So the eventful year passed, and the rains came on time. The fields became green, and the banabas in the streets blossomed. The land became soggy, and the winds lashed at Rosales severely, bowling over a score of flimsy huts that stood on bamboo stilts. Our house did not tremble in the mightiest typhoon. With us, nothing changed. The harvest with its usual bustle passed, the tenants — among them Teresita’s father — filled our spacious bodega with their crops. The drab, dry season with its choking dust settled oppressively, and then it was March — time for Teresita and me to graduate.
Throughout the hot afternoon, we rehearsed our parts for the graduation program. We would march to the platform to receive our high school diplomas, then return solemnly to our seats. When the sham was over, Teresita and I rested on the crude benches lined before the stage.
She said softly, “I will not attend the graduation exercises. I can feign illness. I can say I had a fever or my cough got worse, which is the truth, anyway.”
“Why?”
“No one would miss me in the march if I don’t come.”
“You are foolish,” I said.
“I can’t have my picture, too, I’m sure.”
“I don’t believe you.”
“I can’t come. I just can’t,” she repeated with finality.
She did not have to say anything more. I understood, and that afternoon I asked for money from Father to buy a graduation dress for Teresita.
And that same week Father ordered Teresita’s father, who farmed a lot in the delta in Carmay, to vacate the place, as Father had sold it. Teresita’s father had to settle in the hills of Balungao, where there were small vacant parcels, arable patches on the otherwise rocky mountainside. There he might literally scratch the earth to eke out a living.
April, and a hot glaring sun filtered through the dusty glass shutters and formed dazzling puddles on the floor. The dogs that lolled in the shade of the balete tree stuck out their tongues and panted. The smudges of grass in the plaza were a stubbly brown. The sky was cloudless and azure. Sepa told me to see Father, who had something important to tell me.
He was in the azotea reading the papers and fanning himself vigorously. The question he asked stunned me. “When do you want to leave for the city?”
For some time I could not say a word. The school vacation had just started, and the school opening was still two months away. “It’s only April, Father,” I finally said.
“I know,” he said. “But I want you to get well acquainted with your cousins there.”
Heat waves rose, shimmering in the street, swallowed up by the dust that fluffed high when a jeepney passed. Father’s voice: “You will grow older.” He hammered this notion into me. “You will grow older and realize how important — this thing that I’m doing. You will leave many faces here. You will outgrow boyish whims. In the city you’ll meet new friends.”
I did not speak.
“The time will come when you will return to me — a man.”
“Yes, Father,” I said as he, having spoken, went on with his reading.
The dark came quickly. The sun sank behind the coconut groves of Tomana and disappeared below the jagged horizon. Before darkness fell, I left the house and journeyed to where the houses were decrepit, where children were clad most of the time in unkempt rags and, when a stranger would stumble into their midst, they would gape at him with awe. Beyond the cluster of homes came the barking of dogs stirring in the dust.
I went up the ladder that squeaked, and when Teresita’s father recognized me in the light of the flickering kerosene lamp hanging from a rafter, a shadow of a scowl crept into his leathery face. Even when I said, “Good evening,” his sullen countenance remained. He returned my greeting coldly, then went down and left us alone.
“I’m leaving,” I began. Teresita was washing the dishes and now she wiped the soap suds from her hands. “I’ll go to the city tomorrow to study. Father is sending me there.”
She said nothing — she just looked at me. She turned and walked to the window that opened to the banks of the river and the fields.
“We’ll soon leave, too,” she murmured, her hands on the windowsill. “Your father sold this place, you know,” she said without emotion.
“I’m very sad.”
“There is nothing to be sad about.”
“Yes, there is,” I said. “Many things.”
She remained by the window. Outside, the night was alive with crickets.
“Won’t you go to school anymore?” I asked after a while. She did not reply, and I did not prod her for an answer.
“What course are you going to take?” she asked.
“I’m not very sure,” I said. “Maybe I’ll follow your advice.”
“Please do,” she said. “Please be a doctor.” With conviction, “You can do so much if you are one.”
I did not know what else to say.
“Don’t write to me when you are there,” she said.
“But I will.”
“Nothing will happen,” she insisted. “Besides, it will not be necessary. Thank you very much for coming to see me.”
“I have to,” I said.
She followed me to the door. The bamboo floor creaked under me. She called my name as I stepped down the first rung, and I turned momentarily to catch one last glimpse of her young, fragile face, and on it a smile, half-born, half-free.
“Please don’t write,” she reiterated, raising her hand. “It’s useless, you know.”
“But I will,” I said, and in my heart I cried, “I will, I will!”
“I’d be happier, and so would Father, if you didn’t,” she said. “And besides, I wouldn’t be able to answer your letters. Stamps cost—”
“I’ll send you some,” I said.
The smile fled from her face. “You cannot buy everything,” she said.
I headed for the gate. The children who played nearby stopped and looked at us. And in the other houses, though it was very dark, I knew the farmers and their wives watched me leave, knowing how it was going to be with us, how I would leave Teresita and thus make Father happy, how I would forget everything — the orchids I gave her that now adorned her window and that, I am sure, would someday wither, the books I lent her, which she rapaciously read, the eager laughter that welled from the depths of her. I would forget, too, how we hummed to the music of the town’s brass band and walked one sultry night from the high school to Carmay.
The night was vast and the stars were hidden by clouds. In the blackness I could not see banabas along the path, but I could imagine the purple of their blooms.
CHAPTER 17
On the morning that I left, Sepa came and thrust into my hand pieces of pan de sal with coconut syrup. The syrup had oozed, and the paper bag with which she had wrapped the bread was soiled.
“For the trip,” she said, attempting a smile.
I went down to the yard, where one of the boys had the jeep waiting. The air was heady, compounded with the clean tang of morning. The sun was mild, and one could drink it and never feel that the body was full. It touched the fading grass and gave it a tinge of jade. It glinted, too, in the leaves of the coconut palms and transformed them into a thousand blades gleaming and unsheathed. It was a beautiful day, but not for me.
Father was at the gate. When I kissed his hand, he held my chin up and said: “You’ll be all right in the city. But that’s not important. It’s the learning that counts, and the growing up.”
He dug out his gold watch from his waist pocket. “You have plenty of time,” he said. “Now listen. You are young and you don’t know many things, but do remember this: you are alone on this earth. Alone. You must act for yourself and no other. Kindness is not appreciated anymore, nor friendship. Think of yourself before you think of others. It’s a cruel world, and you have to be hard and cruel, too. They will strangle you if you don’t strangle them first. Trust no one but your judgment — and even then don’t trust too much.”