THE TEST
The next day Sister Margaritte comes to collect Nanay and me for testing. Although Nanay is obviously Touched, she has to be checked by the government’s doctors so they can give her identification papers. Sister Margaritte tells us that in the Places Outside, all the other islands that make up our country, which we learn about in school, the Touched are being collected together and sent on ships to Culion.
She embraces Nanay when she opens the door. She looks almost as sad as my mother, her head shrunken in her habit, like a baby in swaddling. I worry Nanay will be rude because she doesn’t like the nuns, but she doesn’t even tense up. Instead she goes slack in her arms. They exchange quiet words in quiet voices that mean I should not listen, so I stay in our bedroom until Nanay calls me. She holds my hand very hard, and in her other hand the stick is clutched just as tightly.
Though it is only two days since Mr Zamora arrived, new buildings are already growing in the green spaces between the houses on our street. More bamboo has been cut down from the forest, and formed into small squares with banana-leaf roofs. These will be the homes for the new arrivals.
Culion Town feels smaller already, with its gaps filling in. For the first time, it seems less hill and more town, the forest retreating to higher ground. The patch next to the bakery has been trampled completely. Nanay’s hand twitches in mine, and I know she is thinking of the seeds we planted. It will never be a butterfly garden now.
Sister Margaritte knocks on all the houses we pass and neighbours join our procession. It is like when we go to funerals, everyone is so silent and downcast. Diwa’s new baby is tied to her chest and I try to peek but Diwa has her arms wrapped so close around him all I can see is his forehead. We pass twelve new houses on our street, some fully built and others where the ground has been flattened and bamboo poles lie in stacks on the ground, waiting to be walls.
Capuno and Bondoc are amongst the men building, and Sister Margaritte gestures for them to join us. At the end of the road we turn left in the direction of the hospital, and I lose count of the new buildings.
This used to be a stretch of open field, but now trenches for sewage are already dug and I can see the lines of a new street forming. There is no room for gardens and some of the houses share walls. I never knew how much space there was in our town, because all the fields and forests felt necessary. I wonder where the insects that filled the grasses will go.
There is a queue of people snaking down the centre of the street, and it is only when Sister Margaritte leads us to the back that I realize the front of the queue is at the hospital, far ahead. There are only a dozen beds there, and they are always full. The examinations must be happening in the waiting room or in Doctor Tomas’ office inside his house.
‘It shouldn’t take that long,’ says Sister Margaritte to Nanay. ‘I have to go and help, but I’ll see you and Amihan inside.’
She walks towards the hospital and we begin our wait. I am good at waiting. I sit down by Nanay’s feet and watch the builders, but Nanay can’t sit because she doesn’t want to have to stand up again in public. She finds it hard with her Touched foot. Diwa’s baby wakes with a wail and has to be rocked and fed.
A long time passes, and I see a house sprout up from a patch of earth like a spring. I don’t recognize all the builders, but some are obviously Touched. They must have arrived from the Places Outside, maybe on the boat that brought Mr Zamora. One has a face marked like Nanay’s, but he doesn’t cover it with a cloth. I suppose that soon this will be a Leproso area and no one will have to cover their faces. That will make Nanay happier, even though I will not be with her.
I have to stop thinking this quickly.
After I watch two houses being built and a third starting I realize we have been waiting a very long time. Even after the sun touches the top of the sky we have barely moved.
I lie down in the grass and Nanay does not tell me off, even though I am wearing my best dress to meet Mr Zamora’s doctors. She is sweating and when Sister Margaritte comes back with pails of water she and Capuno drink a whole one between them. Bondoc and I share because this is one of the things you do to stay Untouched.
‘They’re going to start walking up the line,’ says Sister Margaritte softly. ‘Anyone with obvious signs will be given their identification papers and sent home. Otherwise you will have to wait.’
I assume this means me and Bondoc, and Diwa too, because she is only Touched a little on her foot, so little that it looks like leaf mulch caught between her toes.
‘You will need to show them your nose,’ continues Sister Margaritte to Nanay. Her voice has an apology in it, and I am glad it is not Sister Clara doing this job. ‘Then you can go home.’
Ahead, four men are walking along the line. One of them is Doctor Tomas, whose face is pale and miserable, and another is Mr Zamora. The other two men in white coats must be his government doctors. His reinforcements. I hope Doctor Tomas reaches us first. The line is moving quicker now with many people having obvious signs on their faces or arms, and by the time one of the government doctors gets to us we are nearly at the hospital door anyway.
He is wearing a white cloth mask over his mouth, and white gloves. He looks at Nanay expectantly and she unwinds her cloth. Her nose does not look good in the daylight, and, without wanting to, I feel embarrassed. For a moment I see her how he must, her cheeks rough with sores and lumps, the folded twists of no-nostrils. Then I shake my head free of these thoughts and see instead her brown eyes, as clear and sharp as a fox’s, the smooth brown skin of her long neck, her pulse working quick and visible beneath her ear.
From the pockets of his white coat the stranger draws out a pad and pencil. He beckons for her to step forward and she moves clear of the line, replacing her cloth.
All I can see of the doctor’s face are his eyes. They are unlined, and his gloved hands are nimble as they fill out the top form on the pad. He seems young to be a doctor. He hands the pad and the pencil to Nanay and she fills in the boxes marked ‘name’ and ‘age’. There is a number at the top of the sheet: 0013822.
He rips off the bottom of the form and marks it with a blue-inked stamp. He gives this to her, the number circled. I look down at it with her, and brush the paper with my fingertip. It is rough where other people have signed their names on the paper above it. The doctor gestures for me to hold my hands out and I do. He unfurls my fingers with his pencil, looks at my face and bare legs, then points for me to join the dwindling queue. He moves on to Diwa and her baby without a word.
His silence is catching. It feels as if my tongue is latched to the roof of my mouth. I trip forward to make up the gap between me and the man in front, and Nanay limps with me.
‘Not you!’ barks a voice. Mr Zamora is watching us closely. ‘You—’ he points at Nanay. ‘You have your papers?’
Nanay holds up the piece of paper with the circled number.
‘Exactly. So you must proceed home and await the results of your assessment.’
‘I think the results are fairly clear,’ says Nanay in a scratchy voice. Maybe her tongue is latched too. Mr Zamora’s lips twitch but it is Doctor Tomas who speaks next.
‘Even so, Tala. You can see we don’t have the room. It really would be a help if you could wait for Amihan at home.’
‘I’m still here,’ says Bondoc from behind me. Capuno is beside him, holding his paper in the snarl of his fist. ‘I’ll walk her home. You can go with Capuno.’
Nanay looks from Mr Zamora to Sister Margaritte to Bondoc with a dazed expression. Then she kneels, although it is painful for her, and hugs me, pinning my arms by my sides.
‘I love you, Amihan.’
‘I love you too, Nanay,’ I say and mean it especially much because of how rude I was in my head when she took off her cloth.
Capuno helps her up and she turns quickly to walk away with him, but not quickly enough for me to miss the tears in her eyes. Bondoc takes my hand in his cavernous palm and we catch up to the queue, which has now moved inside the hospital.
It is hot and smells like it always does, like stale breath and stale water. The examinations are happening in the main room – all the beds are empty and pushed up against the walls. There is no sign of Rosita, Nanay’s friend who was admitted last week, or any of the other patients.
There are more men with white face masks and white gloves stationed beside the rails of curtains that normally divide the room. People emerge from behind the curtains and are handed papers by Sister Clara. Sister Margaritte squeezes my shoulder as she goes to join her.
Shortly a doctor with a deep worry line down the centre of his forehead calls me forward. Bondoc drops my hand and the room tilts slightly without him mooring me to the floor. I step behind the curtain.
‘Name?’ says the doctor.
‘Amihan.’
‘Surname?’
I know what this means but don’t know the answer, so I give Nanay’s name instead.
‘Age?’
‘Twelve years.’
He writes down my name and age on the form, then looks up at me, his eyes crinkling so I know he is smiling despite the face mask.
‘So, Amihan Tala. I am Doctor Rodel and I am from Manila. Do you know where that is?’
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.