Module 5 : Cebuano Short Stories
Posted by : Ama A. Erana
Sources: The writers of Cebu: An Anthology of Prize- Winning Short Stories
Edited by: Resil B. Mojares, with an Introduction by national artist Nick Joaquin
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This Module is intended to:- Show Short Stories to the Learners
- Talk about Cebuano Short Stories
- Appreciate the Cebuano Short Stories
Introduction:
This Module is served as an educational supplement to the learners
to be able them to have initiative in writing Cebuano Short Stories.
Discussion:
A pin she had failed to remove from a dress sank its point deep into her finger. She cried to herself in surprise and squeezed the finger until the blood came out. She watched the bright red drop fall into the suds of soap and looked in delight at its gradual mingling into the whiteness. Her mistress came upon her thus and, shouting at her, startled her into busily rubbing while she tried not to listen to the scolding words.
When her mistress left her, she fell to doing her work slowly again, and sometimes she paused to listen to the talk in the bathhouse behind her. A little later her mistress’ shrill voice told her to go to the bathhouse for drinking water. Eagerly wiping her hands on her wet wrap, she took the can from the kitchen table and went out quickly.
She was sweating at the defective town pump when strong hands closed over hers and started to help her. The hands pressing down on hers made her wince and she withdrew her hands hastily. The movement was greeted by a shout of laughter from the women washing and Rosa Rosa Rosa
Her mistress’ voice came to her, calling impatiently, and she tried to hurry. When she arrived, the woman asked her what had kept her so long, and without waiting for an answer she ranted on, saying she had heard the women joking in the bathhouse, and she knew what had kept the girl so long. Her anger mounting with every angry word she said, she finally swung out an arm, and before she quite knew what she was doing, she slapped Rosa
She was sorry as soon as she realized what she had done. She turned away, muttering still, while Rosa
Getting back to her washing, she gathered the clothes she had to bleach, and piled them into a basin she balanced on her head. Passing her mistress in the kitchen, she said something about going to bleach the clothes and under her breath added an epithet. She had to cross the street to get to the stones gathered about in a whitened circle in a neighbor’s yard where she was wont to lay out the clothes. She passed some women hanging clothes on a barbed-wire fence to dry. They called to her and she smiled at them.
Some dogs chasing each other on the street, she did not notice because the women were praising her for the whiteness of the linen in the basin on her head. She was answering them that she hadn’t even bleached them yet, when one of the dogs passed swiftly very close to her. Looking down, she saw in wide alarm another dog close on the heels of the first. An instinctive fear of animals made her want to dodge the heedlessly running dog, and she stepped gingerly this way and that. The dog, intent on the other it was pursuing, gave her no heed and ran right between her legs as Rosa held on to the basin in frantic fear lest it fall and the clothes get soiled. Her patadiong was tight in their wetness about her legs, and she fell down, in the middle of the street. She heard the other women’s exclamations of alarm and her first thought was for the clothes. Without getting up, she looked at the basin and gave obscene thanks when she saw the clothes still piled secure and undirtied. She tried to get up, hurrying lest her mistress come out and see her thus and slap her again. Already the women were setting up a great to do about what had happened. Some were coming to her, loudly abusing the dogs, solicitousness on their faces. Rosa
She could stand but she found she could not walk. The women had gone back to their drying, seeing she was up and apparently nothing the worse for the accident. Rosa
Then there came down the street a tartanilla without any occupant except the cochero who rang his bell, but she couldn’t move away from the middle of the street. She looked up at the driver and started angrily to tell him that there was plenty of room at the sides of the street, and that she couldn’t move anyway, even if there weren’t. The man jumped down from his seat and bent down and looked at her foot. The basin was still on
He came back after a while, just as Rosa
She told her mistress about the accident. The woman did not do anything save to scold her lightly for being careless. Then she looked at the swollen foot and asked who had put oil on it. Rosa Rosa
It was with very sharp regret that she thought of her having forgotten to ask the cochero his name. Now, in the days that followed, she thought of him, the way he had wound an arm around her knees and carried her like a little girl. She dreamed about the gentleness of his fingers. She smiled remembering the way he had laid out the clothes on stones to bleach. She knew that meant he must do his own washing. And she ached in tenderness over him and his need for a woman like her to do such things for him—things like mending the straight tear she had noticed at the knee of his trousers when her foot had rested on them; like measuring his tartanilla seat cushions for him, and making them, and stringing them on his vehicle. She thought of the names for men she knew and called him by it in thinking of him, ever afterwards. In her thoughts she spoke to him and he always answered.
She found time to come out on the street for a while, every day. Sometimes she would sweep the yard or trim the scraggly hedge of viola bushes; or she would loiter on an errand for tomatoes or vinegar. She said to herself, He dreams of me too, and he thinks of me. He passes here every day wishing to see me. She never saw him pass, but she said to herself, He passes just when I am in the house, that’s why I never see him.
Some tartanilla would pass, and if she could, as soon as she heard the sound of the wheels, she looked out of a window, hoping it would be Angel’s. Sometimes she would sing very loudly, if she felt her mistress was in a good humor and not likely to object. She told herself that if he could not see her, he would at least wish to hear her voice.
She longed no more to be part of the group about the water tank in the bathhouse. She thought of the women there and their jokes and she smiled, in pity, because they did not have what she had, some one by the name of Angel, who knew how to massage injured feet back to being good for walking and who knew how to lay out clothes for bleaching.
When they teased her about Sancho, who insisted on pumping her can full every time she went for drinking water, she smiled at the women and at the man, full of her hidden knowledge about someone picking her up and being gentle with her. She was too full of this secret joy to mind their teasing. Where before she had been openly angry and secretly pleased, now she was indifferent. She looked at Sancho and thought him very rude beside… beside Angel. He always put his hands over hers when she made a move to pump water. He always spoke to her about not being angry with the women’s teasing. She thought he was merely trying to show off. And when one day Sancho said, “Do not mind their teasing; they would tease you more if they knew I really feel like they say I do,” she glared at him and thought him unbearably ill-mannered. She spat out of the corner of her mouth, letting him see the grimace of distaste she made when she did so, and seeing Sancho’s disturbed face, she thought, If Angel knew, he’d strike you a big blow. But she was silent and proud and unsmiling. Sancho looked after her with the heavy can of water held by one hand, the other hand flung out to balance herself against the weight. He waited for her to turn and smile at him as she sometimes did, but she simply went her way. He flung his head up and then laughed snortingly.
One night she sent the maid to a store for wine. Rosa Rosa
It never occurred to Rosa Rosa Rosa
It would have been useless to tell her mistress how the bottle had been broken, and the wine spilled. She had been walking alone in the street hurrying to the wine store, and Sancho had met her. They had talked; he begging her to let him walk with her and she saying her mistress would be angry if she saw. Sancho had insisted and they had gone to the store and bought the wine, and then going home, her foot had struck a sharp stone. She had bent to hold a foot up, looking at the sole to see if the stone had made it bleed. Her dress had a wide, deep neck, and it must have hung away from her body when she bent. Anyway, she had looked up to find Sancho looking into the neck of her dress. His eyes were turned hastily away as soon as she straightened up, and she thought she could do nothing but hold her peace. But after a short distance in their resumed walk home, he had stopped to pick up a long twig lying on the ground. With deft strokes he had drawn twin sharp peaks on the ground. They looked merely like the zigzags one does draw playfully with any stick, but Rosa Rosa Rosa
She rubbed her arm in memory of the numbing blow the man had dealt it, and touched her face with furious shame for the slap he had dared to give her. Her fists closed more tightly about the stone and she looked about her as if she expected Sancho to appear.
She thought of her mistress. She had been almost a year in the woman’s employ. Usually she stayed in a place, at the most, for four months. Sometimes it was the master’s smirking ways and evil eyes, sometimes it was the children’s bullying demands. She had stayed with this last mistress because in spite of her spells of bad humor, there were periods afterward when she would be generous with money for a dress, or for a cine with other maids. And they had been alone, the two of them. Sometimes the mistress would get so drunk that she would slobber into her drink and mumble of persons that must have died. When she was helpless she might perhaps have starved if Rosa Rosa
Then she thought of Angel, the cochero who had been gentle, and she lost her tears in thinking how he would never have done what Sancho did. If he knew what had happened to her, he would come running now and take her to his own home, and she would not have to worry about a place to sleep this night. She wandered about, not stopping at those places where she knew she would be accepted if she tried, her mind full of the injustices she had received and of comparisons between Sancho and Angel. She paused every time a tartanilla came her way, peering intently into the face of the cochero, hoping it would be he, ready to break her face into smiles if it were indeed. She carried her bundle on her arm all this while, now clenching a fist about the stone she still had not dropped and gnashing her teeth.
She had been walking about for quite a while, feeling not very tired, having no urgent need to hurry about finding herself a place, so sharp her hopes were of somehow seeing her cochero on the streets. That was all she cared about, that she must walk into whatever street she came to, because only in that way would he see her and learn what they had done to her.
Then, turning into a street full of stores set side by side, she felt the swish of a horse almost brushing against her. She looked up angrily at the cochero’s laughing remark about his whip missing her beautiful bust. An offense like that, so soon after all her grief at what Sancho had done, inflamed her into passionate anger, and mouthing a quick curse, she flung the stone in her hand at the cochero on his seat. It was rather dark and she did not quite see his face. But apparently she hit something, for he suddenly yelled a stop at the horse, clambered down, and ran back to her, demanding the reason for her throwing the stone. She exclaimed hotly at his offense with the whip, and then looking up into his face, she gasped. She gasped and said, “Angel!”
For it was he. He was wearing a striped shirt, like so many other people were wearing, and he had on the very same trousers of dark blue he had worn when he massaged her foot. But he gazed at her in nothing but anger, asking whether her body was so precious that she would kill his horse. Also, why did she keep saying Angel; that was not his name!
Rosa kept looking up at him not hearing a word of his threats about taking her to the municipio, saying only Angel, Angel, in spite of his protests that that was not his name. At last she understood that the cochero did not even remember her and she realized how empty her thoughts of him now were. Even his name was not Angel. She turned suddenly to walk away from him, saying, “You do not even remember me.”
The cochero peered at her face and exclaimed after a while, “Oh yes! the girl with the swollen foot!” Rosa forgot all the emptiness, forgot the sudden sinking of her heart when she had realized that even he would flick his whip at a girl alone on the road, and lifted her smiling face at him, stopping suddenly to tell him her foot had healed very quickly. The cochero asked her after a while where she was going, and she said breathlessly, without knowing just why she answered so, “I am going home!” He asked no questions about where she had been, why she was so late. He bade her ride in his vehicle, grandly saying he would not make her pay, and then, with many a loud exclamation to his horse, he drove her to her mistress’ house.
The cochero shouted, without stopping his horse, “Pedro” and continued to drive away.
http://www.sushidog.com/bpss/stories/servant.htm
Cecilia manguera Brainard
AFTER a quarter of a century of living in America, I have turned into some kind of bird, a sparrow perhaps, returning to where I come from, once a year. One of the so-called "balikbayans" (which some people say with a sneer). Indeed we have become strange creatures, we balikbayans, not quite Filipino, not quite American. And still I do my annual trek, as if searching for something, what exactly I do not know, cannot pinpoint why exactly I return. I say it's to visit my mother. I say it's to visit my roots. But it's something else, something vital to my soul. Is it something from my past? Perhaps. So much of the present is linked to the past. Therefore this year, like the year before, and the year before that, I shut down my studio, say goodbye to my agent, and endure the 25-some hour flight from New York Manila Manila Manila
My school friends still remember me. Tess, especially, who was my best friend in high school, and who has remained a special friend always. "You must come to dinner. It's for the February celebrants," she insists. In their middle-age, my Theresian classmates have bonded and hold monthly dinners for their birthday celebrants. "It'll be at the clubhouse at my apartment. And we'll have a program, poetry reading! Bring your favorite poem to share. And you must tell us about your recent show. I heard it was a success."
Tess lives in Pacific Plaza
Sister Agnes is present, a treat I understand because she doesn't usually attend these gatherings. There she sits looking very much like Sister Agnes of the past, large eyes with a startled expression, that tentative smile, that low clear voice recounting details about all of us. How does she do it? She must have had thousands of students, and still she remembers my Hong Kong-bought black shoes with Cuban heels, and she recounts with a laugh how much Tess loved cucumbers in her sandwiches. When we were freshmen in high school, Sister Agnes frightened us so much, we'd jump when she walked up to us. She was known as the terror. But she became our teacher in our Junior year, and even though she was strict, she loved us. We "belonged to her" and she tolerated our foibles. Once, standing in line for a long time; Tess and I became bored and we left the line to peer down some pipe. There was nothing there really, just a pipe shoved down the earth; and there we stood, with a vacuous expression, staring at the pipe and earth. Sister Agnes approached us; we jumped, ready to be punished. Instead she stared at the pipe and earth and declared, "Well, there's nothing there. Get back in line."
They ask how I'm doing; they say they've been reading about me, that they're proud of me, so glad that I've "mainstreamed," one of few Filipino artists who have done so in the States. I smile, answer their questions, but do not go on and on about my work. It's taken me over two decades to learn my art, to make a name, to build a reputation-how can I sum up what I've done in a few minutes? How can they truly know the difficulties I've faced as a so-called "minority woman" in White America? How can they understand how much I put into my art, that it must be more than good, that it must stand out? How can they know the politics involved, the networking to gain whatever edge I can? How can they know the dry spells, the times when there's nothing, nothing worthwhile coming out on the canvas, and the panic I feel over this aridity? I smile, say things are just fine, that yes, my recent show went well, and yes I'll do one in Manila
After the explosion of greetings and remembrances, we settle down to chat and eat. I'm in a table with Araceli, Darn, Carol, Aida, Henedina, old friends, so we have an easy time catching up. Tess is in her element, flitting about, playing hostess. After dinner, she emcees the program. She cajoles everyone to get up to read a poem or recall favorite stanzas. Everyone hams it up in front of the mike, even shy Monina dares to read a poem. It's as if Sister Agnes's presence validates our youth-if she's around, surely we couldn't be that old? Silly young girls this balmy February night.
When the poetry reading disintegrates to nursery rhymes, Tess recovers the mike to read a poem by Maya Angelou. Her voice is soft and seductive like the night outside:
The caged bird sings
with a fearful trill
of things unknown
but longed for still
and his tune is heard
on the distant hill
for the caged bird
sings of freedom.
She pauses (as we all feel a pause in our hearts); then she invites others to continue the program. But we've run out of poems. Everyone who has brought a poem has shared it, and there is a lull in the program. The mike is passed around like a hot potato-here Carol, you emcee, no, you do it Araceli, no you do it.
Sister Agnes gets up, takes the mike from Tess's hands and says: I would like to say something.
A shadow flits across her face, and briefly I wonder if we forgot to say our prayers before eating. Sister says, "Tess's reading of "The Caged Bird" has reminded me of someone close to my heart, to our hearts. There is one of you who is not present here, and I want to remember her."
I know whom she is talking about-Verna. Verna, the other class artist aside from myself. Verna who did vivid water colors and oils that brought me to rain forests and the Cordilleras
Verna talked me into joining the Solidality, and Sister Agnes got us started on visiting the sick at Philippine General Hospital. The very first time we went, we ran across a nurse carrying a basin filled with blood. I almost threw up. I hated that hospital, hated the indigent patients who clung to us with a desperation that took days to wash away from my skin, my soul. Verna did not mind talking to the patients, consoling them, giving them hope. "They're poor," she explained, as if I were unaware of that fact.
Verna fell in love with a boy of eight with kidney problems. Every Saturday, we visited the hospital, and she saw that boy. She brought him little gifts, toys and candies. He lit up when he saw her walking toward his bed. There was something I did not approve about that relationship, something that disturbed me. "He really likes you," I said, in a tone that was more reprimanding than I had wanted it to be.
"I like him too," she replied.
"But is that all right? Is it really all right for us to like these patients? We won't be members of the Solidality forever and then we won't be back, and then what will happen to them? We can't be friends with them, have them expect things from us, then abandon them?"
"They'll go on without us."
She said this so calmly, it infuriated me. Verna had a way of being self-righteous sometimes. She had a way of knowing black from white; whereas I always had too many gray areas in my life. Even now, there are a lot of gray areas in my life.
One Saturday-it was March, almost the end of the school year-we visited the hospital. I was edgy because I figured it was time for Verna to say goodbye to the child, to explain to him that finals were coming and summer vacation would soon be here, that we would not be back to see him. "You must tell him, Verna, otherwise, he'll go on waiting for you."
"Don't worry," she said.
When we entered the children's ward, his empty bed loomed in front of us. Verna and I glanced at each other. Without being told, we knew. The dayshift nurse confirmed that the boy was dead. All we could do was walk to the chapel and pray. Verna cried. I cried with her, but inside I felt that I had been right after all, that she shouldn't have gotten involved with that child. I picked up the idea then that relationships need to be measured in terms of the toll on one's self or one's goals. I don't believe Verna learned that lesson.
Sister Agnes's voice brings me back to the the clubhouse, to the present. "Do you know what happened to Verna?" she is asking.
We nod. Someone says, "She died in a car accident."
Tess wrote me about Verna's car accident in Mindanao
"There's more to the story than that," Sister continues.
"What?" we ask. What more could there have been except for the fact that Verna died at 30?
"After graduation, Verna continued to visit me," Sister Agnes said. "She went to art school and I even helped get her a teaching position. She was an excellent art teacher. Things were going just fine for Verna until she met a man named Hector. Verna's greatest mistake, in my opinion, was falling in love with Hector. The political situation was very bad at that time, and Hector was an activist. Verna followed him wherever he went. I saw them in Negros
"In Negros
"Apparently, Hector's affection for the other woman did not fade because even when he and Verna were married, this woman continued to hang around them. This hurt Verna of course, and she mentioned this to me during her visits. But she could not leave him. That's what she said to me, 'I can't leave him. I love him.' By this time, she had given up her art. She was fully devoted to Hector and his causes.
"When the Marcos government started cracking down on anti-government elements, Hector and Verna went underground. I didn't hear from her for several years, but one day, Verna, with a baby in her arms, came to see me. She said she, Hector, and their baby would be leaving soon for the States, that things would be better, that they could work for the people over there. The baby was beautiful, clear-skinned with slanted eyes, like Verna's. There was one brief reference of that woman friend of Hector. Verna said it calmy, but I could imagine her pain over the situation. It seemed to me that all she wanted was a quiet life with Hector and their child. For years, she and Hector had lived a harsh life, hiding from the government, working for what they believed was good for the people. So you see, in many ways, Verna was a caged bird.
"Well, you know how the story ends. One day, Hector, Verna, and their baby were in a car, near Davao
"So now, since we are gathered here, let us remember Verna for just a moment and pray for the eternal repose of her soul."
After saying prayers for the dead, we mumble to one another surprise at Sister Agnes's story. None of us knew about Hector; none of us knew about the other woman; none of us knew about the ambush.
I am left with emotions so turbulent, I do not know where to begin to sort them out. I feel guilty that Verna is dead while I survived and am an artist with some measure of success. But at the same time I envy her political involvement and nobility to the end. I was not even in the Philippines when things were bad, when people like Verna were getting killed; I was in New York, making compromises to get where I am now. Again that huge expanse of gray in my life, while Verna knew what black was and what white was. I look at my life and my accomplishments and the price I've had to pay for all this; and I look at Verna's brief life; and I wonder who of us won this time. That art contest in high school-how simple it had been to win that P200. It has never been as simple ever again. Never. A sadness starts to gnaw inside me and will not leave. A pain that probably has been there for so many years I do not when it began.
When the others leave and only five of us remain, we ascend to Tess's apartment on the 40th floor. It is a magnificent apartment, surrounded by picture windows that make you feel as if you're floating on top of Manila Victoria Manila Manila Manila
I can feel a stirring in me, an urge to capture this picture on canvas; (and always with that creative urge is a sense of excitement, of life.) It will be more than the sprawling city scene before me. The challenge as I see it will be to capture the evening on my canvas, maybe capture my sadness, maybe even capture Verna there.
I will call my creation: "Manila Without Verna."
Analysis
The writers of these stories are great because they have so many literary pieces to make the readers enjoy.
Guide Questions:
- Why is it important to write a Cebuano Short Stories?
- What are the benefits will be acquired to us in writing Cebuano Short Stories?
- How do we promote our own Cebuano Short Stories?
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