The Island at the End of Everything

by Kiran Millwood Hargrave

  I nod. Manila is the biggest town in the Places Outside. The place where Mr Zamora says I will get a job some day, if I am Untouched. It is a very long way from here.

  ‘Nothing I am going to do will hurt, so you mustn’t be afraid. I have a granddaughter who is nine, and she doesn’t like doctors, even though I, her own lolo, am one! Is your lolo here at Culion?’

  ‘No.’ I like him but don’t want to show it too much because he is one of Mr Zamora’s doctors.

  ‘Whom do you live with? Was that man with you your ama?’

  I shake my head and laugh, because Nanay would scrunch up her face and make a yuck sound if I told her Doctor Rodel thought Bondoc was my father.

  ‘I live with my nanay,’ I say.

  ‘And where is she?’

  ‘She was sent home with her papers.’

  ‘Ah,’ says Doctor Rodel, and his voice is suddenly serious. ‘She is a leper, then?’

  ‘We don’t use that word,’ I say, the sentence out before I can draw it back, but Doctor Rodel doesn’t seem offended.

  ‘I’m very sorry to have used it, then,’ he says, eyes creasing again. ‘I’m afraid I am going to have to keep my mask on, just to be safe. I’ll call one of the sisters over, because I’m going to need to check your stomach as well as your legs.’ He gestures to where they are, and luckily Sister Margaritte is looking so she is the one who comes over.

  ‘I’m going to need to do a full examination, Sister. Draw the curtains, would you?’ says Doctor Rodel. Sister Margaritte pulls the rails into a triangle around the three of us. The light goes paler through the curtain.

  Sister Margaritte helps me take off my dress and then wraps a cloth around me so Doctor Rodel can see my skin and check it for marks and numbness. He works quickly, and Sister Margaritte moves the cloth so he can do my stomach too. It tickles but I don’t move. When he is finished, she helps me back into my dress and he puts some cotton on a stick inside my nose and rubs it on my nostril.

  ‘To check for things too small for my old eyes to see,’ he says as he puts the cotton in a twist of paper. ‘But it seems your nanay has taken very good care of you.’

  ‘Yes,’ I say. I want to ask if this means I can stay with her, but Sister Margaritte has already opened the rails and is leading me towards Bondoc, so I only manage a quick, ‘Thank you.’

  Doctor Rodel’s eyes smile again and then he gestures for Diwa to come forward. Sister Clara hands me a piece of paper. As Bondoc leads me out, Doctor Rodel’s crinkling eyes are already drifting to Diwa’s Touched toes. Her baby is still crying.

  THE RESULTS

  T

  he paper in my hand is different from Nanay’s but the same as Bondoc’s. The Sano and Leproso boxes are empty, and it is unstamped. I suppose that this means they are waiting for the cotton to tell them things Doctor Rodel can’t see before deciding what I am.

  I know that being Touched comes from tiny specks that travel in your body. That is why Nanay and I must be careful not to drink from the same water or eat from the same spoon, in case these tiny specks go from her to me. But I didn’t know that anyone would be able to see them from swabbing my nostril. My nose tingles and I rub it, wondering how I will feel if I am Touched and can stay. How I will feel if I am Untouched, but have to go? Both possibilities crouch heavy as demons on my shoulders.

  The men are still working in the field. Already I can’t remember how it looked without houses on it. It’s funny how that happens. I can’t remember how Nanay’s face looked before her nose folded, or what school was like before Sister Margaritte came. The way things are rewrites the way things were so quickly.

  Nanay is fussing around inside the house when we arrive, sweeping up dust from the dirt floor and then re-sweeping it in the other direction. Capuno is watching her with an amused expression on his face.

  ‘Well?’

  Bondoc settles down beside his brother to tell them about the government doctors and the curtains drawn around in triangles and the cotton sticks in our nostrils.

  ‘Where did they put the patients?’ asks Nanay. ‘Ami, did you see Rosita?’

  ‘No, the beds were all empty and pushed against the walls.’

  ‘That man probably kicked them out into the street,’ she says, meaning Mr Zamora.

  ‘So they took swabs?’ says Capuno. ‘What help will that be?’

  ‘For a microscope,’ says Bondoc. ‘My doctor said they brought one with them from Manila.’

  ‘What’s a microscope?’ I ask.

  ‘It shows you things up close,’ says Nanay. ‘It will tell the doctors if you have the tiny specks that make you Touched.’

  ‘I hope I do,’ says Bondoc bitterly. ‘I hope I gave them to Mr Zamora when I stood before him in church.’

  ‘Tsk, Bondoc,’ she says. ‘You don’t know what you are talking about.’

  ‘What do your papers look like?’ Capuno asks me, and I know he is changing the subject. I show him the paper and he shakes his head. ‘So now we wait.’

  We wait for a very long time. A whole evening and morning sky circles over us. Bondoc and Capuno sleep by our fire and in the morning they make us breakfast. We sit inside all day so we don’t miss the knock, but soon it is evening again and the moon is in its fullest roundness outside. Nanay, Bondoc, Capuno and I are just sitting down to a meal of rice and salted fish when someone raps on the door.

  ‘Come in,’ says Nanay.

  Doctor Tomas steps inside.

  ‘We were just about to eat,’ she says, getting up stiffly.

  ‘My apologies, Tala. I have the results for Ami. And you, Bondoc.’

  ‘Well?’

  ‘Would you rather I came back?’ He looks nervous and I know that it is not good news, but then I don’t know what news could be fully good.

  ‘No,’ says Bondoc who has not stood up and is glaring at Doctor Tomas. ‘Tell us what your Mr Zamora has sent you to say.’

  Doctor Tomas clears his throat and passes two pieces of paper to Nanay and Capuno. ‘These are your official papers. They confirm you have Mycobacterium leprae, and must reside within the Leproso areas when they come into force.’

  ‘And me?’ says Bondoc.

  ‘You are clean,’ says Doctor Tomas, and holds out another piece of paper. Bondoc stands and snatches it from his hand.

  ‘You even talk like them now,’ he hisses, and Doctor Tomas drops his eyes.

  ‘And Ami?’ says Nanay. I can hear the quiver on her lips.

  ‘I’m so sorry, Tala,’ says Doctor Tomas. Nanay takes the paper from his hand and scans it. Then she starts to cry.

  ‘Nanay?’

  She tries to speak but her whole body is shaking.

  ‘Sister Margaritte will come tomorrow to explain what this means.’ Doctor Tomas leaves quietly.

  Bondoc takes the paper and says, ‘Oh, Tala.’

  He passes it to me. Beneath my name and age, above the blue-inked stamp, is a neat cross in a box. Below the box is a single word.

  Now I know which I would have preferred. It was not this.

  Sano.

  Nanay is worn out from crying, so she goes to bed while the rest of us tidy up. When the brothers leave, I am still fizzing with energy. I hover outside our bedroom.

  ‘Nanay?’ I can hear her ragged breathing, and sit beside her on the bed. Her back is to me. ‘I’m sorry,’ I say.

  Her hand reaches behind her and gropes for mine. ‘Why are you apologizing? This is good news.’ Another sob grips her throat as she speaks. ‘You are well, my little girl. Healthy. This is good news.’

  I can’t think of anything to say so I just sit there until her breaths slow into sleep. I’m not tired at all. My blood feels as if it is filled with little beads of heat. It will be noisy for Nanay if I stay in the house to play, so I collect the racing berries from the garden and go into the street.

  My feet take me to the field where we queued. The houses grow like square bushes either side of the sewage channel. The men have all
left and the only light comes from the moon and the hospital. I wonder about going to see if Rosita is there, but I don’t want any of the government doctors to see me.

  Nanay will be worried if she wakes up and I’m not there. I walk part way up the new street and begin to place one of my racing berries on the threshold of each of the houses as a welcome present. I run out of berries, and begin picking more from a low shrub before I realize it is silly. They probably won’t notice the berries. Even if they do, they won’t know who they are from, because when they arrive I will be gone.

  My chest aches. It is only by climbing into bed with Nanay and curling my body against the warm scoop of her back that it begins to loosen. I tuck one of the berries into her pocket, and hope that she at least will know it’s from me.

  THE COLLECTOR

  K

  nock!

  My body jumps awake, as if stopping itself falling from a great height.

  Knock! Knock! Knock!

  Someone is banging on the door. Nanay is already up, her side of the bed cool, uncreasing slowly in her absence. My heart slows as I hear the door creak open and Bondoc’s voice.

  ‘Tala, we’re going to sort this out. Come with me.’

  ‘What do you—’ starts Nanay.

  ‘Come now. Sister Margaritte’s got us an appointment.’

  ‘Appointment? For what?’

  ‘For sorting this out. Let’s go!’

  ‘I can’t leave Ami.’

  ‘I’ll come with you,’ I call, slipping on my sandals and hurrying through to where Nanay is standing in the doorway. Bondoc’s hand is on her cheek and he drops it hurriedly, though I have seen his hand on her cheek and hers on his many times before when they thought I wasn’t looking.

  Nanay turns to me. ‘I don’t even know where we’re going—’

  ‘I’ll explain on the way,’ says Bondoc, stepping back and holding out his hands to us. ‘We have to be there by nine, or he won’t see us.’

  ‘He?’

  ‘Come on, Tala!’ Capuno emerges from his brother’s shadow. ‘We have to leave now.’

  Capuno is more sensible than Bondoc, and him urging Nanay seems to decide it. She wraps her face and picks up her stick, and I close the door behind us, hurrying to keep up with Bondoc’s strides.

  We are following the steps we took yesterday, and the ones I took last night – down our street, through the field that is now houses, towards the hospital. I scan the doorsteps for berries, but they are gone. Every one, gone. As we walk Nanay hisses at Bondoc to explain, and Bondoc tells her we are to see Mr Zamora, to put our case to him.

  ‘Our case?’

  ‘For Ami to stay.’

  Nanay’s hand clenches mine, and I feel her slowing until it is like walking through mud and I am almost dragging her.

  ‘I don’t want to see that man.’

  ‘I know,’ says Capuno softly. ‘But it is worth a try, yes?’ Nanay stops and takes in a great hiccup of a breath.

  ‘Yes,’ I answer for her.

  Bondoc squeezes my shoulder, his hand huge and heavy and warm. Nanay nods, and we keep walking.

  We walk past the berryless houses and the queuing people at the hospital to Doctor Tomas’ house, a neat square built on two floors with wrought-iron balconies at the windows. Bondoc knocks twice on the wooden door, and Sister Margaritte opens it.

  ‘Come, quickly. It’s nearly five past.’

  Inside is cool, the floor stone, like in church. There are framed pictures on the lemon-yellow walls, and the first room we pass is filled with piles and piles of paper, with Doctor Tomas sitting on a low chair, leaning on his knees to write in a large book. He looks up as Sister Margaritte ushers us on, closing the door on the piled-paper room. The door has a small square sign saying DOCTOR TOMAS, hung lopsidedly.

  ‘So he’s a guest in his own house now?’ says Nanay, and Capuno shushes her while Bondoc snorts. We are led up the stairs, which creak ominously as we climb. Sister Margaritte brings us to a stop on the narrow landing.

  We all crowd around the door. It is white except for a small square patch of unpainted wood in the middle. This must have been where Doctor Tomas’ sign used to be. Above it, a large sign hanging on a nail reads:

  MR ZAMORA

  AUTHORIZED REPRESENTATIVE

  TO THE DIRECTOR OF HEALTH

  It is in the same red lettering as the notices. I try to swallow the lump that rises in my throat as Sister Margaritte knocks.

  ‘Enter.’

  She turns the handle.

  The room is full of colour. The walls are flecked like the church’s stained glass, with reds and purples and greens and blues, as if vines of gumamela flowers have threaded up them. But it is not flowers that crowd the room – it is butterflies. Butterflies lined up like school children, or an army, in neat rows.

  ‘What is this?’ Bondoc growls.

  ‘Ah, do you like my collection? I go nowhere without them,’ says Mr Zamora, unfolding slow as a nightmare from behind a low wooden desk. He is wearing a pink tie drawn tight enough to butt against the apple of his throat when he talks. ‘They are dear as children to me. Rhopalocera. Or as you may know them—’

  ‘We know what they are,’ interrupts Bondoc. ‘Why are they here, like this?’

  ‘I am a lepidopterist,’ says Mr Zamora.

  ‘We don’t use that word,’ says Bondoc warningly.

  ‘A lep-i-dopterist, Bondoc,’ says Sister Margaritte. ‘Not leper.’

  ‘Oh.’ Bondoc folds in on himself, seeming to lose height.

  ‘Yes,’ smirks Mr Zamora, thin fingers spreading to indicate the walls. ‘Or to put it in terms you may understand, I collect and study butterflies.’

  ‘These are all dead?’ I ask, though I know they must be, to be so still. The colours of the wings ripple like fish underwater.

  ‘No, I trained them to settle like that,’ Mr Zamora sneers. ‘Yes, of course they’re dead. I breed them, hatch them, pin them . . .’

  ‘You breed them just to die?’ says Nanay.

  ‘So that I may study them,’ Mr Zamora repeats, raking his eyes across her scarf as he sits back down, pointedly scraping his chair back and away from her. ‘Is this why you’ve come? To question me about butterflies?’

  ‘No,’ says Nanay coolly. ‘But it is interesting to know.’

  ‘We’ve come,’ says Capuno hurriedly, breaking the bristling silence, ‘to discuss your plans to remove the children—’

  ‘The government’s plans,’ interrupts Mr Zamora.

  ‘You are their authorized representative, are you not?’ snaps Bondoc, who is done shrinking. ‘Or did I misunderstand the sign you’ve hung on Dr Tomas’ door?’

  ‘I am indeed the government’s representative.’ Mr Zamora narrows his eyes. ‘And you would do well to reflect that in your tone.’

  Capuno steps between Bondoc and the desk, pulling from his pocket a carefully folded piece of paper. ‘I have here a petition, signed by the parents of all the Untouched children who are to be taken, and plenty of us without children too. We request—’

  ‘We demand—’ interjects Bondoc.

  ‘That you reconsider your plans to relocate the children to the Places Outside.’

  ‘Places outside?’ Mr Zamora’s voice is mocking, his thick eyebrows rising towards his thin hair.

  ‘To the next island,’ says Capuno calmly. ‘To Coron.’

  ‘I see,’ says Mr Zamora, obviously amused. My skin is as hot as if he were making fun of me.

  ‘We feel it must be possible for the children to stay on Culion, if not in the town itself. Perhaps things can remain as they are, or perhaps they can keep to the areas you have devised and see their parents in a monitored environment. Surely anything is preferable to separating families.’ Capuno was a teacher before he came here, and I imagine a good one, with his straight back and clear voice. ‘So, here it is.’

  He unfolds the piece of paper and holds it out towards Mr Zamora.

  He does
not reach for it, for what feels like a moon age. His face is placid, like a lake hiding the snapping log of a crocodile. Eventually Sister Margaritte takes the paper and places it on the desk in front of him. It is a tangle of names. People have written up the margins and between the other words. I feel the first bright start of hope. Surely he can’t ignore so many names?

  ‘Read it, sir,’ says Sister Margaritte. ‘Please.’

  ‘I hope you say your prayers in a more persuasive tone, Sister,’ says Mr Zamora, giving the same hard emphasis to the last word as she did to ‘sir’. He lets out an exaggerated sigh, and leans forward slightly to open the top drawer of the desk.

  He takes out a pair of tweezers and lays them carefully by the petition. Then he takes out a glass disc with a wooden handle attached, and puts this next to the tweezers, nudging them this way and that to make them all line up neatly. Like soldiers, or school children, or pinned butterflies. Then he closes the drawer. He does all these things with an infinite slowness that makes my skin prickle and crawl.

  In one hand he picks up the tweezers, pincers the top corner of the petition, and lifts it, keeping his long arm extended. With his other hand he picks up the handle of the glass disc, and peers through it. His eye bulges, huge through the glass, flicking back and forth as he reads aloud:

  ‘We the undersigned write in protest to point four of Article Fifteen, as decreed by Government Representative Mr Zamora. We request that persons under eighteen be afforded the same right as those over eighteen, namely: that the Director of Health authorizes this person to remain on Culion, on the condition they stay within the Sano areas. Limited trespass may be made into Leproso areas under authorized supervision.’ It is horrible to hear the words, quoted from the signs stuck up on every street, spoken out loud, especially in Mr Zamora’s faintly amused tone.

  ‘We feel that this is the kindest and most tenable way to temper the already traumatic effects of forced separation, without resorting to forced migration. Signed . . .’ Mr Zamora looks up from the petition. ‘Seemingly everyone on this sorry rock.’

  ‘Not quite everyone,’ says Nanay. She has been standing so still it felt as if I were holding hands with a statue, or a tree, but now she reaches forward and plucks a pen from the inkwell on Mr Zamora’s desk.