BEHIND THE MAN
Behind the Man by YDR
Sometimes it is better to pretend that we are not affected by what’s happening around us than be hurt with the truth it brings on us. This morning he will open the shop and spend most of his time talking to customers with his life’ s adventure as well as his problems he surpassed lately. He talks like a parrot in every person he meets and tells the same story that he had recently. He projects so well that he is a good provider with all the people he has talked to. He pretends to be humble with all the things he has. The newly constructed mansion, a Honda civic , a Ducati motorcycle, an original Manny Paquiao shirt , a Tag Hever watch, a Levis maong pants, were all in his possession though he claimed that these are all owned and given by his wife. Sometimes , it sounds convincing but sometimes it’s irritating especially if he keeps on telling this to people whom he come across that these are all what he got. He is living like a well off man . He can go to shopping mall whenever he wants. If he wants to eat something exotic he can go to Subic. He can travel locally and internationally. With all these , people thought that his business proliferates. How fortunate!
His daughter, LJ is enrolled in a well known private tertiary school taking up Photography, a course that he never approved . With this, LJ didn’t get support from her father in every undertaking she underwent . She never felt she’s special though she is the first child . She grew up with her lola who gave her the special attention she’s looking for. From then on, she envies the treatment that was given to her brother, believing that his brother is the favorite child. She tried to be somebody by engaging in sports. She played tennis and gave her best in this game until she became famous. Another story of her father was added on the list. His daughter brought him something to be proud of…the trophies, medals and recognitions. The applause and words of congratulations given to LJ was also given to her father. What an achievement!
Jayson is in a private secondary school who dreamed to be the opposite of his father. He grew up with his parents and witness the sufferings of her mother in the hands of his father. His father never hurt his mother physically but emotionally. Often he sees his mother crying and it all started with a joke shared to his father which was interpreted differently .His mother never learned this thing for twenty years. His father is very sensitive especially if the joke is about him. You can never measure the degree of his emotion when he is angry. Never worm your way in when he is driving for he will drive you crazy. How reckless!
Amanda is fond of watching movies because she would like to share many great stories in class for she is a Literature teacher in a State University . She always remember the film “Hanggang Kailan Kita Mamahalin”( Till when will I love you) starring Lorna T. , who played Liza and Goma who played Mike . Mike here in the story is the exact description of her husband, conceited, arrogant, hot tempered. Knowing that Mike became unemployed because he didn’t get the promotion he is aspiring for but instead his wife got the promotion so he decided to resign. Amanda’s husband is a former OFW who started a business near the university where she’s teaching. Though he’s running a business of his own he only gives the weekly allowance of their children which is 1,000 pesos a week. That is his share with all the family expenses. The food, electricity, gasoline, tuition fee, clothing , etc. are all shouldered by Amanda. The difficulty of budgeting what she earned became her usual dilemma. She tried to be physically okay as much as she can though she looks problematic most of the time . She handles all her problems with ease including her health problems. Her conditions are always not a priority.
Given the chance to talk, they would rather talked about business matters than her heath condition. She often had hypertension due to stress brought by her husband. Setting aside the former findings on her about the prolong menstruation which she suffered so much. With all these illnesses, her husband didn’t bother to advise his wife to seek advice from the medical experts. It’s a waste of money! Doctors and hospitals become rich capitalizing on the condition of the patients. Medicines are indispensable when you were diagnosed by medical practitioners. These were all his beliefs. Our body has the capacity to regenerate cells to help us feel well. With proper diet and exercise we’ll be fine. Who will not be stressed with this kind of thinking!
No one can endure this kind of man except when you truly love him. A man you’ll love and at the same time you’ll hate . A man you’ll keep and a man you should let go. The choice is yours!
Two years ago, Amanda was torn between keeping their relationship or separate with him. This is after she brought herself into the hospital because of non stop vaginal bleeding . While in the hospital Amanda confronted her husband about what he revealed to her last night that caused her to suffer from an intense emotion that led to miscarriage . She won’t forget that night, she would even prefer to have a nightmare than a real thing.
A night before, a confrontation was made .
Is there any problem? Amanda asked.
He immediately swears to God that he loves her and he doesn’t want to lose her.
“Promise me that you will understand” he pleaded.
“Tell me” she said.
Will you promise me to be my wife no matter what?
“I need a friend who will understand and will give me piece of advice and I want it to be you because I would like this to be a secret between the three of us.”
“I love you and I’m sorry.”
“ What happened ?” waiting impatiently.
“Have you found another to replace me?” trying to insinuate.
“No! No one can replace you.”
“Then…what’s your concern!” slightly tensed.
Still quiet… and thinking of the right things to say.
“Don’t tell me she’s pregnant?” she finally decided to ask the question.
He held her hands and kissed her saying “ I’m so sorry..please forgive me”
All her muscles become tensed upon hearing him softly. Amanda tried to control her emotion, instructing herself to be calm.
He knelt in front of her – just like a sinner asking forgiveness from a priest who could wash away his sin.
But Amanda is not a priest so she can not give what he’s asking.
She ran to the next room and locked the door. She wanted to scream but she doesn’t have the strength to open her mouth to shout at him. The tears from her eyes never stopped falling. It hurts wishing that she shouldn’t hear those things.
If only she can command him to decide for the good things though it will hurt them, she will. If only she can asked him to get out of her sight, she will.”
But the pain has made her dumb and numb. Dumb because she still wants to keep him for her children .Numb because the pain went through all her senses til she feels nothing but distress. What an agony!
After two days , Amanda went out from the hospital without any expectations from her husband. Her husband is still confused on the problem he is into. His mind keeps on thinking of his own problem disregarding the present condition of Amanda. He still keeps in touch with the woman while Amanda is weak because he would like to end up this dilemma . There will be no problem if there will be no proof. Proof of infidelity!
Amanda suggested him to do everything to get rid of that child. It’s a sin, she knows but it’s her suggestion they may consider it or take another action. Upon the initiative of the girl, who is a graduating student from the university where Amanda is teaching, she paid 2,000 pesos for the assistance made by the quack doctor but the baby according to her is fighting for his life, so the procedure didn’t succeed. They didn’t waste any minute, Her husband connived with a med rep. to take charge of the girl on how to get rid of the child.. They had it overnight with 24 capsules of cytotek-. He is waiting for the text of his friend if it is a success. But it failed. That means nothing happened so it was pushed through. They can not do anything, time passes by and they have forgotten for a while the girl. They tried to live in a normal life together. But Amanda is aware that any day from now the girl will be delivering her baby so she decided to take a vacation in Hongkong together with Jayson. While they are away, her husband received a text message from the girl that she delivered a baby boy. Since Amanda is not around, he visited the girl in the hospital and see for himself the baby. He was introduced as a friend to her mother. He had the chance to see the baby but he never felt the excitement of a father who had seen his son. The eyes, nose, lips were not all in resemblance with his. Finally he asked for the blood type. It’s” B”. His blood type is “A” and the mother is” O” where the hell he got this type of blood. He was cheated by the girl whom she thought is his. Karma!
It was around 6 pm and it was a tiring day in May 2010. Amanda and Jayson returned to the Philippines and are on their way home truly bonded with each other after a nice time in Hongkong. They rent a car from the airport . The driver was driving at the speed limit, listening to the radio… when this animal ran out in the road. It might have been a wild dog.. or a beast . Either way… it happened so fast. They had severe injuries including broken bone in her face, six spots of bleeding in her brain, Jayson’s shoulder was separated from its joints and tendons and upon further inspection he found that he had broken his back, badly. Jayson went out of his mind with pain until they were finally recovered 6 hours later by a nice elderly couple that looked absolutely horrified. They were brought to the nearest hospital but his mother was declared DOA.
Jayson grieved so much with the loss of his mother but relieved with all the heart aches her mother has gone through. Her friends were all sad and at the same time happy for she ended all her burdens. His father looked busy talking with friends and relatives. He seemed to be fine with the jokes he’s sharing but within he’s grieving. Til this last day of mourning he projects to be in sanity but after the burial no words come out from his mouth. He preferred to be alone in his room and reflect on the things he did. Its too late that he realized the love that was given to him was turned into ashes.
Enough with all her sufferings its time for her to be at peace. After the funeral, Jayson decided to live with his lola while his sister will be leaving for Wimbledon .
The woman behind the man has found her righteous place as well as the children.

GRAVEYARD SHIFT
The first short story is entitled Graveyard Shift, and is written by Rachel Salud
Rachel Salud is currently a senior student at UST, AB Journalism. This Short story was published in the Philippines Graphic Magazine last July 5, 2010.
Graveyard Shift
By Rachel P. Salud
(Published in the Philippines Graphic magazine, July 5, 2010, Vol. 21 No. 5)
The city was asleep.
Maria watched from behind the counter how nightfall gently tumbled on the buildings, on the streets lined with lampposts that glowed like eyes red with nightmares. A cluster of moths scurried and circled around them, and if not for the closed doors and air-conditioned walls of the store, she would’ve heard the insomniac crickets join their murmurs in the dark.
Occasionally, brief flashes of lightning winked from a distance, presaging rain that never seemed to arrive. Stars hid behind the bruised cherry sky, concealing their dazzling faces from travelers unguided by their lost radiance. Nobody was out on the streets, not even the vagrants and the horde of restless who, Maria guessed, have taken refuge behind alleys, waiting for the descent of dreams or smoking cigarette butts discarded by passersby. A car or two would zoom past the corner road, hailing from the broad highway that stretched out into another dozing metropolis. The stoplights from the curve kept blinking perfunctorily.
Green. Yellow. Red.
Maria did not notice the man who came in the store, until the chimes from the entrance clinked against the twenty-degree hush. She looked up from behind the counter, removing her chin from the lazy cradle of her palms, and straightened herself into a semblance of alertness.
The man was young, Maria could tell, but more than that she knew he was a stranger. It was the way he ogled at everything—with stunned amazement. She was all too familiar with that mystified stare, similar to the first, curious gaze of a newborn child overwhelmed by a world outside the sticky vestiges of a womb.
The young man stood at the entrance for a short while, the clatter of chimes disappearing like the face of the moon. He looked through the aisles, past the plump, airtight bags of chips and junk food, the instant noodles to the left and cookies at the opposite gondola, the peanuts at the bottom corners, the various labels of teabags sold individually or in boxes, the bottles of juice, energy drinks, beer and soy milk lined neatly on the glass-covered refrigerators, and cans of chilled coffee ruling from the top shelves. On the open chillers beside the counter were assortments of boxed lunches, sandwiches, different flavors of yogurt in plastic cups, more cans of coffee and bottles of soy milk.
It had only been half a year since Maria worked the graveyard shift at the convenience store and already, she had memorized the exact locations of the merchandise simply because it became inevitable when she had run out of plate numbers to read or names marked on whooshing cabs. Sometimes, she brought along a book to keep her company since the magazines on the rack were all encased with plastic. The only other magazines which were open for reading were filled with musical chords and lyrics of songs she had never even heard of. She did not play any instrument and the only songs she knew were from back home. No newspapers remained in the racks; besides she wasn’t interested in the turmoil of the city or even the nation.
It was only when the young man vanished behind the aisles that Maria realized she hadn’t greeted him with the routine words of welcome imposed by The Management. According to the brief lecture The Management instructed Maria to exercise courtesy upon the arrival of each and every customer. She should acknowledge their presence, and more importantly, to behave with sincere attention to the customer’s needs, or at least a semblance of it, even if they ignored her or speared her with quiet glares because everyone who walked into that door was prospective profit. And in the city, Maria learned, money makes the world go round.
In any case, the young man didn’t seem to be at all bothered with Maria’s unconscious violation of protocol. She thought it was too late to utter anything else. She simply waited for the man to approach the counter after he’d completed picking out what he wanted. For the meantime, Maria resumed watching the stoplight once more.
Yellow. Red. Green.
It didn’t take long for the young man to come up to the counter, clutching a can of iced coffee, a large bottle of pineapple juice (the one that claimed to have fat-burning properties) and a stack of cheese Pringles. He lined them up neatly, placing each item on the counter without making a sound.
“And a pack of Marlboros,” he told Maria after a brief moment of silence.
He couldn’t have been over eighteen at a glance, except that he was tall, in the way foreigners towered above everyone else. He still harbored the slight appearance of a boy, dimples on both sides of his cheeks, somewhat curly chestnut hair tousled in a juvenile, slapdash mess. His eyes were faintly green or gray, but Maria couldn’t properly tell for he was standing against the pouring white florescent. She was certain that he had already seen a part of the world she couldn’t possibly witness even in the entirety of her lifetime.
“I’m sorry sir, but we don’t sell cigarettes to minors,” Maria said, pointing out to a plastic sign above the tidy rows of cigarettes behind the counter.
The young man let out a weak laugh and scratched his head.
“Listen, miss…” he glanced at the nameplate stuck to Maria’s uniform. “Maria. Miss Maria. I appreciate the compliment but it had been more than two years since I went past my twenties.”
“Can I see some identification sir?” Maria said, taking note of the young man’s unfamiliar accent that seemed to twist rather awkwardly around his tongue.
He scratched his head again and gave her another boyish little grin, hoping perhaps that his good looks (or at least according to the women he’s met) would earn him some slack.
“Uh, I don’t exactly have any IDs with me right now,” he said as he took out his wallet and rummaged for a card that would give her proof of age. “I left my other wallet at the hotel where I was staying ‘cause I was in a hurry and—“ he stopped, realizing that he was diving into a monologue that a stranger couldn’t possibly give a hoot about.
“Anyway, I don’t have anything on me right now but it’s not like you’re assisting me in a criminal offense, right? It’s already, what, three in the morning? The guard outside isn’t exactly going to arrest me for buying cigs,” he laughed.
“I’m sorry sir but management policy clearly states that we’re not allowed to sell cigarettes to minors.”
He gave a defeated sigh, deciding that it was pointless to argue about his age and it’d be much better to stave off his craving at the hotel where the cashiers at the little stores were mostly women who didn’t ask about his age but inquired instead about his phone number, given the subtle provocations. He looked at his open wallet and laughed a little bit more as though he’d remembered a joke. Maria stared at him, perplexed, but said nothing.
“Okay, uh, just give me a hotdog sandwich,” the young man pointed at what looked like a transparent oven, a pair of tongs dangling on the plastic handles.
“Regular or jumbo?” she asked.
“Jumbo.”
“Would that be all, sir?”
“I would’ve bought something more for forty bucks but I guess I’m saving a little more cash tonight,” he said.
Maria animatedly walked toward the heaters, took out a bun, placed it in a plastic wrapper, and split it open using the tongs before slapping the hotdog in between. She fished out a sachet of ketchup and mayonnaise on the lower stacks behind the counter, and all this she executed with routine precision. After that, she raised the barcode gun above the can of iced coffee, the large bottle of pineapple juice and the stack of cheese Pringles, the tiny contraption making a beeping sound she could never get used to.
“That would be two-hundred forty-seven all in all,” Maria concluded.
The young man unfastened his wallet once more and pulled out a crisp five-hundred bill, the kind that looked as though it had come fresh from the bank or from under a flat iron. Meanwhile, Maria was placing all the purchased items inside a plastic bag, Pringles first then the juice bottle then the can of coffee then the sachets of condiments. She placed the sandwich in a smaller plastic bag. Maria liked for things to be orderly even if there was no specific Management rulebook on the matter. She handed him his change—two-hundred fifty-three to be exact—and placed the five-hundred peso bill neatly inside the cash register.
The young man grabbed the plastic bag on one hand and the hotdog bun on the other. He walked toward one of the empty tables overlooking the mist-covered street from the huge glass window. Maria watched as he sat and opened his can of coffee before taking a bite out of the sandwich. He remained there for some time, a stranger in the middle of a city that dozed under a blanket of darkness.
Of course, there hadn’t been many instances when Maria actually attended to a customer, especially when the hours of her work entailed nothing more than a deserted store with an unlimited supply of air-conditioning. There were people who went inside and bought several things but none she could remember that settled on one of the tables to whittle away the rest of the night. All of them had somewhere to go back to and this was just a brief stop on their way home.
Home. She’d been away for far too long. But it wasn’t the place that she could go back to, at least not anymore. After all, everyone loses a little something, even spirits, no matter how old their souls were attached to the roots of their land. And when they do, they simply become creatures who drifted astray into the realm of the living, wandering and wondering how it could be called living at all.
“Excuse me,” the young man said as he approached the counter without Maria noticing. “Do you know how to get to this address?” he showed her a piece of paper, scribbled with numbers and words that she could barely decipher.
Maria shook her head and handed him back the note.
“I’ve only been here for six months and I don’t go out much,” she said. “I’m not familiar with the villages here.”
“I guess that makes two of us,” he said with a weak laugh and folded the piece of paper back inside his wallet.
Maria simply nodded, unable to think of anything to say. She wasn’t used to talking, much less with foreigners and in English. It wasn’t that she didn’t know how to—she even read English paperbacks, most of which she bought from a thrift store at malls. But the last time she held a conversation with an English-speaking man was long ago, during the days that they first came onto the land bringing their doctrines of liberty and independence and democracy, when the only other language Maria had known, aside from the tongue of her ancient mother, was Spanish. Yet the young man did not look American, and simply appeared to be the son of some other race, one which conceived children as though they were the offspring of myths.
“I used to live around here until the family moved to London,” the young man began. “Now I can’t remember which streets here go where. Are you from the province?”
She gave him another nod.
“Southern?”
“Yes,” Maria looked at him with a bewildered yet amused stare. “Are you psychic?”
“Lucky guess,” the young man laughed. “Laguna, perhaps?”
“What makes you say that?”
“’Cause you look familiar. Anyway, are you from Laguna?”
“I’m from far away,” Maria simply smiled.
“I could’ve sworn you were from there. I lived in Laguna until I was eight. Even got lost hiking in a mountain. Then I spent another eight years here in the city and for the last six, I’ve been in London, studying.”
“I’m sorry sir, but that still isn’t going to convince me to sell you cigarettes.”
“Okay, okay, you got me,” the young man chuckled, holding his hands up in the air in a gesture of mock surrender. “But really, I could’ve sworn you were from Laguna.”
“Yes, I had lived there for a long time.”
“What are you doing here now in the city? They always said the province is a much better place.”
Maria shrugged.
“Home is always a better place.”
“I don’t know much about that,” the young man sighed, taking another bite out of his hotdog sandwich. “I’ve lived in three different places in two different countries, excluding the summer days we’ve spent in another province or city or country, visiting an aunt or an uncle or whichever relative there was to visit. So, yeah, I’ve never had a permanent home.”
“Is that why you’re spending the night here?”
“Maybe. I have to be at my girlfriend’s place first thing in the morning, that is, if I could find it. But I guess I’m going to have better luck at asking directions when people are awake. I just couldn’t help but drive out here after settling at the hotel. It’s only been a few hours since I got off from the airport. I wanted to surprise her but I can’t seem to remember where the streets lead anymore. It’s a miracle I even got as far as here. She lives nearby.”
Maria gave him another perfunctory nod.
“So, what about you? I mean isn’t it sort of odd for a girl to take the graveyard shift alone in a convenience store? What made you leave Laguna?”
For a moment, Maria kept mum, while a cab zoomed past the curve. She glanced at the stoplight which flashed in only one color: Green.
“Things happened,” Maria spoke carefully. “After that we couldn’t go home anymore.”
“Oh,” the young man mumbled. “Sorry to hear that. Laguna was a great place. Nothing like this city, or at least where we were staying at the time.”
“It’s different now,” Maria said.
“The last thing I could remember about it was this huge mountain. I was with my dad and my older sisters when we were all hiking, and of course, our guide, Mang Temio. He was a really old man but he had the bones of a healthy horse. Hell, he could’ve been a steed running on heavy duty car batteries. I’ve never even seen my grandpa walk like that. I was only eight but I’ll never forget it. I’m sorry, am I boring you with this?”
“Not at all,” Maria smiled. “It’s always good to hear from someone who shared the same home at least once.”
“It’s probably going to be a long story,” the young man chuckled.
“It is probably going to be a long night anyway,” Maria said.
The young man smiled at her and for a moment; he thought she would’ve looked better if a flower were tucked behind her ears.
“Well, I guess that’s a yes,” he grinned. “So, my dad said Mang Temio knew the mountain like the back of his hand. He was an old friend of the family. When he led us toward and inside the mountain, my dad wasn’t worried that one of us would get lost, until his son had the bright idea to stray from the pack,” the young man laughed in the way that people do when they remember something stupid.
“I didn’t know what came over me at the time. Dad kept telling us never to wander off alone, Mang Temio adding that the forest and the mountain were tricky, that there were things out there, creatures that ate children or made stew out of them. But I’ve heard that threat so many times from our yaya—she was from Antique—that instead of being scared, I became sick and tired of her yapping about the aswang or the bumbay that would suck my guts out or sell me in a black market if I didn’t behave the way she wanted to. Besides, my sister Lisa and I were fighting as we walked, because she didn’t want to share any of the candy our grandparents gave us.
“I walked at the tail end of the group, deliberately slowing my pace because I was close to having a tantrum. I brooded about the candy, about the injustice in the world that girls always had to ruin my life and that my dad always told me to listen to my older sisters because they knew better, until I saw something twinkle around the corner, like a tiny star that fell out of the sky. I headed toward it and saw that it was only a piece of chipped glass flickering under a shaft of daylight. By the time I was going to rejoin the group, my dad, my sisters and even Mang Temio, were gone. It was as though they vanished out of thin air and I couldn’t see anything for a good distance but trees and earth and rocks. Thinking about it now, they couldn’t have possibly gone too far. I thought they were just playing a really bad joke on me and I swore that if I found them, I’d do something to make them pay, especially Lisa because I was perfectly certain that she was the one who convinced them to leave me. But Mang Temio was right. The forest and the mountain are tricky places and I ended up wandering around, shouting my dad’s and my sisters’ names among the trees.
“I don’t know how long it lasted but it felt like hours to me. I kept walking and walking and felt like I was just circling the place. I even tripped on a huge tree root that was sticking out of the ground. I had a large gash on my knees and I was sure I couldn’t walk anymore, until a lady suddenly came out of nowhere and helped me.”
“A spirit?” Maria asked.
“I don’t know about that but she was my first miracle,” the young man said. “I mean, nobody really believes in these kinds of things anymore, right? But at that time, I was sure she was a miracle, sent from heaven to help stupid lost kids like me who couldn’t find their way out of a maze. There was light coming out of her, or that was just another one of the tricks the mountain played on me. She had no wings but she looked like an angel, not the kind that we learned about in religion class, where they all had blonde hair and pale skin, with halos attached to their heads. She was more of a fairy or a nymph, a creature born from the ancient magic of the earth.
“The woman was smiling, that I can remember. Her skin was kissed by the sun, her flowing hair were dark as her eyes. She was…” the young man paused, as though fumbling for the right words to describe a distant memory.
“Breathtaking,” he sighed.
“She walked toward me and kneeled down, looking at my leg while I struggled not to cry. My dad always told me not to, even if it hurt badly, so I bit my lip hard. The fairy-woman touched the bloody mess on my knees, muttering something that might’ve been a prayer or an incantation. I couldn’t tell what it was but after she said it, she lifted her palms and my knees were fine, as if they didn’t even get wounded. There was no blood, no scab, just the skin that had been there. It was gone and so was the pain. She just touched it with her hands and muttered a few words, then pooof! It vanished,” he snapped his fingers.
“I could walk again as if the whole thing didn’t happen. My whole body was refreshed but I was so scared and confused and amazed that I thought I was going to piss my pants,” he shook his head as he laughed.
“Then the lady asked what was I doing there. She said it was dangerous for kids to wander alone in the mountains. I told her I got lost and I needed to find my dad and my sisters because if I didn’t, they’d get so angry at me. She just smiled and quietly handed me a bracelet,” the young man said and showed Maria his wrist.
Maria gazed at the trinket—a native-looking bracelet whose beads were made of wood furnished with tiny, curled engravings that looked very much like an ancient alphabet. The beads were lined along a twine, the kind that couldn’t be found anywhere anymore.
“She wrapped it around my wrist and after that, she walked away. I simply watched her, unable still to comprehend what had just happened. I wish I could’ve given her something in return, though. For a long while, I just stood there like a rock then continued to walk whichever direction I felt like walking. Eventually, I caught up with my dad and my sisters, and found out that they’d been searching for me for hours. Mang Temio must’ve noticed the bracelet I was wearing because he had a strange look on his face when I showed it to them. Then he told my dad that I was fine, and I was blessed by the spirit of the mountain because it wouldn’t have returned me if it was otherwise,” the young man said.
A moment of silence washed over them, like gentle rain on a summer’s day. Then the young man spoke again:
“You know, it’s kind of weird. Since that day I got the bracelet, I never got lost even while I was traveling in London or any other place. It’s only now that I can’t seem to find my way again. Maybe because before leaving she said that—“
“You would never get lost as long as you wear it? As long as she was the spirit of Makiling, you would always find your way?” Maria smiled at the young man. “You know, Artemio had that same bracelet. He was just like you when he was a child. Wandering off into my mountain just like that. He died a few years back, when they just started taking over our home. It’s not like I didn’t try to do anything about it. But those people, they didn’t care about the land, about the creatures they couldn’t see. They shot Artemio when he tried to stop them. Many others got shot too. There were just forces more powerful than we could handle, even when we could command hurricanes or cast plagues upon the wicked. If we did any of that, we would kill the people who were left behind, those who wanted to stay and protect the land. We didn’t know what to do anymore. And soon enough, little by little, we were losing the only home we knew. The day came when we could not go back…”
The young man said nothing and simply stared at Maria, in the same way that he did when he first saw her as a child.
“I guess you would have to find your way on your own now,” she told him.
“Maria…” the young man said below his breath.
“Hush… Like you, I too am waiting to get back home…” Maria said, her head bowed.
The young man walked out of the door, leaving the plastic on the table, keeping the silence of his words and his feet, even as the chimes broke the hush as he hurried to his car and drove into the curve, the beginnings of daylight tapping at his tinted windows. Maria then continued to watch the stoplight as it flashed—green, yellow, red—and quietly waited for her shift to end.
Goodbye for a Godchild’s Mother by Jermafe Kae C. Angelo
A half moon hung in the sky behind the purple clouds. The wind blew and the cloud mountains were tinged with fire. The grasses on their feet rubbed together in the sharp chill of the night air and the leaves rustled in the wind. The place seemed sensual, and tonight they felt like part of it.
He kissed her forehead, her eyebrows, the tip of her nose. His glasses were crooked and she reached up to straighten them. As she did, she smoothed his brow. Her eyes were shinning and she was smiling up at him. He put his hands on her back and he felt her slim body through her dress.
“Something’s different tonight,” she said.
Everything, he thought.
He felt the breeze in his hair, and heard it in the trees. Overhead, the stars were as bright as they were going to get close to town. The sky was wrapped in haze, a sheet of sheer silk, and the stars were orange globes.
“Dianne…” he whispered into her hair. “… I want us back.”
Her eyes lose its spark, “Even if I have him, it’s been always you, but—”, she cleared her throat as if she was into starvation and ate all the words she said. Her heart was slamming, standing barefoot on the toe of his shoes, reaching up to kiss his chin, the side of his face. He brought her mouth to hers and rocked her back and forth in the sultry night. Her cheeks shone in the starlight, and he knew they were wet with tears.
“ I wish you weren’t going,” he said. He held her tighter as if it could stop her from going away.
“In a way, so do I,” she said.
“How do wishes work?” he asked.
“What do you mean? she asked, she thought he was kidding, but he wasn’t.
“How?” he asked.
“You look up,” she said. Taking his hands, she raised it overhead. “You point”.
“Yeah?” he asked, scanning the heavens.
“And then you wish.”
He nodded. He closed his eyes but didn’t wish or think about anything. When he opened his eyes, she was still there.
“So far, so good,” he said. kissing the knuckles of her right hand, her left hand and then kissing her mouth.
She held a deep sigh and said, “I still want you to lead your band on my wedding John.” To hear you sing for the last time before I’d be forever gone with them.
“All for you, and for my godchild.” His pulse was throbbing and words raced through his mind.
They had kissed and held hands together and kissed again until her knees gave out, and she knew it was good that she was going away. They both needed him to stay here with the thought that wishes and reality needed new destiny to merge.