The day before the monsoon ended, 10-year-old Christina Villaluna heard two stories. The first was of a little orphan girl who was adopted by a rich white man. The second was of a woman who filled her pockets with rocks and drowned herself in the bay near their village.

At school Christina learned so much American history that the only thing she knew for sure about Filipino history was that Magellan had been killed there with a spear. Just like her history books, the story about the orphan girl had come from America. Christina and her schoolmates sat in a circle while their teacher, Tita Adelaida, read the story to them from a book that had been read by so many people that the pages broke off almost every time she turned the page. Tita Adelaida finally had to hold her thumb a certain way so the book wouldn’t break into pieces. Christina spent more time watching Tita Adelaida’s thumb and waiting for all the pages to fall than she did listening to the story.

The other tale – the one about the woman who drowned herself – didn’t come from Tita Adelaida. It came from Frederico, a boy in the class who thought the story of the redheaded American orphan was stupid. It took the children fifteen minutes to walk from the schoolhouse to the village and during that time, Frederico promised them a “real story” – the one about the Lady in the Bay.

The story went like this: The Lady in the Bay had lived in their village years and years ago. She was the most beautiful woman in the barangay, but no one wanted to marry her because she was deaf. Then one day a boy saw her sitting on a rock by the bay and he thought she was so beautiful that he wanted to know her name. When she didn’t answer or look at him or anything, he fell more in love with her because he kept seeing how beautiful she was. By the time he figured out she was deaf, he didn’t care. The second she turned around, he asked her to marry him and she said yes. The boy was so happy that he promised to catch barrels of fish so they could have lots of money for their new life, but when he went out on his fishing boat, a typhoon came. The boat came back, but he didn’t. The Lady was so sad that she filled her pockets with rocks and drowned herself.

Frederico finished his story just as the straw roofs of their nipa huts and the blue water came into view. The children had bathed and washed clothes in that water all their lives, but now it was no longer a nook of the ocean where they splashed and played and did their daily chores. It was now something far more spectacular: A watery grave.

Cecilia, one of the girls, stared at the bay ahead of them with wide and frightened eyes, but after a few moments, she laughed it off.

“If that really happened, my grandmother would have told me,” she said.

Frederico shrugged. “I don’t know when it happened, but I know that people have found some of the lady’s hair on some of the rocks on the shore. Paulo found a bunch of hair once. You can ask him.” Paulo was Frederico’s oldest brother, but no one could really ask him, because Paulo had left the village months before to help Americans fight the Japanese.

“Let’s go see what we can find!” Christina said, and she immediately ran down the dirt road toward the village, calling “Come on! Come on!” Every few seconds, she looked behind her to see if the other children were close behind.

All of them were. All except Fidela.

MARTES
(TUESDAY)

Just before Ida Panganiban’s face turned red like berries, she let out the loudest scream that Christina had ever heard. She was in so much pain that Christina wondered why she kept having babies. She had three already. All of them were gathered together now, looking at their mother with strange and curious eyes. Eight-year-old Heracleo stood still as a statue with his arm around his little brother, Renaldo. Fidela, Christina’s schoolmate and Ida’s oldest daughter, stood still and quiet, too. It was strange to see Heracleo so speechless and frightened because he was what Christina’s mother called an “active boy,” which Christina knew was another word for “misbehaved.” It wasn’t so strange to see Fidela still and quiet, though. Every day during lessons, she sat away from the other children and never spoke a word; sometimes it seemed like Fidela had become part of the bamboo walls of the schoolhouse. She was mahiyain, “afraid to even greet a dog,” as Lola would say.

The last of the monsoon had come that afternoon while Christina and her friends were searching the rocks by the bay, so they were all gathered inside the house with a single bed, open-fire stove, and little else. It was in this bed, where Ida now screamed and arched her back, that the whole family slept. Tita Ida’s husband, Jose, was “in town.” He went “in town” often.  
Christina had no duty to Tita Ida, other than those of a child to an adult, but she did have a duty to her grandmother, her “Lola,” who, as the village hilot, was delivering Ida’s baby. Christina had seen many babies born, but this seemed the worst of all, because Ida was screaming so loudly that she was even louder that the wind, and her face was so red that Christina thought it might burst.

Lola shoved a clean towel in Fidela’s hands, told her to wipe her mother’s face, then gave Christina a handful of bloodied towels to rinse in the water basin at their feet. Christina knelt at the foot of the bed, pushed the towels into the water, and listened to Ida’s screams, the wind, and the rain, while the water turned pink. There usually wasn’t this much blood, but Christina didn’t really think anything was wrong until she heard Lola praying. She hoped that the rain was loud enough so that Fidela couldn’t hear.

Christina was afraid to stand up -- afraid to see Tita Ida’s face explode and even more afraid to see the faces of her children, especially Fidela. Christina didn’t know much about Fidela, but she knew this: If something terrible happened to Tita Ida, Fidela would probably want to fill her pockets with rocks.

Fidela’s father, Jose, was a cruel man. Once, when Fidela was only five or six years old, Mang Jose sent her to town to purchase an armful of vegetables. When Jose discovered that some of them were bruised and worthless, he made Fidela stand in front of the village pump, where everyone could see her, and hold a pail full of water above the ground until her arms were so tired that she dropped the pail and the water spilled into the dirt. When Mang Jose came outside and saw the overturned pail, he whipped Fidela with a bamboo switch. Everyone in the village could hear her wails. There were so many wails from the Panganibans that they had become part of the sounds of the village, like the rain against the straw, or the mosquitoes caught in the nets. Christina’s mother said all they could do was pray, so Christina prayed almost every night for Tita Ida and Fidela. She prayed that one day Mang Jose would treat Fidela to shaved ice or take her fishing -- things he did with Heracleo and Renaldo -- and that he would come home with a dozen roses for Tita Ida. Christina would sometimes ask her father, who had died when she was nine, to watch over Mang Jose and teach him how to be good to his family. But then midnight would come and, soon after, the wails.

Christina had stopped praying for them months ago. She knew her father had tried to teach Mang Jose how to be a good man, but sometimes there are things only God can do.

When Christina stood up and saw Fidela’s face, she prayed again.

Ida pounded the mattress with her sweaty fists and shook her shoulders back and forth, like she wanted to shake away the pain. But it seemed to only make it worse, because her next cry was even louder and soon, none of them could really hear the wind anymore.

Ida’s shrieks had become so frightening that Fidela, who had been wiping her mother’s brow, pulled away and dropped the towel. Christina waited for her to pick it up again, but she only stood there, twisting her hands and staring at her mother, so Christina walked around Lola and fell to her knees to snatch the towel.

“Shh …,” Lola said softly, to Ida. She rubbed both of Ida’s legs.

Ida stopped screaming, but her hands were still clutched to the bed and her eyes were closed tight. Her mouth was turned in a strange position, like she was trying hard to keep the screams locked inside. As she sputtered and sobbed and squealed, Christina saw the brothers grabbed hands. Fidela only stared.

Lola stopped rubbing Ida’s legs, looked back to the spot where the baby was supposed to come, and motioned for another towel. Christina handed her the one that was damp with sweat. Ida’s screams had turned into quieter, yet stranger, noises. Whimpers. An even stranger noise cut through the howling wind as Christina squeezed out the towel to prepare for another trade with Lola. When Christina heard the noise again, she realized that it was Ida’s baby. Through all the screams, she had almost forgotten that they were waiting for a baby. It seemed like the only thing they were waiting for was an end to the screaming. That had ended, too – Tita Ida’s face wasn’t scrunched up anymore, and neither were her hands. She had fallen asleep.

The baby was tiny, even in Lola’s delicate hands, and he was unlike any other baby Christina had ever seen. The noises he made weren’t cries. They were more like gasps, like the sounds Christina made after she ran a long way. Even when Lola put him on her shoulder and swatted his behind, he didn’t scream out like most babies did. He didn’t make a sound at all.

He wasn’t pink or red like most babies were, either. Instead, he looked asul.

Blue.

Christina could tell that the baby was dead by the way Lola looked at him, but it was the way Lola looked at Ida that frightened her. It must have frightened the other children too, because when they saw Lola’s face, they immediately looked away from the baby and looked at their mother, who was quiet now. Her eyes were closed. There were mounds of wrinkles in the sheets where she had clutched the bed, but her fingers were relaxed. Her head was turned to the side, facing her children, with a mass of wet black hair splayed across the pillow. Sweat dribbled around her ears. She looked so peaceful that Christina feared she was dead, but moments later, she saw Ida’s chest move up and down with long breaths, and then she let out her own breath, without even realizing that she had stopped breathing.

Heracleo pointed at the baby and asked if it was dead.

Lola laid the baby on the corner of the bed, in front of Christina, and cleaned everything up. Christina didn’t want to look at the baby, but she couldn’t help it. She looked at all of him – his blue skin, the strange white circles around his eyes, his wrinkled little toes.

“Yes, but do not be sad for him,” Lola said to the children in their dialect. She wrapped the baby in a blanket. “His soul came down from Heaven for only a moment, but it was too pure to stay on this Earth. He is like Elijah, carried away by chariots.” At this, Heracleo looked around the hut.

“You cannot see the chariots, Heracleo. Only God and His angels can see them.” When she finished wrapping the baby, she picked him up and cradled him in her arms. “We will call him Elijah.”

“Shouldn’t my Mama name the baby?” Renaldo asked.

Lola looked at Ida, who had not moved at all.

“She did. Your mother told me in her dream. She told me to name him Elijah and to lay him next to her while she sleeps.” Lola put little Elijah next to his mother, then brushed Ida’s hair away from her face.

Mother and son were an awkward sight. They were very still. Looking at them gave Christina a funny feeling in her belly and she wondered if Fidela had a funny feeling too. She couldn’t tell if Fidela’s belly was flipping around like hers, but she knew that Fidela must be afraid, because she was whispering something, very softly. Something that no one could hear but her.

MIYERKOLES
(Wednesday)

Christina slipped on a soggy pair of flip-flops that were next to the front door and walked across the wet grass to the Panganibans, saying another silent prayer on the way. This time, she prayed that Mang Jose still had not come home. If he was there, she would be too afraid to go inside.

There was no sign of him. Only Fidela, sitting on the bed next to her mother. Ida was the same way Lola had left her. Baby Elijah was gone; Christina figured Lola had buried him sometime early that morning.

“Fidela?” Christina stepped inside and walked up to the bed. The morning air was heavy and buzzing with mosquitoes. There were several near Fidela and her mama. “I was thinking of going to town to get a cup of shaved ice. Would you like to come?”

Fidela shook her head. “I don’t want to leave my mama.”

Christina looked at Tita Ida. Her head was turned the same way it had been hours before. It was hard to tell if she was still breathing or not.

“I will pray for you all day, Fidela,” Christina said. When Fidela said nothing, Christina decided to step out and go back home. She wasn’t really planning to get a shaved ice, but it was the only thing she could think of that might get a lonely girl out of bed.

“Did you like that story?” Fidela said, when Christina started to back away. “The one that Tita Adelaida told us yesterday?”

“Yes.” She had liked the Frederico’s story more, but the one about the orphan girl was okay, too. “I bet that orphan girl could get all the shaved ice she would ever want.”

“She could hire someone to make shaved ice for her all day, if she wanted.”

Christina wondered what that would be like.

“If my mother dies like Elijah,” Fidela said, “I’m going to run away and live like Annie.”

Christina stopped thinking about shaved ice and instead looked at Fidela. “How?”

“I’m going to run away to America and find an orphanage like the one that Annie lived in. And then a rich man will come and adopt me.”

“Why do you want to run away?” Christina asked, and immediately regretted it. Everyone knew about Mang Jose. There was no use in pretending it was a secret.

Fidela looked at her mother. “There will be no one to look after me if my mother dies.”

“My Lola will look after you.”

Fidela shook her head. “Lola has to look over you and your mama. Everyone has someone they have to look after.”

“So do you. You have two little brothers.”

“No. They love their father, not me.”

“How would you get to America? It’s impossible.”

“I only have to get to Manila first. In Manila, I can find someone to take me to America. An American family, maybe, or Filipinos who live in America and are home for a visit.”

“They’ll call the police and the police will take you right back here. And think about Mang Jose. ”

“That won’t happen,” Fidela said. “I won’t tell anyone where I’m from. Or else, I’ll lie. I’ll tell them that the Japanese killed my family and then no one will have any reason to come here.”

“Lola says Manila is an evil place. The women there do things with men for money. And the streets are so dirty that you can hardly walk down them. It’s a sinful place. It’s where the devil lives.”

“No,” Fidela said. “The devil lives here, with me.”

Christina thought about the time Fidela stood in front of that water pump.

“Lola says God makes everything happen for a reason,” Christina said, quietly. She wasn’t sure she believed it herself yet, but it’s what Lola believed, and Lola was closer to God than anyone she knew.

“Your Lola says a lot of things that aren't true,” Fidela said. “She made up that story about the chariots. My mama told me she wanted to name the baby David. She didn’t tell anyone but me. She wanted him to be David. Not Elijah.”

Christina didn’t know what to say. She swatted away two mosquitoes that landed on her arm and watched one of them fly away and land on Tita Ida’s hand. Ida didn’t move. Neither did Fidela.

“Don’t tell anyone about my plan, Christina,” Fidela said. “Okay?”

“Okay.”

“Do you swear?”

“It’s a sin to swear.”

“Do you promise, then?”

The secret was a dangerous one. Christina now regretted that she’d come to visit Fidela, but there was nothing she could do but promise to keep the secret. Fidela must have seen how much the secret scared her, though, because she smiled and told her not to worry.

“I’ll only run away if my mother dies,” Fidela said. “Either way, God will take care of me.”

Christina took a deep breath and looked at the floor. A tiny spider scurried across her toes.

“I will pray for you all day, Fidela,” Christina said, without looking up. Then she darted out the front door and ran home.

HUWEBES
(THURSDAY)

Christina heard the knocks on the front door even before they were there. She opened her eyes and sat up in bed. Christina could tell by the shade of the darkness that it was very early in the morning. Her mother slept next to her, breathing softly. Earlier that afternoon, it had started to rain again, but now all Christina heard, along with the sounds of her mother’s breaths, was a low rumbling of thunder and quiet spatters of raindrops against the straw.

Lola was at the door. In the moonlight, Christina could see Tita Cecilia, Frederico’s mother, at the doorstep. The village was quiet behind her. When Christina saw Tita Cecilia and Lola do the sign of the cross in the darkness, she knew that Tita Ida had died and she immediately jumped out of bed and ran out the door to the center of the village. The Panganibans' door was open and lighted with flickering candles. Shadows moved across the light, but Christina couldn’t see anything that was going on inside. Tita Cecilia and Lola followed her to see why she had rushed out of bed, but before they could ask her anything, Christina asked them – “Saan ka Fidela? Saan ka Fidela?”

When Cecilia said that Fidela went somewhere private to mourn, Christina ran barefoot across the grass to the Panganibans, despite Lola’s cries for her to come back and not to disturb the family. Inside, Tita Ida was on the bed, covered with a red and gold blanket, with her hands folded across her chest.

Jose was inside, standing over his dead wife with his head bowed. Renaldo and Heracleo were on the floor at the foot of the bed, where Christina and the water basin had been the night before.

Christina cried “Saan ka Fidela! Saan ka Fidela!” but the boys only glared at her. Jose stormed toward the door, shooing her away, but she yelled again and again: “Saan ka Fidela, Mang Jose? Saan ka Fidela?”

Jose took large steps toward her. Christina scrambled backward, tripped on her feet, and fell into the grass. Her dress dampened. She blinked up at Jose through the raindrops.

He looked toward Lola and motioned to Christina, yelling at them before he went back inside the house and slammed the door. It hit the doorframe, then crept open just enough for Christina to see Heracleo and Renaldo, staring back at her.

Once she was at her feet, Christina looked frantically around the village, hoping she would Fidela's shadow behind one of the trees, or in the grass, or near the bay. But it was too dark to see much of anything except outlines of the forest under shifting black clouds. Fidela could be anywhere in those trees, listening. Christina thought of her promise, grabbed the damp hem of her dress, and cried. Lola asked her, again and again, what was wrong. With Cecilia and her grandmother watching, she told everything – the story of the orphan girl and how Fidela wanted to be adopted by a rich man like in the story.

She prayed for forgiveness while Lola and Cecilia ran back to the Paningbans to tell Jose. She had never seen Mang Jose look so angry and she thought that he would walk over to her right away and strike her across the face. Instead, he told his boys to follow him and he slammed wide the door to his house and strode into the middle of the village. Christina hadn't realized that she was still gripping tight the hem of her dress until she let go and her knuckles throbbed.

Jose cupped his hands around his mouth and walked through the sleeping village. "Child missing! Child missing! Wake up!"

Doors began to open. The men quickly came out of their houses and joined Jose, who told them that Ida had died and Fidela had disappeared. The more Jose yelled, the more Christina wished that she had kept her promise. He was yelling for someone to help him, but didn't sound like a weak man. He sounded like an angry villain.

Once a group of men had formed, they made a search plan. They would first move into the jungle, then the mountains. Jose said that Fidela would probably find shelter from the rain before she would start the long journey to Manila. He doubted that she would even be brave enough to stay gone and that she probably would never leave the island. A trip to Manila meant days, maybe weeks, of walking through mushy forest, finding fishermen to help her cross many rivers and streams, and finding her own food. Fidela was too weak, he said, to manage such a journey, and too stupid to survive in Manila, even if she made it.

The rain stopped while they were making their search plan and just before the hunt began, the sun began to rise. Christina saw Mang Jose walk into the forest with a handful of switches, and she asked God for two things: forgiveness for breaking her promise and enough sunshine for Fidela to get away.

By afternoon, Christina knew that God had forgiven her for breaking her promise because the sun was not only bright for the rest of the day, but the rest of the season, and Fidela was never found in the forest, the mountains, or the city of the devil.

The little orphan Fidela was gone.

II.

On the day the monsoon ended, 25-year-old Christina Villaluna told her daughter two stories. The first was of a yellow-haired princess whose guardian angel dressed her in a beautiful gown so she could meet her American prince. The second was of a little girl who had to leave the barangay to search for her blessings.

She told the story on the rocks of the bay, where she had once searched for locks of black hair. Seven-year-old Maria had asked if it was true that a woman drowned in the bay and haunted the village. Christina told her that was a silly ghost story – but she had a real story, if she wanted to hear it. She did.

"Once upon a time there was a beautiful little girl," Christina said. "God loved her very much, but she didn't think so. God wanted her to know that He loved her, so He made her a mountain of beautiful blessings. He couldn't give her the mountain of blessings right away though, because He wanted her to prove that she had faith in Him. So instead of letting her live on the mountain, she had to live in house of sadness. God knew that if she had faith in Him, and others had faith in her, she could make it to the mountain.

"One night, when it was very, very dark, she left her house of sadness and started her journey for the mountain. She walked through dense forest and saw many animals who wanted to hurt her, but when they saw she wasn't scared of them, they thought she was a brave warrior and they hid her in their caves and let her ride on their backs to the river. God told the animals they had to stay in the forest, so they couldn't help her cross the river, but when she got there, a man with a fishing boat asked if she needed help. She asked if he would please help her across the river so she could find her blessings. He was a very kind man, so he agreed.

"On the boat, there were many scary sea animals who didn't want her to find her blessings. Stingrays and sharks attacked the boat so much that the fisherman got scared and hid under his net. But the girl wasn't scared. She took the fisherman's ore and fought all the sea animals until they swam away deep underwater, never to be seen again.

"The fisherman was so grateful that he gave her a handful of pesos. When she got to the other side of the river, she asked another man if he would help her find her blessings. But he wasn't a kind man. He said he wouldn’t help her unless she gave him money. He thought that she wouldn't have any money because she was just a little girl. But he didn't know that God was on her journey, too.

"The man helped her cross the island. They walked for days through fields of grass and every time they thought they were too thirsty or hungry to go on, they would find food and water. When they thought they were too tired to keep walking, they found a tree with beautiful shade, or animal hides that could be used as blankets.

"After seven days, the little girl finally arrived at the mountain. There was a beautiful shining light at the very top. When she got there, she held out her hands. Her fingers were scratched from fighting the jungle animals. The insides of her knuckles were bruised from fighting the fish. Her palms were scratched from pushing away all the tall grass. 'I'm here for my blessings, please,' she said. The light embraced the little girl and carried her all the way to America, with His blessings."