Stella’s five-year-old daughter, Ruthie, passed out flashlights.
“Mama,” Cheryl whispered and pointed. “Ruthie looks like a boy.”
Indeed, Ruthie’s red hair was shorn, and she wore a boy’s shorts and shirt. The child strutted through the crowd apparently proud of her new look.
Stella explained in a whisper, “I figure Ruthie will be safer . . . you know . . . as a boy.” Her voice quavered. “Anyway, it’s just for a little while.”
Gina and Vivian exchanged a quick glance.
Two bare bulbs dimly lit the interior of the low-ceilinged, bamboo-lined shelter, and storage benches edged the perimeter. Gina and Cheryl sat on the bench next to Vivian and her daughters, both girls wide eyed.
When the drone from outside swelled, Stella closed the door. “With this many people in here, it’s going to get hot. We have water and an air supply. Please, stay calm. Say a prayer. We’ll get through this.”
Ruthie squeezed in next to Cheryl. “My daddy built this shelter, and he let me help. You want to play go fish?” She took a deck of cards from her pocket.
“Okay,” Cheryl said, wiggling off Gina’s lap. “I like your shirt.”
Ruthie’s toothless grin revealed her delight. “It was my brother’s. He outgrowed it. You want to play, too, Leah?”
Gina watched the girls sitting on the floor playing go fish and wished she could be so easily distracted, but her ear was tuned to the growl from outside, which had increased to a roar. And then, boom! The shelter shook, and the lights went out. Another boom! In the inky black, the little girls screamed. Flashlights flicked on, and Cheryl jumped onto Gina’s lap.
“It’s okay,” Gina said, not sure it was. She wrapped her daughter in a protective hug and covered her ear with the palm of her hand. Cheryl popped her thumb into her mouth, closed her eyes, and snuggled in tight.
The beams from multiple flashlights illuminated frightened faces—some in wide-eyed panic, some sniffing and crying, and others with lips moving in prayer. In time the air became hot and rank from close quarters and nervous breathing. Sweat ran down Cheryl’s cheeks and dripped off her chin.
Maggie said, “She needs water, or she’s going to dehydrate, Miss Gina. I’ll get her some.”
A squadron of warplanes directly overhead roared a cacophony of discord that made the ground under Gina’s feet pulsate. Feeling panicky again, she tightened her grip on Cheryl, who squirmed in the restraint. When the bombs dropped on the harbor, one after another and another, the floor in the shelter buckled, and dirt filtered through the ceiling. Gina ducked her head and clamped her jaw shut to keep from yelping.
“Holy shit,” someone yelled. “It’s going to cave in on us.”
“Let me out,” another shouted. “I’m not dying in this dirty tomb.”
Gina sensed a scuffle and heard muttered epithets. She cringed back against the bamboo-lined wall, Cheryl clamped so tight to her chest they could have been one.
“I want Daddy!” Cheryl whimpered.
So did Gina, and her thoughts slipped away to her last sight of Ray, he dressed in jeans and hefting a duffel, as clear as if he were standing beside her. “You look like a kid, not an old married man with a five-year-old,” she’d teased.
“Hold that vision, babe. I’ll be back before you turn around twice.” He’d run his hands through her hair like he was petting a kitten.
After what seemed a lifetime, the booms and roars faded to a diminishing buzz, and when the all-clear sirens blew, Stella opened wide the shelter’s door. Carrying Cheryl, Gina emerged to murky light and a sticky-sweet smell. Toward the harbor, columns of black smoke spiraled upward.
Vivian murmured, “Lordy, I never . . .”
Cheryl whimpered, “Will the bad guys come back?”
This time, Gina didn’t correct Cheryl’s supposition. “Probably. We’ll be safe in Miss Stella’s shelter.”
“I don’t want to go back there.”
Still feeling the buckling ground and the rain of dirt, hearing howls of fear and prayers of despair, Gina didn’t want to go back there either.
The Japanese returned the next day to continue their bombing raids on Manila Bay’s harbors, destroying docks, warehouses, storage sheds, and anything that floated. Gina, Vivian, Isabella, and the girls, traumatized yet again, trudged home from the shelter. Her voice husky from the smoky air, Gina said to Vivian, “You want to come in for a while?”
“Thanks, I was hoping you’d ask.”
It was a shaky group that entered Gina’s living room, the mood subdued, everyone processing one more distressing experience. The little girls leaned on their mothers, and Maggie sat by herself in a corner, watching out the window. Isabella brought in glasses of Filipino lemonade called calamansi and a plate of peanut butter cookies. Her eyes were large and dark.
“Thank you, Isabella. Help yourself to a glass of wine if you like.”
Knowing her friend well enough to communicate in signals, Gina gave Vivian a nod.
Vivian said, “Maggie, please take the girls to the playroom and keep them busy for a while. You can take the cookies with you.”
Maggie’s pretty face turned sullen. “Why do I always have to watch them?”
The girls retreated, and Vivian’s gaze followed Maggie. “She sasses back about everything. It’s wearing, and I sure don’t need it right now.”
“She’s sixteen, half grown up and half still a kid . . . one scared and not wanting to show it.” Gina handed Vivian a vodka and tonic, noticing both their hands were shaking. “And she’s worried about her dad. Where’s Theo now?”
“He’s at Clark Air Field. The hospital up there called for additional surgeons. I’m proud he volunteered, but holy cow, Gina, I need him here. The girls need him here.” She patted her chest and coughed. “This smoky air kicks up my asthma. I can hardly breathe. How about Ray? Is he still on Corregidor?”
“As far as I know. He’s living in a bombproof cave. The Malinta Tunnel, he called it. MacArthur has offices there, so Ray might be safer than we are.” She swirled her drink, and ice tinkled against the glass. “I’ve decided to take Cheryl and Isabella to our cottage. There are beautiful beaches close by. It will be safer there away from the military bases and the harbor. Why don’t you come with me?”
“Are you sure? Do you think it’s safe to be on the road?”
“I don’t know, but it can’t be any worse than sitting in Stella’s shelter or waiting for a stray bomb to come through my roof. I’m barely holding it together for Cheryl’s sake, and she’s jumpy as a bedbug. It’s a three-hour trip. It’s a chance I’m ready to take.”
Vivian took a long time to answer. “I’m tempted. I’m really tempted, but I want to be here when Theo returns from Clark. How long do you think we’d be gone?”
“A couple weeks, maybe. Until MacArthur clears the skies.”
Vivian glanced out the window at the smoke-filled horizon, and then her gaze went to the playroom. She raked her hands through her hair. “Our girls have to come first. Theo will understand. When are you leaving?”
“First thing in the morning . . . God willing.”
Chapter 3
LEAVING MANILA
I’m billeted in a complex of underground tunnels. Exploring a series of passages, I discovered a fully stocked one-thousand-bed hospital, and I cringe at the implication.
—Ray Thorpe, Corregidor, December 1941–May 1942
The morning started in chaos, with Miguel not able to pack all the necessities for living at the cottage into the trunk of Ray’s Cadillac and teary-eyed Isabella wringing her hands and pleading, “Miss Gina, no make me go. My mother old—she needs me close by.”
“Isabella, you have sisters who can care for your mother. It’s only for a short time, just until General MacArthur stops these bombings. We’ll be back before you know it. I need you at the cottage. I can’t do this alone. Come with me, please?”
Isabella nodded a damp-cheeked yes.
; “You’re a dear,” Gina said. She went to her bedroom closet to access the wall safe where she kept her jewelry. Ray had always been generous with his gifts, and each piece brought a memory of celebrations and intimate pleasures. She slipped on her diamond-and-sapphire wedding ring and selected a diamond necklace and earrings, her last birthday present from Ray, and a few other pieces she enjoyed wearing. She wrapped the jewelry in a satin case and put it in her purse with the money she had withdrawn from the bank. Left secure in the safe was a treasure trove of her most costly gold, diamond, and gemstone pieces.
Gina packed a few clothes—she wouldn’t need many at the cottage—and added some for Ray just in case. On a whim she added a polo shirt of Ray’s that Cheryl had worn for a nightgown after he’d left, the short sleeves hanging nearly to her wrists and the hem to her ankles.
There was little room in the car for six people, each carrying their own treasures. Gina drove, and Vivian rode shotgun with boxes of food and sundries crammed under both elbows and on the car floor. Isabella, still sniffing; two big-eyed little girls; and Maggie, hugging her dad’s black medical bag, sat in the back with totes piled on their laps and under their feet.
“Three hours to the cottage door,” Gina announced to her passengers, trying to keep her attitude positive, but the reflection of her house growing smaller in the rearview mirror brought on a shiver. She forced her sight forward, glad Vivian was beside her for support.
They joined a long line of trucks and cars heading out of the city, the vehicles packed with families, their household belongings tied to their transports’ tops and running boards or stuffed in back windows. As they approached the bridge over the Pasig River, traffic slowed to a crawl. A trolley car lay on its side, telephone wires hung to the ground, and the poles leaned cockeyed. Glass from broken windows covered the street for blocks, and gangs of young boys were looting the unprotected shops.
Ahead, Gina saw the destruction worsened, and she drove around chunks of debris in the road. The walls of Intramuros, the walled city that had survived since the sixteenth century, had cratered, and the roof of the Santa Catalina School lay in rubble. Thick smoke billowed from the twin towers of the ancient Santo Domingo Church, and ferries left in the bay listed and smoldered.
“I figured the docks would be damaged, but I didn’t expect this.” Gina’s voice was thick with emotion.
Vivian agreed, her voice hoarse. She sat with her arms hugging her body.
Isabella mumbled in her native Tagalog under her breath.
“I don’t know what I’m supposed to feel,” Maggie said. “Anger? Hate? Rage? I have friends at school who are Japanese. I like them. And what about Professor Yokota, who lives down the street? He’s always been nice to us.”
As had the workers in the Japanese spa Gina frequented. Conflicted herself, she didn’t know what to say to Maggie. Vivian was quiet, too, and the question remained unanswered but not forgotten as they drove in silence through blocks of rubble.
Beyond the city center, bumper-to-bumper traffic included oxcarts and hundreds of walkers—mothers, fathers, aunts, old grandpas and grandmas, and black-haired children, even the youngest carrying bundles on their heads, in their arms, or strapped to their backs and chests. It seemed the whole country was trudging to somewhere else, their bodies stooped, their faces sad.
Gina inched the car through miles of rice paddies where workers in conical straw hats and knee-length pants worked to salvage their crops and repair strafed fields. Huge-horned water buffalo called carabao dragged plows through the muck or soaked their massive bodies in mudholes to cool off, passively tolerating white herons that perched on their broad backs.
Gina maneuvered around an American troop truck that lay on its side twisted and smoldering, and then she circumnavigated several potholes as big as bathtubs. “Lordy, Viv. Why are the Nips bombing the farmers’ fields?”
“Beats me. Maybe they plan on starving us.”
“Don’t say that! MacArthur will clear them out in a jiffy.” It was a chant Gina let roll on a loop in her thoughts.
Leah said from the back seat, “Mama, I need to use the bathroom.”
Cheryl added, “It’s hot back here. I’m thirsty.”
Gina stopped at a nipa-roofed roadside store that was nestled in a stand of acacia and flame trees. The girls hopped out of the car and made a beeline for the outhouse.
Inside the store, colorful parols, star-shaped Christmas lanterns, hung from the ceiling, and festive Christmas music played on a radio, the ambience in contrast to the anxiety emanating from the milling crowd. Gina whispered to Vivian, “Did you pack Christmas gifts?”
Vivian nodded. “A few. Just in case. But we’ll be home before Christmas, don’t you think?”
“I did until we drove through Manila.”
Vivian purchased bottles of sarsaparilla for everyone and the last bag of pretzels in the store from a one-toothed crone manning the cashbox. The old woman took her money. “You no go to Clark Air Field?”
“No. To a cottage,” Vivian said.
The woman’s eyes shone overly bright. “That good. Ladies go to Clark to find missing husbands. But nothing there. It flat. Boom! Boom! Boom! The whole ground shake. Scare my ponies near to death.”
As she stood next to her mother, Leah’s face turned ashen. “My daddy’s at Clark.”
The old woman glanced at Leah but ignored her fear. “My son found a hand on the road. Right off some soldier’s arm. He buried it, and I put a flower on it. An awful thing, it—”
Aghast, Gina and Vivian quickly herded the girls out of the store and into the car.
The traffic had thinned, making driving easier. Isabella fingered the amulet, her eyes closed and her lips moving in a silent incantation. The little girls squabbled, and Vivian minded the sky as they drove by miles of sugarcane fields. A glint caught her attention, and she adjusted her glasses on her nose to better focus. “Japanese planes! Get off the road, Gina! Right now!”
Gina made a hard right, and the car barreled through the head-high stalks of sugarcane, bouncing those inside around before it stalled. She clutched the steering wheel like it was the only thing between her and death, while Vivian searched for her glasses, which had been flung from her face. The little girls cried for their mothers, and Isabella chanted louder.
Her voice shaky, Gina called, “Is anybody hurt?”
Maggie said, “I bumped my head. I’m okay.”
Hearing the planes roar overhead, they all hunkered down and prayed Japanese bullets would fail to find them.
It took a while and the help of a farmer and his carabao to pull the car out of the field. The three-hour trip stretched to eight. Gina turned off the main road that rimmed the perimeter of the peninsula onto a steep, serpentine mile-long climb that led to the cottage. The tin-roofed structure, one of many tucked into the hills, almost disappeared in the surrounding vegetation—a mixture of hardwoods, ficus, bamboo, and towering poinsettias with vibrant-red plate-size blooms. Vines from strangler figs had overgrown the porch.
Gina kicked through the vines and unlocked the front door, and everyone went inside except Isabella, who wouldn’t get out of the car. She sat with her eyes closed, her lips moving as she rolled her amulet in the palm of her hand. Gina went back to the car and nudged her shoulder. “Isabella—”
The maid’s eyes popped open. Her pupils were huge and her voice strangely breathy. “We not stay here, Miss Gina. I feel evil spirits around us. The toddy cats restless. The birds no fly. The howler monkeys quiet. They know.”
Gina didn’t need this anguish right now. “You talk nonsense. There are no evil spirits. The airplanes are scaring the animals. That’s all.”
“Ooohh! Nooo!” Isabella’s breathiness turned to a moan, and her big eyes glazed over. “My lola told me evil spirits hide in the trees. They come out when danger nearby. Tonight I hear them whispering. They planning. They snatch the weak. Please do not stay here, Miss Gina.” She covered her face with her
hands.
Gina had heard these beliefs before. Hundreds, maybe thousands of superstitions permeated all strata of the Filipino society. “Your grandmother told you a made-up story. I tell you there are no evil spirits.”
Isabella put her hands down. “My lola old. She knows strong magic. She knows what you not know.”
Gina coaxed the reluctant maid out of the car, the frightened woman crying and babbling, “Lots of night animals in jungle—toddy cats, tarsiers in the trees—they restless. Deer and wild pigs, running. Crocodiles hiding . . . no go near the river’s edge.”
Gina had no thought of going anywhere. “Viv,” she said while leading Isabella into the cottage, “get Isabella a cool washcloth for her forehead, please. Maggie, would you be a dear and make Isabella a cup of tea?”
With Isabella quieted, Gina passed out room assignments. “You take the guest room, Viv. The girls and Isabella will sleep in the loft.” She opened a door, showing off a bathroom with running water, a shower, and a flush toilet, luxuries in a rural cottage.
The individuals dispersed to settle in—Cheryl excitedly showing Leah her stash of games and books, Maggie helping Isabella cook and serve a meal of rice and canned tomatoes, and Vivian retiring to write a letter to Theo. Gina moved her things into the main bedroom, feeling relieved to be off the road and hidden away in the remote countryside. She should have come sooner and saved days of stress. She cracked open a window to freshen the air. The moon shone as large and bright as she’d ever seen it, and she took a long minute to enjoy it, wondering if Ray was thinking of her and enjoying it too. “I miss you. I love you,” she whispered.
In the morning Gina answered a knock on the door. A young man handed her a basket of freshly picked vegetables. “My mom says hello. She told me to ask if I could paint your roof.”
His mom was Mrs. Flores, who looked after the cottage when it was empty. Gina noted Arturo stood a foot taller than when she’d last seen him. “My roof? Is there something wrong with it?”
Along the Broken Bay Page 3