Monsoon Mansion: A Memoir(57)

I smiled with my eyes and the shorter one tagged me.

I had never been a runner, but the fact that I was among children who knew nothing about the mansion and who cared little to nothing about where I was from made me sprint to tag the next It. I had never been a runner, and yet was thrilled to be part of the game.

Once tag got old, we moved on to other diversions: tumbang preso (knock down the prisoner), patay-patayan (playing dead), agawan base (stealing base), langit lupa (heaven and earth), and ubusan ng lahi (wipe out the clan)—games that our adult counterparts seemed to be playing and enjoying at a different level.

The sun started to set and I still hadn’t employed the help of my new friends. Dinner depended on it, I remembered.

“Hungry?”

The set of them, now a group of eight barefoot, tatter-dressed boys and girls between the ages of seven and fourteen—and cumulatively weighing about 275 pounds—countered, “In exchange for what?”

“My stepfather has a project for me and I need help,” I said, as if certain of the task at hand.

“Using dye?”

“Lots of dye.”

“We know dye. We are from the Tingguian tribe and our mothers and grandmothers make dye.”

“Perfect. So who’s ready for dinner?”

We frisked along: hungry children, lonely children, children ready to work for a bite or two.

We arrived at the safe house and entered through the back where Tony and a few men smoked and chewed tobacco. Tony nudged the guerilla boy next to him, who was about fifteen, who then reached under his Monobloc plastic chair and pulled out a plastic bag of Styrofoam containers. He held it out to me, the leader of my newly formed pack, and gestured for me and my troupe to eat. I set the bag on the floor and opened it. My friends waited as I popped each top. We gasped every time the contents of each of the four containers were revealed. They gasped in excitement, and I gasped in revolt. They called the first dish abuos, a stir-fry of giant red ant eggs. The second dish they called abal-abal, vinegar-dressed beetles. The third they called kampa, a white fish found only in the Abra River and boiled in tamarind soup. The fourth they had no special name for but looked the most familiar to me: rice. So I let them have a go at the first three dishes, while I took a fistful of the long grains. Within five minutes, the food was gone.

Tony unrolled a poster and flattened it out on one of the worktables. He pointed at it, then to a crumpled sheet with handwritten lettering and said, “Copy these words but make it look like this,” referring to the poster. The poster read “ERAP PARA SA MAHIRAP!” Erap for the poor! Erap was the name of a former actor running for president. On the sheet, someone had spelled Norman’s and Father’s names, along with a caption about serving the underprivileged and the indigenous, and the titles “Gobernador” and “Bise Gobernador.” I drafted a mock-up, copying the sheet’s text, but in the typestyle, color, and size as on the poster. Tony, his men, and the kids watched over my shoulder as I drew and erased, drew and erased. At the fourth try, I did it—I made a master copy of Norman’s election posters. The armed men and the now not-so-hungry children clapped for me. I felt hot around my neck and the back of my ears. I blushed. I felt proud of myself, but also ashamed and angry—knowing that my art was to aid Norman in reaching his dream of being in office. I imagined him rebuilding another mansion, hiring more men, and enlisting more children. I thanked the group for their praises, in the softest, tremulous voice I could speak in because I couldn’t help but think of what Mr. Santiago had said. The most dangerous of times. Danger. The new weapon—children.

I also knew that my sketch and calligraphy were only the beginning.

The kids and I spent after-dinner hours silk-screening my design onto letter-size and tabloid-size sheets. After we’d gone through the stacks of paper around the room, Tony unboxed cotton T-shirts for us to tint with dye. Our little hands worked like cogs and bolts in a printing press, Norman’s version of a campaign and a political machine. I thrived in the rhythm of this new game—press, pour, push, pull, push, pull, print. I gave directions and the kids listened, not because I was the oldest, but because my education and class gave me a sense of command. As a leader, I felt the need to protect my legion, to make sure that what Mr. Santiago said—danger—would never meet my troupe.

“I need to go home,” the shorter one said.

“We still have work to do,” I said.

“But my mom will think that I joined an army.”

“What army?” I asked, setting down my dye stir stick.

“Goons for the mayor or governor. Bang-bang.”

“Bang-bang?”

“My cousin Chito, who’s twelve, has joined. My brother and I have been asked. Chito cuts grass now, but soon he’ll have a gun, too.” He pretended to fire.

I sent them all home and asked them to return first thing in the morning. “There will be breakfast,” I assured them. I commended them for the meticulousness of their little sweatshop hands, their head-down-mouth-shut work ethic, their listening skills, their speed and agility, and even how well they ate their food. I gave them endless praise—to lure them back to my army and not anybody else’s. The silk-screen work, it stung and stained our skin, but better the sting of dye than the pouring of blood.

Morning broke and I roused to the memory of last night’s conversation. Goons for the mayor or governor. Bang-bang. I ran to Norman and Mama’s sleeping quarters, where they sat up in bed reading the paper, so I could ask for a ration of bread and condensed milk for the kids coming to help me that day. Mama said that Tony had gone to pick up a brown bag of pan de sal and should be back shortly, and that asking for condensed milk was asking for too much, and that we should get printing done by midday so we could hang the posters up all over town by dusk. I left without responding, hurrying to get clothes and flip-flops on, and scurrying down the spiral steps to await my troupe. I prayed, “Oh, God, please bring them here and not there.” I thought of the inscription etched on the private school’s chapel doors: “Let the little children come to me.” Over and over I prayed, hands clasped and teeth grinding, breathing shallow breaths just down and into my shoulders and nowhere past. Where are they?