Monsoon Mansion: A Memoir(51)

On Monday, I arrived at school before sunrise, scrounged the grounds for leftover Coke bottles, and turned in my collection at the cafeteria, in exchange for a plate from the janitors’ breakfast buffet: salted and dried threadfin fish. Then I went to the prayer room, sat cross-legged as I prayed the day’s thanksgiving and requests. “Lord, thank you for my new friend. Please help me with today’s civics exam. I did my best studying. Please keep me safe, fed, and strong for yet another day. Amen.”

At the ring of the bell, I headed to my classroom, confident in my knowledge of history. While repeating names of Philippine revolutionaries to myself, a pea-sized ache jerked from my lower abdomen. It jerked and jerked until the ache was a full-on cramp, the kind I had had four months back—the week of my infested water ration. I sat down in my designated seat, assigned according to the first letter of our last names. My friend Bunny had left a bouquet of sharpened no. 2 pencils on the desk, perhaps aware of my limited resources and struggles at home. I turned around to find her in a classroom full of students, to thank her, but kept getting interrupted by the spasms. Oh no, I thought, not again. I know I boiled the water, and I’m sure I kept the lids on. Oh no, Jesus, no.

And then the wet feeling came. It spread through what felt like the entirety of my tattered underwear. Oh no. The test proctor handed me an exam. I wrote my name on the top corner, or at least tried to. The wetness kept increasing, dispersing itself past my undergarment, and soon, if I let it, through my skirt. I got up and ran out of the classroom. The proctor yelled, “Hey! Hey! You can’t leave! Come back at once!”

I reached the bathroom stall, pulled down my skirt and panties, and slumped down to the toilet. It was not diarrhea. I wasn’t sure whether I was grateful, knowing that I hadn’t contracted yet another malarial-type bug. But there it was, reddish brown, brownish red, smeared on my underwear and marking my passage into another time: womanhood.

My mouth went dry. I looked up at the stall door to make sure it was locked and that nobody could walk in on my discovery. I thought of taking off my undergarment, wrapping it in toilet paper, and throwing it in the trash. But I realized that my menses would continue to flow, and I needed something to catch it. I pulled up my boy shorts from ankles to knees, rolled up a wad of toilet paper, and laid it over the stain. I crept out of the bathroom, sweating cold sweat, and shuffled my feet to the school clinic.

I came home wearing disposable underwear and a new skirt—both pockets stuffed with feminine pads to last me two days—all from the school nurse. I also came home with a permission slip from the principal, requesting my mother’s signature for a retake of the exam that I, as the proctor had noted on the slip, “had evaded.”

I wanted to tell Mama about my unwanted visitor, but she, as on any other day she spent at home, busied herself with magazines and periodicals in the breakfast room, while Norman drank coffee, whiskey, or both.

“Look here. This article says the coming election is the year of the newcomer. No more incumbents. Do you see what I see?” she said.

“I can always rely on your smart ass,” Norman said, grabbing her face and kissing her hard on the lips. “Abra, I’m coming home with a vengeance! Last time I was there, I was the poor guy. This time I’ll be the powerful guy. My people will be killing and getting killed for me.”

Mama gave her nervous sniffs. Norman belched after stuffing a stale donut into his mouth. From where I stood under the arched entryway, I could smell the stink of his breath and the lack of showering wafting from under her arms. Mama’s head bobbed from her undernourished body, and from her bun a gumamela flower stuck out. She had stopped washing herself because of the lack of water, but she continued to do her hair.

I turned around, repulsed by their conversation and the odor that now filled the breakfast room, and headed upstairs for a nap.

I laid my head on my pillow and felt the curve of the fork—my weapon—under the feathers. It brought back memories of Paolo striking forks when I slept. And I missed him. I wondered how a big brother would have reacted to the news of my first period.

Diyosa, who had been staying in one of the extra bedrooms, heard my steps, crossed the terrace between our two spaces, and came into my room. Without asking or saying anything, she started stroking my hair with her fingers and sang. At the end of her song, she said, “Why so sad, sweet angel?”

I kept my mouth closed and pulled the bunched-up wads of feminine pads from my pockets. Even though I was turned away from her and I couldn’t see her face, I felt her smile.

“Oh my. What a big day it’s been for you! Now what should we do to mark it? Hmm. I could give you a rose, but no, I don’t have any. Or I could tell you all the crazy folk tales about womanhood handed down by my mother, but no, those aren’t even true. Hmm. Well, what about my favorite, makeup and dress up?”

I perked up. Without saying a word, I hugged her around the neck, overtaken by my excitement. I used to help do Mama’s face in the morning in her walk-in vanity, right after breakfast. I remembered how close I felt to my mother in that moment and how distant thereafter.

Diyosa walked me to her room, Papa’s post–Gulf War habitation, where stacks of his yellowed ledgers and documents were still piled up against the wall. A cot lay in the middle of the room next to an upside-down biscuit tin that had been transformed into a dresser. On the makeshift dresser, Diyosa had arranged her trade’s accoutrements: pocket mirror; flamingo-pink blush; violet, turquoise, and gold eye shadow; Revlon’s Smoky Rose lipstick; and a plastic bottle of imitation perfume. In her room, we made our complexion fairer, our cheeks rosier, and our facial angles more contoured. We listened to her battery-powered radio. We sang. We murmured words of quiet rivers and whispering winds. Diyosa crooned to her unborn child, and I to my would-be rescuer: Papa, Paolo, anybody. And as we harmonized, she showed me how to properly place a feminine pad on my underwear. She stripped the wax paper to reveal the adhesive strip, then stretched taut the band of fabric between the leg holes and set the pad, without wrinkling an inch of my boy shorts, right in the middle, at a position straighter than a twelve o’clock hand.