A Moment in the Sun (97 page)

Señora Divinaflores had lost a girl to infection who was using sponges and beat Dionisia with a strap when she discovered the girl was pushing half of a cut lemon inside herself before each
visitante
. Instead, each week she made them all drink a tea made with
hierbas
prepared by her ancient friend Doña Hermanegilda, who even shy Keiko agreed was a witch. It tasted almost as bad as China medicine, which tastes like the ugly disease you are trying to kill, and Señora Divinaflores watched them swallow every drop.

“We are here to entertain the
caballeros
,” she said, “not to produce their bastards.”

In the slow afternoons the Filipina girls liked to play cards together and Keiko embroidered handkerchiefs with flying sparrows, always sparrows, and Ling-Ling would sit out on the sill of the window under the Spanish flag, watching the world pass by. Señora Divinaflores allowed this as long as Ling-Ling dressed up in her working silks and wore makeup and oiled her hair so people passing would know hers was a high-toned establishment. The Filipina girls taught Ling-Ling to comb the cocoanut oil through her hair and her favorite part of the day was early afternoon when they would sit and do it for each other. Only Ynés, who was
mestiza
and had curly hair that was almost red, was left out of this pleasure, but she was the one the
caballeros
asked for the most. There were
yang gweizi
women in Manila doing the same as them, said Eulalia, but they could afford to entertain alone in their own houses.

It wasn’t long after Ling-Ling arrived in Sampaloc that the
Comisaria de Vigilencia
man came along with Señora Divinaflores’s lover, who was called Sargento Robles, to tell them that they had to be registered and inspected. They were brought to the Office of Public Hygiene and their photographs were taken. When the
oficial
asked her name she said Ling-Ling, just Ling-Ling. She was given a card that had writing on it and her photograph in the corner, and the
Comisaria
kept an identical card. Ling-Ling had never had her photograph taken before and did not like to look at the girl in the picture. At least it was only from her shoulders up and did not show her feet.

Twice a week they were supposed to either go to the hospital or let Dr. Apostol look inside them when he came by on his rounds through Sampaloc. It cost a Mexican silver if you went to the hospital or two if you waited for Dr. Apostol, money taken out of your pay by Señora Divinaflores.

They were paid in this house in Sampaloc, though after their food and lodging and
hierbas
and clothing and now medical examinations were taken out very little was left. The Filipina girls bought themselves things, sweets, pretty things, things you could buy on the street or from vendors who came calling under your window and would send your purchase up in a basket. Keiko gave her coins to a Dwarf Bandit man who came by once a week and who, she said, was sending it home to her parents. Ling-Ling kept hers in a wooden jewel box Eulalia had given her and never counted them. Eulalia had given her some gold earrings, too, and an ivory comb and a small icon, carved out of black stone, of a naked man with his hands and feet nailed to crossed planks. Ma had had something like that but one night when Baba was drunk and angry at the
yang gweizi
he threw it deep into the fire and wouldn’t let her reach in to pull it out. Sometimes in the mornings when Ling-Ling was lonely and sad Eulalia would come into her bed and hold her. Eulalia always smelled of cinnamon and cocoanut oil and gave Ling-Ling sarsaparilla wine to drink.

“The
hierba
tea only protects you against babies,” she said. “This will keep you from being infected.”

But even though they always drank a small bottle of it to make their mouths forget the taste of Doña Hermanegilda’s brew, one week Dr. Apostol said they had to go with Carmen to the Hospital San Juan de Dios to be cured. They were marched there by Sargento Robles and one of his fellow
guardia
and locked in a ward full of infected girls from all over Manila.

They had to lie on their backs three times a day and pour a cup of something that stung into themselves, holding it in till they could hold it no more and were allowed to run to the bench full of holes and pee it out. There was not much else to do and sometimes there were fights between the girls.

“Stay away from that one,” warned Eulalia, pointing to a hard-faced
mestiza
across the ward. “I was in Bilibid with her once. She hides a razor in her hair.”

“Why were you in prison?”

Eulalia raised her shoulders. “I argued with the
ama
at the house I was in before I came to Señora Divinaflores and she had me arrested. And even before that, on Thursdays and Sundays they let visitors into the cells, so we would go and entertain the prisoners who had money but no wives.”

In the evening the Daughters of Charity came in with their white hats spread out like the wings of flying fish, to pray for them and remind them that they were wicked women. The only one Ling-Ling liked was Sor Merced, who was young and would sit by her with her hands folded inside her robe and ask in Spanish what life was like for North China people. The robe was bluish-gray, the exact color of the cloth that Ma had woven so skillfully when she was still able to work a loom. Sometimes Sor Merced would tell stories about the life of San Vicente and sometimes even stories about herself when she was a girl and had a different name that Ling-Ling never asked her to reveal.

“Your sickness,” Sor Merced said, “is God’s warning that you are in peril. If you wish to lead a different life, perhaps I can help you.”

The Daughters of Charity were supposed to help the Poor and the Sick, and Ling-Ling was both of those. “But Sister,” she said shyly, “I am a
pagana
.”

Sor Merced looked at her for a long moment. “That does not mean I won’t help you,” she said.

But they were only at San Juan de Dios for a week when the doctor said they had been cured and something was written on the registration card with her photograph on it, both on hers and the one they kept, and she and Eulalia and Carmen were sent back to Señora Divinaflores.

“I kept your beds for you,” the
ama
told them. “You are in debt to me.”

Then there was a war between the government and the
insurrectos
, who were all Filipinos from Cavite, said Eulalia, who was from Ilocos, but after the very beginning it didn’t come too close to their house in Sampaloc. On the night before they were to be sent to fight, Rodrigo Valenzuela and many of his fellow junior
oficiales de fusileros
came to drink and sing and be entertained. Before he went to the room with Ling-Ling he pulled her out in front of the others.

“We have a wager,” he said. “A wager between
caballeros
. They say there is no
china
capable of this, that I am only a braggart and a fabulist.”

Ling-Ling stood looking down at her clown-feet, never happy to be the focus of so many eyes.

“Go ahead,
querida
. You know which one.”

And then Ling-Ling raised her head and covered her heart with her right hand and recited, trying to say the words with exactly the tone and exactly the rhythm that Rodrigo Valenzuela had taught her.

A mi alma enamorada—

—she cooed—

Una reina oriental parecía

Que esperaba a su mante

Bajo el techo de su camarín—

—the
caballeros
standing with their mouths hung open like carp in a too-small bucket—

—
O que, llevada en hombros

La profunda extensión recorría

Triumfante y luminosa

Recostada sobre un palanquín

The
caballeros
smacked their hands together and the girls squealed with laughter and even Señora Divinaflores gave a bitter smile before she swallowed another glass of
jerez
.

Later on, after he had used her and lay curled up with his hand on her stomach like a small boy, Rodrigo Valenzuela began to cry. “I’m going to die,” he said. “I’m going to die in this
hoyo de mierda
.”

The war was still being fought when Ling-Ling started to feel sick all the time, like she had on her first voyage at sea, and her body started to thicken.

“Drink this,” said Doña Hermanegilda when the
ama
called her in to consult. “There is still time.”

These
hierbas
made her sweat and have cramps and feel sick in a different way, but her bleeding had stopped and nothing else came out and then it came into Ling-Ling’s head that the being inside her was determined to live.

“She’s just getting fat and lazy,” Señora Divinaflores said to Lao, who came to collect money for Mr. Wu. “I think you should send her on to Singapore.”

Ling-Ling still had to entertain, so many new soldiers being sent to Manila from Spain to fight the
insurrectos
, and most did not even notice or care when her stomach began to push out. Dr. Apostol examined her for the disease and said she was at least a month away.

“Doña Hermanegilda is coming today,” said the
ama
the next morning. “She can make it come out sooner. The sooner it comes the sooner you will be able to go back to work to support it.”

The old lady came and began to lay out her needles and Ling-Ling saw Sargento Robles and one of his
guardia
very pointedly lounging out in front of the house in their lacquered hats, smoking cigarettes and telling jokes and looking as if they would be there till it was finished.

“Hermanegilda is an
abortista
, not a
partera
,” said Eulalia, so she and Dionisia and Keiko, who were already awake, made a rope of sheets that they wet and knotted and lowered Ling-Ling down on in the back, waving but not calling as they watched her hurry through the alley to Calle de Alejandro.

The man at the cigar factory next to the church in Binondo said that they did not hire
chinas
, pregnant or not. The
mestizas
who sold cloth from their narrow stalls said they needed no help and even the woman who hired for the
lavandería
by the barracks inside the Walled City said there was no work for her, that she should go back to her own neighborhood north of the river. Ling-Ling knew that if she tried to sell mangoes or milk or
dulces
on the street the
guardia
would soon arrest her, a
vagamunda
with her photograph on a card, not living at the house where she was registered. She spent the first night crouching under the Puente de España, not sleeping, and the next day was told they would not hire her at the
fábricas
in Tondo and Meisic, not hire her even to wash the long tables at night after the
cigarreras
went home. It was late afternoon when Ling-Ling passed through the Parian Gate and talked her way into the hospital, saying she had come for her examination this time to save a dollar. When they forgot her on the waiting bench she left and wandered the long hallways till she saw a sister wearing the cornette, and asked for Sor Merced.

“
Soy puta y pagana, y eso es hijo de quién sabe
,” she said to Sor Merced, touching her swollen belly, “
pero pido su ayuda
.”

“Every child is a child of God,” said the sister, and found her a bed to lie in.

It was mostly poor Filipinas in the ward, women who did not care to talk with a
puta china
, but Lan Mei did not mind. The doctor said there was something bad in her blood and that she would have to lie flat on the bed and not get out of it even to pee or make dung. She had never lain in bed so long with nothing to do, nobody to entertain, and relieving herself in the cold pan the nurse slipped under her was difficult at first. After about two weeks Eulalia found her. She had Ling-Ling’s money from the jewel box in a sack and the little idol, attached now to a thin golden chain.

“You have to wear this now,” she said, hanging the idol around Mei’s neck. “But the money—I’m afraid one of these
sinverguenzas
will steal it while you’re asleep.”

“Sor Merced will keep it for me.”

“As long as she doesn’t show it to any fucking friars.” Eulalia moved close to whisper to her. “They’re looking all over for you. The
guardia
and the people from Mr. Wu’s Society.”

“I am safe here, I think.”

Mei’s friend embraced her before she left.

“If it’s a girl,” she said, “think about naming her Eulalia.”

“Do you know why they did that to Him?” asked Sor Merced when she came to sit by Mei and saw the icon on the chain.

“He must have disobeyed the authorities,” said Mei.

“Yes, He did that,” smiled Sor Merced, who had a similar icon, carved in white stone. “And why do we wear this around our necks?”

Mei held her icon close to look at it, turning it this way and that, the man’s body twisted, spikes driven through the palms of his hands and both of his feet. “It is a very good warning,” she said.

When it was her time, the hurt was worse than anything she had ever felt before, and she thought then that women were given the icon to remind them that some men suffered almost as much as they did. Mei refused to cry out, though, holding on to Sor Merced’s plump arm as if it was a lifeline, as if she would drown if she let go. Her life was not nothing, it was the raft on which her child, whoever it was, would be borne above the waves. Sor Merced was shaking the whole time, praying and shaking and trying to keep her face averted from whatever the doctor was doing behind the curtain that hung over Mei’s swollen breasts.

It was a boy baby, and she told the
oficial
his name was Lan Bo, son of Lan Mei.

The Mother Superior arranged a job for Mei when she was well enough to walk, wearing rubber gloves and a mask and boiling the metal cups and bowls used to feed the patients infected with malaria or typhus or smallpox or cholera or tuberculosis or diseases the doctors had no names for. With this job came a little room behind the laundry, and, during Mei’s work shift, a
niñera
—a sweet-natured woman named Paz who had lost a leg to diabetes, and who stayed with Bo and the other babies of poor mothers who were recuperating.