Category: Fiction

Uncle Gaspar takes a wife

Fiction by | June 27, 2010


Growing up as I did in our little barrio of Kauswagan, I only knew of Uncle Gaspar through the balikbayan box of chocolates, cigarettes, wine, and small appliances he sent every Christmas. Uncle Gaspar worked as a truck driver in Saudi, you see, together with his brother, my Uncle Diosdado. In the five years he was away, he sent money to Lola Estella to build a house and to buy a farm lot.

I always suspected that Uncle Gaspar was a mama’s boy. Mama said that even if he was naughty, Lola had always given him special attention. With Uncle Gaspar far away, Lola Estella would sometimes take out the photo album she kept in the aparador of their house. She showed us pictures of Uncle Gaspar together with Arabs in long, white gowns and equally long headscarves. Sometimes, the pictures were of Uncle Gaspar playing cards with other Filipino workers.

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Saturday Soul Searcher

Fiction by | June 13, 2010

Elsa smoothed her hair as she got to the university entrance. A glance at her watch showed it was 4:55. Just in time for her regular 5pm Saturday mass. It was actually an anticipated Sunday mass. She made it a habit to attend this schedule to allow her to loll in bed the whole Sunday while watching TV or DVD’s. Given the possibility that the priest might give a long homily, she would be out of here by around 6:15. Then she would take a tricycle ride and still catch up with her favorite TV program on showbiz news.

But the chapel seemed full as she came near it. Definitely, this was not her day to show off her fashionable get-up to full advantage. In the past, she would usually walk down the center aisle and head towards the front seat near the altar, her head held high. Reluctantly, Elsa walked towards one of those plastic chairs set right outside the chapel’s door. She found a corner seat beside a small artificial pond. She glanced furtively to her right. Good, there was still an empty seat between her and the other churchgoers. She was about to place her small bag there when a young girl hurriedly sat down.

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Your Name

Fiction by | June 6, 2010

“Eleonora Amador?” the receptionist asks as she looks at around. Could she have been expecting the old woman to stand as the name was called? When you stand, she looks at you from head to foot then smiles wryly.

You are confident that you look your best today. You wear a ruffled blouse paired with skin-tight black leggings. You look even younger than your past twenty last November. You nod your curl-crowned head thinking of how many times people have wondered about that name of yours and how many times you have had to claim it as yours.

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New Year's Eve

Fiction by | May 30, 2010

You have been very busy preparing for tonight. It is the last day of the year, and you have been on a holiday rush, along with others, who are milling about in the mall, jostling one another in the supermarket. You decide to tag me along so that you can have someone to carry the bags of groceries, which are enough to last for a week. I suspect that all of them are for tonight; you’re the type who welcomes the New Year lavishly. Have you checked our purchases? Have you noticed the seemingly countless round fruits in Styrofoam and All-wrap bearing their weight in my hand? As we ford through the crowd, I try to keep close to you, lest I get lost and won’t be able to make it home with you tonight. (Walking the distance between the mall and our house is out of the question; it would be too far. And I can’t call you up on a cellphone—you simply refuse to give me one although I have always said that I’m old enough to have one.) I can already imagine myself—while we hurry through the throng of the holiday-fevered shoppers—being alone in the huge mall, crying, like how a child would, looking for you, running through the maze of people, beset with fear that will last until the stroke of midnight. I don’t want to spend the rest of my year wailing. It’s one of the countless things you have taught me—to welcome the New Year with happiness.

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You Never Had Me at Hello

Fiction by | May 16, 2010

For James

There are at least two things that you yourself wouldn’t want to miss. One, seeing your dad at the audience area during your first ballet recital. Second, having your firsts.
 
Mama bore me with a furious mole on my cheek that swells every time I grin and has been resting itself for years on my eyeglasses’ rim. Next to that, I’ve never tried Victoria’s Secret for my scaly skin. Perhaps that was why my classmates never shared tables or sat with me during recess, or else they also thought I was a complete freak who lived in the attic. Although sometimes, I did believe Mama when she said that it was because of my high mental capabilities (Mama taught me that) that I’d get chewed gum on my skirt and lose my desk during Homeroom. But you see, that was more of the “not so good” part of my life. Just like Cathy and the girl behind her and the janitor who cleaned the girl’s restroom, I did have fun too.
 
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Sunday Light

Fiction by | May 9, 2010

It is 3 o’clock; the perfect time to have a snack in this cool, air-conditioned restaurant. A couple walks in, trailed by two little children. The man stays at the doorway and surveys the room for a table while the woman heads for the the bar to ask for a highchair. The smaller of the two children, a boy of about three, latches onto his mother’s navy blue skirt. The girl romps her way to the toilet and turns the knob. It is locked. She stamps a foot and runs to her father, who has chosen a table by the window and is now reading the newspaper. He feels his daughter tugging his sleeve. He lowers the paper and glances in the direction of the toilet and pats the chair next to him. Sit down and wait for your turn. But the little girl refuses to sit. Instead, she walks back to the door. She shifts her weight impatiently: first on one leg, and then the other. She does this for a while, the intervals becoming shorter as her discomfort increases. Finally the door opens and an elderly woman walks out.

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Baby Hopes

Fiction by | April 25, 2010


I didn’t want to see pain in Mama’s face as much as I didn’t want to see anguish in Papa’s. I never wanted to look at their faces twisted in a way that I have never seen before, or hear unfamiliar gasps and cries because they wouldn’t have words to scold me. It was not like breaking my Grandma’s urn, or my mother finding out that I had just transferred the mess inside my room to my locker, piled underneath my clothes. It was much, much more profound and complicated than that. I was pregnant.

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The Young Sultan and the Plague

Fiction by | April 4, 2010

sultan
In the days when the Kingdom brimmed with prosperity and good fortune, the dining room of the Palace flowed with food and wine for the many revelers. Expensive draperies festooned the windows; servants brought in exotic delicacies on platters made of gold and silver.

Now, the days of such merriment were long past. The young Sultan shuffled into a dining room dim and empty. No revelers, no food, no wine, windows closed, an eerie silence pervaded the room. Only a flickering candle on the round table held back the darkness. The sultan said sat on his throne, still uneasy.

While he was though how all this came to pass, the three Rajas, whom he was expecting that day, arrived one by one.

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