Calandracas #1

Page |1

A. R. Enriquez

Page |2

Philippine Copyright©2006 by A. R. Enriquez Cover Design by Anton Vladimir V. Enriquez Drawing by Nonoy Estarte

Page |3

Contents Fiction Short Stories Asocena 6 Iguana 25 Pablo-Pedro 54 The Ant Hill 79 The Icon 97 Dance a White Horse to Sleep 167

First Chapter Subanons English 193 Chabacano 210

Essays To Forge a Voice 228 Writing in English 245

Scraps Zamboanga:the “Garden of Flowers” never was! 255 Jesuits Return to Fort Pilar: 1666— No Way! 259

Page |4

Selected Stories & Other Writings

Page |5

Fictions Short Stories

Page |6

EXTRACTS:

ASOCENA LIKE MOST of the boys in Labuan, a coastal barrio in Zamboanga, Chu had a farm dog. He called him Leal, which in the native tongue Chabacano means loyal. It was always fun to watch Leal chase the big monkeys in the cornfield, for as the dog passed under the low branches of the trees on the slope of a small hill above the slash-and-burn farm, the monkeys hanging by their tails from the low branches would reach out and pull Leal’s tail. This always enraged the dog and he would bark at the foot of the hill until the monkeys, bored, left for higher branches. Chu could not think of anything funnier happening to a farm dog. Early one morning Leal was missing, and Chu went up to their farm to look for him. “Have you seen Leal, Pa?” he said. “No,” his father said. “I thought he was with you when I left the house.” “I hope nothing has happened to him,” the boy said. The father noted real worry in his son’s

Page |7

voice. His boy was taking it badly. He was too “Maybe he’s in the house,” he said. “I already looked for him everywhere in the house,” the boy said, “and on the yard, too.” “Don’t worry, Chu,” the father said. “He is just around somewhere.” “Do you think, Pa,” Chu said, “anything has happened to him?” There was that worry in his voice again, the father noticed. Chu looked bad trying to hide his worry, not knowing how to handle it. “You are a big worrier,” he said. “Why don’t you look for him at the river? He loves to flush those wild palomas pigeons along the river bank.” The sun was still very young in the morning. Chu walked barefoot along the footpath, coming down the slope of the hill through the meadow in front of the house. The path was smooth and the dew was cool under his bare feet. He passed the house and went around the back and on to the long bank of the river, his feet wet in the mud clay, and then went up the river to a clearing below the woods where the wild pigeons came down every morning. But the palomas were quietly feeding in the black sand, pecking at the small pebbles, lumping low and short-legged on the river bed. If Leal were here, he would come between them

Page |8

and the clearing, and once they flushed they would come whirring at him, some rising steep,others skimming by his head, before they angled back down into the brush. And so Chu went on, around the clearing, taking the longer route back to the house. At lunch Chu would not eat anything. He sat at the table staring at the food on his plate. He had that worried look again, the same one as at the farm, staring at his food without touching it. His father said, “Don’t you want to eat?” Chu said,” I’m not hungry.” “The tapa sundried meat is wonderful.” The father picked up Chu’s plate, put a piece of fried venison on it, and, setting the plate down in front of the boy, he said, “You try it, hijo.” Chu’s mother reached for a knife on the table and cut the venison into slices. Then she set the knife down beside the meat. She said, “Try a tiny piece, Chu.” “I don’t want to eat anything,” the boy said. __________________

Iguana

Page |9

WE HEARD the mother hen croak. “Get up, Macario,” Ma said. “The mother hen…” “What?” said Pa, awakening. We heard the hen croak again and then, all of a sudden, become quiet… “The mother hen,” Ma said. “Maybe the iguana has entered the chicken house. Quick.” “Leche!” Pa said. I am sitting on the top rung of the kitchen steps with a .22-caliber rifle in my hands. I sit there waiting for the iguana to come out of the bamboo thickets across the river. It is morning, soft and light. Just then I hear mama call me from the flower garden. I lean the rifle against the wall of the kitchen and go down the wooden steps. Then I go around the back of the house and on to the footpath, worn smooth and scoured by countless interminable feet, and then across before the now useless, broken-down chicken house. I go on. Suddenly the path levels off as straight as a plumb-line toward the garden. I walk a small way on the footpath before stopping in front of the garden. Ma is squatting on the ground before her flower bed of daisies. Her hands are busy turning the soft black loam over and patting it gently

P a g e | 10

around the stems. “Where is the water I asked you for?” she says without yet looking up at me. “Did I not tell you to bring me some water?” I have forgotten all about the water. “You did not tell me, Ma,” I say. She stands up, her hands caked with black loam and hanging rigid at her sides. She turns toward me. Her eyes become locked with mine, quiet and searching. But I still don’t move. “You must help me in the garden, hijo,” she says. “For your father won’t lift a finger to help me.” As I look back at her, I notice the reddish blotches on the balls of her eyes and the swelling around them, and I think, She cried some more after Pa left. She cried there in her room. Alone there in her room she cried as papa tramped angrily out of the house. Earlier Pa had shouted at her and was very red behind the ears with anger. I was then under the house, the bamboo-split floor not three feet above my bare head, and I was about to take the fodder to our pigs when I heard him, in the sala, say: “I’m not giving you even a centavo. Not one centavo, do you hear? Nothing for that foolishness of a chicken house.” “The iguana will kill all my chicks,” said Ma. I suddenly stood stock-still under the house, not making any noise that would warn them. Then she said, “Last night I lost my last

P a g e | 11

chicken, the mother hen of those chicks. If you don’t give me money to repair the coop, the iguana will eat all those chicks tonight. See if I am wrong.” I could hear them talking loudly in the sala through the bamboo-split floor. I heard Pa say, almost hissing with anger, “That wouldn’t have happened if you had listened to me. But you would not listen. What you listen to are those foolish ideas which go around in your head.” “You do not care about the chicks,” I heard mama say. “You would rather see them all eaten up by the iguana than give a centavo to repair the chicken house.” Standing under the bamboo floor directly where they both stood or sat I heard papa’s chair scrape as though he were about to rise, and then just as suddenly he changed his mind and remained seated, still and immobile.