7/27/2019 47752435 the Trap Kerima Polotan Tuvera

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 The Trap

Kerima Polotan Tuvera

I was fourteen when we moved to Cabuyao. We reachedthe town at night and though it was not quite seven, thestreets were empty. I had hoped we would get to it beforedark, while there was light enough for people to see uscome. We knew no one, of course – “We’ll make friends,”my father had said – and expected no welcome, but

having left Tayug with reluctance, I had urged my fatherduring the trip to drive faster so that we might arrive inCabuyao early enough for someone to see us drive in.

 That was important to me.

“Why, Elisa?” my mother asked, and I could not tell herwhy, except that I had left behind in Tayug one friendvery dear to me. When the day came for us to go, wecould not leave soon enough. I wanted the pain of missingSalud to start quickly. She said goodbye to me thatmorning by the plaza, asking, “Are you taking everything,Elisa? You’re sure?” When Mother frowned, I hated Salud

for betraying me.

Several times that past year I had told Salud I felt thatsomething was happening to me. I felt I was growing tobe another person entirely. “Something’s wrong, Salud,” Isaid one day – “I’m going crazy.” She had laughed andlooked pointedly at my breasts and said. “They’regrowing like mine, Elisa.” She had a way of saying thingslike that, that angered and also disarmed me; she was 18and the four years between us yawned like an abyss.During all that time I had watched her turn into a lovely,graceful girl, unfazed by adolescence, leaving me farbehind, eaten with envy and yearning. When she laughedat me that morning, I refused to be shaken off. I doggedher all the way along Calle Santa, round the corner to Del

Pilar, and catching up with her a few coconut trees fromtheir steps. I said something that made her pull up andlook at me gravely. “Help me, Salud,” I said.

 That past September I had come home one Monday fromschool, my dress with a stain. Since then I had lived withthe terrible feeling that I stood on the brink of something.I had dreams about this too, unhappy, frightened nightswhen my dreams took me to an unknown precipice and Iwatched helplessly as my body dropped over the edge.

It was of this that Salud spoke when she asked, thatmorning we got ready to drive away, if I was leavingsomething behind with her. Some books I had given her,and tears, and a girlish promise I would write faithfully.

She stood beside the car, saying, “Goodbye,” over andover; she would not cry before me. Her eyes, thoughbright, were dry. I held her arms tightly, wanting to seeher tears, but my father said, “All right, all right,” and I lether go. She blew her fingers at me and we drove away.

We live near the church, I wrote Salud, in a house that isall sawali, except for the roof which is nipa, and the floorwhich is bamboo. The toilet is at the back, outside thehouse. It is an outhouse set on posts and connected tothe kitchen by a bamboo bridge. You will not believe mebut the bridge is the part I like best – it swings when Iwalk on it. There are sugarcane stalks on both sides of the bridge and I never hurry to the outhouse. It isbeautiful when there is a moon up.

I believe you, Elisa, Salud wrote back. But don’t jump off.

 The first day I resumed schooling, my father came withme. We saw the principal together. She was an elderlyspinster who wore tight rimless glasses on her nose. Sherarely smiled and when she did, it was to show big falseteeth that clicked noisily when she spoke – “How old areyou, Elisa?” she asked. “Fourteen,” I replied respectfully.“Only?” she remarked, and it was the wrong thing to say.I had scrubbed myself that day and put on my best dressbut at Miss Ramos’ remark, I felt my knees grow roughand dark, my breasts start to swell. I wondered if she

knew about my new condition. My days were full of bodilypain and a mysterious sense of growing; I moved aboutcarefully, waiting for some bit of womanly knowledge todawn on me, a grace, a manner of self, but I fumbled asbefore and dropped things and was miserable beforepeople. Only the unnerving dreams persisted, the nightly

 journeys that took me through the labyrinths of my mto emerge always on the sharp rim of some mountainsfrom which I flung myself even as I called for help.

Miss Ramos stood up, took me by the hand, companionably, not with palm about my wrist, but windex finger and thumb, with clear distaste, and led thus, a sullen specimen, through the corridors of school, and without bothering to knock, pushed ahead, through a door marked Mr. Gabriel, and said, “Gabriel, this is Elisa.”

Miss Ramos is a witch, I wrote Salud. When she’s aroushe gives off a smell that makes me sick.

Everyone smells, Salud replied, but you will smell mosall, Elisa, if you don’t stop hating people.

Not everyone, I wrote back. I like Mr. Gabriel. He is a gman.

Mr. Gabriel was small and thin and stooped, with a wabout him that made him seem even smaller. His elaughed even when his mouth did not, and when thappened, the tenderness spilled down the cheeks toquiet lips. When Miss Ramos blazed into his rodemanding forms and reports and C-156’s, Mr. Gabmet the storm with soothing coolness, as though he dwith just another wayward student.

One day, we were weeding the grounds when I swungscythe and hit my leg instead. I stood bleeding, watchthe red fluid flow down to the soil, stain it momentathen sink and disappear, leaving nothing but a wet spMiss Ramos walked up to me, smiling thinly. She sa

“Why, it’s only blood.” Mr. Gabriel took me to the cliHe stopped before the door, fumbling through his pockfor the key. A dark flush had spread over his face aneck. Inside the clinic, I sat on a white stool while Gabriel opened a window. He took a long time searchfor swab and iodine and bandage but when he sat in fr

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of me, the flush had disappeared from his face. It was nota deep wound but it was ugly. The tip of the scythe haddrawn a gash across my leg, leaving a piece of fleshdangling by a thread of skin. Mr. Gabriel washed andbound it. Except for some throbbing, it had ceased to hurtme. I said so as we left the room – “It’s not painful,” I saidwonderingly. “It will return later,” he said.

I followed him out of the room. The yard was empty; theother children had left. A frown passed over the face. Hehurried down the steps and sloshed through the mud, his

shoes squeezing down on the wet soil. Bits of clay clungto the cuffs of his pants. It was a brown suit he wore. Ihad seen it on him several times before. It was loose andit fitted him badly. As he walked, the back of his coatswished about his thighs. In the light of early evening, hewas a weird sight, like an earthbound ghost hurryingthrough the countryside. I trotted after him. When wereached the fork, he raised his hand quickly anddisappeared in the twilight.

We had begun to write themes again and I looked forwords like agony and happiness and soul. Each time Iused such a word, a bell seemed to ring inside me. Onemorning when Mr. Gabriel read one of my themes in frontof the class, I sat still, trying to recall my feelings as I

wrote it. But it was no use, something was gone. Perhaps,it was Mr. Gabriel’s voice: it was soft and low, like awoman’s, and I kept thinking: I wish I could talk to himalone. Perhaps it was the memory of what I had writtenabout – a white, long-legged bird skimming the rice fieldswhile I stood on the shoulder of the road watching, thegreat sky above me.

If Mr. Gabriel had seemed amused, I might have hatedhim. But he smiled faintly and looked away, and then asgently as that, between one heartbeat and another, I fellin love with him.

I did not write to Salud about it. I was certain her answerwould come, underlined with mockery: Yes, but is he inlove with you, and if he is, is he a married man, and if heisn’t, will he marry you?

I betrayed myself in a hundred ways.

When Mr. Gabriel stood beside me in class, watchingwhile I wrote a theme, his presence, would undo me socompletely that my mind would go blank and I would askto be excused. Outside, I crawled beneath the schoolbuilding, where it was damp and I could be alone, but assoon as class was over, I lingered by the door of theteacher’s room, compelled to stay by a new, frighteningnecessity.

One day, he surprised me beneath the building. He hadgone to look for the boys who had disappeared as soon asthe gardening assignments were posted on the board. Helooked under the schoolhouse and saw me on the ground,hugging my legs together. “Elisa?” he called. “Mr. Gabriel,“ I replied. “Come out,” he said. I crawled to where hewaited by the hedges. “Were you hiding?” he asked. Istood mute. I felt that if I began to explain I would saymore than I should, I would in an onrush of hope tell himeverything – Salud and my dreams and the sense of sinthat possessed me because I had begun, despite myself,to span with aching arms the emptiness of my youthfulbed at night. For one, instant, I could have, but someonecame to ask for a hoe, and Mr. Gabriel handed me atrowel and I headed for my garden plot.

In February that year, I fell ill. On the fifth day of myillness, a friend passed by the house and left a note. Howdo you do, Elisa? It read. Are you better? Hurry up andcome back to us, we miss you. Sincerely Leonor. ThenP.S. What is wrong?

It was the postscript that completed my betrayal –Leonor’s girlish prescience. In my own handwriting, Ireplied to that question, I wrote: I love Mr. Gabriel. Itrembled as I wrote the words. Dimly, I realized I hadidentified the precipice at last. I had met the forlornstranger in my dreams, face to face, no longer, would she

go wandering tremulously on mountaintops, dying herlonely deaths, she was where I sat in my sick clothes,writing the fateful words that accepted the knowledge of womanhood.

When I returned to school the next Monday, it wasover the place. The damning note had made rounds areached Miss Ramos, before whom I now stood, await

 judgment. The principal smiled that grim smile of hand said, “A costly mistake. A very costly one. You hinvolved Mr. Gabriel that may mean his job.” I snothing, accepting suspension.

When I returned to my room, I saw on the blackbosomeone had written “Elisa Gabriel.” I picked up things and left. I took the long road, the one that led p

the market and the billiard hall, past the empty solots, around the graveyard, then I cut across the pland headed for home. But on the porch of our homhad no sooner put my books down than I turned aroand ran back to school, taking the narrow dike this timran so fast that my heart rose to my throat and bthere, heavy strokes, that made breathing difficult. Toright, the river lay, untouched by the panic that led mthe building on top of the hill. It was dark when I stumbinto Mr. Gabriel’s room and found him, not bleeding helpless and dying, but seated at his desk, correcpapers. We frightened each other, I think, because his dropped, and at the sight of him, I missed a step and to my knees, and there on the floor, in that grotesqunintended curtsey, the words were wrung from me, “Gabriel. Sir, I love you.”

I never found out if he went to my father about thiseven told Miss Ramos, but I can see myself in the duskthat room years ago, in that absurd posture, along wthe strange, gentle man to whom I had lost my youheart. For what seemed forever, Mr. Gabriel did not muntil I stood up and, in my shame, burst into tears. The approached me and led me to the door. The wind picked up a mournful sounds, like the far-off despaiwail of an animal caught in some trap, and now it reacus both where we stood in the deserted corridor of school . “Run home, Elisa,” he said. “Run home.”