The Virgin(For Frine Asprer Zaballero)

KERIMA POLOTAN

He went to where Miss Mijares sat, a tall, big man, walking with an economyof movement, graceful and light, a man who knew his body and used it

well. He sat in the low chair worn decrepit by countless other interviewees andlaid all ten fingerprints carefully on the edge of her desk. She pushed a sheettowards him, rolling a pencil along with it. While he read the questions andwrote down his answers, she glanced at her watch and saw that it was ten. "Ishall be coming back quickly," she said, speaking distinctly in the dialect (youwere never sure about these people on their first visit, if they could speak English,or even write at all, the poor were always proud and to use the dialect with themwas an act of charity), "you will wait for me."

As she walked to the cafeteria, Miss Mijares thought how she could easilyhave said, Please wait for me, or Will you wait for me? But years of working forthe placement section had dulled the edges of her instinct for courtesy. She spokenow peremptorily, with an abruptness she knew annoyed the people about her.

When she talked with the jobless across her desk, asking them thedamning questions that completed their humiliation, watching pale tonguesrun over dry lips, dirt-crusted handkerchiefs flutter in trembling hands, shewas filled with an impatience she could not understand. Sign here, she hadsaid a thousand times, pushing the familiar form across, her finger held to aline, feeling the impatience grow at sight of the man or woman tracing awavering "x" or laying the impress of a thumb. Invariably, Miss Mijares wouldturn away to touch the delicate edge of the handkerchief she wore on herbreast.

Where she sat alone at one of the cafeteria tables, Miss Mijares did not look34. She was slight, almost bony, but she had learned early how to dress herself toachieve an illusion of hips and bosom. She liked poufs and shirrings and little-girlish pastel colors. On her bodice, astride or lengthwise, there sat an inevitablerow of thick camouflaging ruffles that made her look almost as though she hada bosom, if she bent her shoulders slightly and inconspicuously drew her necklineopen to puff some air into her bodice.

Her brow was smooth and clear but she was no beauty. She teeteredprecariously on the borderline to which belonged countless others whom you

found, if they were not working at some job, in the kitchen of some unmarriedsister's house, shushing a brood of devilish little nephews.

And yet Miss Mijares did think of love. Secret, short-lived thoughts flittedthrough her mind-in the jeepneys she took to work when a man pressed downbeside her and through her dress she felt the curve of his thigh; when she held ababy in her arms, a married friend's baby or a relative's, holding in her hands thetiny, pulsing body, what thoughts did she not think, her eyes straying, againsther will to the bedroom door and then to her friend's laughing, talking face, tothink: how did it look now, spread upon a pillow, unmasked of the little waywardcoquetries, how went the lines about the mouth and beneath the eyes (did theyclose, did they open?) in the one final, fatal coquetry of all? to finally, miserablybury her face in the baby's hair. And in the movies, ah the movies, to sink into aseat as into an embrace, in the darkness with a hundred shadowy figures abouther and high on the screen, a man kissing a woman's mouth while her ownfingers stole unconsciously to her unbruised lips.

When she was younger, there had been other things to do-college to finish,a niece to put through school, a mother to care for.

She had gone through all these with singular patience, for it had seemed to herthat Love stood behind her, biding her time, a quiet hand upon her shoulder (Iwait. Do not despair) so that if she wished she had but to turn from her mother'sbed to see the man and all her timid, pure dreams would burst into glory. But it hadtaken her parent many years to die. Towards the end, it had become a thanklesschore, kneading her mother's loose flesh, hour after hour, struggling to awaken thecold, sluggish blood in her dying body. In the end, she had died-her toothless,thin-haired, flabby-fleshed mother-and Miss Mijares had pushed against the bedin grief and also in gratitude. But neither Love nor glory stood behind her, only theempty shadows, and nine years gone, nine years. In the room of her unburied dead,she had held up her hands to the light, noting the thick, durable fingers, thinking ina mixture of shame and bitterness and guilt that they had never touched a man.

When she returned to the bleak placement office, the man stood by a window,his back to her; half-bending over something he held in his hands, "Here," shesaid, approaching, "have you signed this?"

"Yes," he replied, facing her.In his hands, he held her paperweight, an old gift from long ago, a heavy,

wooden block on which stood, as though poised for flight, an undistinguished,badly done bird. It had come apart recently. The screws beneath the block hadloosened so that lately it had stood upon her desk with one wing tilted unevenly,a miniature eagle or swallow? felled by time before it could spread its wings. Shehad laughed and laughed that day it had fallen on her desk, plop! "Whathappened? What happened?" they had asked her, beginning to laugh, and shehad said, caught between amusement and sharp despair, "Someone shot it!" andshe had laughed and laughed till faces turned and eyebrows rose and she toldherself, whoa, get a hold, a hold, a hold!

He had turned it and with a penknife tightened the screws and dusted it. Inthis man's hands, cupped like that, it looked suddenly like a dove.

She took it away from him and put it down on her table. Then she picked uphis paper and read it.

He was a high-school graduate. He was also a carpenter.He was not starved, like the rest. His clothes, though old, were pressed and

she could see the cuffs of his shirt buttoned and wrapped about big, strong wrists."I heard about this place," he said, "from a friend you got a job for at

the pier." Seated, he towered over her. "I'm not starving yet," he said with aquick smile. "I still got some money from that last job, but my team brokeup after that and you don't get too many jobs if you're working alone. Youknow carpentering," he continued, "You can't finish ajob quickly enough ifyou got to do the planning and sawing and nailing all by your lone self. Yougot to be on a team."

Perhaps, he was not meaning to be impolite? But for a jobseeker, Miss Mijaresthought, he talked too much and without call. He was bursting all over with anobtruding insolence that at once disarmed and annoyed her.

So then she drew a slip and wrote his name on it. "Since you are not starvingyet," she said, speaking in English now, wanting to put him in his place, "you willnot mind working in our woodcraft section, three times a week at two-fifty to foura day;depending on your skill and the foreman's discretion, for two or three months,after which there might be a call from outside we may hold for you."

"Thank you," he said.He came on odd days, Tuesday, Thursday, Sunday.She was often down at the shanty that housed their bureau's woodcraft,

talking with Ato, his foreman, going over with him the list of old hands due forrelease. They hired their men on a rotation basis and three months was the longestone could stay.

"The new one there, hey," Ato said once, "we're breaking him in proper."And she looked across several shirted backs to where he stooped, planing whatwas to become the side of a bookcase.

How much was he going to get? Miss Mijares asked Ato on Wednesday."Three," the old man said, chewing away on a cud. She looked at the list in herhands, quickly running pencil down. "But he's filling a four-peso vacancy," shesaid. "Come now," surprised that she should wheedle so, "give him the extrapeso." "Only a half," the stubborn foreman shook his head, "three-fifty."

"Ato says I have you to thank," he said, stopping Miss Mijares along a pathwayin the compound.

It was noon, that unhappy hour of the day when she was oldest, tiredest-when it seemed the sun put forth cruel fingers to search out the signs of age onher thin, pinched face. The craw's feet showed unmistakably beneath her eyesand she smiled widely to cover them up and squinting a little, said, "Only a half-peso-Ato would have given it to you eventually."

"Yes,but you spoke for me," he said, his big body heaving before her. "Thankyou, though I don't need it as badly as the rest, for to look at me, you wouldknow I have no wife-yet."

She looked at him sharply, feeling the malice in his voice. "I'd do it for anyone," she said and turned away, angry and also ashamed, as though he had foundout suddenly that the ruffles on her dress rested on a flat chest.

The following week, something happened to her: she lost her way home.Miss Mijares was quite sure she had boarded the right jeepney but the driver,

hoping to beat traffic, had detoured down a side alley, and then seeing he waslow in gas, he took still another shortcut to a filling station. After that, he. rodethrough alien country.

The houses were low and dark, the people shadowy, and even the driver,who earlier had been an amiable, talkative fellow, now loomed like a sinisterstranger over the wheel. Through it all, she sat tightly, feeling oddly that she haddreamed of this, that some night not very long ago, she had taken a ride in hersleep and lost her way. Again and again, in that dream, she had changed direction,losing her way each time, for something huge and bewildering stood blockingthe old, familiar road home.

But that evening, she was lost only for a while. The driver stopped at acorner that looked like a little known part of the boulevard she passed eachday and she alighted and stood on a street island, the passing headlightsplaying on her, a tired, shaken woman, the ruffles on her shirt crumpled,the hemline of her skirt awry.

The new hand was absent for a week. Miss Mijares waited on that Tuesdayhe first failed to report for some word from him, sent to Ato and then to her.That was regulation. Briefly though they were held, the bureau jobs were notones to take chances with. When a man was absent and he sent no word, it upsetthe system. In the absence of a definite notice, someone else who needed a jobbadly was kept away from it.

"I went to the province, ma'am," he said, on his return."You could have sent someone to tell us," she said."It was an emergency, ma'am," he said. "My son died.""How so?"A slow bitter anger began to form inside her. "But you said you were not

married!""No, ma'am," he said gesturing."Are you married?" she asked loudly."No, ma'am.""But you have-you had a son!" she said."I am not married to his mother," he said, grinning stupidly, and for the first

time she noticed his two front teeth were set widely apart. A flush had climbedto his face, suffusing it, and two large throbbing veins crawled along his temples.

She looked away, sick all at once.

"You should have told us everything," she said and she put forth hands torestrain her anger but it slipped away and she stood shaking despite herself.

"I did not think," he said."Your lives are our business here," she shouted.It rained that afternoon in one of the city's fierce, unexpected thunderstorms.

Without warning, it ceased to shine outside and the skies were overcast. Therain gave the world outside Miss Mijares' window a gray, unhappy look.

It was past six when Miss Mijares ventured outside the office. Night hadcome swiftly and from the dark sky, the thick, black, rainy curtain continued tofall. She stood on the curb, telling herself she must not lose her way tonight.When she flagged a jeepney and got in, somebody jumped in after her. She lookedup into the carpenter's faintly smiling eyes. She nodded her head once inrecognition and then turned away.

The cold, tight fear of the old dream was upon her. Before she had time tothink, the driver had swerved his vehicle and swung into a side street. Perhaps itwas a different alley this time, but it wound itself in the same tortuous manner asbefore, now by the banks of overflowing esteros again behind faintly familiarbuildings. She bent her tiny, distraught face, conjuring in her heart the lonelysafety of the street island she had stood on for an hour that night of her confusion.

"Only this far, folks," the driver spoke, stopping his vehicle. "Main street's ablock, straight ahead."

"But it's raining," someone protested."Sorry. But if I get into that traffic, I won't come out of it in a year. Sorry."One by one the passengers got off, walking swiftly, disappearing in the night.Miss Mijares stepped down to a sidewalk in front of a boarded store. The

wind had begun again and she could hear it whipping in the eaves above herhead. "Ma'am," the man's voice sounded at her shoulders, "I'm sorry if you thoughtI lied."

She gestured, bestowing pardon.Up and down the empty, rain-beaten street she looked. It was as though all

at once everyone else had died and they two were alone in the world, in thedark.

In her secret heart, Miss Mijares' young dreams fluttered faintly to life,seeming monstrous in the rain, near this man-seeming monstrous but sweetand overwhelming. I must get away, she thought wildly, but he had moved andbrushed against her, and where his touch had fallen, her flesh leaped, and sherecalled how his hands had looked that first day, lain tenderly on the edge of herdesk and about the wooden bird (that had looked like a moving, shining dove)and she turned to him; with her ruffles wet and wilted, in the dark she turned tohim.