“Mama!” she yells. “What on earth…?” she starts wiping the mud off her mother’s shoulders, as she looks in disbelief at the usually stern woman all dirty and sweating.
“Lala, you will go to your Aunt Cecile today,” her mother says calmly. The girl can’t believe that Luding, as everyone calls her mother, did not make breakfast for her daughter and is now calmly telling her what to do for the day. Clearly, Lala tells herself, this is the weirdest day of all.
“Can I at least have breakfast, Ma?”
“I’ve packed your bread and boiled egg in your lunch box. Cecile will meet you at the tricycle station in a few minutes.”
“What’s going on? I’m supposed to go to the dressmaker today remember?” she tries to buy some time talking to her mother while slowly reaching for the packed breakfast. Lala swears she could eat through the aluminum container as she gets hungrier every second.
“You will start getting ready now, Lala!” At that moment, mother and daughter stare at each other in surprise, for in Luding’s home, nobody is allowed to show any act of violence, and shouting tops her list.
“Where were you last night?” the calmness in her mother’s voice is back.
“The gang and I were celebrating.”
“What did you do?” This time, Lala takes a step backward, scared that her mother might do something crazy. After all, she broke her own rule for the first time today.
“What do you mean? Um, we had some beer, we…we played some games…what’s going on, Ma?”
“How much did you drink?” Luding’s voice is rising again, “Who else was with you?”
“Mama, you’re scaring me!”
“Rita’s dead! When you came home last night, you said you were with her and now she’s dead!”
“Wha…” Lala drops on the chair and stares in space in shock. “No, Ma, how can that be?”
“Her mother and I found her in the tracks, what remained of her limbs were tied to the tracks. Cora came here early this morning looking for her daughter.”
“Ma, I swear I had nothing to do with this.” Lala whispers.
“I want you to get ready to meet your aunt. I will bring some of your things tomorrow and you will not come home until I tell you.”
“Why? I want to see her.”
“Didn’t you hear what I said? Rita was tied to the tracks, there’s nothing left to see.”
“I’m staying to find out. She was my best friend.”
“Go now before I drag you there myself.” From Luding’s look and tone, Lala knew at that point, she had to obey. She grabs the now cold and stale breakfast, dresses quickly, and heads outside without a word to her mother.
Lala can’t help looking at Rita’s home across theirs as she heads for the station. Last night, Mrs. Santos had warned the girls not to go near the tracks when Lala went over to pick Rita up. It sounded funny to them that Mrs. Santos was worried about the bad luck that falls on newly graduated students.
The girls had finally graduated from the public school in the poor community of the Bagong Pag-Asa Relocation Project in the heart of Manila. All they wanted was to celebrate their freedom because for poor students like them, graduating meant freedom from the rotting and oftentimes foul-smelling classrooms, mostly bad teachers, shortage of facilities, and inferior teaching methods that drive away students rather than encourage them to stay. Lala was always smarter than Rita in school, but Lala would concede anytime that when it came to practicality, Rita was the best; Rita was the one who always got it going with the boys without getting in trouble, anyway. Just when every adolescent female in their place marries shortly after menarche, due to early pregnancy; Rita got away scot-free. Lala never engaged in illicit sex lest she faced her mother’s fury. Time and again, Luding would remind her that being poor doesn’t mean one has to take one’s morality to the pits, especially that of a woman’s.
She remembers how Rita had repeatedly tried to get her into some of the adventures that most teenagers are eager to experience. Always encouraging her to go out with some guy whenever there was an event in school or simply, just to get around meeting people.
“You are a nun!” Rita chided her once when she refused to go out with someone whom Rita set her up with for the hundredth time.
“I’m not ready to have a boyfriend.”
“He’s not going to be your boyfriend. Well… you’re lucky if he does.”
Rita had made it a point to go out meeting guys from up there. She said that their only salvation from this damned place was a rich husband. Sometimes, Lala questioned if they would be able to get out of this rotten place and almost every time, the answer was “maybe”. They were turning 17 in a few months and graduating from high school as well. Out of almost a hundred students, they were two of the 20 girls lucky enough to get through high school. Most of the girls simply dropped out or went on to marry guys who were no better than they.
“This is just hell, all of this. Do you think getting a high school diploma will get us out of here?” Rita once complained when they were smoking blue seal by the railway out of their mothers’ sight.
“So why did you stay long enough for graduation?” Lala retorted.
“There was nothing else to do. I’m not pretty enough to go to Japan. Why don’t you go to Japan? You’re pretty enough.”
“Look at how flat I am!” Lala said pointing to her chest.
“When you go there, you’ll know how to make them big.”
“That’s not really the problem. You know how mama will take it.”
“That mother of yours will stop you from getting rich. If I were as pretty as you, I would be earning a lot in Japan by now.”
That was the last time she smoked with Rita because a few minutes after she entered their shanty, Luding smelled her and gave her a lengthy speech. That day, she lied to her mother about when she started smoking. There was no way she was going to tell her mother that she’d been smoking with Rita since they were 14.
But the risky adventures didn’t end there. They tried stealing money from the market nearby so they could have better meals after school and cheap accessories to go with their hand-me-down clothes from the relief drive that comes every two years. Rita also managed to get the answers to their Math test from their overbearing and arrogant teacher. How she did it, Lala would never know for Rita never told. All she noticed was how Mr. Solis started to treat Rita differently, almost special.
“You got to do what you got to do.” Rita said as they were walking home after acing the test.
“So what did you do, Rita?”
“You are so naïve. I can’t believe we live in the same damned place, go to the same school, and see the same things every day. You seem to be somewhere where everything’s nice and pretty.”
“Why are you suddenly so… so grumpy?” Maybe it was Lala’s hurt voice or the frustration in being on the wrong side of the fence that made Rita stop and for the first time looked so serious.
“La, I don’t know what your mother has been teaching you about this life. All I know is if we keep dreaming and hoping for something good, but don’t do anything to get out of here, we’re doomed.”
“You always say ‘get out’… what do you plan to do?”
“After my typing course, I’ll get a job in that big mall in Sta. Mesa. There will be so many people there, rich ones. I will find my fortune there.”
“You mean, you’ll find your rich husband there.”
“Yes. Why, are you hoping to get to college after graduation? Be a bank manager someday?”
“Gary got a scholarship to the Ateneo University…”
“La! Gary is super brain. But look at him, he’s weird. Unless you’re a super brain like Gary or you hit the Lotto jackpot, you will never get rich.”
“The government offers so many scholarships for high school grads, Rita. Maybe we should try.”
“Dream on, girl. I won’t waste my time.” That was the first and last time Lala heard and saw Rita so serious.
After being friends for so many years, Lala felt strange walking by herself on a summer morning. How many summers had she shared with Rita? Having no siblings meant having Rita for a sister more than a friend. She tried to go back to the final hours she spent with her best friend. For a brief moment they owned the world; defying rules by drinking as much beer as they could, staying up till the wee hours. Lala had never felt so free before last night, or was it just a few hours ago?
For a few hours they forgot that they lived in the poorest of lives. They walked by the railway talking about imaginary business ventures, dreaming about traveling to many countries, and living in beautiful houses befitting only the rich.
“I’m your boss. I order you to book my flight to… to… Paris…” Rita was obviously too drunk that night.
“No way. I’m the boss, I got higher grades, remember? The boss is always smart.” Lala knew the beer was getting to her head.
“Not in Math, though. And this… is… a fian… fiancial…”
“Financial…”
“I knew that. Financial company.”
“Yeah, right. I forgot you got the highest in Math,” Lala said sarcastically, “did you see the look on their faces when Solis announced…the…the…you as best in Math in… our class?”
“What do you mean? I was always good at Math! I was just too lazy.”
“You did something. I know. C’mon, I’m your best friend, we tell each other everything.”
She really wanted to know. Rita, for all her cunning ways, took it as an opportunity to teach her friend more serious stuff.
“Oh…look, La…is that a bottle of solvent right beside you?” True enough, as Lala turned, there was a bottle of clear liquid conveniently stowed under the tracks.
“Oh no…no, I don’t do solvent.” She started to panic but was too intoxicated to get up.
“Coward. I’ll let you know if you sniff some.”
“C’mon, Rita, no fair.”
“Sniff some and I’ll tell you what I did.”
“Isn’t it dangerous to mix beer and that…that stuff?”
“No. Done it several times.” It didn’t surprise her that Rita had tried the stuff more than once.
For some reason, as she comes near the tracks, she feels a chill go up her spine. What happened, Rita? Out of habit, whenever she felt frightened, Lala raises her hand to her neck to touch her crucifix pendant. What she finds makes her even more scared, as her hand feels nothing of that familiar metal thing that always hangs by her neck.
Oh! Ma would be so mad at me! Where did I leave it? She moves closer to the tracks because as logic tells her, it might have fallen down there, somewhere, and she was too drunk to have noticed.
“Did you know that our chances of having a better life is like going through an eye of a needle?” Lala is clearly hearing Rita’s voice now and it was no comfort at all.
“Rita?”
“I felt so powerful, La. Solis kept on begging for more. Men…they’re pigs.”
“Rita, what did he do to you?” She goes closer to where Rita died.
“Just like any blood-sucking male monster would do. But he thought he won…or something… because he had that look as if… as if… he knew…”
“As if he knew what?” Lala feels silly talking to the wind.
“That I was that kind of girl. But I can’t blame him. Even my father thinks so.” Lala remembers seeing tears coming out of Rita’s eyes that moment. But then everything becomes hazy, she can’t remember exactly what happened next and she feels so light, like when she was walking home hours after midnight; she was crying and laughing so much at the same time that she might have woken up Luding.
“Lala don’t forget, tell Mama everything. Tell her why I did this. Tell her you tried to stop me.”
Suicide! Rita killed herself. Why didn’t I stop her?
But images in her head tell her something else. She remembers Rita lying on the tracks, smiling and crying at the same time.
“Be sure you tie it tight so I can’t get up and go. You think it’s gonna hurt?”
“It hurts!” Lala shouts back at the wind, for she remembers now. Without her knowing it, Rita tricked her into sniffing too much. She was so wasted that she did everything Rita told her to do. She went along with it, thinking that they were both high up there.
“I don’t think it’s gonna hurt. It would be too fast for me to feel it, right La?” She remembers now how scared Rita was, but determined nonetheless. That was when she took off her crucifix and put it around Rita’s neck.
“This will make you brave. Be sure to…to return it, you hear?” She was sure she would see Rita in the morning, get her necklace back, and they would laugh at all this, for she thought it was just a game.
Lala cries as she has never cried in her life before. It wasn’t a game and Rita is really dead. She runs to her mother as fast as she can, and for the first time, the wind hurts her eyes, her face. For she can smell the stench in the air now, the rotten life Rita was talking about.
Perhaps Rita was right, she tells herself. I was so naïve; I thought everything could be beautiful.
And what more could break her heart than to see Luding clutching the necklace, with the crucifix still intact, crying for her daughter who’s been sucked up by hell on earth? And like her daughter, she wishes that, for a brief moment, the roaring train would drown out all the craziness in her world.
« return.