However, the deprivations became insignificant after they heard the news that traveled the bamboo telegraph. Corregidor had fallen into Japanese hands after weeks of massive bombing, and those soldiers who had survived the carnage had been taken prisoner.
Despondency crushed Gina, and ugly scenarios blocked rational thought—life without Ray wasn’t an option. Cheryl needed a father, and Gina desperately wanted another chance to give him a son. Alone by the rippling stream, the words of poet Astor Laslo ran in an endless loop:
the agony of losing you
is only eclipsed
by the fear of never finding you
Across the stream, three miniature deer—a buck, a doe, and a fawn—lifted their heads and twitched their ears, as if listening to Gina’s whispered plea: “My dearest, give me a sign that you are still with me on this earth.”
She sat still as a stone, listening, watching, and waiting for a whisper in the breeze, a point of light reflecting on the water, a birdcall perhaps, or a wave of positive assurance. Her heart almost stopped beating when the buck walked into the forest, leaving his doe and fawn alone by the water’s edge. Gina cried out her sorrow and fear of her future.
Life in the nipa-hut camp settled into a humdrum existence of endless, hot, dirty, backbreaking work that Gina had to make palatable or perish. While doing chores, she escaped her reality by dreaming she was in a more familiar world, singing in Italian and French the songs she’d performed while touring Europe with the Follies, and the diversion nourished her soul. She knew by the fit of her clothes that she had lost weight, but her muscles were firm, her joints flexible, and she could finish most long, hard jobs without needing to rest.
Chapter 8
LIVING IN THE SKY
I am an alien in my own world, where no one anymore speaks my language.
—Ray Thorpe, Corregidor, December 1941–May 1942
Gina had adjusted to living by the rise and fall of the sun. There were no shadows now, so it must be noon. She found the crisp morning air refreshing, the cool mountain water invigorating, and the garden-fresh fruits and vegetables vitalizing. She had learned to fish and catch shrimp and cook them over an open fire. She could crack open a coconut and peel a pineapple with a bolo, as well as clear a path with it, each learned task bringing with it a sense of accomplishment at her self-sufficiency. Though she missed her maids, cooks, houseboys, and amahs—oh, how she missed them—she had an appreciation for the long hours of hard work they had done for such a pittance in pay.
Edna had set up a school class for Cheryl and Leah and taught reading, writing, and math using Marcus’s books for the basics and hands-on learning for practical applications. With the individual attention, Gina thought both girls were advancing beyond their grade levels.
Popo meandered up the path, carrying a hollow bamboo tube filled with a day’s fresh water and a jute bag of logs he had chopped into usable lengths for the stove. He was stronger and more helpful than she had first thought. He’d built the stairs soon after they’d arrived and tilled the soil to extend the garden. Though Tagalog was his native tongue, he knew some English, having gone through grade school as the mountain people did, and could communicate with her on an elementary level. Today there was something on Gina’s mind, and she wanted to talk to him.
When they entered the hut, a gecko scuttled in, a sign of good luck according to Popo, and she had gotten used to them scurrying around. As usual, he was smiling. He bobbed his head in greeting and then filled the water jugs and the woodbin. A cockroach skittered out from under a log, and he stomped it dead with his bare foot.
Gina grimaced. There were some things she would never get used to, like the cockroaches that hid in every crevice, the insects that she had to shake daily out of their bedding, and the coconut rats that jumped through the trees during the day and slunk about inside the hut at night. Popo said they were good eating, but even the thought was revolting to her. Ants had been a problem until Popo had showed her how to soak the ground around the hut’s supports with oil. She crossed her arms and leaned back against the counter. “Popo . . . how hard is it to keep chickens?”
At first his face went blank, but then he laughed. “Easy, easy.” He used his hands to help talk. “Little house. Fence . . . wire to keep out iguanas and wild pigs. You feed . . . ahh . . . scraps from you eat. That is all. You get eggs.”
Iguanas and wild pigs. Did she want to invite them into the yard? Seemed like there was always a downside. In half English and half pantomime, she said, “How many chickens would I need to feed seven people?”
He bobbed his head and held up six fingers. “You need six chickens. I help you build a coop. I look for good layers.”
In the yard, Gina showed him the small structure in lousy repair that had housed chickens. He shook his head. “No good. I do better.” He grabbed a section of wire fence and gave it a hard tug. The posts gave way, and the wire and wood flew in all directions. “Eyee!” he hollered, and his hands flew to his face. Blood oozed between his fingers.
“Popo!” Gina gasped, her body tensing with distress. “My God! Did it hit your eye? Let me see.”
Blood dripped off his chin when he peeled his hand away. His eye was intact, but a gash extended from the top of his ear to the corner of his mouth. He fumbled in his pocket for a bandana, which he folded into quarters and held over the cut. “I go home now.”
“No, I wouldn’t hear of it.” She took his arm and pulled him forward. “Come with me. We’ll fix you up.” By we she meant Maggie, who had shown herself to be a competent nurse. Inside the hut she called for the teen, who examined the wound and cleaned it with a mild boric acid solution.
“Some splinters need to come out, Popo. I’m sorry. I’ll be very careful, but it’s going to hurt a little.”
Popo’s eyes grew wide, and he moved to leave, but Maggie grabbed his hand and began chanting a riff. “One, two, three and we be done. Miss Gina, would you please bring Popo a cup of water? Okay, Popo? Quick pick and we be done? You no get infection, and I be happy.” She nodded, and Popo mimicked the movement.
By the time Gina brought water, Maggie was murmuring to Popo while picking at the wood fragments with tweezers. “Open your fist. Make your hand floppy like a fish. Think floppy hand, fishy hand. Close your eyes and think of cool water washing over your fishy hand. The cool water is climbing up your arm. It’s at your elbow now, and your arm feels like a floppy fish. I don’t know what color the floppy fish is, Popo. What color should we make your fish?”
“Fish no color.” His voice sounded dreamy.
Gina stood off to the side, mesmerized.
“Done.” Maggie held up two wood fragments for Popo to see.
“Done?” he repeated, still in a daze.
Maggie dusted the wound with sulfa powder and covered it with a dressing. “It will be a little sore. You feeling all right?”
He took a deep breath. “Sí.”
She handed him six aspirin and the glass of water. “Two now, two tonight, and two in the morning. Come back and see me in two days.” She held up two fingers, and Popo nodded. After he left, she said to Gina, “I wish Dad would return with meds. He’s been a long time in Manila, and I’m down to my last bottle of aspirin.”
“He should be back soon,” Gina said. “It’s hard to move around when you have to stay hidden.” She picked up the bloody rags, which would be washed and reused. She saw a little of herself in Maggie, curious and independent, having left home at barely seventeen to travel with the Follies. “You had Popo in a trance. Where did you learn that?”
“At the clinic, I guess. I worked a lot with the kids. It was one way I learned to distract them. Sometimes it works. Sometimes it doesn’t. Popo’s pretty suggestible.”
“My dear, you’re an angel.”
Maggie scoffed. “Tell that to my mother.”
“She only wants the best for you.”
“I know. I just need more space.”
With increa
sing numbers of people moving to the mountains, the produce available from the local women had decreased, but the garden had filled out and was taking up the slack, and the chickens they’d purchased were laying plenty of eggs. Additionally, Edna and Maggie scoured the jungle for tubers, greens, berries, and mushrooms used for food or medicines. This was a sore point for Vivian, who privately called Edna a witch doctor after she’d almost killed Leah, Vivian felt, by dosing her with sugar melted in a teaspoon of turpentine to rid her little body of intestinal parasites. The child had been up all night crazy with pain, though Vivian had to admit that Leah had passed the offending worms in the morning, and the malady appeared cured. Nevertheless, she’d told Maggie that her father wouldn’t approve.
“Yes, he would,” Maggie had retorted. “Edna taught biology and botany at the high school in Manila. She lived off the land when she was in China. Where could I find a better teacher?” In defiance of her mother, Maggie continued to work with Edna and catalog the appearance, location, and usefulness as food or medicine of each new plant she found.
Theo returned, guided by a cowboy from Señor Ramos’s ranch, each man riding one horse and leading another loaded with bundles. After the welcome homecoming, Theo told the latest news. “You would hardly recognize Manila. The streets are filled with Nips, and guards are on every corner checking residence IDs. Propaganda is everywhere: Asia for the Asians. The locals are scurrying around, keeping their heads down. Some Americans are still in hiding, but most have been interned on the University of Santo Tomas campus. It won’t take long for that to turn into an overcrowded stink hole.”
Gina winced, imagining Stella and her three children and Edith and her frail mother interned in a Japanese-run camp for the long haul, not the few weeks they’d so glibly fantasized. Despite the hard life in the mountains and the nipa hut’s meager comforts, she was glad to be free.
Theo passed around a pack of cigarettes and offered lights. Gina deeply inhaled, enjoying the familiar buzz; they had been out for a while. He said, “Thanks for letting me take Isabella.”
Gina didn’t remember it that way. But she was physically stronger now, more self-sufficient, and confident she could survive this uncomfortable interlude in her life. She was able to say, “I’m glad she was helpful to you, and I wish her well.”
Theo nodded. “Very helpful. I had to stay hidden, and she was my intermediary. Dr. Lopez at Remedios Hospital donated medical supplies and drugs. Father Morgan from Malate Church sent clothing and blankets. You remember him, don’t you, Vivian?”
“Of course. He runs a charity mission through the church, and you wrote him a generous check every Christmas. Not in my wildest dreams did I ever think we’d be on the receiving end.”
Later, Theo took Gina aside. He looked pale and tired, like the trip had taken its toll. He spoke in his gentle way. “I suppose you heard. The men on Corregidor were captured. They were taken to Bilibid Prison. I saw them coming into the city.”
Gina’s eyes searched his for more information. “Did you see Ray with them? I heard hundreds were killed during the last bombings.”
“I wasn’t that close, but there were thousands, Gina . . . Ray could have been one.”
Gina called to mind the bloodied, beaten men on the march. Expecting the worst, she steadied herself. “Tell me more, Theo. I need to know the truth.”
“The truth is the men are dehydrated, hungry, and dirty. The Japanese are petty; they push the prisoners around and steal anything that glitters. But these men haven’t been abused like what you saw on the march. I’m so sorry you had to witness that. I know it has left its mark on you. It has on all of us.”
Yes, a mark and that kernel of hate she felt growing. “What happens to the men now?”
“Bilibid is just a temporary holding facility. Most men stay a few days or weeks before being trucked out to other prison camps.”
“Trucked? They’re not being marched?”
“No.”
“Trucked,” she repeated, somehow finding that small piece of information comforting.
Theo kept the horse he arrived on, and several times a week he and Maggie, who rode behind him, roamed the mountainside, visiting the barrios in the area, chatting with the local people, learning their dialect, and attending to their medical needs. Often they returned carrying bags of rice or beans and today vegetables that Gina cleaned, cut up, and roasted on the grill for their evening meal, along with mountain trout Marcus and Edna had caught and cleaned that afternoon.
With Cheryl and Leah playing go fish with a new deck of cards Theo had brought back, Vivian lit candles and set up for bridge, a common evening’s entertainment.
“You’re quiet tonight,” Vivian said to Theo, whose mind seemed to be wandering.
He put down his cards. “Sorry. I was thinking about Señor Ramos. I heard he and his foreman were picked up by the Kempeitai yesterday.”
A pall came over the room. The Kempeitai were the military police of the Japanese army, a punitive branch of a harsh force trained in espionage and counterintelligence and known for their unique torture techniques to ferret out local resistance. Gina folded her cards. “His ranch is halfway up the mountain. How did they find him?”
“A sympathizer or a bounty hunter. Or maybe the Japanese just want his cattle. At any rate, we have to be extra cautious.”
That night, Gina, in a recurring dream, heard the rattle of Japanese bicycles and the directive of the captors: “Speedo, speedo.” She slunk behind the throng, carrying a gunny sack, collecting body parts of American soldiers with the intent of returning them to their families. As always, she awoke gasping for breath.
Days later, two men on horseback came to the edge of the clearing. Gina stepped inside the hut, where they couldn’t see her. Both men were Filipino, but they weren’t like the local farmers she had seen at the store in Tinian. These men wore expensive boots and hats and carried guns in holsters attached to their belts. They sat on their horses and gazed at the huts as if they were looking for something.
Cheryl and Leah skipped toward the door, and Gina waved them back and put her finger to her lips. “Shhh.” She took inventory of the others’ whereabouts—Vivian cutting up vegetables in the kitchen, Edna and Maggie at the stream catching freshwater shrimp.
Marcus walked across the clearing to the Filipinos. He was square built like his sister but tall, with big hands and big feet. When not clearing brush around the perimeter of the camp, he’d be in the jungle hunting or at the stream fishing, often bringing home meat or fish for the evening’s meal. A quiet man, he liked to read, which was a problem with so few books available. Edna had told Gina he was fluent in several languages.
From the door of the hut, Gina, unable to hear the conversation, tried to catch the gist of it by studying the men’s body language. Marcus stood rigid with his feet apart and arms crossed, not offering his handshake in greeting. The Filipinos stayed in the saddle. One gestured toward the cabin, and she pulled back into the shadow and shushed the girls again. She hoped Edna and Maggie stayed out of sight at the stream. They needed rules for when strangers showed to hide and stay safe, a topic for this evening’s conversation.
After a time the Filipinos turned their horses around and left.
Vivian came up behind Gina. “What was that all about?”
“Beats me. Let’s go find out.”
Marcus took off his hat and wiped the sweat off his brow with a kerchief he’d pulled from his pocket. “They said they were looking for a place to live, but my gut tells me they’re scouting for Americans. Seems we have a price on our heads now. I spoke to them in Spanish and told them we were from Argentina. I’m not sure I fooled them. We may have to move farther up the mountain.”
Vivian’s face clouded. “It will be colder . . . more primitive. People don’t live there for a reason. We’d never survive.”
Marcus gazed at the mostly uninhabited peaks in the distance. “My guess is that’s the Japs’ plan.”
&
nbsp; Chapter 9
GUERRILLA BEGINNINGS
I’m fenced in by barbed wire, trapped under a blazing sun, and given little water. I watch the sky for American planes. None come. It can’t be. My country wouldn’t surrender me to a cruel enemy.
—Ray Thorpe, Corregidor, December 1941–May 1942
Gina, returning from Mrs. Bueno’s store with her arms full of packages, saw Vivian hurrying toward her. Viv’s voice was urgent. “I’m glad you’re back. A nurse showed up with a wounded soldier tied on the back of a mule. His clothes are covered with dried blood. The strange thing is Cheryl ran up to him like she knew him. I grabbed her back. I thought you’d better know.”
Gina frowned. She didn’t want Cheryl running up to any stranger. She’d have a talk with her. “Where’s the soldier now?”
“With Edna and Marcus. Theo examined him. The guy’s out of his head with malaria and who knows what else. His pants are full of holes like”—Vivian swallowed—“oh God, Gina . . . like he’d been stabbed multiple times with a bayonet.”
Vivian’s eyes filled with tears, and Gina blanched.
“The nurse—her name is Clara—wants to leave him here with Theo.”
“Did you learn his name?”
“Davy something.”
No. Please don’t let it be . . . But they were on an island. “Not Davy McGowan.”
“Yes, so you know him?”
Gina’s voice quavered. “Yes! Cheryl and his son, Harry, are in the same class at school. He’s a major in the army. You met him once, Viv, at a birthday party I threw for Ray. Tall, good-looking guy. Brush cut. A scar under his right eye. I must go see him.”
Gina thought she was prepared, but it sickened her to see Davy’s once-robust body shrunken, jaundiced, and covered with oozing wounds. A patch protected one eye, and when he opened his mouth, she glimpsed broken teeth. She forced her widest smile, and to cover her shock, she reverted to the trash talk she’d learned while traveling with the Follies. “Holy cow! You look like a piece of shit, Davy. Tell me how you’re really doing.”
Along the Broken Bay Page 8