Before the third episode of the Philippines Graphic Literary Workshop (PGLW) concluded on April 18, we knew that we had one more thing that we can offer our bright young fellows: a starting platform for their creative endeavors. Here, we present one of their final outputs from the workshop. We also asked them to provide an artwork that they think best represents their stories. Read on.
“Do you have grapes there?”
Mary Joy raises her head at the sudden query, cheek red from being laid on her folded forearms for a while. The venue of tonight’s musings is her janky desk.
Through the window, amihan blows her last breath this season.
But, from the laptop, warm morning light seeps through the sheet of her bleach-fried hair. Mary Joy’s gaze lands on the cornered self-view feed, where her brown roots peek.
Her eyes of a similar color adjusts to the other faint figure before her—his, hazel.
“Which kind?”
Two pale fingers flash on the screen. Between their tips, one green grape. It is shiny. It should be. However, his tiny webcam fails to capture this detail, and others.
The man dangles the desaturated blob of pixels on Mary Joy’s face.
He pops it in his mouth, “so sweet and so cold.”
She smiles.
After a gentle lull of the grapes’ delicate snaps, Mary Joy mutters, “Yes, but they’re too expensive.”
“Over here too! Jesus, don’t get me started—I went to the store earlier, yeah? Prices of everything shot up. Not just gasoline.”
“I feel rich if Mama buys them for New Year. You know…for good luck.”
“You and your darling traditions,” he teases, “did you have some this year?”
The young woman’s head tilts in recollection. Mindlessly, her tongue darts over her bare but ruby lips as plump as the fruit being devoured by the other.
He freezes as he watches her think—one of the very few delightful intimacies granted by their connectivity.
Mary Joy’s protruding front teeth sink to her bottom lip. Unlike the white man, she has nothing to eat.
Yet, she buries this hunger. Her insatiability lies elsewhere.
“Not really. But we had lots of mandarins.”
“Well, that explains this madness, Mary Joy. The world is in shambles because you didn’t eat your grapes!” he quips and keeps feasting.
She shakes her head, shielding her face before the camera could catch her cold sneer and project it on the screen.
On his end, sweet Mary Joy seems to be laughing with him.
The two will share other joys, just not this one. In four years, she will leave Krus na Ligas to live with the man in a certain suburbia. He will build her a sturdy desk from his woodworking hobby, then bend her over it.
“We have better fruits!” Mary Joy rebuts, “Our mango is super sweet; we export them everywhere.”
“Yeah, you get so much sun there, I envy you.”
“It gets too hot during the day though. I end up amoy araw.”
“What, now?”
“I smell of the sun.”
“So, you smell…hotter in the core than the surface? I’m not surprised.”
“You’re sick.”
She will try to classify this as mere fever. He fanned the flame that first fluttered in her mind, down to her fingers. However, it will eventually attempt to consume the body—a home at risk of perishing in fire.
The video call drops.
Krus na Ligas, overrun by entanglements of all sorts but primarily of cables, has always had internet issues. It is its own little pocket of chaos amidst the greater chaos of the city. But it has everything she needs at the moment. Mary Joy has made her minor adjustments though, like getting a WiFi repeater.
Living where she is, one has to make many of these—repetitions.
With her wireless mouse, she clicks on the refresh button.
“Hello.”
“Hi again.”
“You should really move out of there.”
“It’s not too bad. It’s a really good deal—a steal even—especially for how close it is to work.”
“We haven’t talked uninterrupted in days.”
“I’m trying.”
The man shrugs, “I know,” tossing a green berry in his gob.
“Why say that then?”
“I’m just saying.”
The young woman scratches her head. Her neatly trimmed nails still unearths dandruff from her unwashed scalp. She tinkers away at the cake under the keratin.
“It gets annoying.”
“You get annoyed by so many things these days,” he says in an exhale.
“Like what?”
The man finishes his grapes. From the kitchen island on which his iPad was perched, Mary Joy observes the lean body make its way to the sink, and with time on his hands, he rinses the remnants of the delicious treat.
“Nothing.”
“Now that’s annoying.”
“What?”
“What?”
“You’re lagging.”
Mary Joy picks up her laptop and wanders closer to the repeater. She plops herself on the tiled floor, tempering its chill.
“I’m trying to fix this.”
“I know, we’re both trying really hard,” he pointed out.
“No, I fixed it. Is it working?” she waved at the camera.
“Oh.”
“What?”
The mechanical chest of her computer hummed steadily.
“I’m just saying…you should stop letting things affect you so much, Mary Joy. I don’t like seeing you so frustrated. It pains me.”
“Maybe if everything just stops pissing me off, I will.”
“It’s causing us problems, too, honey. You need to relax. I just asked you about grapes and your face! I saw it. I’ve been learning to read you. Ain’t that something? No…come on now. Don’t look at me like that.”
She will look at him differently. Whether in a better or worse light, she will still be deciphering years after the last bit of ash latches itself on the sill of her impossible soul.
The man continues, “Let me make things easier for you.”
The young woman returns the offer with a firm “no.”
But he already has, and he will further help her, in his own way.
When they settle down, Mary Joy will want to do something else with the language degree she acquired from her country’s top university, aside from online private tutoring. But his engineering salary will be enough to support them both. And she will be busy with their baby anyway, whom she will raise in a lonely house she will pay nothing for.
She will get tired. She will tell him this.
He will hire a helper, another good-natured Filipina, and call it a day.
Most days, she will crave carabao mangoes.
They will have some there, but bruised and ripened by force.
Such is the system in his country.
Mary Joy reclines fully on the ground. The other’s gaze follows every shift in the LED display.
“You got too much pride in that five-foot body of yours.”
She takes the device at once. Her tear-stricken, furious face comes into frame.
“Literally, shut up! Don’t you hear yourself? There’s more to this than pride. You should know that by now, if you really know me.”
“I know. And I’m proud of ya.”
“You’re annoying.”
“You love me.”
“Much to my dismay, I do…so I don’t want this relationship to be like that.”
And that is enough.
“Forgive me, honey.”
It will all be enough, she will tell herself as she boards a plane to some other place away from him. But the fruit of this love will clamber up her body, calling her “nanay.”
Mary Joy pulls herself from the floor and closes the window.
Meanwhile, amihan will keep on breathing with every blow.
Patrice Noan Rosales
