The Virgin by Kerima Polotan

He went to where Miss Mijares sat, a tall, big some unmarried sister’s house, shushing a brood
man, walking with an economy of movement, of devilish little nephews.
graceful and light, a man who knew his body
and used it well. He sat in the low chair worn And yet Miss Mijares did think of love. Secret,
decrepit by countless other interviewers and laid short-lived thoughts flitted through her mind —
all ten fingerprints carefully on the edge of her in the jeepneys she took to work when a man
desk. She pushed a sheet towards him, rolling a pressed down beside her and through her dress
pencil along with it. While he read the question she felt the curve of his thigh; when she held a
and wrote down his answers, she glanced at her baby in her arms, a married friend’s baby or a
watch and saw that it was ten. “I shall be coming relative’s, holding in her hands the tiny, pulsing
back quickly,” she said, speaking distinctly in body, what thoughts did she not think, her eyes
the dialect (you were never sure about these straying against her will to the bedroom door
people on their first visit, if they could speak and then to her friend’s laughing, talking face, to
English, or even write at all, the poor were think: how did it look now, spread upon a pillow,
always proud and to use the dialect with them unmasked of the little wayward coquetries, how
was an act of charity), “you will wait for me.” went the lines about the mouth and beneath the
eyes: (did they close? did they open?) in the one
As she walked to the cafeteria, Miss Mijares final, fatal coquetry of all? To finally, miserably
thought how she could easily have said, Please bury her face in the baby’s hair. And in the
wait for me, or will you wait for me? But years movies, ah the movies, to sink into a seat as into
of working for the placement section had dulled an embrace, in the darkness with a hundred
the edges of her instinct for courtesy. She spoke shadowy figures about her and high on the
now peremptorily, with an abruptness she knew screen, a man kissing a woman’s mouth while
annoyed the people about her. her own fingers stole unconsciously to her
unbruised lips.
When she talked with the jobless across her
When she was younger, there had been other
desk, asking them the damning questions that
things to do—college to finish, a niece to put
completed their humiliation, watching pale
through school, a mother to care for.
tongues run over dry lips, dirt crusted She had gone through all these with singular
handkerchiefs flutter in trembling hands, she patience, for it had seemed to her that Love
was filled with an impatience she could not stood behind her, biding her time, a quiet hand
understand. Sign here, she had said thousands of upon her shoulder (I wait. Do not despair) so
times, pushing the familiar form across, her that if she wished she had but to turn from her
finger held to a line, feeling the impatience grow mother’s bed to see the man and all her timid,
at sight of the man or woman tracing a wavering pure dreams would burst into glory. But it had
“x” or laying the impress of a thumb. Invariably, taken her parent many years to die. Towards the
Miss Mijares would turn away to touch the end, it had become a thankless chore, kneading
delicate edge of the handkerchief she wore on her mother’s loose flesh, hour after hour,
her breast. struggling to awaken the cold, sluggish blood in
her dying body. In the end, she had died—her
toothless, thin-haired, flabby-fleshed mother—
Where she sat alone at one of the cafeteria
and Miss Mijares had pushed against the bed in
tables, Miss Mijares did not look 34. She was grief and also in gratitude. But neither Love nor
slight, almost bony, but she had learned early glory stood behind her, only the empty shadows,
how to dress herself to achieve an illusion of and nine years gone, nine years. In the room of
hips and bosom. She liked poufs and shirrings her unburied dead, she had held up her hands to
and little- girlish pastel colors. On her bodice, the light, noting the thick, durable fingers,
astride or lengthwise, there sat an inevitable row thinking in a mixture of shame and bitterness
of thick camouflaging ruffles that made her look and guilt that they had never touched a man.
almost as though she had a bosom, if she bent
her shoulders slightly and inconspicuously drew When she returned to the bleak replacement
her neckline open to puff some air into her office, the man stood by a window, his back to
bodice. her, half-bending over something he held in his
hands. “Here,” she said, approaching, “have you
signed this?”
Her brow was smooth and clear but she was no
beauty. She teetered precariously on the “Yes,” he replied, facing her.
borderline to which belonged countless others
whom you found, if they were not working at In his hands, he held her paperweight, an old gift
some job, in the kitchen of some unmarried of from long ago, a heavy wooden block on which

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The Virgin by Kerima Polotan

stood, as though poised for flight, an

undistinguished, badly done bird. It had come She was often down at the shanty that housed
apart recently. The screws beneath the block had their bureau’s woodcraft, talking with Ato, his
loosened so that lately it had stood upon her foreman, going over with him the list of old
desk with one wing tilted unevenly, a miniature hands due for release. They hired their men on a
eagle or swallow? Felled by time before it could rotation basis and three months was the longest
spread its wings. She had laughed that day it had one could stay.
fallen on her desk, plop! “What happened? What
happened?” they had asked her, beginning to “The new one there, hey,” Ato said once.
laugh, and she had said, caught between “We’re breaking him in proper.” And she looked
amusement and sharp despair, “Someone shot across several shirted backs to where he stopped,
it,” and she had laughed and laughed till faces planing what was to become the side of a
turned and eyebrows rose and she told herself, bookcase.
whoa, get a hold, a hold, a hold!
How much was he going to get? Miss Mijares
He had turned it and with a penknife tightened asked Ato on Wednesday. “Three,” the old man
the screws and dusted it. In this man’s hands, said, chewing away on a cud. She looked at the
cupped like that, it looked suddenly like a dove. list in her hands, quickly running a pencil down.
“But he’s filling a four-peso vacancy,” she said.
She took it away from him and put it down on “Come now,” surprised that she should wheedle
her table. Then she picked up his paper and read so, “give him the extra peso.” “Only a half,” the
it. stubborn foreman shook his head, “three-fifty.”

He was a high school graduate. He was also a “Ato says I have you to thank,” he said, stopping
carpenter. Miss Mijares along a pathway in the compound.

He was not starved, like the rest. His clothes, It was noon, that unhappy hour of the day when
though old, were pressed and she could see the she was oldest, tiredest—when it seemed the sun
cuffs of his shirt buttoned and wrapped about put forth cruel fingers to search out the signs of
big, strong wrists. age on her thin, pinched face. The crow’s feet
showed unmistakably beneath her eyes and she
“I heard about this place,” he said, “from a smiled widely to cover them up and squinting a
friend you got a job at the pier.” Seated, he little, said, “Only a half-peso—Ato would have
towered over her, “I’m not starving yet,” he said given it to you eventually.”
with a quick smile. “I still got some money from
that last job, but my team broke up after that and “Yes, but you spoke for me,” he said, his big
you don’t get too many jobs if you’re working body heaving before her. “Thank you, though I
alone. You know carpentering,” he continued, don’t need it as badly as the rest, for to look at
“you can’t finish a job quickly enough if you got me, you would know I have no wife—yet.”
to do the planning and sawing and nailing all by
your lone self. You got to be on a team.” She looked at him sharply, feeling the malice in
his voice. “I’d do it for any one,” she said and
Perhaps he was not meaning to be impolite? But turned away, angry and also ashamed, as though
for a jobseeker, Miss Mijares thought, he talked he had found out suddenly that the ruffles on her
too much and without call. He was bursting all dress rested on a flat chest.
over with an obtruding insolence that at once
disarmed and annoyed her. The following week, something happened to her:
she lost her way home.
So then she drew a slip and wrote his name on it.
“Since you are not starving yet,” she said, Miss Mijares was quite sure she had boarded the
speaking in English now, wanting to put him in right jeepneys but the driver, hoping to beat
his place, “you will not mind working in our traffic, had detoured down a side alley, and then
woodcraft section, three times a week at two- seeing he was low on gas, he took still another
fifty to four a day, depending on your skill and shortcut to a filling station. After that, he rode
the foreman’s discretion, for two or three through alien country.
months, after which there might be a call from
outside we may hold for you.” The houses were low and dark, the people
shadowy, and even the driver, who earlier had
“Thank you,” he said. been an amiable, talkative fellow, now loomed
like a sinister stranger over the wheel. Through
He came on the odd days, Tuesday, Thursday, it all, she sat tightly, feeling oddly that she had
Sunday. dreamed of this, that some night not very long

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ago, she had taken a ride in her sleep and lost her “I did not think,” he said.
way.
“Your lives are our business here,” she shouted.
Again and again, in that dream, she had changed
direction, losing her way each time, for It rained that afternoon in one of the city’s
something huge and bewildering stood blocking fierce, unexpected thunder-storms. Without
the old, familiar road home. warning, it ceased to shine outside and the skies
were overcast. The rains gave the world outside
But that evening, she was lost only for a while. Miss Mijares’ window a gray, unhappy look.
The driver stopped at a corner that looked like a
little known part of the boulevard she passed It was past six when Miss Mijares ventured
each day and she alighted and stood on a street outside the office. Night had come swiftly and
island, the passing headlights playing on her, a from the dark sky, the thick, black, rainy curtain
tired, shaken woman, the ruffles on her skirt continued to fall. She stood on the curb, telling
crumpled, the hemline of her skirt awry. herself she must not lose her way tonight. When
she flagged a jeepney and got in, somebody
The new hand was absent for a week. Miss jumped in after her. She looked up into the
Mijares waited on that Tuesday he first failed to carpenter’s faintly smiling eyes. She nodded her
report for some word from him sent to Ato and head once in recognition and then turned away.
then to her. That was regulation. Briefly though
they were held, the bureau jobs were not ones to The cold tight fear of the old dream was upon
take chances with. When a man was absent and her. Before she had time to think, the driver had
he sent no word, it upset the system. In the swerved his vehicle and swung into a side street.
absence of a definite notice, someone else who Perhaps it was a different alley this time, but it
needed a job badly was kept away from it. wound itself in the same tortuous manner as
before, now by the banks of overflowing esteros,
“I went to the province, ma’am,” he said, on his again behind faintly familiar buildings. She bent
return. her tiny, distraught face, conjuring in her heart
the lonely safety of the street island she had
“You could have sent someone to tell us,” she stood on for an hour that night of her confusion.
said.
“Only this far, folks,” the driver spoke, stopping
“It was an emergency, ma’am,” he said. “My his vehicle. “Main street’s a block straight
son died.” ahead.”

“How so?” “But it’s raining,” someone protested.

A slow bitter anger began to form inside her. “Sorry. But if I get into that traffic, I won’t come
“But you said you were not married!” out of it in a year. Sorry.”

“No, ma’am,” he said gesturing. One by one the passengers got off, walking
swiftly, disappearing in the night.
“Are you married?” she asked loudly.

“No, ma’am.” Miss Mijares stepped down to a sidewalk in

front of a boarded store. The wind had begun
“But you have—you had a son!” she said. again and she could hear it whipping in the
eaves above her head. “Ma’am,” the man’s voice
“I am not married to his mother,” he said, sounded at her shoulders, “I am sorry if you
grinning stupidly, and for the first time she thought I lied.”
noticed his two front teeth were set widely apart.
A flush had climbed to his face, suffusing it, and She gestured, bestowing pardon.
two large throbbing veins crawled along his
temples. Up and down the empty, rain-beaten street she
looked. It was as though all at once everyone
She looked away, sick all at once.
else had died and they two were alone in the
“You should have told us everything,” she said world, in the dark.
and she put forth hands to restrain her anger but
it slipped away and she stood shaking despite In her secret heart, Miss Mijares’ young dreams
herself. fluttered faintly to life, seeming monstrous in the
rain, near this man—seeming monstrous but

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The Virgin by Kerima Polotan

sweet and overwhelming. I must get away, she

thought wildly, but he had moved and brushed
against her, and where his touch had fallen, her
flesh leaped, and she recalled how his hands had
looked that first day, lain tenderly on the edge of
her desk 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 to him.

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