Un Castillo
By Reyes

A long long time ago, before World War II, ==, or urban development, two buildings stood in quiet majesty along a narrow kalye behind the University of Santo Tomas. The first was the Sarangani Research Center; the other was a tall, white house with iron gates, carved panels, and capiz windows looking serenely out onto the world. The street was named after them - Dos Castillas. During the Japanese Occupation, nearby UST was turned into a concentration camp and bombs rained over all Manila, but the white house was spared. Belonging to a doctor, the residence was turned into a makeshift hospital and had a red cross painted on its roof. Today the street of Dos Castillas is a busy one. Grey apartment buildings rub elbows with quaint wooden homes, carinderias, Internet cafés and laundromats. Wash lines festoon their upper stories; down below students pass at all hours of the day and night, stray dogs are busy foraging, fighting or making love. Tambays and barakos loll against the doorframes. The castles still stand. In February of 2003 the white house has the air of a convent-bred grandmama, genteel and proud and dutiful. It is only a couple of months since the sheriff threatened. Gates, doors and staircases creak and termites plague the upper floor. Still it stands, with a crystal doorknob here, a chandelier there, stained glass blue and green under a coating of grime, sheltering all who make their home there.

Kuya Bernie is master of the house. He is middle-aged, a painter of repute who has rubbed elbows with the likes of Joel Torre and Rock Drilon. His sister, Ate Tess, is a former ballerina who gave up dancing when her daughter Gracia was born. There is reportedly another ballet dancer in the family - their brother John. Kuya Erwin and Ate Dada occupy the first first-floor bedroom. They go to UP. He is a painter; she, a film major. Both are tattooed. Their son, Anton, is four years old. Another baby is on the way. The second bedroom belongs to Ates Kat and Eileen. Eileen is a med student. Kat is a working girl. Karla, Aisa, Miko and Gian, probinsyanas every one, sleep in a third bedroom that opens out into the backyard. Karla wants to be an architect. The other girls are studying pharmacy. Ate Reg, in her last few years of med school, lives in a little room under the stairs with Raisin, a miniature Pinscher. It is a Friday afternoon, around the time when the sun is setting and Quiapo is clogged with traffic. >Karla's friend May has come over for a visit. She has just broken up with her boyfriend, is wailing and making impossibly heroic statements by turns - I can't believe him; bastos siya! But if he's happy… and he said he likes me because I understand him so well… so I told him only love could make me so understanding and he said… When she subsides, Ate Reg emerges from under the stairs and Karla introduces her friend. Ate, this is May. She just broke up with her boyfriend. For the third time. So you're the one who was crying… I mean, whining, a while ago. Don't worry. They say the third time's the charm. Ate Reg is single by choice. May is aghast. But I want to be married by twenty! she exclaims. Does she have a brother, Karl? Ate Reg inquires. Karla shakes her head. No wonder she doesn't know what men are like. Raisin darts out from the half-open door. Here! C'mere Raisy! Clap, clap. The dog is sleek and golden brown, with a bell around her neck. Ate Reg picks her up. Karla knows of another little Pinscher - a male - in the area. Maybe Raisy would want to...? Regina cuts her short. My dog is going to die a virgin. May spends the night. In the morning, she breakfasts with Ate Kat. Kat is around twenty-one-or-two-or-three, creamy-skinned, with rounded arms and manicured nails. She begins a discourse on last night's boy, dating men with cars, dating short men who are often sweet to make up for deficiencies elsewhere, the hazards of dating in the first place, and her own ex-boyfriend, Ian. Karla mentions her baby. Oh yes, the baby that would have been. Wasn't she lucky? Ian had another girlfriend already when he'd gotten her pregnant, and it was three months before she'd miscarried. Hahaha. When May and her boyfriend had sex the first time it was all they'd ever talk about. Gusto ko sana siyang ipikot, says May. Bakit, maganda ba ang lahi? Kat asks. Oo, ang gwapo-gwapo. Ganyan naman pala e. I-pikot mo na! Go! Hehehe. No one is sure whether Kuya Erwin and Ate Dada are married. At any rate Anton is there and they are a family. The little boy hops around astride a PVC pipe playing horse. It clatters along behind him from one end of the house to the other. Batang addik, they call him. Born with marijuana and God knows what else in his bloodstream. That's why he literally bounces off the walls. It's amazing how babies can still be born beautiful no matter what. Look at Kurt Cobain and Courtney Love's daughter. Maybe God gives junkies perfect babies so they'll start believing in Him. Ate Tess doesn't like Anton playing with Gracia. Intrigued, Karla visits the couple in their room at one pretext or another. Dada apologizes, Ang gulo-gulo pa kase. Erwin is at work. He has discovered a way of mixing cigarette ashes and paint to create texture. The walls are covered with paintings. The most beautiful one is that of Dada and Anton together. Karla picks up a book lying on the table. It is Filipino poetry written by Ate Dada herself, entitled Sangkutsaritang something-or-other. Moonlight or dust or whatever. Can I borrow it? The author is reluctant. Ang babaw-babaw ko pa niyan. It was published when she was fifteen. A week or so later they move out. Kuya Bernie has no respect for Erwin and his ilk. The girls mourn their departure and that of their wide-screen TV. The girls in the outside bedroom have discovered that a dictionary can be used for divination. They ought to be studying tonight; instead, they are gathered around a table with a battered copy of Webster's. They ask a question, shut their eyes, let the book fall open at will and run a finger down the page to a word that, interpreted, is the answer. Will I get rich? they ask in turns. Yes, yes and yes except for Gian. Will I marry a Muslim? asks Karla, who is from Mindanao. Yes. Will I marry a non-Muslim? No. Will I be successful? Answers in the positive, except for Gian. Are you here? she asks, exasperated. Yes. Pinagtitripan mo ba ako? What are you anyway? An elf-like creature, the dictionary says. E totoo ka ba? Aisa is impudent. Galit ka ba? Gian asks. Her finger hits the word "chaos." They are spooked. It is too real. Let's ask if there are spirits in the house! No! Gian, 'wag! She closes her eyes and whispers to the dictionary. She reads the answer and smiles. Gian was in a car accident a few years ago and came out of it alive but with her third eye half-open. She has almost been to the "other side." Karla has the "terrace" to herself, a roofed-over space overlooking the junk pile and a landscaped garden all of four meters square. She is sitting at a rickety table sewing sequins and rainbow garter on plain tops she bought dirt cheap in Divisoria. After her embellishments, she will sell them at a hundred and fifty pesos to classmates and friends. She has a huge mug of coffee and a cinnamon bun from the panaderia with her. The last Marlboro dies a slow death in the ashtray at her elbow. Loath to get up and go to the sari-sari two houses down the street, she calls up VJ. VJ is a kababayan who lives next door. Her best guy friend. He has a crush on her and is quick to offer up his own cigarettes. One time he took her picture and May's with an SLR camera as they posed beside the toilet bowl Kuya Bernie used as a flower pot. Do you know how to use that thing? they asked. Of course. I'm taking Advertising, remember? I'll be using this thing for all of next semester. Make us look nice, we're sending it to the boys ( this was in the time when there had been boys; after a while their high school sweethearts had tired of waiting for mail. Afterwards the girls couldn't help thinking they'd traded love for a college education). The film was developed; the girls appeared as two blurs in the lower-left corner of the photograph. Miko and Gian are set on a night out with their friends. They plan to be back the next day. Ate Tess has set a curfew for eleven. It is ten thirty. Gracia, shirking bedtime, wanders into their room. Tell your mommy we're going out. Ate Tess is washing up at the sink. Gracia delivers the message. Ate Tess comes around eventually, but not without segueing into a long reminiscence about how reporters begged her for stories when she used to work at Annabelle's, restaurant to the stars. Did they know that Charlene played bridge for Aga and Dayanara?