WHAT I REMEMBER: A FICTIOAUTOBIOGRAPHY

Prologue III

" If you really listen to the voice of the Lord, your God," He told them, " and do what is right in his eyes: if you heed his commandments and keep all his precepts, I will not afflict you with any of the diseases with which I have afflicted the Egyptians; for I the Lord, your God, Am your healer."

- The Book of Exodus 15:26-

Natonin, Barlig, Mt. Province- Tecla stood watching her Tatang and Nanang walk down the path with her older brothers and younger sister at dawn. They are on their way to the fields again. And yes, she is not allowed to join them, again. Her father reasoned she must stay at home to take care of Melchor. But she knows better. She fainted again yesterday.

She knows they could take Melchor and still work fast in the field. She knows she is not strong enough to pull the weeds, not fast enough to cut down the pagay and simply not healthy enough to work under the sun all day long. The fainting scene proved that again, yesterday. Her father would tell her that it is because she has endured a lot of sickness when she was still a baby and her body is still recuperating from all the tablets and injections and herbs that were applied to her. Her father has promised her she would soon become as healthy as her brothers and sister but it seemed that each time she thought she has recovered, she would soon faint, or her nose would suddenly bleed or she would come down with a fever.

She brushed the tears from her cheek when she remembered the words her younger sister, Betty, whispered in her ears while she was lying by the shed yesterday,

"Naarte ka!..".

She wanted to lash out her sister but she knows better. Beth is right. She is not good at anything. The only thing she is good at is school. And what good would it do, anyway? After grade six, what happens? She knows the high school is too far. And money is too tight. And she will be too sickly to finish anything anyway.

She is tired of it. She is so tired of it. Of all the fainting spells, the never-ending drinking of this and that medicine and herbs, the visit to the mangngagas, even the travels to go and see the white-clothed nakaadal doctors. She has gotten tired of them all. She wished Kabunian or the Trinity would just take her whichever will answer her prayers first and end all the sufferings of both her and her parents.

She was about to sit at the stairs when the baby cried. She sighed and took the tin cup where her mother put her breast milk and made her way to the inner room of their hut.

" But they would not listen to him."

-The Book of Exodus 16:20-

Chap-ay, Barlig- Dalmacio stood in front of the school. It is late. He is late. He is too late for school now. He wants to go inside and sit and pretend to listen to the teacher and be away from the field work or from the lashing of his father or from the pinching and cursing of his stepmother or even from the cold admonitions of his Manang Loreta.

School bores him. But it's the only way he could get away from them all.

But soon, his saviour will be gone. His father told him, after the older man saw him write his name, that he had enough of schooling. He could write now, he could read now, he could count and add and subtract money now. It is time he become a more productive man and help in the fields.

He sighed and turned around. His days of gallivanting are numbered. He might as well enjoy them.