A Significant Loss

8/3/2019 A Significant Loss

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A Significant Loss

To distract himself from his reawakening hunger, Qino looked out the window, pushing

curtains aside, to spy on the line of tricycles up the street. He counted fifteen tricycles and

reminded himself that he was no longer responsible: the drivers had all bought their own

tricycles to help pay the debts his mothers business had incurred. His late mother had made him

keep watch on her team of hired tricycle drivers lounging, huddled, underneath a shabby

tarpaulin, stretched into a makeshift tent cluttering the sidewalk. The welded passenger cars still

sported his mothers signature purple. Qino straightened up, a little embarrassed for his habits.

He latched the window as a tricycle rumbled past, blue smoke trailing like the apology he still

expected from his mother for stranding him in the difficult business of settling her life. She was a

large woman who loomed over her only sons life and she had left her small business in an

untidy knot. Qino found himself stretched thin between her responsibilities and living his own

life. He was, foremost, his mothers son, stranded in his mothers debt and her old problems.

When she moved permanently out of the city, to a small two-storey house she shared with

Qino, she established a tricycle andjeepneybusiness servicing the provinces just outside the city,

where she recognized more and more people were buying land and building houses. She planted

jeepneys in Rizal, along its long, stretching highways still uncongested with byroads. She

arranged trips along the rickety roads up to Antipolo and east to Cainta and Marikina.

Anticipating the impending prominence oftamaraws as a public utility vehicle, she next

acquired a team of ten.

By the time her son was born, she had earned enough money to buy a small, flat house in

one of the sprouting villages. She weaned him on traffic and lulled him to sleep on her breast to

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early morning radio shows. Qino grew up in a house full ofbiente-singkos, one-peso or five-peso

coins segregated in large cylinders, each neatly labeled. His early life was saturated by coins.

Once, left alone in their living room, he had crawled to a pile of large, two-peso coins. Maybe it

was the curiosity of all infants or, the reckless hunger he had that followed him throughout his

life, which impelled him to taste the fistful he had stolen. Qino acquired a large, gaping mouth

and a loud laugh when his mother fished for the coins before he swallowed or choked on them.

Every day, Qinos hands were grimy with metallic soot, as he handled money and

strangers hard labor passed hand to hand in an endless procession of jingling coins, broken now

and again by a stray button, a lost marble or the cheap silver cross severed from someones

rosary. His mother enjoyed sifting through the loot, occasionally handing him a jubilant, shining

peso to spend on the cornersari-sari store. Qino remembered his recalcitrant frustration

whenever he finished a small pack of chips or biscuits.

Once, having missed a bus from Antipolo to Manila, Qinos mother walked on the barely

constructed sidewalk, carefully stepping over jagged stones. She made her way around upturned

metal spokes and scattered open manholes. To her right, demarcated lots occupied by tall,

swaying grass, lit by fireflies. Behind her in the distance she could only gauge by slices of

broken, uneven sidewalk names in melodramatic letters to distinguish tracts of land and

domesticate the mountains. Life in the city didnt suit her, she always thought there were too

many people crowding the street, cooped up in box houses pressed against each others walls.

She smelled their dinner in her kitchen.

She mouthed the homeless syllables as she passed them by: Ridgemont, Janssenville,

Cherryhill. She counted the tricycles that turned into the barely constructed roads or stopped by


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guardhouses standing sentient to unpopulated streets crisscrossing upwards and softened by pine

needles.

She spotted a few taxis returning to the birds nest of a city; no ill-built buses crashed

through the gathering blackness, screeching like hollow birds. She thought the highway was

humming too softly, there was an essential noise missing from the smooth, steady droning of

vehicles on the road.

When, finally, she managed to flag down an overcrowded bus, she enjoyed the way it

lumbered, undisturbed, down to the city. Half-asleep, her head hit the thick plastic window and

filthy, dark green curtains as the bus abruptly stopped mid-turn, its driver honking and cursing at

the misshapenjeepney stealing between bus and curb. She recognized the squeal of rubber on tar,

steel on concrete as thejeepney heaved itself up and over the lip of pavement and gutter. The

jeepney slid past her bus, swerving out of the way, to reach the sidewalk. As the bus stalled, a

blind man, with a pail of peanuts and a short stick, clambered onboard. The fried peanuts salted

the air and dried her throat so that she turned away, ignoring his call for ten-peso packs oflutong

mani.

He did not move down the bus as she expected, but he sat down beside her, jiggling a

fistful of coins, the pail on the floor between his feet. Underneath his dark sunglasses, his eyes

were sewed shut with brown thread and she wondered how he lived against the shapeless forms

that moved against him and what a relief it must be. Like everybody who peeked at his shut eyes,

she wondered when he last woke up.

As the bus hunkered onward, his great bulk occupying most of the two-seater, she leaned

over to examine the roasted nuts cradled on plastic and sheets of old newspaper. She looked at

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his great bulk, the lines on his arms and the tattooed girl on his neck, heaping stories on his

blindness. He mustve memorized the way the needle ran over his skin to recognize the ink in his

skin.

Her eyes slipped over his limp hands, pale wrists until she felt him edge away, arms

folded against his chest, lips crumpled. She thought the blind man mustve smelled the dried

sweat between her breasts, the smog in her hair and stale saliva creeping down the corner of her

mouth. Embarrassed, she wanted to close her eyes but felt he was waiting on the dark planes

beyond sight.

Qino smoothed the pillows. While folding the blankets, he found himself suddenly

immersed in the full bloom ofsampaguita, his wifes favorite flower, while his stomach rumbled

uncomfortably. Nita sliced and boiled its petals, using the fragrant water on her hair, lips and

neck, claiming that the aroma helped her fall asleep.

He stretched his arms, straining to touch the ceiling veined with brown, rain water stains.

He had watched the ceiling descend as he grew taller and felt his bones stunted and crushed by

his mothers house and its ant-eaten, wooden walls. His old blue bedroom, into which he had

moved his and Nitas doubled life, had faded into dirty white a decade ago. Shadows from the

windows opposite painted it faintly pink, green or musty yellow. Dust clung to the tips of his

fingers.

Now, Nitas nightly ritual began with what fell apart. Last night, her eyes closed, she said

she removed the rotting cabinet doors from their rusty hinges. After she wiped them clean,

spread a sheet of old, mended curtain against the gaping hole and replaced the kitchenware. At

the back, she unearthed ten pesos in coins lodged in a small, forgotten jar.


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After the funeral Nita helped him with the long, slow procession out of his mothers

influence as they arranged his mothers room. It seemed to Qino that they were burying her a

second time as they sorted through her jewelry and locked the boxes. The body of her work

scattered receipts, notebooks of accounts, a dozen or so phonebooks, a couple of surviving jars of

coins no longer in circulation Qino and Nita assembled in boxes. They decided to get rid of the

mattress and deconstruct the bed frame, agreeing that an empty bed in an empty room invited

ghosts.

They arrayed her scribbled menus in cramped handwriting with sheets of colored paper,

meticulously organizing the receipts chronologically. It was Nita, checking a list of payments

made against debts incurred, who noticed the inconsistencies. After a few hours, a dozen or so

calls, they discovered a den of debts and payments overdue on which her business had been built.

Aside from failing to levy fuel surcharges despite the rapid increase in gas prices, she had lost

money, literally, from misspending her spare change. During the last few months of his mothers

life, she had amassed debts amounting to around twenty-five thousand pesos, which Qino

inherited along with a garage somewhere in Manila, full of rust-eaten spare parts forjeepneys no

longer in commission.

Although he knew Nita was happy to stay, his childhood home was only his mothers

house, occupying the space she had left behind. Qino and Nita contended with his mother for

every step. She had sustained it during the fruitful years of her business. Out of gratitude, their

house succumbed neither to flashfloods, which ate its doors and windows, nor to the pestilence

of insects. Their house had been falling apart steadily, the splintering wood decorated by dark,

deepening cracks. The tiles on their kitchen floors had begun running up the walls. But, now, its

walls seemed to constrict and expand with the persistent heat. It was flimsy and hollow without

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his mothers coin jars, her stacks of folders and boxes of receipts.

As a child, he had watched his mother, bent over a large book with grids and numbers,

her other hand balancing a twenty-five centavo coin between knuckles. She kept loose change in

numerous glass jars, filling them one peso at a time, enjoying the thin sound of metal against

glass. Qino always thought she wanted one of the great, glass jars to break and listen to the rush

and clatter of coins on the tiled floor. She spent hundreds, a column of one peso, or two-peso

coins at a time, on sporadic trips to the supermarket for ingredients forbukopie or special turon

with langka, which she never got around to baking, too preoccupied with nurturing her slavish

devotion to counting coins.

His mother adamantly mistrusted the heavy, large bank safes and scoffed at their

managers, necks elongated by the string of keys underneath their heavy, navy blue jackets. She

mistrusted the sleek counters, the way their tellers slipped money out of cashier boxes, and the

total absence of noisy coins jangling against each other. She liked to be reassured where her

money was going, taking pleasure in counting hard-earned money straight from her customers

wallets.

When Qino finally convinced her to open a bank account for her business, to keep her

accounts in order, she railed against him for a week before she allowed herself to be piled into a

taxi and driven to the nearest bank, where she grumbled, filling out forms. Qino did not inherit

his mothers disdain for banks. He tolerated their soft-eyed tellers and disregarded the irony of

security guards, whose bellies betrayed their disinclination towards exercise, obstinately toting

long-barreled, neutered guns.

When news broke that a bank employee had swindled almost fifty thousand pesos, Qino


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took his mother down to the offices after suffering a cannonade of insults condemning him and

his dangerous ideas about hiding money in some godforsaken hole in the wall.

Waiting in the air conditioned offices, Qino watched her remove layers of doubt and

mistrust, her hard anger and debilitating obstinacy, until her features softened and she appeared

almost bored. She slipped her scowl and the double knot holding her eyebrows together in a

strange, sharp angle, in a manila envelope, for her personal perusal at a later date or some

convenient hour. She unfolded a veil of complacency to hide her rattling nerves. When a bank

manager came, she extended her right hand, no longer shaking from anger or embarrassment.

Instead, Qinos memories offered her mottled fingers, the brightly colored fingernails and the ill-

fitting shirts she somehow struggled into.

She asked the manager about the crime, how the bank was going to make up for the

stolen money. Qino could remember her writing details down, a small notebook propped upon a

thigh. Commuting home, Qino had smiled at her: wala naman palang nawala, e. His mother had

turned to him angrily: naniwala ka naman. Although he recovered from his mothers anger, he

never forgot the way she consistently rejected most of his efforts to comfort her. To some extent,

he understood: he was her child, she was his mother. She had moved them away from a city of

blind men to build a life on the red earth and boulders of lower Antipolo. He watched trees trail

color, soothing his own ragged patience with the sting of the wind.

Qino moved towards the flimsy, paneled closet he had helped build. He was extra wary

of splinters and dead wood as he pulled the cabinet door open, confronting his reflection on the

thin mirror hanging off the door. He consciously straightened his face, refusing to frown at his

large, round eyes and his drooping lips. He settled his features in a sincere smile, thinking of Nita

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cooking lunch downstairs. Bending down to the metal-framed mirror, he looked for the soul he

was going to sell. With the same meticulous care with which his mother ignored the thousand

ants festooning the walls and the field mice shaking in the shadows of their furniture, Qino had

parceled off his mothers business and come up short to pay for the debts.

Qino looked around to his wifes dressing table tucked between their bed and the long,

low window ledge. He had been listening for Nita. His wife was a soft, silent woman. He had

finally gotten used to her padding barefoot all over the house, sometimes reminding himself to

sweep the floors once in a while. The precise silence from the kitchen was a contemplative hush

that fell thickly over the muted radio Nita used for white noise. He woke up calm, to a silent

house and an empty bed, the wooden floorboards warm from the hot air in the kitchen. With a

jolt that was almost physically painful, Qino saw how she worked on her cooking the way his

mother tallied biente-singkos. It was a quarter before one; the banks were due to reopen.

Against his decimated chest, the brown vein of thread, knotted on both ends to secure a

miniature depiction of Christ embossed upon cheap plastic. Qino raised his arms, examining the

pungent flesh already wilting in the heat. At thirty-give, he watched his stomach recede into a

tent of flesh as he rotated his wrists, flexed his long and knobby joints. His wife, too, was

exceptionally full-figured, the way his mother mustve been, before a marriage she would not

talk about, before Qino was conceived. He unfurled his arms thirty-five years strong. The room

seemed to shrink.

He pushed through creased shirts and the warm scent of decay and rheumatism; the mint

mothballs pooled on his coiled, little-used belts, ties and handkerchiefs, until he found a

careworn blue button-down, comfortable enough for the dusty jeep ride. Meticulous and careful


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with the buttons and his shirts thin fabric, he looked at himself in the mirror attached to his

closet door. He touched a smooth cheek, newly shaven. He was keen to make a good impression,

hoping to ease the transaction between account managers, the bank tellers, maybe even thesekyu

who mightve been ordered to barricade the door against men based on the opacity of the

shadows under their eyes and the grime coating their throats. Qino had scrubbed his body

immaculate with rough water, until he saw his hands purple.

He moved towards his wifes dresser where she kept a chippedplatito of loose change,

nothing like the vast collection his mother enjoyed. He let his hand hover uncertainly over the

collection of bronze biente-singkos, corroded, silver one-peso coins and a few, stray newly

minted five-peso coins, as he tried to recall the amount he needed to pay for the ride up the

highway towards the nearby rural bank. He had given up driving his tamaraw only recently,

when his mother and her business died and her fleet of tricycles, jeepneys and tamaraws

descended into an inchoate mass of petty, unruly drivers.

Qino collected twenty pesos and headed downstairs. He half ran down the narrow, high-

ceilinged staircase, carefully avoiding the jutting ledge of a small altar. A stiffSto. Nio

advocated peace with an imposing, blank glare. He avoided its vacant eyes as he reached up to

dip a thumb into the dish of holy water at its feet which Nita daily refilled. He came into a square

kitchen and its large, yellow tiles as he brushed back his thinning hair.

Under the long, thin fluorescent light, his wifes skin was dirty white, her cheeks

translucent. On shelves stacked above her head, Nita had removed two cans of sardines from the

array of red, yellow and blue labels, the flesh on her arms slack upon the bones.

She stood by the crudely tiled counter opposite the rickety balustrade. From behind, she

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appeared near formless as steam erupted from the boiling pot, raising a halo of hair and dust

mites. The loose housedress, its short sleeves cinched around her arms, floated above her ankles

and over her swollen belly. Large, bright redgumamelas melted into indecipherable splotches on

her small back, dark petals stuck to the nape of her neck. Although she was seven months

pregnant, she refused any help with cooking that her husband offered. She was adamant about

her place in the kitchen, opposite the flickering stove and the dining table with four sturdy chairs:

the only indication of their shared dream for two children.

When they moved in and accepted the difficult task of raising money for a mothers

rotting dream, Nita had been four months pregnant. They quickly resolved to settle things as

quickly as possible, to opt for the most convenient solutions. Neither of them wanted their child

born in debt. Once born, their family would take priority. They wanted to buy a decent life for

themselves, like everybody else.

It was a difficult pregnancy: Nita became more reclusive by the month, appalled by her

girth and the complete roundness of her thighs. She complained about missing her collarbones

but she seemed to be hungry the whole day so she cooked until the cupboards were empty of

canned mushrooms, tuna in vegetable oil. She cooked until she had no plates left. Qino

perpetually moved between their house and the local grocery store, newly penned short grocery

lists folded into quarters in his pocket. In turn, Nita fed him relentlessly, testing one recipe after

another, mercilessly hounding him: masarap ba? His mother had imbibed her, at least, with the

same devotion to his gastric satisfaction.

On the counter beside her, his wife had piled three dark-brown husks. Qino watched her

shoulder blades bulge, elbows thrust out, as she milked a fistful of grated coconut. Beside a large


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cup of steaming hot water, she deposited the ragged pile of white pulp, in the shape of her fist.

This was her favorite part of cooking laing: her hands ached, and her entire form shook, trembled

with energy and with, what she felt was, her strength of will. After crushing the strips of coconut

flesh, Qino watched her clutch the edge of their counter. He could hear her dry breath distend her

crumpled lungs. Coconut milk dripped from her fingers and arms. Qino moved from the small

space between the refrigerator and the staircase, carefully maneuvering around the pots she had

stacked next to the sink. He came up behind her, nipping her bare ankles with pointed, leather

shoes. He wanted to rub her back gently, maybe ease the strain and pent-up frustration that

bloated her cheeks.

Huwag kang magpagod. Are you cooking laingagain? Despite himself, Qino frowned

slightly. However much he appreciated his wifes attempts to expand his palette past simple fried

food, sometimes sauted vegetables and crude breakfast meat, sometimes he missed taking his

meals in a rush.

For you, I bought red eggs and large tomatoes. Nita moved to the stove, wiping her

hands on a kitchen rag. She poured the coconut milk into a large pan, adding ginger, onions and

thinly sliced pieces of pork. He watched Nita carefully add chili to the laing, tasting it after every

teaspoonful, trying to walk the line between spicy and wicked. She used a moderate amount of

bagoong, enough to compliment the tangy pork andgabi leaves.

Qino moved around the kitchen, gathering a bowl, a knife, two tomatoes and a red egg.

He quartered the tomatoes and crushed the grainy, soft egg yolk against the bowl. Setting it

aside, Qino watched Nita by the stove, stirring, waiting for the heat to separate coconut oil from

milk before dousing the yellowing coconut milk with thirsty leaves, stripped and bruised.

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She finally sits opposite him as he chews a piece of tomato, whose confusing sour and

bitter tandem of flavors startles him as much as her hand, upturning his wrists, tracing his green

veins. Qino imagined her hands on his face, smoothing his features into a dull stupor.

Kumain ka muna. Qinos stomach gurgled but he smiled.

Di ako magtatagal. The bank is not far.

Nita shifted on her seat, the bright husk of her neck shining with sweat. She spooned a

tomato into her mouth. Her hair, in a loose bun, jumped all over her face as the squatting electric

fans scabrous face turned towards her. He would be gone during their share of the city-wide

rotating black out. Unfortunately, they were slated to lose power at around noon so Nita slept

spread-eagle on their bed, next to an open window and power lines, her swollen stomach

exposed. She looked at the clock pinned high upon the back wall, watching the minutes stumble

past each other.

Qino shrugged and reached over to pat her hands. When they got married, the romantic

aspect of physical intimacy was overwhelmed by marital proximity. In the morning, Qino woke

up with her hair in his mouth. In the heat, his sweat, distilled with sweetsampaguita,beaded his

forehead. He learned to expect an unflushed toilet and the strangled bottle of toothpaste. When

he came home, he no longer needed to hold her. Somehow, the lock fixing their front door in

place, the violent pull and snap of rusted coil, and the faint smell of acrid smoke were enough for

her. She barely looked up from fixing his dinner, but he always noticed her shoulders relaxing

and she leaned less heavily on the counter. It seemed that, now, the things he left behind for her

to find sufficed to represent him in her life: crumpled tissue from lunch at Jollibee or

McDonalds on the table after dinner, left overkakanin from his train ride home and the shiny


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spare change from the LRT ticket machines in the bowl in theirsala.

Now, he hesitated to stroke her arm. In turn, Nita had become part of the furniture he

came home to, a fixed point in his life. As if to reassure him that they were moving into a

comfortable life, that she did not blame him, and he shouldnt blame her, Nita took his hand and

spread her cool, moist fingers white against his skin. Qino couldnt ask, but he was afraid that, in

her life, he remained transient, like the prayers before meals.

Magkano ba ang inaasahan mo dyan? He traced the doubt in her voice to a stubborn,

religious fear, the obstinate mark of a childhood spent imbibing weekly masses in silence. Her

fingers massaged his palm but he felt them trembling. He released her when she got up to

prepare rice. He wanted to air his high estimations, but he flinched at the thin echo of hollow

hope in his mind.

When he first heard about banks dealing in souls, something in his bones thrilled and

ached and he remembered the inflamed optimism that coiled around his neck as he watched noon

time shows, the studio contestants with fistfuls of cash. He remembered his mother had attacked

the new bank policies, clutching her rose-petal rosary. She had listened to the jingles on her

radios. She made the sign of the cross, guarding her body, and mumblingsusmaryosep.

To pacify his own brutal curiosity, Qino had called banks to ask how they determined the

monetary value of souls, how they collected, and who bought the souls, in the first place, but the

customer service attendant paused before answering. He heard ringing keys, the silence of stalled

breathing. A person entered his question in a database, and having found a corresponding

answer, Qino heard him exhale.

He said: souls are evaluated through a detailed checklist the customer must fill up before

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he may enter into the exchange, the monetary value will be gauged based on the customers

score, and the transaction will be completed when the customer signs a soul release form. The

employee on the other end paused, satisfied: would that be all, sir? Qino thanked him and hung

up. His mother had turned back to Wowowee, following the host facilitate a round ofhep, hep,

hooray. It seemed to Qino that Banks didnt have a monopoly in dealing with souls.

Siguro naman, dalawampung libong piso. Maybe less. I dont know. Qino rubbed his

hands together. Do you need me to pass by the grocery? He noticed the jagged stack of cans.

He felt his stomach growl, he hadnt eaten breakfast.

You should eat something before you go. Nita reminded him again. She washed the

grains of rice while Qino listened, reminded of his choleric mothers love for listening to

chattering coins in her pockets.

Nita peeked into the casserole to check the leaves gorging on coconut milk. She seemed

to nod her assent absentmindedly, preoccupied with the laing. She had learned one of its

essential secrets: never stir the leaves until much of the coconut milk had been absorbed and the

withered stems had become pliant and soft. She pushed the shrinking leaves closer together, to

stew in the middle of the pan and poured in more milk, a dash of chili and bagoong. Qino

crossed over to theirsala, set apart from the dining table and kitchen by a long counter and

Nitas carefully arranged set of framed pictures.

Qino picked up a folder full of personal documents a copy of his birth certificate, the

deed to their house, his drivers license and an identification card. His wifes tendency towards

over-preparation, made him grin. In addition to grocery lists, she diligently refurbished the

cupboards as dictated by her list of standard kitchen supplies. He had once come across a precise


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tally of all her clothes, possibly accomplished preceding their move from their apartment to his

old house. He remembered her recipes, collected in a neat little notebook that she kept on top of

the refrigerator.

Im leaving.Para matapos na. Qino called out. He saw Nita nod. He tucked the

envelope underneath an arm. The door snapped shut behind him as he walked to their gate.

Qinosjeepney clambered up the highway. As two more passengers squeezed in the tight

space beside him, he bent forward, almost hugging his knees. From the far end of thejeepney, a

girl split her coin purse open upon her lap. She rummaged in her pockets for an extra, lost peso.

When she found it, tucked away at the bottom of her bag, she passed along a column of fifteen

one-peso coins. Reaching across three or so other passengers, Qino lurched forward in time with

the tumblingjeepney: it braked sharply, veering to the right towards the sidewalk, nose pointed

towards the pavement and a woman in a faded red shirt.

Huddled within its narrow throat, Qino looked at the turbulent assortment of arms, long

necks and the deep-set black eyes, blinking back both sleep and dust. Everyone resembled each

other and Qino resembled them, and he sat calm, with a small, patient smile. Within the

quagmire of heat and sweat, he waited, poised and alert in his seat, completely in control of his

own body even as thejeepney lurched forward without warning and he allowed his body to

swing backwards. He had ridden injeepneys all his life his mother had insisted that he learn the

trade routes and corresponding prices. Until he was fifteen, he rode in front, next to various

drivers, learning how to scowl. He had burned his legs underneath the overheating dashboard at

last twice and developed a hearing problem by eighteen.

He dozed, half listening to the murmur of a song leaking from someones earphones,

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consoled by thejeepneys abrupt pitching motion, and how he imagined it was to be tossed by

the sea. Qino allowed himself to be jolted from the uncertainty of debt.

Qino repeated the first sentence he wanted to say to his son or daughter: anak kita, laying

claim to a life in a way his mother had always wanted to. Within the indifferent violence of the

metropolitan, slowly being birthed by its arid heat, congesting smog and the fumes of his

neighbors strong shampoo mingled with stale perspiration, Qino nurtured his shallow optimism

for a few moments, as he experienced being shifted, transported, from one part of his life to

another.

He often tried not to remember his mother. Qino had been a particularly unmotivated

child, taking pleasure in his ability to accept anything, smoothing everything underneath a pliant

smile wide enough to flatten the rough topography of both his childhood and adolescence with a

generosity bordering on laziness. Everything was fine, ok na yan. His mother complained: Qino

never wanted anything bad enough to work for it.

Despite himself, Qino smiled into his armpit as he clung to the bar bolted to the roof of

thejeepney. His mother would be so proud. Although he had successfully disobeyed her high

hopes for him he was only a finance deputy, a low ranking officer in a small call center

somewhere along the Ortigas avenue extension she must know that he was finally working

towards something. He hoped she watched him struggle with the debts cultivated by her own

paranoia. Qino couldnt foresee that in a couple of months, with the birth of his daughter, the

world would transform. For him, it would lose its quiet watchfulness, to become an unfeeling

spectator.

Instinctively, Qino turned to determine where he was. Crouched beside the road, the


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small buildings lay dwarfed by the noon sun. Fully awake now, Qino tapped the roof sharply and

thejeepney veered right, this time dodging a tricycle and a car.

The bank was nearly empty and the line of seated tellers was broken in two places,

possibly abandoned by two girls giggling in the restroom. Qino arranged his collar, straightened

the bent edges of the envelope he nervously clutched in his left hand. One of the girls looked up

when he entered. Qino approached her desk with a plastic job description pronouncing her a New

Accounts Officer. Opposite her, Qino settled on the edge of the plastic stool. Through a cloudy

mask of white powder and blue eyelids, she smiled: what can I do for you, sir?

Confronted with the task of naming what he wanted to do, he realized he had only

merciless, callous words from his own recalcitrant childhood. He thought: Im going to sell my

soul. For a few moments, he struggled and wrestled with his own confusion, as his words bruised

each other and his hard accent edged between soft syllables. His soul was hollow and airy,

flapping against the troubling finality of bought and sold. Tumaptanggap po ba kayo ng

kaluluwa? Gusto kong ibenta ang kaluluwa ko. The correct, flush adjectives eluded him.

Do you want to make a deposit?

Qino shook his head helplessly, rereading the small, placard in front of her desk, until he

noticed the poster. The bright-skinned girl stood, with tightly pinned back hair that emphasized

her sharp nose and the pointed blade of her mouth, half-smiling at him. Arms crossed against her

chest, she looked off, past the edges of the poster. Next to her, in bright yellow letters, the copy

read: peace of mind, set your soul free, invest with us. Qino pointed to the poster, helpless and

speechless. He coughed into a loose fist, trying to cover up his embarrassment. In the cool empty

space, as the New Accounts Officer rummaged for forms and typed a sentence or two into the

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computer on her desk as Qino squirmed in his seat. He had tried to hear his soul jingling like

loose coins between his bones. He had tried to loosen its fine stuff from his flesh and muscle. He

wouldve liked to feel it lie heavy in his stomach, maybe to clamp the hunger that nervously

smoldered underneath his anxiety. Since he had never felt it, he thought, the way he felt the tug

of his hair on skin or his teeth and tongue in his mouth, it wouldnt hurt him much to lose his

soul. Qino looked at his arms and thighs; it couldnt be muscle or flesh to be torn from his bones.

The New Accounts Officer could not have been more than twenty-seven, he guessed. Her

fingernails were short but painted dark red, and she wore two, thin gold bracelets on her wrists.

She faced him and, from a stack of forms underneath her desk, she handed him two pages,

stapled together, and told him he needed to answer the release form before she could open an

account. He wanted to ask how long until he got the money, how much he could expect, but after

handing him a pen, the girl had turned away to answer a phone. Qino relaxed, listening to the

exhausted buzz of their air conditioners.

An hour or so later, Qino rapped on the smooth, light wood counter. After filling out the

perfunctory contact details, he had moved quickly through questions about his family, their

living conditions and his own financial standing. He had expected questions about his health,

maybe his religion, but for forty-five minutes, Qino imagined he was the mother of two errant

children; would he turn them over to the justice system? Next, he was on a sinking ship, forced

to justify his choice to save only either his mother or his wife. He was forced to estimate how

many times he lied in a day. Does Qino vote?

There were three questions about the death penalty was he for or against, did he agree

with the abolishment of the death penalty, did he really believe death was the worst punishment?


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Finally, at the bottom of the questionnaire, in red letters, the penultimate question urged him to

estimate the monetary value of a soul. He did not hesitate. In the white washed bank with its

supreme silence he could hear no clock ticking, all the employees, as far as he could tell,

including the guard facing the street, a sturdy block of wood lodged between the metallic

handlebars of the glass doors Qino held his head in his hands.

Home lingered on his soft, old shirt and the tomato was still in his breath. He sucked his

teeth, a habit he slipped into when he was nervous and unsure. When his mind slipped,

exhausted, into a slow, black abyss, he felt himself recede. He felt hungry a hundred times over,

and he remembered, first, Nita exploding with their first child. He remembered his mother, the

blind man on the bus with sewed-up eyes, who saw his mother as a tumbled mess of sweat and

fear. The pragmatism with which the bank had worked out how to judge souls rattled him. He

scrawled answers to the open-ended questions with impish, thin letters crowding together, in a

sentence or two.

When the New Accounts Officer looked his form over, checking to see if he answered all

the questions, her eyes bounced quickly from one number to the next. She skimmed the pages

before landing on the essential, final detail. Satisfied, she stood up and slipped it into a bright

pink folder on her desk. With a tilt of her head, she told Qino to follow her as she walked to the

other side of the bank. She wrote him a check for twenty-five thousand pesos, the amount he had

identified as the monetary equivalent of a human soul.

The check was in his pocket when he took a tamaraw home. The New Accounts Officer

said they would call him when the payment was due. He no longer asked how they were going to

collect. He didnt know but, somehow, he didnt care. He allowed his head to loll to one side

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before he blacked out in a deep sleep. He felt his body crushed as another passenger yanked the

door close. He was still unused to the way the tamaraw moved. It loped down the highway

steadily and he usually felt impatient, anticipating the lurch forward that never came. Instead, the

tamaraws with their blinded windows slunk past the noisy, crusadingjeepneys. Confined in the

rattling room, Qino fell asleep, his head lolling against his chest, he dreamt about his mother in a

jeepney being borne up Antipolo where the clouds shuffled noisily out of the mountain, rustling

and pulling at each other like wet sheets on a line. When he opened his eyes just in time for his

stop, Qino remembered only the money in his pocket, preoccupied with his growling stomach.

When he clambered out of the tamaraw, Qino glimpsed a passenger in the middle four-seater,

looking back at him over her shoulder. He remembered a shapely mouth and full cheeks curved

upwards in a smile, her lips melded together in a thin, red line. She was listening to a friend

beside her, mimicking a laugh with a tilt of her head.

At home, Nita greeted him from the kitchen. She was wringing a towel dry.

Gutom na ako, Qino called from the door. He slipped off his shoes. Gutom na ako.

He sat down at their table, feet propped up on a chair. Nita was drying her hands, eyes wide. She

spooned a cupful of rice onto a plate and set it in front of him. She uncovered the tomato and red

egg he had pounded together before he left for the bank. She had arranged it in a white bowl,

hoping to please him. The laing, she kept out of sight. Qino sniffed at the mess of yolk and

crushed tomato.

This is it?

Theres the laing.

For a second, Qino looked disgusted. He eyed the bowl and tasted the bright tomatoes.


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When he finished the last of his rice, he leaned back.

Gutom ka pa? Nita approached him.

Oo, pero wala na akong gana.

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A Significant Loss