Chapter 1

Sleep was beginning to finally visit the insomniacs and drunkards of Barangay Bagong Pag-Asa when a commotion louder, more ominous than the usual domestic squabble erupted from the second floor of Mang Calixto’s bakery. Footfalls on crunchy GI sheets. Objects falling on hardwood. A female screech. And when it was over, out came, from the side door below, the dazed, emaciated figure of the retired general. Dazed but also smiling, the remnant no doubt of a megalomania that ran unchallenged for too long. Escorted by soldiers in high battle gear, the decorated butcher of peasants and activists looked jolted from sleep, hair long and gray, a shadow of his former self. 

From across the narrow street, Yñiga’s view grew increasingly obstructed, first by an ambulance, then several menacing black SUVs, and finally a van that disgorged a reporter and a yawning cameraman. Soon the scene was engulfed in a forest of people’s bodies. Among the early birds: the gang that always gathered in the lugawan nearby, the mourners from a wake down the street still carrying their styrofoam cups, a group of high schoolers practicing a play in the makeshift basketball court, the stay-in workers of the plastic factory by the river. Then the dogs, the cats, the children who must have been awaken by the blare of the siren, followed by their mothers, who quickly found each other amid a volley of conjectures. One by one the bright glare of fluorescent traced the outlines of shut windows, and the glow of ten-watt bulbs peeked from behind the patchworks of plywood and concrete, no doubt interrupting sleep and weed smoking and hurried trysts. A street away the psychedelic sounds of a videoke machine abruptly stopped. Above the roofs, like an alien protrusion, the lights on a far-away derrick flickered. A rooster crowed, hours ahead of schedule. The colossal balete next to the chapel and barangay hall appeared to lean closer to the site of the capture.

Unable to see a thing, Yñiga reached to the ground to pet the furry insistence on her legs: Jestoni surely roused by the ruckus, the faint alarm in the air not unlike oncoming rain. Light sleepers, she and the cat, while the train could derail off the tracks nearby, careen headlong into their homes, and Diego would still be knocked out on their mattress. From the corner of her eye, she saw Denise step out of her bungalow, the biggest thing in the area, and really the only one which most resembled the kind of proper house drawn by all school-age children the world over. She was followed by her American lover Brad, who proceeded, as was his wont, to narrate the scene in sing-song English. Lourdes, who collected the street’s garbage, arrived with her cart, then loaded with wooden planks and plastic bottles and discarded furniture, the pile twice her size; from her wrist, as usual, hung the mysterious red purse that she always carried around. She and Yñiga caught each other’s eyes, exchanging the most imperceptible of nods. More dogs. Someone alighted from a pedicab and winced in pain as she took the first few steps—Jennifer, still wearing the bright orange beret that was part of her uniform at the motel. 

What happened? Jennifer called out. Yñiga said the name of the general, and Jennifer sighed in relief. Thought it was a fire. She rubbed her bare arms. Or the crocodile. Not sure which is worse. What happened there? Yñiga asked, pointing to her feet. Jennifer shrugged. They took away our chairs. Better for the back, they said. Helps me stay up so no complaints. Didn’t I tell you to quit and sing full time? Yñiga asked. If only it were that easy! Jennifer said. Wait, so all these years Mang Calixto had been— she pointed to the bakery’s second floor. Only for the past three months, Yñiga said. His wife’s the cousin of the general’s aide, and they hand-picked this area, even with all the people here who want him dead, like hiding in plain sight, they said. He’d wear a wig (Jennifer’s mouth opened) then just walk out and get a bowl of lugaw and tokwa. Jennifer covered her mouth. So he could’ve bought lugaw next to me? Mang Polly, who owned the printing shop next to the bakery, lifted his cane toward them and called out, Hey how’d you know all those details? Jennifer laughed. Your hearing’s amazing for your age, Mang Polly! The old man chuckled. It’s the malunggay that I put in my rice every lunch, he said, gesturing vaguely to the tiny garden beside his shop. And I’m a widow. Seventeen years. Orgasm weakens your hearing. I read that somewhere. 

What? Yñiga asked in a near shout, and it took some time before they got the joke.

Their laughter was drowned out by the crowd-parting blare of the ambulance, which must have carried the general, and the baleful beeps of the SUVs, on the backseat of one Mang Calixto and his wife sat, probably stunned. Both vehicles sped off to the direction of the main road, the van in their trail. She couldn’t tell if the gentle rustling in the air was applause or the usual shower of leaves from the balete. In the fresh silence: the slow, disappointed slapping of rubber slippers on pavement, the murmured summary of what had just taken place, the first notes of a videoke machine being restarted.

Turn me loose from your hands
Let me fly to distant lands

Yñiga watched the crowd recede to reveal the doomed bakery, just this morning the site of furiously wholesome communal activity, the source for years of warm pan de sal and warmer gossip for everyone within a five-hundred-meter radius. Now it was dark and boarded up, cordoned off by taut tape, its dirty roll-up door set to adorn the front pages of tomorrow’s newspapers. She gave Jestoni, asleep on her feet, a wake-up scratch behind the ears. Mang Polly of course knew why she knew the details of the arrest. She might begin close to the end, just hours ago, when she made the anonymous tip to the military. Or a couple of months ago, when a routine writing assignment led her to uncover the curious link between their little lives in Barangay Bagong Pag-Asa and the fugitive general who for three years evaded a massive government manhunt. Or earlier still, close to the beginning, in fact, when she saw a garbage collector casually jump off the back of a truck to hand Mang Calixto a package. An innocent, if odd, transaction, and she would have forgotten about it had she not seen Jennifer come home carrying something similar weeks later: both the size of a shoebox, both wrapped in shiny orange plastic, and both bearing the logo of a motel with a sleazy reputation, but which was also famous for its crispy pata and pancit canton, a favorite, it seemed, of people in cramped, windowless spaces. …

Chapter 2

A crocodile was seen in the river.

As usual, word of the sighting spread quickly, widely, and without verification, easily drowning out all the other rustling gossip, including the one about Mang Calixto's secret life of crime for which the bakery was merely a front (the orange package contained either cocaine or jueteng-related paperwork, depending on who one asked). Rumor had it that the famous high school theater group trooped to the small resort next to the abandoned tenement by the river after school, and one of them, a boy, saw from the platform of the tallest slide, just over the low fence, a smooth gliding motion in the murky waters. Not a clump of water lily or island of garbage. Too small, too submerged to be an abandoned barge. And which moved—paddled?—ever so gently so he knew it wasn’t a corpse this time (thank god). Buwaya! the boy screamed, with a force so primal that it stunned the vicinity awake, the pigeons and the dogs mid-trawl, the half-dozing resort goers and the usual population of sketchy elements that congregated by the riverbank. The lifeguard on duty, who was also the waiter and resort security guard and so came too late to the platform to confirm, nevertheless excitedly told a group from the plastic factory eating at Magda’s lugawan that night, and everyone who passed by must have heard a capsule version. A crocodile in the river—how could it not captivate? Just two elements, arresting and easy to remember, which rolled off the tongue. Buwaya sa ilog. So soon after that python was caught near Mang Nestor’s furniture shop, behind all the bamboo and unvarnished cabinets! And just in time for election season when the real crocs surfaced ha-ha-ha! Like monsoon, the rumor picked up speed and intensity as it made its way from house to house, from mouth to mouth. By the time it breached the high walls around Denise’s bungalow, it had sufficiently absorbed all of the community’s many fears and fantasies.

A crocodile? Denise wondered. In the river? Won’t it suffocate from all the disposable diapers or something? Even fish with iron lungs will find it difficult to survive that murk—

Denise had always imagined that she lived above and apart from Baranagay Pag-Asa (from the ghetto but not of the ghetto, as she heard some rapper proclaim). It certainly helped that she was the neighborhood’s de facto source of emergency cash, at least next to Raj, the Bengali who made weekly rounds in the area astride his beat-up Suzuki. Lately, Denise had been trying to do something about the resentment she felt for her neighbors, bad for the heart, her feng shui guy said. Part of her effort was her growing friendship with Jennifer, the motel receptionist, and Yñiga, whose love affair everyone in the neighborhood knew but whose mode of living few did. Yñiga was her age more or less, while Jennifer was younger, so it was a perfect balance. Both of whom now stood outside her iron-grilled gate, through which she leaned. Gathering at the spot, just after she watered her orchids, had become a nice midmorning routine for the three, when they waited for the sundry wares that passed through the street: first the pakbet vegetables at around eight, followed by the kakanin, then the chop suey vegetables last at half past nine (the men who sold plasticware and fixed umbrellas would come at weird, unpredictable hours—men, they scoffed). 

Wait, do fish have lungs? Jennifer asked, big brown eyes growing even bigger. Yñiga hummed, devoutly unengaged as usual. Denise tried to remember the fish she and Brad had for dinner last night and recalled them gasping for air after being fished from the giant aquarium at the grocery. Wait, you’re right, Denise said, they don’t. You’re so smart I’ve always wondered why you have the job that you have. Jennifer laughed. My mother said so, too. Yñiga looked impatiently around the street. The pakbet lady is late, she mumbled.

Denise could no longer remember when and how she started cooking. Growing up she had taken roundabout pride in her aversion to anything girly; she didn’t seem to be any good at it, so why not hate it? High school home economics she remembered for the messy backstitches, the bland ginisang munggo, the failure to memorize the steps in starching a theoretical husband’s favorite shirt. In line to get their hands slapped by the teacher’s ruler once (for god knew what dumb infraction), the boy next to her, a transferee from Batangas whose stylish middle-part people said predated Wowie de Guzman’s, asked her why he should learn something that he knew for a fact someone would gladly do for him someday? Right? She winced, unsure if what she heard was admirable or stupid, and she remained so deep in thought that she didn’t even notice the two crisp hits her open palms took. Wow, the transferee told her when they returned to their seats, you did not flinch at all. You’re different from the other girls. 

The boy would be expelled by the end of the school year (for throwing tomatoes freshly harvested from the class garden onto the homeroom ceiling fan), but not before confusing the hell out of Denise, who then still went by her given name Dominga. Here was a boy who said he admired her strength and yet insisted on carrying her backpack, who constantly told her she was pretty and yet scolded her whenever her bra strap peeked from her blouse, who said he enjoyed her company and yet openly shushed her whenever she’d get excited mid-story. It all became clear one morning during English. The word coquettish came up in the middle of a discussion of Le Morte d’Arthur. When the teacher explained what it meant, Dominga joined the class in subdued laughter before looking around to see that many of them, the boy included, were for some reason looking at her. She was what? Coquettish? Flirtatious in a feminine way, like when someone hikes their voice while talking to guys? Her sixteen-year-old mind processed the label with curiosity and bewilderment but also, and this surprised her, delight. Pride even. A feminine way? This birthed a philosophy that she had found useful since: being a woman was both weakness and weapon, and it was up to her, and her alone, to decide.