Intsik

"Intsik, halika". I would often hear them call her. The men in my neighborhood wore sandos usually holed and frayed at the edges, the lower half of it folded up revealing their potbellies. They converged by Mang Derek's store, sitting on the wooden bench the Kabataang Barangay solicited money for. On seemingly lucky days, beer bottles would be rolling by their tsinelas-clad feet. Mostly though, they would drink gin bilog and chase it with water taken from Barangay 4's poso. Sometimes on luckier days, they would call Intsik and she would be sitting with them, fanning herself with her skirt, the heat always tremendously scorching for her to bear...

Mama said we should not play with her, with Intsik. She was not allowed in the house more so. Mama said Intsik took money from our neighbors and from people in the streets. Why didn't she go to jail, I asked.

Oh yes she did go to jail every time she got caught, Mama said. But the police liked her too much especially Capt. Guzman.

I have been to Intsik's house in Barangay 4. She lived with Lisa, her older sister and Aling Trina, their mother. Aling Trina did our laundry in the summer when Yaya goes home to Dipolog for her vacation. Aling Trina had never gone to a vacation, she told me while I was bathing my Barbie in the planggana. But she had been on a ship before, when she was younger and her dentures new. Aling Trina said her uncle took her to a cruise around Asia. They were on the ship for a whole month. She loved the food, she said. And dressing up, putting on perfume and make-up. Her uncle bought her clothes for when the Chinese captain of the ship held dinners and invited his guests.

That was how I got to play with Intsik every Saturday in summer. Mama would ask me to fetch Aling Trina from their house and I would stay behind to play with Intsik.

Her real name was Rosanna, she said. Their neighbors called her Intsik because of her eyes and porcelain skin. You have beautiful China eyes, I told her. Intsik just smiled.

She didn't have toys like I did. We used the lids of milk cans for plates, the bottle of Clorox for our pitcher and their Nescafe glasses. We ate with our hands. I wanted to bring my tea set but Mama wouldn't let me take them out of the house. She said my playmates would just steal them.

When Mama found out I had been staying in Intsik's house, she blamed Aling Trina for talking me into it. Mama said Aling Trina owed our family a lot and that they could not afford to pay it up. Mama was screaming the whole time. Aling Trina just looked at her gnarled hands. Mama also said Aling Trina is a whore who pimps her own daughter.

I never saw Aling Trina in our house again after that. The men in Mang Derek'ss store said they had moved into a house in a subdivision in Cavite. They also told me Intsik likes policemen more than jeepney drivers...


- excerpt, Intsik, an unfinished story.