In the vernacular, "Dagupan" means a place where people gather. Indeed, Dagupan is a center for trade and commerce where people from the Ilocos region and Pangasinan converge to buy and sell goods: clothing materials, construction materials, foodstuffs, jewelry, Chinese porcelain, ceramics, novelty items, furniture, heirlooms, pianos, books, medicine, footwear, hats, kerchiefs, missals, candles, etc.
Flora sold homemade soap in Dagupan. She would mix ashes of burned nipa stalks with lye and extracts from ilang ilang leaves to lend it a faint scent. She spoke proudly of the quality of her soap which were promptly bought by her regular customers. She hurried home before dark, fretful of rumors about women being abducted in Japanese garrisons in Lingayen and Dagupan.
These were comfort women forced to cater to the carnal desires of Japanese soldiers: Korean, Chinese, Filipino, Malaysian, Indonesian, who were forcibly abducted, abused, degraded, stigmatized and scarred forever. There were tens of thousands of them, victims of a cruel fate who would later retreat into the sheltering confines of anonymity, trying to pick up pieces of broken dreams.
One early morning when the market place was just filling with people: vendors unrolling their merchandise and customers hoping to buy fresh meat, fish and vegetables for a lower price, Flora fell in line behind a vendor balancing a basket of vegetables on her head and a bilao, also filled with vegetable, crooked under her right arm, to make the customary bow before a sentry manning a checkpoint. The woman failed to bow properly, obviously because of her load. Flora was startled when the sentry slapped the woman who sprawled on the ground together with the vegetables which were strewn about. There was a cut on her lip. Without taking her eyes off the ground, the woman gathered her vegetables and replaced them on her basket and bilao. As if nothing happened, the sentry faced about and resumed his post.
Flora seethed with anger, compounded by her helplessness and inability to do something. She quickly disposed of her soap and headed for home, moralizing:
"What gave that bastard the right to slap that woman?" "What is right?" "What is wrong?" "Is might right?"
Her anger calmed when she reached home and was met with a disturbing news from Gorio, a lad of ten who "adopted" himself into her family when he announced to his relatives that he was going to live with the kind "maestra."
"Akulaw Sebya is dead. Typhus!"
"Why, who told you it's typhus?
"Them. They tied a kerchief under her jaw!"
"Don't go near their house! Take a bath! Wash your clothes immediately!
"Later."
"NOW !!!"
The old woman, Sebya, was buried three days later. She was wrapped in a rolled buri mat tied with bamboo twine. A simple bamboo cross was staked on the mound, marking her grave.
Flora breathed easier when no one contacted a disease after three weeks. It was not a case of typhus but a seizure. The poor woman had been complaining of chest pains and her wracking cough brought about by excessive smoking must have done her in.
