Ghosts of Infinity: and Nine More Stories of the Supernatural (6 page)

I wedged myself between a fat housewife with a large basket that we had to step over, and a quiet woman and her baby. Elli perched herself on my lap and her yellow slicker thoroughly soaked the front of my dress. I held our dripping umbrella awkwardly. We made a sad, wet, miserable tableau.

This is a fact of life: one of the hardest things to do is to travel an hour-long ride with only a smidgen of a seat holding you up and a squirmy, heavy kid on your lap. A bumpy road just doubles the agony.

To take my mind off the pain of holding Elli up, I began to look at who my riding companions were. They were the usual: housewives on the way to the public market, some high school girls, one or two laborers and a few middle-class commuters like Elli and myself. An assorted, motley crew; it seemed to me each face mirrored the gray depression of the sky outside, for they were all sullen and quiet. I gave Elli our fare, and she paid for us with the flourish of her wet, raincoated arm, spattering everyone.

Small talk seemed a chore; the air was heavy and wet and smelled of mildew and badly laundered clothes. The slapping of the rain on the roof made it difficult to exchange even the simplest of pleasantries, leave alone the juiciest, most urgent gossip. Another fat woman across from us seemed to want to say something, but thought better of it and went back to staring at the rain. Everyone seemed to contemplate the downpour, the slowness of our progress and each one’s worrisome tardiness.

All except the baby in the arms of the woman beside us.

The baby was swaddled heavily against the rain and the cold in what seemed like endless yards of old fabric. I realized later on that it was a faded blanket, so big that the baby seemed lost in it. The small pink head peeking out of it told me it was barely days old, and the stuffed, cheap bag flanking Elli’s schoolbag in the aisle told me that the mother and child were on their way home from the public hospital nearby called Sta. Isabel’s.

The baby was crying lustily and with abandon, as if giving voice to our collective depression. Elli positioned herself on my lap to watch it in earnest as it struggled in the blanket in its mother’s arms. The mother turned from Elli as if to protect her child from my nosy daughter. Elli turned up her nose, harrumphed at the rebuff and turned back to watching the roof drip water onto a man’s head.

The baby was crying up its own storm within the hot, damp confines of the jeepney. The mother tried vainly to shush her baby, but gave up after a while. She glanced up at me and I caught a forlorn look in her eyes that disturbed me. She probably hocked her house and jewelry to be able to pay Sta. Isabel’s already indigent-adjusted fees, and was angry and ashamed and confused and worried and embarrassed and defiant all at the same time.

Then the baby struggled furiously out of its blanket and I saw the real reason for the mother’s expression.

The little baby had a harelip.

It stretched its pink, toothless, deformed mouth wide, pushed aside its swaddling clothes with small, chubby arms and let out a deafening, mournful wail, as if it was aware of its disfigurement. The terrible cleft lip slashed up into the baby’s nose, exposing a distressing amount of gum and the reddish inside of the nostrils. It cried plaintively now, untrammeled by the blanket, loud in the small, cramped space of the jeepney.

The mother looked around at the other passengers, desperate and embarrassed, as the baby struggled in her arms. She tried to swathe the baby’s face in the blanket but the child resisted her efforts. She looked like she wanted to cry herself, and a soft keening sound escaped her, barely heard in the rumble of the rain. It was their first time out in public, I guessed, the first time people other than the hospital would get a look at her child. She took a small lace handkerchief from her pocket and gently tried to cover the baby’s mouth.

Wiping teary eyes on her sleeve, she held the baby close to her chest to quiet it down, and look at the rest of us with hurt, reproachful eyes, sure of what we were all thinking. Like everyone else, I caught myself staring, and I realized it was painfully obvious in my case because I had to twist my head around to look at the mother and child, as Elli and I were seated directly beside them. I immediately cast down my eyes to the back of my daughter’s yellow raincoat, burning with shame. The sticky, humid closeness of the jeepney became distinctly more uncomfortable, and I twisted uneasily on my perch.

“Mommy—,” Elli began, and I cut her off with a withering look. The normally dense fourth-grader immediately grasped the situation and remained quiet, but continued to sneak wondering glances at the baby.

I looked at the other passengers. Some were busily looking away, ashamed of themselves and their thoughts. The two high school girls had begun whispering among themselves, but the fat woman with the happy face put a stop to them with a furious look that I didn’t think her capable of. No matter. The mother was oblivious now, and was trying to distract the baby by making sounds at it. The baby continued to cry loudly.

The jeepney picked its way slowly through the ruts and potholes, and the silence inside it lay heavy with unspoken thoughts and unacknowledged embarrassment.

The mother finally succeeded in quieting down her child by the oldest of maternal tricks—sticking a bottle in its mouth. She began to rhythmically squeeze the plastic bottle, dripping the formula down the baby’s throat. It dawned on me how difficult raising a child like that would be—the simple instinct of suckling would be impossible for the baby with its cleft palate. Even now, the baby gurgled and choked as the milk flowed down the wrong pipe; the mother became more careful, but it was hard with the jeepney’s swerving and swaying.

Raising this baby would be difficult under the best of circumstances, I realized. I was lost so deeply in my thoughts that I almost didn’t see the beggar leap up and cling to the back of the jeepney; I think we were rounding one of the many bends of our route when he stepped out from under a tree and hopped aboard to hang on the step. If Elli hadn’t suddenly drawn against me, it would have been some time before I realized we had an extra passenger. But then again, I think the smell would have alerted me before long.

The man was filthy. And that was being kind.

He was one of those poor souls you see rummaging about garbage heaps, hanging around alleys, sleeping under bridges and begging near churches and other places where people congregate and emerge from with generous, charitable moods. There were many words to describe them: scavengers, hobos, bums, tramps, but none so colorful and pungent as the vernacular term
taong grasa
.

He wore tattered, blackened clothes that were more hole than fabric, held together by grime. Old and thin, the man had long, wet oily hair plastered to his head like a greasy shawl. He was veined with light brown lines where the rain had eroded the dirt on his skin. I supposed I should be thankful that the downpour had washed him off a little. He clung to the bars at the back of the jeepney, leaving grease marks on them.

It didn’t seem to bother him much that the jeepney was full; I don’t think it mattered—empty or not, he’d likely just hang on to the back anyway. I felt Elli relax against me as she realized that the
taong grasa
had no intention of forcing himself inside and finding a seat. She looked as relieved as the other passengers, and I imagined my face reflected similar sentiments.

The fat housewife sitting beside us and separating us from the filthy man edged nervously away from him, making my position all the more precarious. The others looked away in disgust and wrinkled their noses. The lady with the chubby, happy face now held a chubby hand across her nose and mouth.

I took a surreptitious look at our new passenger and was more appalled by what I saw; he was worse off on close inspection.

He looked like he could keep a team of doctors busy for a whole day straight. He had running and bleeding sores; in fact, he seemed to have a scar on every other pore, and sores in between. A nasty, scabbed and pus-crusted gash on his elbow looked raw and bleeding. If they ever got him to sit still long enough to be treated, I don’t think the doctors at Sta. Isabel would know where to start.

The jeepney lurched. To get a better grip, the man reached in and grabbed the overhead rail inside the jeepney, right above my head. I glanced up at his hand clutching the overhead rail and saw that he was missing most of his fingers. One of those left was stunted and underdeveloped, as though from birth, and two looked like they were lost in an accident. I couldn’t see the other hand. Even his arm looked funny; it rested at an odd angle, as if it was broken and the bones were left to set and knit on their own.

I looked closer. One leg, dangling from the running board, seemed shrunken and gnarled as though from a childhood bout with polio. He seemed like he’s had a lot of bouts with a lot of nasty things throughout his life. All things considered, he made a good case for a generous, full-service dole-out from some big corporate benefactor.

He was wracked suddenly by a violent coughing fit (tuberculosis?), spittle flying, and I recoiled, like everyone. He stared up and caught me looking at him.

He stared back—with one eye. I saw that one of the eyes was gone, and the socket was held shut by some piece of wire, like a bent paper clip. His bearded, scarred, and pockmarked face was blackened and frightening. It looked almost belligerent and angry, but the one eye contradicted his overall countenance. The light brown eye had a soft, apologetic look to it. I would have used the word
kind
, if I wasn’t scared to death. It was dark in that jeepney that day, and I thought I was imagining things.

But I felt exposed, almost naked under that gaze. That he knew every little secret I had, every little indiscretion, every mean, evil thought.
Don’t look so haughty
, the eye said.
We’re the same, you and I
. I wanted to jump out the window to escape, but the moment passed. I put it down to inhaling too much carbon dioxide in the cramped jeepney.

I glared at him futilely a while longer, and allowed myself to be stared down. Gladly, too, because he was genuinely hard to look at. After a while, I sneaked another glance at him. He was staring out at the rain that was drenching him, indifferent and bored.

I remember thinking at that instant, that maybe after some serious cleaning up and medical attention, he wouldn’t look so pathetic. I can’t say why, but from the way he stood there, under the rags and the grime, he seemed to have an awareness of self that bordered on some rough street intelligence, some self-possession. In another life he could have been a young teacher or some middle-management executive. That one penetrating look spoke volumes, but like I said, maybe it was the jeepney exhaust.

Just then, the jeepney fell into a deep rut, almost knocking the
taong grasa
off the running board. He just barely managed to hold on. The jolt also woke up the little baby, who had dozed fitfully in his mother’s arms after that little bit of milk, forgotten for the moment. Now it started working itself up into another good cry.

The distressed mother began to whisper placating, assuring noises, but the baby ignored her and gave a lungful wail.

The beggar regarded the little crying bundle with apparent disdain. With that sixth sense that all mothers have, she hugged the baby closer to her, away from the dripping, smelly man. The baby rebelled at its mother’s fussing and began kicking and shoving its way out of the thick blanket, almost succeeding.

Then the baby saw the man framed in the dim light of the jeepney’s entrance, and fell quiet as it sensed the man looking at it. Then it broke into another loud bout of its dirge-like crying and continued to struggle in its mother’s arms. It opened its deformed mouth wide and screamed at the world.

I looked at the beggar, who seemed shocked at seeing the baby’s ravaged face. His own dirty, bearded, pocked face gaped at the child, and seemed to knit together into what I can only describe as indignation, maybe aimed at himself for being surprised into reluctant empathy. He continued to stare at the child, transfixed by the harelip.

Slowly, his expression began to change, and after a while he seemed to withdraw into himself again, staring out into the gray sheets of rain. His brow furrowed as if deep in thought, as if he was debating some matter of life and death with himself. He was thinking so intensely it seemed to exclude everything else, and another hard drop into a deep pothole almost knocked him off the running board again, and me almost off my perch.

I never saw anyone think so hard. It was the stance and attitude of someone working feverishly on a make-or-break exam that required full concentration. I became anxious and uneasy. I realized it could also be the look of a lunatic up to no good, and judging by the way he appeared, no one could blame me for thinking that.

He shook his greasy head a couple of times, his beard swinging with the movement, and mumbled something I couldn’t catch. He looked at the mother and child repeatedly, as if he was trying to get his nerve up to do something.
What? Snatch the mother’s bag?
There was nothing to steal.

He shook his head firmly one last time and seemed to reach a decision. His troubled face became grim and assumed an odd expression that only years of hindsight could identify: deep resignation and acceptance of a fate he didn’t want. He flashed a last weary, worried look at the baby and wiped his mouth with a dirty sleeve.

Before I realized what was to happen on that stormy day six years ago, that old, muddied jeepney fell into another deep rut in the road, and while everyone
oofed
in surprise, the beggar stepped into the crowded jeepney and went for the baby.