, see see!” I can’t say it aloud again, so I keep my finger on the words.
They scamper up to the pulpit to confirm. Four heads lowered as in prayer.
“NEver!”
“Tama ba yon?”
“Wow, bomba in the bible!,” snorts Bengbeng.
“Walang hiya, Bengbeng it’s da Bible!”

I lick two fingers to pinch the thin paper and turn the page. There’s a lot of stuff about food: honey and milk, myrrh, and honeycomb and spice. We turn back to the breasts.
“Do regular bibles say this?”
“King Solomon is making ligaw!” Bengbeng gets on his knee to stained glass Orange Jesus, "Oh Juliet, juliet...."
“Tanga! Alis ka na, Bengbeng! "Dirty mind. ‘To the pure all things are pure.'’”
Alicia gives her brother a pious whack.
“Aray!” He grabs his ear. But he’s right. “Song of Solomon” is about making ligaw. Of course King Solomon had a syota – the Queen of Sheba.

I feel queasy, since the "Come unto Me" Orange Jesus is peering over our shoulders and maybe does so much like being Juliet. Is it a sin to read this part of the Bible without adult supervision? As we scamper out of the church, I give a last peek to the "hair like goats." Wish my hair would do that.

Is it in all the bibles? Mom’s is in the Airconditioned Room. Feverishly, I chunk through the Old Testament in a panic that someone will barge in. Think, think, how to find it, humming our song of the holy table of contents:
“Genesis and Exodus, Leviticus we sing
Numbers, ta-ta ta-ta and Deuteronomy..
Joshua Judges Ruth, then the Samuels,
First and second Kings and then the Chronicles.
Ezra Nehemiah, Esther Job and Psalms,
ta-ta –tata –ta-ta….the Song of Solomon…” AHah!
The name in mom's book is “Song of Songs," maybe like a cover up. But it's the same book, all about food and body parts then running up hills and climbing walls. Really, the bible is so wierd.

So, is sex holy? If it's in the bible, why don't we learn it in Sunday School?

We don't know much about ligaw, but King Solomon had nothing on Ellinwood Malate Church weddings. Our barkada steals up to the balcony as they loop the pews with white and pink ribbon and sprays of lilies. Then they unroll a thick white cloth down the middle aisle. All the way outside, you can hear the Hammond organ booming dum dum ti dum! The minister waits under Orange Jesus as a procession as glorious as the Queen of Sheba approaches him - flower girls tossing petals, a three year old ring bearer, a flock of bridesmaids, finally a pretty mass of white chiffon gliding over the carpet of petals. The groom and best men in their finest jusi Barong Tagalogs linger like elegant beige birds at the watering hole. The flurry, the dreamy, the pomp, we swoon with it.

But what about the bakla calling “hoy!” loudly across the street to each other and flapping their wrists. They aren't really guys, and they make ligaw. Do they belong in the Song of Solomon? We flap our wrists at each other. “Hoy!” Dolphy makes bakla jokes on TV. Two bakla own the beauty salon on Indiana street. Chito is kind, so I don’t “hoy!” him.

And Dolly our helper. She was kind like Chito. She didn’t scold us and she let me watch her pomade her short black hair on her day off. She goops it up so it’s really greasy. Then she combs it back like a guy, using her hand to smooth it till it shines. Then she washes her hands, tucks her shirt into her pants and puts on men’s shoes. I notice that. “Sige na, Kerry,” and she’s gone. “Don’t go near Dolly, she is a tomboy,” Laling instructs me one day after Dolly has left. Elena who is nearby gives Laling a hard quick look and says something I can’t follow. Laling responds sharply. What’s wrong? People say "tomboy" to me because of my short hair. Then mom says, “Dolly, you are always a girl in this house.” “Yes mum,” she mumbles.

I try to see what she’s feeling, but you can’t tell with Dolly. One day, Dolly is gone. “Where’s Dolly?” I ask. We’re used to our mother’s silences now, so I wait. Finally mom says, “The other helpers weren’t comfortable with her.” Mom's edgy, she doesn't want to talk about it. Is she angry? I can't tell, but I have that queasy feeling again, so I just say,
“Oh.”
It takes a few years to follow this logic back to the bible.

White Lady and Orange Jesus

Luke 24: 39 Look at my hands and my feet. It is I myself! Touch me and see; a ghost does not have flesh and bones, as you see I have."

Not all things white are multo, ghosts. But mostly. The White Lady is the multo queen. Orange Jesus is see-through too, but he's light brown and he’s not a multo. He makes sure you know when he says "look at my hands and feet." It's still creepy that he asks Thomas to touch his wounds. That's so Catholic.

The White Lady, like Orange Jesus, appears everywhere. In komiks, there's a True Stories about a white lady who takes a taxi and invites the driver to come to her house. He wakes in the morning on cold ashes! A burned down ghost house! After taxis, she favors girls' dorms and bathrooms. It’s because of the blood. A White Lady lives in the Union Elementary School bathroom in the dark corner near the stairs. I hold my pee and run home during recess. She got upset and pushed the mirror over the sinks so it crashed all over the floor during morning period. Wow! Fourth grade girls were screaming. But you know, it's stinky filthy in there, with bm and kotex blood smell. The floor's sloppy wet and shoe prints on the toilet rims. In my personal opinion, the White Lady did it to force the janitor to clean up. Some times I wonder.... "How do you know it's the White Lady?" If you see, you know. Slim, tall, in a white gown, long black hair draped over her face. If you're stil not sure, look at her feet. They are pointed the wrong way. That’s why she is always barefoot. The White Lady's real home is the cemetery, somewhere Orange Jesus never goes. Orange Jesus and the White Lady never meet. She wouldn’t flee anyway, not like the aswang. She’s the sorrowing dead.

For a joke, strangers yell at Johanna and me, “White Lady!” or “White Monkey!” We pretend we don't hear.

Johanna and I are the white kids at Union Elementary School. So maybe we are white like the White Lady. Even though the school is right beside my house, anyone could swoop down and get us. The kids are grabbed into cars. Lots are kidnapped, mostly Chinese and mestizos whose parents have money. “Americans are rich,” we know, and we live in a big missionary house. Dad says, “No we’re not rich. We didn’t come here to make money.” In 4th grade, it's poor kids who disappear from schools around Manila. Then, one by one, they show up again, grim and mum with a small crescent scar on their cheek. “Scarface Scare!” cry the jarios like Manila Bulletin. Who will be next? All of us anxiously scan the b&w photos of sullen hollow-eyed child faces in The Manila Bulletin. UES is in alarmed lockdown. We wait dutifully behind the walls until someone picks us up. Mrs. Teves our principle makes the rule that no one can wander out on Wright Street to go to Reyes Sari Sari Store, buy banana lumpia, chocolate or orange popsicles, or cotton candy in the after-school vendor spree outside the school walls. No patentero, no holens, kicking sipa, or lingering on the sidewalk.

I need Orange Jesus for rescue power. "Make me see-through," I pray. I crawl out of my bed to kneel, which is for emergencies, and whisper, “Please Jesus, don’t let dem take me, Johanna, or Phyllis.”

There are minor stories about kidnappings. Then jarios shout about a mestiza who disappears. She returns, and I check jario pictures. She is pointing at the cave where the kidnapper kept her until her parents paid ransom. Just in case Orange Jesus decides to test me, I pin string and matches inside my panties. I will trail the string behind me like Hansel and Gretel when they take me to the cave because insects will take away crumbs. Each day before school, I do this.

Now that I have my own room, in the dark, alone, each night, I lie awake with the outside florescent light spilling in through the screen. Asleep, nightmares strangle me: blue black, white ladies, taximen, smothered terror. Awake in the muggy night, the bamboo whish with unfriendly intent, angry cats yowl, sometimes a calming "balooot" call from a faraway vendor, and a gecho hiccup. I weigh the plan to salve the fright. Should I a) speak Tagalog immediately so they will treat me better, or b) pretend I don’t know Tagalog so I can listen in on their plans. This too requires some kneeling prayer.

Thanks to Orange Jesus, in all my Manila days I don’t ever meet the White Lady in person or have to use Tagalog to get out of a cave.

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Pakikisama – The Philosophy of Grading

3/25/2013

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“Students take out a half sheet of paper,” says Mr Ubano, fifth grade class of Science. There is a sputter as thin lined paper is torn from pads, folded lengthwise, ripped, and shared with a neighbor. This is followed by the rumble of requests for pencils from those who forgot (the lakuatseros), books and notebooks moved to the floor as the teacher is writing the first of the questions on the blackboard. In this case: 1. List the color spectrum of the rainbow. The now nervous lakuatsero (let’s call him Manny) chooses a buddy (Remi) for the quiz.
Manny, “Pssst, Remi, ano ba ang sagot ng 1?”
Remi whispers, “ROYGBIV”
Manny does some hasty scribbling. Remi positions his paper for Manny to read answers to questions 6 (Cumulus) and 7 (Nimbus). Then Remi gently rests his hand over the rest of the answers, which is also an unspoken Rule. You do not have to share your whole lunch when you say, “Kain tayo”. A symbolic portion is OK.

We didn’t think of this as cheating but a way to raise the water level of the whole class. The great leveler, pakikisama, worked to balance the smart, poor, and lazy. Since we were all marked by the same stars, there was often good natured sharing of answers on the quizzes.

Our quarterly report card illustrated grading on the curve in its purest form and was based on a philosophy of interdependence and the impossibility of perfection. After final exams in each subject, we received our report card with numerical grades that ascended through the year. In other words, the highest grade in History was usually an 86 in the first quarter and a 94 by the last. In our school, you never really knew what the highest grade was until you found the person who got it. Each quarter, there was a massive hunt for the highest grade in the class so we could calculate our own class standing. This wasn’t standard practice. We learned from other friends that the highest marks were read aloud.

These were the Rules of the Classroom:
Rule 1 – No one ever receives 100 points, that would make you too mayabang (haughty);
Rule 2– Your points will continue to rise each quarter, so you will feel as though you are improving even if you are doing about the same;
Rule 3 – God is ultimately unknown and so is your class standing;
Rule 4 -- If you pursue knowledge, it must be by inference. In order to find your place in the great chain of being, you cannot ask anyone directly about their grades, but sideways questions they will oblige.

My grandmother never quite understood the logic of pakikisama, which rough translates as, coming along, or better yet, that we are all going together. It had a powerful grip on us all.

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School Days

3/25/2013

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I warn you, elementary school in the Philippines is not for the faint-hearted. We memorize notes from seven classes for quarterly exams, must dance with grace, sing, create worship services once a week, play an instrument, declaim, and construct flawless macrame bags. No matter the weather, our uniforms are never rumpled. Skill at jackstones or kickball is helpful though not required.

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Phyllis and Union Elementary School

3/25/2013

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Scott walks to Jose Abad Santos Memorial School (JASMS) on Taft Avenue past the music school and family portrait studio.Johanna and I graduate from Union Elementary School (UES), a Protestant parochial school beside our house. Feelees and her family have moved to 4th Estate subdivision because her father, Eddie Monteclaro, is editor of Manila Times. She's at UES so we reunite.

I pass Pilipino due to teacherly mercies and home economics because Mrs. Sayo, a thin, energetic and perfectionist, allows enthusiasm to compensate for weak hand-eye coordination. When my cross stitch is skewed, Mrs. Sayo says noncommittally, that's imaginative, Kerry." My plastic macrame shopping bag sags to the left; she grades it as a hopeful "82". My rice is soggy and tinapay is barely edible. I love to embroider screen covers to ward off flies. We use colorful plastic/paper to create bananas, flowers, and pineapples on the mesh. We turn from this to hats. Then laundry soap carving of animals and women's heads with long hair.

Because Phyllis and I plan to be nurses, we pay attention on how to attend to the gravely ill. From Mrs. Sayo we learn what they should eat, how to change the sheets of someone who can’t leave the bed, how to shield them from dust, light and noise, but to be sure there is circulation of air. There should be a table beside their bed, and a bell if they need to call you. We take notes word for word.

Then the best part: “Take a shoebox and create the diorama of a proper sickroom.” We carve two windows and make tiny curtains to close and pull open. I paste a little sheet to matchbox bed, plump up a little pillow, and set it facing the window. On the table beside the bed, mom helps me create a lamp out of origami paper. This is really makeup since houses have florescent overhead lights. Most of us have cared for someone in our family who was gravely ill, but we never arrange the room like this.

My mother emails me as we communicate about illnesses:
Are you writing about the time you saved my life? I had stepped on a nail in the street, wearing toe shoes (flip flops). The nail had gone right through the sole into my foot. It swelled up and became infected. I went to the doctor (not Reyes), but probably at the Seventh Day Adventist Hospital where we had our doctors. I got two shots. One was an
antibiotic (possibly penicillin to which I was allergic, as learned from having it used by a dentist) and the other was an antihistamine in case I was allergic to the antibiotic. And I was given pills to continue the treatment.

I got the pills mixed up and took two of the antibiotic and one of the antihistimine. I realized immediately what I had done and began to fear the worst. I began to tingle around my nose and ears, my first signs of an allergic reaction. Then my mouth. My face broke out in a rash. The rash began to go down my throat, my arms, my body. I couldn't swallow or breathe correctly. Dick wasn't home and wouldn't be for several more hours. You were the only one there. Someone called the doctor. Maybe I did, and, I think, this was Dr. Reyes.

I lay down on my bed and if I was absolutely motionless I could slowly breathe. You came and sat with me. You sang, and talked, and prayed. While you were there I could relax, remain motionless, didn't choke, and the rash didn't itch so much. At some point the antihistamine was expected to conk in. The rash continued down my body, slowly, slowly. Then, finally, it stopped at my knees. You sat there, holding my hand, until, at last, a doctor came and gave me another antihistimine shot. It had been almost two hours. Dick came home.

Sayawan

Hula girls, Nora, Lisa, Eunice.

Foundation Day challenges my aesthetic and gymnastic talent. We are Irish one year in shiny green skirts, and the next year gypsies with tambourines. I'm even clumsy at the American Square dance decked out in red and white checks ("alamand, and then you swing your partner fair..."). And entirely unconvincing with the Filipino bilao clay pots on my head. Not a swan, which is not to say the ugly duckling.

Always the hula girls stun us with joy and envy as they sashay onto the concrete court in grass skirts and skimpy tops. Florence Nightingale Perez is the reigning queen of the Polynesian shimmy.

We are the impossible contrast to the Bayanihan dance troop, who model the pandango sa ilaw, tinkling, and general repertoire one should finesse as a Filipina.

So that when Eve Ensler creates One Billion Rising to end violence against women in our new century, it comes with dance instructions in the Manila, with school kids in an industrial park in Marikina, out-door aerobics in Baguio and the Pride March in 2012.

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Ducklings

3/25/2013

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Johanna's self-portrait, 1976. Note Fluffy, lower left.

Mostly, we’re lucky to live beside the Interboard Guesthouse. Out its screen doors come many mk playmates - blond Olson kids from Cebu, the Leininger clan from Legaspi, Palmores and Berans from Dumaguete, Malcolms from Davao, Whites and Deeners from Baguio, VanVactors from Marawi, Mosses from San Pablo, lots of other playmates on their way somewhere. They’re always in good spirits because they are going to the States on furlough or they’re coming back. Like we were last year after settling back at 1667 B Wright Street, our Malate house in the same compound.

Summer vacation is hot season between wets and the Guesthouse is full of temporary playmates. Today, three mk friends from Cebu and Dumaguete have knocked at our screen door to play. We’re tired of tarzan vine, patentero, hide and seek.
”I know!” Johanna gets an idea, but we need a chaperone.
“Scotty, can you go to San Andres Market with us?”
“No.” Then, curious, “Why?”
“To get ducklings!”

Scott, my tawny haired, tense older brother is playing with his friend Arjun the bumbai. They’re at JASMS and will be in fifth grade when school begins in June. Scott grumbles but the bumbai is nice to us and says, “Ok, we will go,” in his funny accent, so Scott can’t say no.

Now we need money.

Johanna shouts from the front lawn, “Mom!” Just to make noise. She leaps up our wafflemarked stairs, pulls out the screen door and heads for The Airconditioned Room. I run ahead of her and get to the door first, turn the cool handle and we step into the cold dry sanctuary with its low rumbling.
“Mom…?” Johanna’s exuberance dissolves at the back of my mother, hunched over her corner desk, her silence refusing our interruption.
“Uh huh?” Mother’s short black hair nods, heavy with reluctance. She doesn’t turn around. Her pen chases the words across the page. Is she grading papers again?
“Never mind,” I tug on Johanna’s shirt. Ducklings another time. But Johanna ignores mother’s “go away” and saunters over to her desk, leaning casually on the corner, just far enough away from our mother so that they aren’t touching. My younger sister peers at the pad’s sharp even script. We are not to mess up the careful stacks of papers. Her Celtic cross is perched on one pile. It’s a mystery of dark silver circles that curlicue other circles. She bought the cross on Iona island, which is somewhere far away and cold, she says. It feels cool when you touch it.
“Can we have 25 centavos each?” Johanna pushes on bravely.
Mom sighs and glances at us sideways, “What for?”
Johanna jumps up, “Ducklings, ducklings!”
“OK, OK, Jo,” I tug at her, “calm down.”

So Scott and Arjun unlatch the Interboard Guesthouse gate that opens onto the thick green tree-lined Dakota. Saint Paul College is in session this morning and parochial school girls’ voices float out classroom windows. Two Paulinians in their black and white checked uniforms wander arm in arm along Dakota Ave. They eye us casually. My brother and the bumbai hesitate and peer down the street.
We know they’re reconsidering.
“Lets go lets go lets go go go,” Johanna catches the arm of the Olson girl and me, and we skip with excitement. We sing, “Sitsiritsit, ali-bang-bang salagintot sala-gu-bang, ang baba-e- aran-tan-tan,” making it up as we go. We swing our hips because it’s about a girl in high heels, but we don’t really know.

We're on our way to San Andres fruit market. Annie returns with meat, fruit, vegetables and rice. Every month, new fruit arrives at our table. In hot April and May, bright yellow mangos, mounds of small red siniguelas, and large prickly skinned jackfruit, langka we call it. By wet August, lanzones, guava, atis and durian. In wetter October, star apples arrive and finally, in dry cool December when red poinsettias announce the arrival of Christmas, the plump pink pomelo. It tastes like sweet grapefruit, says my grandmother.

The San Andres tinderas watch our band of gangly batang amerikano at bumbai arrive and joke good naturedly. Bananas beckon to us from the rafters—red, ladyfinger, senorita, saba – the cooking banana only good for banana-que, banana lumpia and creamy ginataan. These matrons of cornucopia sit behind boxes brimming with rice. Beautiful wooden gantas, three litre scoops, list casually in the ocean of rice. The coconut grating machine whirs, so we gape for a while as the coconut man whacks open a hard brown shell and sets it to the grinder for soft shredded nyog he will put in a brown paper bag for you.

Past piles of tomatoes, green beans, kamote, garlic, gabe, ampalaya, and kangkong, our little gang ambles into the belly of the market. A boy Scott’s age calls, “hey Joe, wanna buy a watsh?” and laughs, “Blue Seal!” It takes a while to get accustomed to the gloom. Scott can’t stop fidgeting, his worried dark eyes searching for the duckling man. He’s feeling responsible for us, which is why he said, "no." It makes him grumpy. We should have asked an adult to accompany us.

The ducklings and chicks are in the same part of the market, in boxes warmed by bright naked bulbs. We peer into the wooden box. It’s a melee of little quacks, fuzzy bodies and webbed feet.
“Excuse me sir, magkano ang mga ducklings?” Scott asks a little too loud.
The duckling man is sitting on a tall wooden stool. He has a round kind face. His white teeth gleam as he chuckles and trains his full attention on the edgy Amerikano.
“Bente cinqo. Ilan ba ang gusto ninyo hijo?”
Hijo? I look from the duckling man to Scott. Hijo means my son, not many grownup Filipinos say that to Scott, and you can see its magic working. My tense older brother softens and looks up into the face of the duckling man for the first time.
“Quatro” he responds more softly, adding “po” for respect. Then he’s a little shy and turns to the duckling box. We know, of course, that the ducklings are twenty-five centavos. We have just enough in our pockets for four ducklings. If we had pockets full of bente cinqos, we would buy the whole box.

Johanna already knows, “Oh, oh, yo-on, yo-on!” as the hand of the duckling man ruffles through the mass of ducklings.
He pulls a wiggling body from the batch and drops it into her cupped hands.
“Eeee!”
The duckling man laughs gently as Johanna examines its tiny yellow head and beady eyes. It’s so little.
It’s Fluffy!” she chirps.
I pick one, Scott chooses another and a Guesthouse kid chooses last bente cinqo duckling. We carry the squirmy ducklings in a paper bag and skip and peek all the way home. Scott laughs too, now that it's mission accomplished.

Scott and Arjun help get hose to fill our beloved sandbox with water. We’re chortling excitedly, “Get the stepping stool!” “Here, let me do it!” We put the stepping stool half in, half out of the sandbox to serve as a diving board.
“Me, me, I want to hold a duckling!” Our feathered charges scuttle delightedly into their swimming hole and spash, ‘quack, quack’. We’re silly with happiness.
“Look at Fluffy, look at Fluffy!” who is doing nothing remarkable.
“So what about Fluffy,” I grumble and nudge my speckled brown duckling to jump off the stepping stool.
‘Quack, quack.’ The ducklings paddle their tiny webbed feet around the little pool.

The ducklings go into a cardboard box which mom sets in the concrete laundry sink overnight so they can’t get out and the rats can’t eat them. The next morning, we relieve the ducklings of their cardboard gulag, which is now splattered and stinky with poop. Our playmates appear from the bosom of Guesthouse. “What’s their names?” “Fluffy,” Johanna holds her prize so tightly it squeaks and wiggles. The three other duckling’s names keep changing. “Pecky, Patty and Plumpy,” I grumble as they patter around their sandbox pool. We play duckling til we’re bored and put them in their box for lunch and siesta. After siesta, our ducklings are funny again. We let them waddle around the grassless yard between our two houses. Then we plop them in their swimming pool again. ‘Quack, quack,’ happy.

Some other Guesthouse kids come over. “Your ducklings?”
Johanna, eyes them, points vaguely, “O-o, Fluffy, Ping, Plumpy, and Pecky.”
An older girl we only know a little grabs Pecky from the water and plops it down on the ground. She begins to walk and it scrambles after her.
“Look, see, Plumpy follows me! She thinks I’m her mother!” “That’s Pecky.”
She’s insistent, “See! Put them in a line, they’ll follow each other.”
It’s true, the ducklings waddle frantically after each other.
Johanna wants to be Fluffy’s mother, so she scoops up her little yellow duck and goes a little farther away.
“Ay naku! So cute!” (This is what people are always saying about us when they pinch our cheeks).
“Let’s go to the flame tree!”
“Plumpy!” “Pecky!” I forget the duckling names, again, “Pampi!” We giggle. “Pampi!”

A Children’s Crusade, we march away from the sandbox to the trunk of the flame tree at the front of the house - child, duck, child duck. Like the Pied Piper’s parade, we march round and round the tree. “ Little Black Sambo!” yells older Guesthouse girl with glee. She laughs, “We gonna to turn to butter!”
We know the story. Johanna walks a little faster. Fluffy scrambles after, blond to butter.
We speed up, Pecky, Pampi, Plumpy waddle, waddle.
Then,
“Fluffy?”
“...Huh?”
“Fluffy! Fluffy! Who squashed Fluffy!”
Pecky, Pampi and Patty halt behind us as we bump into each other and shift our guilty feet.
“SOMEBODY stepped on Fluffy!”
Johanna drops to the grass and tenderly nestles the quivering yellow duckling against her cheek, a pieta of love and suffering. Its tiny beak gapes, open, closed, open.
“Don’t cry, it’s OK, it’s OK” Johanna murmurs.
When Fluffy hangs limp, she rises. She carries the yellow fluff gently, past our weak “sorry” up the front stairs. She won’t come out till dinnertime. She doesn't forgive.

Fluffy is the first of our beloved creatures buried under the acacia tree. Johanna’s only poem appears in the Union Elementary School newspaper:

I had a little duckling
Fluffy was her name
And ever since she died,
My life is not the same.

Forty years later, Fluffy is resurrected as a bright yellow blotch on a concrete box in one of Johanna’s paintings. It hangs in our living room.

Pets
"Out of the eater, something to eat; out of the strong, something sweet.”
Judges 13:13

We had generations of ducklings. Only two survived from a miserable stinky diarrhea that usually took them away from us. Ping and Squeaky were wiry and irritable. I loved them, inadequate mother her gone-wrong kids. I dug up worms in the dark earth near the acacia and hand fed them several times a week. The sandbox was too small and by hot season, Squeaky patrolled the front yard. She lowered her crooked neck when anyone approached the house, squawking as she ran, her wings flapping. Ping copied. They never attacked the family, but visitors had to run to the concrete steps to avoid a peck to the shin.

The parents weren’t amused.
“But who else has guard ducks? They’re fierce!” Not the best defense.
“I think the ducks would be happier out to UP. There’s a pond.” Mom.
“Someone will eat them!”
“You kidding? They’re tough as nails.” Dad. So we gave Squeaky and Ping to the Palms who, we were told, released them by the pond.
The front yard was quiet for a while.

You get used to pets as fevered, food or feral in Manila. It’s Samson’s riddle, "Out of the eater, something to eat; out of the strong, something sweet.” Of course, he’s talking about a beehive in a dead lion’s jaw, but proof texting has its merits. We offered leftovers to the outside cat, Melting Snow as she bore litter upon litter in the crawl space under the Ellinwood Bible School dorm. When she disappeared, leftovers went to our neighbor’s baboy, whose death squeals ruined my interest in lechon at fiesta season. I have already confessed to ant wars and dragonfly leashes. We tried turtles (died early) rescued fledglings to prolong their agony dribbling condensed milk down their beaks. My guinea pig mothers ate their babies. “Maybe the cage is too small,” dad worried. So we make a small cage with wooden sides and chicken wire top. I set on the lawn during the day so they crop the grass into rectangular patches. But they were just too plump and sweet. I lurch awake one night, not sure why. In the morning, their cage is empty. No doubt they went the way of our cocker spaniel puppy, who lived with us a week. I resolved that it didn’t matter if our pets were eaten since nothing lives forever, and as long as they weren’t afraid when they died it was always best to be useful.

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