THE HATCHING
It only takes the builders four days to construct Mr Zamora’s hut. Once they install a bolt on the door, he moves in straight away. He spends his days and nights in the hut. Sometimes we hear hammering inside and I think he must be hanging his butterfly collection. He orders the men back to build him a separate workshop, which has such precise specifications I hear one of the builders complaining it will take them three times as long.
Mari and I spend all our time together. We play hopscotch and hide-and-seek, and sit next to each other in class. The boys are very loud, so Kidlat comes to play with us a lot. He has stopped crying so much and even laughs sometimes. I mentioned him in my letter to Nanay, so hopefully she can tell his parents I am looking after him.
Soon after Mr Zamora moves into his hut a quiet, cat-eyed woman called Mayumi arrives to help Sister Teresa with the housework, but Mayumi spends less time cleaning and more time helping Luko with cooking. She also stays with him in his little hut, which makes the nun suck her teeth.
Mr Zamora only emerges from his hut to walk down to town. He does this every day, at ten in the morning. He is back just after morning lessons end – we hear him whistling tunelessly, and he goes into his hut with a box under his arm.
‘Food, perhaps?’ Mari wonders, but I don’t think it can be, because if anything he seems even thinner and I saw him arguing with Luko about Mayumi only yesterday.
‘Do you let her near the food?’
‘Of course,’ said Luko, already bored of the conversation. ‘She helps me make it.’
‘But you don’t know where she’s been! She doesn’t have papers!’
‘She doesn’t need them. She’s from Bagac. There are no lepers there.’
‘I can’t eat the food if she’s near it.’
‘Then don’t,’ said Luko, and closed the hut door in his face. Mr Zamora kicked the door once, then spun around. I looked away a moment too late.
‘You,’ he hissed, cheeks flushing. ‘You stay away from me.’ He hurried back to his hut, taking a wide circle around me, even though I was nowhere near.
He also made us boil any clothes that came from Culion. My blue church dress lost all its dye. I can tell he wants to boil us too, just to be safe. When we go down to the river he is often there, washing his hands upstream.
‘He shouldn’t be around children,’ said Luko to Sister Teresa one morning, watching Mr Zamora trudge towards the river for the third time in half an hour. But Sister Teresa seems powerless to stop him because he is the government’s authorized representative. She told Luko that Mr Zamora’s brother is someone high up in government, in Manila, and that’s why no one will get rid of him.
It is fifteen steps less and we are all outside on our lunch break when I finally see inside Mr Zamora’s hut for the first time. Mari and I are playing her one-handed version of cat’s cradle when a loud shout, more urgent than the usual playground cries, makes me lose my grip and tangle the string.
Everyone turns towards the noise. The door of Mr Zamora’s hut has flown open and he is leaning out of the window, latching the shutters back. Then he disappears from sight again. Mari scrambles to her feet and I follow. The boys crowd around the open door and Mari and I drag logs to the window, stand on them and peer in.
Mari gasps, and though I have seen the pinned butter-flies before, it still takes my breath away to see them rippling across the walls. Mr Zamora is hunched over his desk, magnifying glass in hand, one of the horizontal sticks suspended between two upright supports. One of the chrysalises is swinging wildly, looking more than ever like a dry leaf about to fall.
‘Move out of the way!’ he snaps at the boys at the door. ‘I opened that to get more light, not for you to spy.’
The boys move and some of them gather around us at the window. They try to nudge us off our vantage point but we hold firm. Mr Zamora’s bloodshot eyes flick between the chrysalis and a pad of paper. He sketches furiously. His fingernails are long and scratch on the pad, sending chills up my back.
Suddenly the swinging chrysalis seems to pulse, and I notice for the first time that there is a flash of colour beneath the brown – a streaked, flashing orange. The pulsing continues until a split opens at the base, and two thin black fronds poke out. Mari reaches for my hand.
The whole chrysalis cracks open, hinged near the top like a pistachio, and the orange and black of the butterfly’s wings are deeper and richer than any colours I have ever seen. Even the older boys gasp, and they don’t let anyone see they are interested in anything normally. The black fronds wave and scrabble, and I realize they are its feet. The butterfly is pulling itself out, flexing its wings to loosen the case and its feet to drag itself out of the crack. Suddenly it slides free, its feet gripping the chrysalis, which does not look brown or any colour any more – just an empty papery shell, like the dried skin you pull off a scar after burning your hand.
The butterfly’s wings are crimped from the cramped space within its case. Mr Zamora is still staring and sketching, staring and sketching, using sheet after sheet of paper. The butterfly climbs up the chrysalis as if it is the furthest distance in the world, twitching its wings slightly open and closed like the heartbeats of a tiny animal. Finally it reaches the horizontal stick, and stops there, letting the breaths of its wings deepen. We are all waiting for it to fly, but it doesn’t. It just sits there, growing into the world. My throat closes and I have to blink back tears. I want Nanay to be here, to see it with me.
‘Make it fly, mister!’ says San.
Mr Zamora jumps, as though he’d forgotten we were there. ‘It won’t fly, not for a while. Its wings have to open fully.’
‘That was beautiful,’ breathes Mari.
‘I did not invite any of you to see,’ says Mr Zamora, though he seems pleased that we all look so amazed.
‘What’s that thing?’ San points at the discarded shape on the branch.
‘A chry—’ I begin, but Mr Zamora shushes me.
‘He asked me, girl.’ He turns to San and says self-importantly, ‘A chrysalis. It is strange you are so ignorant of these matters.’
‘We do not have butterfly lessons,’ says Sister Teresa, making all of us jump. No one noticed her enter the hut and stand in the shadows by the door. She steps forward now. ‘We focus on mathematics, other sciences.’
‘They would not be butterfly lessons,’ hisses Mr Zamora. ‘The term is lepidoptery. And it is a recognized science, Sister. Besides, I thought nuns didn’t believe in the sciences.’
‘Of course we do,’ snaps Sister Teresa. ‘We just believe that God is at the root of all things.’
‘Science is the root.’ Mr Zamora’s nostrils flare. ‘And I’m quite tired of you filling the children’s heads with information to the contrary. I believe I will undertake some of their education myself. I could teach them lepidoptery, and thus natural history, natural selection.’
‘That is not in your purview!’ Sister Teresa takes a deep breath and steadies her voice. ‘We do not have the equipment for such lessons.’
‘I will apply to the government for funds,’ says Mr Zamora, scenting victory. ‘It is decided.’ He turns to the windows. ‘Now go away, I have work to do.’
We climb down and the shutters bang closed. I feel badly for Sister Teresa, but still a kernel of excitement sits under my ribs.
‘Do you think she’ll let him teach us about butterflies?’ I whisper.
‘I don’t think she has much choice,’ says Mari.