“So who’s the father?” her mother asked, combing Paulette’s wet hair.

“We’re married, Mama.”

“But who is he?”

“If it matters Mama, he’s a good man, and he comes from a good family.”

“A college student?”

“An ex-college student.”

“And you said you’re married?”

“Yes, Mama. We had our own rites.”

“But this wasn’t a church, or a court wedding.”

She raised her eyes to the mirror, where she met her mother’s blank gaze.

“I’m not questioning the wedding itself, Paulie. You’re clearly in love with this boy. But you’re home, and I’m guessing he’s in the mountains, fighting. Do you really want to return to that, now that you’re going to have a baby?”

This was how their fights usually started: with her mother pretending to respect her. It was as though she believed her daughter had no capacity for thought or emotion—she was just a doll, to be bent and made to pose according to her will. She had forgotten to prepare for this, since time healed wounds, while distance and longing made her forget about her mother’s cheery callousness.

“It’s his child too, and we plan to build a family together.”

Her mother’s smile was stiff with disbelief as she put down the brush and left the room. When she returned, she cupped a can of moisturizing cream in her palm. “It will help heal those scars,” her mother said, screwing off the lid, her voice too steady to betray annoyance or embarrassment.

Carlos said he would write to her, and his letters were delivered to her doorstep by people she wouldn’t expect to carry his words to her: stooped women selling rice cakes, newspaper and bottle collectors, an old tamales vendor whose gravelly call had haunted her childhood mornings. Her parents sent Manang Rosing to collect these deliveries for her at their front gate, too afraid to allow her to collect them herself and expose her to the prying eyes of neighbors.

His first message was delivered inside a bundle of rice cakes wrapped in banana leaves and tied together with twine. She brought the bundle to her bedroom where she wolfed them down, his child making her ravenous as she waited for his words to slip between her teeth.

When she bit at a slip of paper, she gingerly ate around it, licking away at the bits of sweet rice stuck to its surface before separating its sticky folds. His spindly, hurried handwriting, which she had once found scribbled at the edges of maps at the camp’s meeting room, now formed sentences that were for her eyes alone.

Ka Flor,

Take advantage of this opportunity to familiarize yourself with your new environment. You’ve been away for so long, and I’m sure that the political climate has changed since both of us left. Are people frightened, emboldened, or are people buying into the regime’s lies? You do not have to go too far for answers. All you have to do is talk to your parents.

I miss you and I love you.

Ka Daniel

Bereft of his voice, these words on the page read like commands. He couldn’t just write to her; he had a duty to fulfill, and so did she.

She wrote back to him,

Thanks to Ka Celia, I made it home safe. Is she back at camp? Please send my love to her. I’m guessing that she’ll have quite a few things to say about my parents. They’re good people, but they just didn’t know how to entertain, how should I call Ka Celia, an “unusual” guest. But they will take care of me—that I can assure you.

My parents are happy that I’m back, but they’re not very happy about our marriage. My mother says that we never had a church wedding, which is probably her way of saying that we’ve never been married. At least they haven’t shunned me for being an unwed mother, and considering their attitude towards unwed mothers, I take that as a sign that they’ve recognized our union (even if they’re not too happy about it). Why am I so worried about what they think? Maybe I haven’t really changed.

I love you and I miss you.

By the way, I found our bracelet.

Ka Flor

Maybe he was just being careful with his words, knowing that the party was reading his letters, as well as hers. It was his first letter to her, after all, and they had gotten so used to baring their souls to each other before bedtime that their letters to each other would always fall short.

“Well, I could just tell my friends that you came home to give birth,” Paulette’s mother said, over dinner. “Simple as that. They’re polite enough not to ask questions.”

“You’re sure that your friends won’t suspect anything?” her father asked.

“Well if they did ask questions, I could always tell them that the father has well, disappeared,” her mother said with a curt wave of her hand. “Which he has, hasn’t he?”

“I’m not supposed to tell this story too, am I?” Sam asked.

“No. You’re not to breathe a word to this in your school, or to anyone,” Irene said, tapping Sam on the shoulder.

Sam gripped the handle of his Milo-filled mug like a grown man and glanced at Paulette before taking a sip, as though he, too, were judging her. It had been hard for her to imagine his voice breaking, or his dark eyes fixing themselves on a chessboard like a man who possessed the power of plotting the future. When she had watched him mulling over her next move in a game of chess the previous day, she could feel him slipping away from her, towards a destiny he had already mastered. Boys had to win at something, and it would be selfish not to give her brother that opportunity. One couldn’t win against men all the time, unless one wanted to risk losing their affections.

“How about Gabby?” he asked.

“Oh yes, Gabby.” Her mother lifted her eyes towards her father and sighed. “But he doesn’t have friends to begin with, does he?”

“Yeah, but he’s been making friends at the Kabataang Barangay Center lately.”

“Do you really have to go there all the time? You could always play here,” their mother said, shaking her head.

“The Kabataang Barangay?” Paulette asked.

“It’s one of these pet projects of the President’s daughter,” their father said, chewing his bacon. “It’s to keep young people like Sam and his friend Gabby occupied instead of falling in with gangs and doing drugs.”

 “But they already keep themselves occupied here,” their mother said, eyeing Sam with impatience. “And why would Sam join a gang?”

“They have chess players at the center. Nobody will play with me at school so that’s where I go practice.”

“And what does Gabby do at the center?” Paulette asked.

“He makes friends there since everyone at school avoids him, or picks on him,” Sam said, before taking a last gulp of his Milo.

Ka Flor,

As you said before, it would be very difficult for your parents to totally hide you from view. Too many people know them, and know that you’ve been away for quite some time. If they hid you and people saw your light come on or heard your voice, this would be even more suspicious than if you went around and pretended that nothing was wrong about your sudden reappearance.

This is my idea, and I know that your mother may not like this because as you said, she likes keeping up appearances. You make up a story about being knocked up by a coworker in Manila, or some other town where the friends of your parents are unlikely to have friends, and having nowhere else to go since your coworker ran off upon hearing that he was now a father. I know it sounds ridiculous, and it will probably ruin your reputation as well as your family’s, but what do you have to lose? Being married to a communist and bearing his child is probably worse in their eyes than having an illegitimate child. The more salacious your story is, the more effective it will be in disguising the truth. You know how it is in small towns like Baguio, they like a good story.

Anyway, ask your parents what they think. You’re under their care now, and it’s up to them what they want to do with you. I wouldn’t have let you go if I wasn’t sure that you’d be safe with them, and you convinced me that you would be. I trust them to know what’s best for you, because I trust you. Who knows, maybe this will even allow you to gather some useful information for us. But at the same time, please, please don’t take unnecessary risks, and don’t wander too far away from your home. Use your better judgment to ascertain whether a guest of your parents, or someone you meet on the street, is too dangerous to talk to. And try to blend in.

“It’s very sad, what happened to the family of your brother’s best friend,” her father said later that night, as cheers from the TV set drowned out his voice. Her father’s team, the Toyota Comets, was playing against Crispa. “You probably know his kuya, the Army lieutenant. Or heard of him.”

“I don’t think I have.” She had rehearsed this scene in her mind, and she did not falter as she spoke. Her father’s eyes lingered on her before he turned towards the TV. If being a soldier of the revolution had taught her anything at all, it was how not to betray herself, especially to those whom she held dear.

“I think their parents were even Marcos supporters, which made his kuya’s defection even more of a scandal,” he said, continuing to watch the game. “His father lost his job, and though the wife managed to find work I don’t think Attorney Arguelles has managed to find work after this. Especially since he was a Marcos appointee, and his son’s defection managed to get him on his former boss’s bad side.”

Carlos feared for their lives, she could tell, which was why he chose not to talk about these fears. She had led him into the jungle, and he could no longer afford to look back with regret.

“Do you think my secret’s safe with Sam?” she asked. Though she could tell that her father was curious, she could also sense his hesitation. He knew she had secrets, and these she could allude to. But he had not pressed her for specifics, at least not yet.

Her father rose from his seat to switch off the TV. Aside from the muted sound of Manang Rosing’s radio telenovelas and the whirring of crickets outside, there was nothing to insulate their voices from the ears of neighbors. But this was her father’s house, and he knew, better than she did, how safe she was in his home. Returning to the couch, he said, “When you came home, we took Sam aside and told him about your situation. We’ve read the garbage they write in his Civics textbooks and we can’t just allow him to be brainwashed. You can tell by the way he asks questions that he has his own mind.” He brought an arm around her shoulder, and she breathed in the comforting scent of his cologne as she leaned against him. “I know you’re worried about him, but I don’t think he’d turn against you. At the end of the day, you’re his sister. We didn’t go into detail about your involvement in the NPA, but we told him that you’ve been working with the poor, and that both your Mom and I are proud of you.”

Perhaps time and experience had softened the edges of his judgment. In his eyes, she had done the right thing.

“Besides, we’ve seen how loyal he has been with Gabby. While Gabby’s other friends abandoned him, Sam stuck by his side. If he can be like this with a friend, then why wouldn’t he be loyal to his own sister?”

Gabriel, according to Carlos, thought of him as a hero. “He wanted to be a soldier, because of me,” Carlos said, shaking his head as he laughed. “I wonder how he thinks of me now.”

“So that’s why Sam lost friends,” she said to her father.

“We raised you and your brother well, which is why you can’t help doing the right thing. We never knew it would get you two into trouble, but it did.”

She remembered him laughing off her activism when she was younger, but as she rested her head against his chest, there was admiration in his voice, as though he were considering the woman she was for once, and was taking credit for the risks she was willing to take.

You’ve been away for quite some time now, and even though Sam is your brother and you probably know him quite well, neither of us knows their generation quite well. These are different times, and they’ve probably been conditioned to think differently. Who knows if Sam feels a stronger loyalty to this group of his than to you? I’m not saying that you should distrust your brother, but you should tread carefully with both of them.

If you’re going to win Sam and Gabby to your side, you should probably be a friend. Just be around to chat with them when Gabby visits, and don’t act like their parents and ask nosey questions, because this is how young people clam up. If he’s comfortable with you, he may just open up to you. He may be looking for an older sister in his life, what with everything that has happened to him at home and in school. I can’t be there for him, but maybe you can.

They probably thought at this camp that I could bring nothing but trouble, and that I was a government spy, but they’ve been winning more battles ever since I joined their side, and there has been more discipline lately in the ranks of new recruits ever since I started training them. They may object to my methods but the results speak for themselves.

Yours,

Ka Daniel

A day after Paulette received Carlos’s letter, she waited in the living room, trying not to betray her nervousness as she spotted Gabriel following Sam through the front door. As his eyes briefly scanned her flabby legs, moving upwards towards her belly, she felt self-conscious, unprepared.

She had seen those quiet, inquisitive eyes before—it surprised her, how Gabriel could take after Carlos without his older brother’s guidance. They were two ghosts that inhabited each other’s bodies, conjuring each other’s presence in the absence of the other.

“My goodness, Gabby, you’ve grown so tall,” Paulette said, setting her book down beside her.

“Hi, Ate Paulie,” Gabby said, setting his backpack down as Sam cut past them towards the kitchen.

“She’s home from Manila,” Sam said, pulling open the refrigerator. She had rehearsed an explanation for her reappearance, but Sam chose to speak on her behalf, knowing his word were to be trusted over hers.

“I’m having a baby,” she said, placing her hand over her belly. Gabriel slouched as he took a seat before her, jiggling his knee as Sam returned to the living room with cold, sweating bottles of Coca-Cola. As Sam handed the bottles to them, Gabriel raised his eyes and peered at her belly again. She could see traces of Carlos’s adolescent shyness on his face, but there was a certain uninhibited curiosity in his expression that he made no effort to disguise. Perhaps Sam’s friendship had emboldened him—years ago, Carlos had approached her alone, having no one from her family to ease his welcome.

“It looks heavy.”

“It is,” she said, smiling. “It’s like carrying a tub of water around for nine months.”

“Jesus.” He took a pull from his Coke bottle, as did she. “Thank God I’ll never have to go through that.”

“Your Mom did it for you, though,” Sam said.

“I know. Sorry,” Gabriel said, giving her a cheeky, crooked-toothed smile.

“That’s all right,” Paulette said, laughing. “It’s a hard job but I’m sure it will be worth it.”

“Are you visiting?”

“Well, sort of. It’s really hard to have a baby alone, which was why I came home.”

“Oh.” Gabriel pursed his lips, his eyes taking on a shade of embarrassment.

Sam proposed a game of Monopoly. Gabriel was a shrewd player, and knew how to play his assets well. He outwitted both Sam and Paulette, who had played this game together as children, and weren’t playing to win. As they packed up the board and placed the play money and pieces back into the game’s box, Gabriel proclaimed, “I almost always win this game.”

“It’s just a game,” Sam said, exchanging glances with Paulette.

“And he played it well,” Paulette said, laughing as she pushed herself up from the carpet, stumbling a little before Gabriel took her hand.

“My lady, you played a good game too,” Gabriel said. As they made their way to the kitchen, where Manang Rosing had prepared for them a merienda of buttered ensaymada and cookies, Gabriel asked, “When are you giving birth?”

“Not soon,” Paulette said. “Which means I’ll be here for a while.” She had to trust his friendship with Sam, as well as his youth, to cement his loyalty. Her family had been generous to him, and the least he could do was to respect the story they had built around her pregnancy. At least this is what she hoped. She would have to be kind to him, to the point that it would pain him to suspect her of a crime.

– Monica Macansantos

Author’s Note:  “Appearances” is an excerpt from my novel-in-progress, People We Trust, which chronicles the lives of three young Filipinos during the Marcos dictatorship and its aftermath.