The Island at the End of Everything

by Kiran Millwood Hargrave

  ‘I’m sorry?’

  ‘What of the families?’

  ‘I can’t hear you.’ He can. We all know he can.

  Nanay must know that too, but after only a moment’s pause she unwraps the cloth around her face. She can be very brave when she needs to be. Sister Clara looks away with a tut, but Mr Zamora stares in a way that is even worse.

  ‘I said, what about the families? I have bred. My clean daughter has been living with me, her demonstrably dirty mother, for all her life. She has remained clean, despite the best attempts of my affliction to sully her. What do you propose be done?’

  Her voice is a challenge, with the point of a sword on her tongue.

  Mr Zamora wets his lips. ‘This was what I was going to address next, before your interruption.’

  Nanay inhales deeply to reply but Father Fernan stands up and opens his hands, like when he is demonstrating God opening His heart to us.

  ‘Please, child. Let our guest finish.’

  It is a betrayal. I feel this, as certain as the sweat on my palms. He is betraying us. Nanay sinks back down and does not take my hand again, so I squeeze her wrist to show her I am proud.

  ‘This is all in aid of reducing the spread of Mycobacterium leprae,’ Mr Zamora says importantly. ‘The disease that has taken your nose. Is that your daughter beside you?’ He does not wait for an answer. ‘How would you feel if she ended up looking like that?’

  Someone has to say something, but my voice is caught in my throat. Sister Margaritte makes an involuntary movement and Father Fernan holds up his hand to her the way Mr Zamora did to him, as the stranger continues to pace.

  ‘We are doing this not for our pleasure, oh, no. This place is a drain on the government’s finances, but we have given you a beautiful home.’

  ‘We have been here for years!’ calls out Bondoc. ‘Generations, in some cases. You haven’t given us anything—’

  Mr Zamora talks over him. ‘We are introducing the segregation to save the innocents.’ I do not understand why he keeps using that word. ‘We will give those who are healthy a future. I have been given control of a facility on Coron Island—’

  Coron: our neighbouring island. You can sight it on a clear day – and we have many clear days – from the eastern hills. But it is only a low smudge, as if a greasy finger has been wiped across the faraway glass of the horizon. It is too far to wave from one beach to another and see each other.

  ‘Facility?’ interrupts Sister Margaritte. ‘Like an asylum?’

  ‘An orphanage,’ says Mr Zamora.

  ‘But these children, they have parents.’ The nun’s voice is shaking. Nanay grips my hand. ‘Their parents aren’t dead.’

  ‘But they are sick, Sister. And they live in what will become the largest leper colony in the world within three years, if our projections are correct. I am piloting this scheme on Coron, taking over an orphanage, to give the Culion children a better quality of life. They will live with other healthy children, away from sickness and death. When they grow up, they will be able to have jobs on the mainland, in Manila and further abroad. The disease will die out—’

  ‘You mean we will die out, Mr Zamora?’ Capuno’s voice is soft, but the challenge halts the man in his tracks. He stares down at Capuno, and his silence is worse than a nod. There is another collective flinch as he continues.

  ‘This segregation has the full weight of the government behind it. Father Fernan has given his blessing and only this morning Doctor Tomas signed an agreement that already has seventy signatures from world experts from America, India, China and Spain.’

  The priest and the doctor keep their faces turned to the floor as Mr Zamora pulls an envelope from his breast pocket, brandishing what I assume is the agreement. Doctor Tomas has signed this. Father Fernan has blessed this. Experts from countries far beyond our sea have agreed to it. The whole world is against us.

  ‘They are all of the opinion that this is the best – no, the only – course of action. Reinforcements from the government will be arriving to ensure it all goes smoothly. The sisters will bring you, street by street, to the hospital for your assessment. This is the start of a new era.’

  This is the end. No one is hissing or standing up to question Mr Zamora. The planks are propped up against the step before the pulpit.

  Sano. Leproso.

  I have forgotten how to breathe.

  ARTICLE XV

  T

  he next morning bamboo posts have sprung up at the end of every street. A notice written on large wooden boards is nailed to each. At the top are maps of Culion Island, with red circles showing where the Sano and Leproso areas are. All the boards say the same, over and over. I tore one down and brought it to Nanay, whose foot was giving her too much trouble for her to get out of bed and see them for herself.

  ARTICLE XV, CHAPTER 37

  OF THE ADMINISTRATIVE CODE

  Segregation of persons with leprosy

  I All persons on Culion Island must be subjected to medical inspection to determine the presence or absence of leprosy.

  II If it be found that a person has leprosy, they shall be marked for segregation within the Leproso areas in Culion Town. Trespassing into Sano areas is strictly prohibited.

  III If it be found that an adult (over the age of eighteen years) does not have leprosy, the Director of Health authorizes this person to remain in Culion Town within the Sano areas. Limited trespass may be made into Leproso areas under authorized supervision.

  IV If it be found that a child (under the age of eighteen years) does not have leprosy, they shall enter the care of the Director of Health or his authorized representative. In this instance, they will be transported to the CORON ORPHANAGE.

  There are other rules too, but I stop reading after point IV. This tells me all I need to know because I am under eighteen, and so must go to Coron. At the bottom of each notice is written in red:

  BY THE POWER AFFORDED MR N. ZAMORA BY THE

  DIRECTOR OF HEALTH, THESE LAWS WILL COME

  INTO EFFECT AT CULION LEPER COLONY

  WITHIN TWENTY-EIGHT DAYS

  When she has read it, Nanay gets me to chop it up for firewood, but the words stay branded on my mind. I wonder about the person whose job it was to paint the words on the boards, if they realized that their day’s work has rewritten the rest of my life. Or was it like when you get lines in class for talking or being late, and the words turn to spiders beneath your fingers, their meaning scuttling away across the paper?

  I thought I had dreamt it all. Sister Clara’s visit, the meeting, Mr Zamora. I woke up the next morning and thought maybe I had been in the sun too long and my head had filled with heat that cooked my brain. But school has been cancelled until segregation has been completed, and these boards are real.

  Nanay crying in bed is not a dream. Bondoc and Capuno wailing outside our house after a night in the tavern is not a dream. Bondoc will have to move to the Sano side of town, away from his home, away from us – or rather from Nanay. Capuno keeps saying he does not understand.

  I understand, and I have not cried. I have shrunk inside, all my tears dry and stuck, like a nut lodged in my throat. I wonder about the other children with Touched parents, if they feel the same weight crumpling their chests.

  Because Nanay is in her dark place and the walls feel too close inside, I go back to the patch of warm earth at the end of our garden. The trees have dropped small berries in the night. I know not to eat them but they are a beautiful purple, so I collect handfuls in my skirt.

  There are thirty, the same years my Nanay is. I pair them and race each pair down the slope of the clearing, over and over until I have only three left. They all roll quickly down the slope but eventually I have an overall winner. It is no different from the others in size or colour. There are no nicks in its surface, nor is it smoother, but it wins each time. I wonder what makes it different.

  I lie on my back and follow the shifting patch of sun with my head until it drops past o
ur house and the light goes flat. I keep the winning berry in my hand the whole time. It grows warm and slick and soon it has been there so long I can’t remember where my hand stops and it begins. The trees throw their shadows across the ground, and the clouds are nailed so loosely to the darkening sky they come apart in places. I see a pig’s snout in one, and a flying fish with an extra fin that shifts to a boat when I squint.

  Then the sky fades and I think more about Mr Zamora, though I don’t want to. I think about Doctor Tomas and Father Fernan sitting in silence, and Sister Margaritte, her wide mouth tight as a fishing line.

  When it is night, Nanay calls for me to come inside and I jump. The berry bursts in my palm.

  THE TEST

  T

  he next day Sister Margaritte comes to collect Nanay and me for testing. Although Nanay is obviously Touched, she has to be checked by the government’s doctors so they can give her identification papers. Sister Margaritte tells us that in the Places Outside, all the other islands that make up our country, which we learn about in school, the Touched are being collected together and sent on ships to Culion.

  She embraces Nanay when she opens the door. She looks almost as sad as my mother, her head shrunken in her habit, like a baby in swaddling. I worry Nanay will be rude because she doesn’t like the nuns, but she doesn’t even tense up. Instead she goes slack in her arms. They exchange quiet words in quiet voices that mean I should not listen, so I stay in our bedroom until Nanay calls me. She holds my hand very hard, and in her other hand the stick is clutched just as tightly.

  Though it is only two days since Mr Zamora arrived, new buildings are already growing in the green spaces between the houses on our street. More bamboo has been cut down from the forest, and formed into small squares with banana-leaf roofs. These will be the homes for the new arrivals.

  Culion Town feels smaller already, with its gaps filling in. For the first time, it seems less hill and more town, the forest retreating to higher ground. The patch next to the bakery has been trampled completely. Nanay’s hand twitches in mine, and I know she is thinking of the seeds we planted. It will never be a butterfly garden now.

  Sister Margaritte knocks on all the houses we pass and neighbours join our procession. It is like when we go to funerals, everyone is so silent and downcast. Diwa’s new baby is tied to her chest and I try to peek but Diwa has her arms wrapped so close around him all I can see is his forehead. We pass twelve new houses on our street, some fully built and others where the ground has been flattened and bamboo poles lie in stacks on the ground, waiting to be walls.

  Capuno and Bondoc are amongst the men building, and Sister Margaritte gestures for them to join us. At the end of the road we turn left in the direction of the hospital, and I lose count of the new buildings.

  This used to be a stretch of open field, but now trenches for sewage are already dug and I can see the lines of a new street forming. There is no room for gardens and some of the houses share walls. I never knew how much space there was in our town, because all the fields and forests felt necessary. I wonder where the insects that filled the grasses will go.

  There is a queue of people snaking down the centre of the street, and it is only when Sister Margaritte leads us to the back that I realize the front of the queue is at the hospital, far ahead. There are only a dozen beds there, and they are always full. The examinations must be happening in the waiting room or in Doctor Tomas’ office inside his house.

  ‘It shouldn’t take that long,’ says Sister Margaritte to Nanay. ‘I have to go and help, but I’ll see you and Amihan inside.’

  She walks towards the hospital and we begin our wait. I am good at waiting. I sit down by Nanay’s feet and watch the builders, but Nanay can’t sit because she doesn’t want to have to stand up again in public. She finds it hard with her Touched foot. Diwa’s baby wakes with a wail and has to be rocked and fed.

  A long time passes, and I see a house sprout up from a patch of earth like a spring. I don’t recognize all the builders, but some are obviously Touched. They must have arrived from the Places Outside, maybe on the boat that brought Mr Zamora. One has a face marked like Nanay’s, but he doesn’t cover it with a cloth. I suppose that soon this will be a Leproso area and no one will have to cover their faces. That will make Nanay happier, even though I will not be with her.

  I have to stop thinking this quickly.

  After I watch two houses being built and a third starting I realize we have been waiting a very long time. Even after the sun touches the top of the sky we have barely moved.

  I lie down in the grass and Nanay does not tell me off, even though I am wearing my best dress to meet Mr Zamora’s doctors. She is sweating and when Sister Margaritte comes back with pails of water she and Capuno drink a whole one between them. Bondoc and I share because this is one of the things you do to stay Untouched.

  ‘They’re going to start walking up the line,’ says Sister Margaritte softly. ‘Anyone with obvious signs will be given their identification papers and sent home. Otherwise you will have to wait.’

  I assume this means me and Bondoc, and Diwa too, because she is only Touched a little on her foot, so little that it looks like leaf mulch caught between her toes.

  ‘You will need to show them your nose,’ continues Sister Margaritte to Nanay. Her voice has an apology in it, and I am glad it is not Sister Clara doing this job. ‘Then you can go home.’

  Ahead, four men are walking along the line. One of them is Doctor Tomas, whose face is pale and miserable, and another is Mr Zamora. The other two men in white coats must be his government doctors. His reinforcements. I hope Doctor Tomas reaches us first. The line is moving quicker now with many people having obvious signs on their faces or arms, and by the time one of the government doctors gets to us we are nearly at the hospital door anyway.

  He is wearing a white cloth mask over his mouth, and white gloves. He looks at Nanay expectantly and she unwinds her cloth. Her nose does not look good in the daylight, and, without wanting to, I feel embarrassed. For a moment I see her how he must, her cheeks rough with sores and lumps, the folded twists of no-nostrils. Then I shake my head free of these thoughts and see instead her brown eyes, as clear and sharp as a fox’s, the smooth brown skin of her long neck, her pulse working quick and visible beneath her ear.

  From the pockets of his white coat the stranger draws out a pad and pencil. He beckons for her to step forward and she moves clear of the line, replacing her cloth.

  All I can see of the doctor’s face are his eyes. They are unlined, and his gloved hands are nimble as they fill out the top form on the pad. He seems young to be a doctor. He hands the pad and the pencil to Nanay and she fills in the boxes marked ‘name’ and ‘age’. There is a number at the top of the sheet: 0013822.

  He rips off the bottom of the form and marks it with a blue-inked stamp. He gives this to her, the number circled. I look down at it with her, and brush the paper with my fingertip. It is rough where other people have signed their names on the paper above it. The doctor gestures for me to hold my hands out and I do. He unfurls my fingers with his pencil, looks at my face and bare legs, then points for me to join the dwindling queue. He moves on to Diwa and her baby without a word.

  His silence is catching. It feels as if my tongue is latched to the roof of my mouth. I trip forward to make up the gap between me and the man in front, and Nanay limps with me.

  ‘Not you!’ barks a voice. Mr Zamora is watching us closely. ‘You—’ he points at Nanay. ‘You have your papers?’

  Nanay holds up the piece of paper with the circled number.

  ‘Exactly. So you must proceed home and await the results of your assessment.’

  ‘I think the results are fairly clear,’ says Nanay in a scratchy voice. Maybe her tongue is latched too. Mr Zamora’s lips twitch but it is Doctor Tomas who speaks next.

  ‘Even so, Tala. You can see we don’t have the room. It really would be a help if you could wait for Amihan at home.�
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  ‘I’m still here,’ says Bondoc from behind me. Capuno is beside him, holding his paper in the snarl of his fist. ‘I’ll walk her home. You can go with Capuno.’

  Nanay looks from Mr Zamora to Sister Margaritte to Bondoc with a dazed expression. Then she kneels, although it is painful for her, and hugs me, pinning my arms by my sides.

  ‘I love you, Amihan.’

  ‘I love you too, Nanay,’ I say and mean it especially much because of how rude I was in my head when she took off her cloth.

  Capuno helps her up and she turns quickly to walk away with him, but not quickly enough for me to miss the tears in her eyes. Bondoc takes my hand in his cavernous palm and we catch up to the queue, which has now moved inside the hospital.

  It is hot and smells like it always does, like stale breath and stale water. The examinations are happening in the main room – all the beds are empty and pushed up against the walls. There is no sign of Rosita, Nanay’s friend who was admitted last week, or any of the other patients.

  There are more men with white face masks and white gloves stationed beside the rails of curtains that normally divide the room. People emerge from behind the curtains and are handed papers by Sister Clara. Sister Margaritte squeezes my shoulder as she goes to join her.

  Shortly a doctor with a deep worry line down the centre of his forehead calls me forward. Bondoc drops my hand and the room tilts slightly without him mooring me to the floor. I step behind the curtain.

  ‘Name?’ says the doctor.

  ‘Amihan.’

  ‘Surname?’

  I know what this means but don’t know the answer, so I give Nanay’s name instead.

  ‘Age?’

  ‘Twelve years.’

  He writes down my name and age on the form, then looks up at me, his eyes crinkling so I know he is smiling despite the face mask.

  ‘So, Amihan Tala. I am Doctor Rodel and I am from Manila. Do you know where that is?’