by Ysabelle C. Bartolome

Image by Mihman Duğanlı on Pexels. (All photos and videos on Pexels can be downloaded and used for free).

Before Purok Laon became a village of rumor and urban legend in the City of Molina––it was like any other purok in its  barangay. Houses of varying lengths and heights were stacked haphazardly next to each other, as in  a child’s drawing. From the sky, Purok Laon looks like a web of concrete houses and rusting roofs enveloping a faint greenish rectangle–the basketball court at its center. 

The basketball court, as  in any other purok in the barangay, is a multipurpose hall, housing the occasional village meeting, fiesta celebration, community basketball league, even the daily morning aerobics session. There is a concrete stage with wood flooring on its north side for events and festivities. Behind the stage, a mid-sized katmon tree grows, giving shade to a group of mothers gossiping about the people in the purok and  from nearby places. The tree and the stage give them a sense of privacy that is not available elsewhere in their community.

Today, a day like any other, the wives of the purok gossip about the demolitions being conducted  nearby. 

“My friend from Purok Ignacio said they will relocate next week.”

“Oh? What happened?”

“Didn’t you know about the fire in Guadalupe a few days ago?” 

“Ignacio is next to Guadalupe, isn’t it?”  

“Isn’t Guadalupe two places away from us?”

“Oh, merciful God!”

“And where will they take your friend?”

“They sold their land before the fire and got some money. Those who have nowhere to go will probably move back to the province.”

“But that’s too far!”

“We don’t have any relatives near here, I hope we don’t get relocated.” 

“Gaga! What can hope do?”

“Wait, why would your friend be relocated if they were not affected by the fire?”  

“You know why!”

A strong wind blows past the tree, rattling its branches, making its  leaves fly. The leaves ride the wind, carrying the women’s gossip to every house in Laon. Soon enough, the whole purok knows about the relocation of Ignacio. The gossip creates hurricanes of worry. The katmon leaves swirl around Laon carrying the words and the worries of the neighborhood. 

At the northeastern side of the purok’s perimeter, nearest from the city center, is a remnant of one of these relocations. That portion of the purok is a mountain of concrete rubble. Some walls that used to be the frame of a house still stand. There are beds with the springs turned out, a lone toilet seat, and debris as far as the eyes can see. The area is a dump site for all the trash that got caught in the broken cement.

On the other side of the purok, near the sari-sari store, an old drunk man, whose presence earns wary looks from purok visitors but cordial acknowledgement from the residents,  catches sight of a small fire flaring up on the roof of one of the houses facing the store. He runs to his house  to get a pail of water ready, hollering, “Fire!” 

Some of the katmon leaves lying on the cement pick up his voice. They bombard the neighborhood with news of relocation and of fire. Those who hear the rustling  leaves rush to the only water pump in the purok. They form a line, passing pails of water until each reaches the burning roof. But after three rounds of splashes, the fire is nowhere to be seen. 

A tall woman shouts that the fire has crept  two houses away. The villagers’ worries and water form a huge wave that follows the creeping fire then crashes on the unlucky neighbor’s roof.  They  hear a tiny shriek and see the flames move—no, jump— to the next roof–a brightly painted yellow roof. Someone calls for a ladder.  

Luna rushes towards her yellow house, now completely wet. The ball of fire drops from the roof and rolls towards her. It swirls around her, crackling softly.

 Later, the neighbors will swear that no fire had broken out.  But at this moment, they are still stunned. They examine Luna’s roof and find it undamaged, as are  the roofs of all the other houses they had splashed with pump water. But their astonishment is short-lived. Relieved that nothing has burned down, they go back to their daily routine. 

The next day, the leaves of the katmon tree swirl around the houses in Purok Laon retelling yesterday’s incident. At the corner store, the neighborhood drunk  now stands straighter and drinks less than usual. Instead of bringing the beer bottle to his mouth, his hands find themselves in the hands of his neighbors, who congratulate him for remaining alert despite drinking all day. But some leaves whisper that there had been no fire at all–only a large tabby cat that leaped from roof to roof until it jumped to the ground, strutted towards Luna, purring, until its blazing embers settled down the way a peacock would lower its train after a mating dance.

Meanwhile, Luna has not come out of their house since the incident. That night, she  caught a fever so high that her body was scalding to the touch. Every hour, her  mother, Pacita, had to wipe her body with a cool towel dunked in a mixture of water and alcohol. It was the only way to prevent  the sweat from soaking her bed.  All night, small wisps of smoke plumed from Luna’s forehead as Pacita wiped it dry.

Luna was mostly unconscious, but she would mutter a string of names  in a hoarse voice: 

“San Andres! San Miguel! San Nicolas! Santa Ana! Santa Cruz! Santa Mesa!”

“Apolonio Samson! Norberto S. Amoranto! Roxas!  A. Mabini! Dioquino Zobel! Ramon Magsaysay! JP Rizal! Don Manuel! Doña Aurora! Doña Imelda! Doña Josefa!”

“San Agustin! San Antonio! San Bartolome! San Isidro Labrador! San Jose! San Martin de Porres! San Roque! San Vicente!”

“Santa Lucia! Santa Monica! Santa Teresita! Santo Cristo! Santo Domingo! Santo Niño!”

Unable to keep up with her daughter’s feverish mutterings, Pacita spent her energy wiping her daughter’s body, while her friends rubbed holy oil on Luna’s forehead as they prayed a novena for her recovery. 

Meanwhile, the purok had its own problems. While Luna slept on, a silver van had squeezed through Laon’s narrow streets and parked in the middle of the basketball court. A lanky man emerged from the front seat, followed by three large men in uniform blue-gray barong. With a friendly smile, the lanky man approached the children playing basketball, handed them some mint candies and asked where he might find the purok’s chief. He told them to tell their elders that Don Jaime had a message for them. 

The usually boisterous and playful children of Purok Laon knew that it was not a good idea to mess with Don Jaime’s people, and so they did as they were told. Within minutes, the four men and their car were surrounded. The village elders  stood  anxiously as the lanky man and Aling Lily, one of the purok’s elders, talked.

“We don’t want your money.  We have made our life here. We  own  this land. Here are the photocopies of our land titles. We are people, not stray animals!”  The villagers cheered as Aling Lily explained their side to the visitors. 

But they fell silent when the lanky man replied: “We are speaking nicely to you now, Ma’am. This is not just a simple business venture. On this land will rise the first health center in the City of Molina, and in the whole country! I don’t want to speak out of turn, but you are old, Ma’am. But because you are elderly, you will surely benefit from this project. Some of your neighbors have already taken the money. It’s easier that way. If I were you, I would do the same.”

“You do not understand us. You are not hearing us. You cannot make us leave. We own this land!”

“Your titles mean nothing to Don Jaime,” one of the guards muttered under his breath. The lanky man looked crossly at him and instructed one of the men  to start the car. “We warned you,” he said to Aling Lily and her companions. “We’ll be back in a few days with the lawyers to negotiate the sale.”

The katmon leaves carry the smell of trash from the demolished side of the purok. Every densely populated residential area like Laon has its own version of this rubble, which the villagers know is within the realm of Don Jaime’s power.

Eventually, Luna regains consciousness.  She gets out of bed and carries herself to the dining table. A bowl of cold porridge awaits her. Pacita is  happier to be by the couch  folding clothes  instead of wiping her sick daughter’s  sweat. 

“Anak, what happened? You were burning up. I could hardly touch your forehead. Look at your shirts, they have burn marks! And you were muttering nonstop. I didn’t know what you were saying.”

Between spoonfuls of porridge, Luna tells her mother that she was dreaming: “It was the dead of the night, yet it was extremely hot. Even the driest of summers could not  compare. I ran as fast as I could to get past the heat–so fast that it was as though I had two pairs of legs. Before I knew it, I was running on all fours, bumping into things. I was choking, choking so much from the smoke, the stench of burning plastic and cable wires. I needed to pause and catch my breath. I needed to get away. I was dragging my choking body through smoke and debris. I was climbing up a roof. The sound of screaming and crying. Everyone calling someone else’s name. Everyone screaming, screaming in unison. Houses moaning before collapsing to the ground—.”

“Don’t scare me like that, Luna,” Pacita says nervously. “That sounds like bad luck.”

“I know this  sounds crazy, Ma. But it was as if I was there–Purok Guadalupe while it was burning weeks ago.”

“What do you mean?”

“I don’t know, Ma. All I know is that in my dream, I was burning up with all of Guadalupe. It was my body that knew this, and my body was on fire.”

“Don’t talk nonsense, Luna,” Pacita turns away, not knowing what else to say. “Now hurry up. You’re late for work.”

Luna takes a tricycle  to the city proper where she works in a corner bakery that always smells of rising bread and browning butter. She enters  the back door and greets the woman carrying a tray of unbaked loaves of Spanish bread. The woman  greets her back with raised eyebrows. 

Luna begins reciting her prayer of indulgence: “I’m sorry for missing work, Ma’am. I caught a fever. I even lost consciousness. I know I should  have asked a coworker to exchange shifts, but I couldn’t get out of bed. I am so sorry, Ma’am. I really couldn’t do anything. You know I am a hard worker. I’m begging you, please Ma’am. Let me stay.”

To which the woman says: “It’s been three days. We’ve found a replacement.”

There is nothing else to do but walk home. 

At the basketball court, Luna catches her neighbors planning a rally with some university students and community organizers–the same crew that had visited Laon in the past to help the villagers secure their land titles. Luna has seen them before, and knows they provide food at their gatherings. Although she is embarrassed to admit this, she joins the small crowd to keep her stomach full.

This time, the organizers are urging the villagers to protect their community by preventing fires from breaking out. They pass the microphone to Joseph, who says he used to live in Purok Guadalupe. They urge him to recall the fire in Guadalupe.

Joseph says: “It was two in the morning.  I know this because my shift at the 24-hour mini mart ends at two a.m. On my way home,  I saw a large cloud of billowing smoke  in the dark sky. When I got closer, I smelled it–smoke from the burning plastic—.”

Luna’s ears prick up. In an instant, she’s back in Guadalupe, twitching her nose, choking on all the smoke.

“My neighbors were all awake and crying,” Joseph continues. “I reached our house–so much smoke…”

Suddenly Luna feels the skin all over her body burn. She drops to the floor on all fours. Her paws hit the gravel.

“—very hot,” Joseph recalled. “As my family rushed out the door, I heard someone scream my best friend’s name…” Tears run down Joseph’s cheeks.

Luna is back in Guadalupe, jumping from roof to roof, running past burning houses, past a young man passed out drunk.

“—trapped inside his house. I watched his house burn. I watched our house burn. Still no sign of fire fighters…”

Luna is dragging her body past the burning bodies. Dragging a burning body through the burning houses.

Before Joseph can say anything more, the katmon leaves blow into the basketball court with news that a fire has started in another part of the purok. The audience scatters to find and extinguish the flames. 

Later they will say that what they were trying to extinguish was not exactly a fire spreading from house to house but a tabby cat, its fur aflame, dodging the pails of water they threw at it. Though its fur burned, nothing it touched burned or turned to ash. They will say that when they realized this, they began to throw random things at the fireball–stones, paper. It jumped off the roof and disappeared, setting nothing on fire.

But right now, the little crowd at the basketball court scatters. Pacita drags Luna back to their house, away from the mob. Luna, who is holding on to Joseph, drags him along. 

“Joseph,” she tries to explain, “I know this sounds crazy. But I was there when Guadalupe…when your friend…”

Pacita senses Joseph’s discomfort and tries to explain, “She’s been this way since she recovered from her fever. She says she knows things.”

“My body knows things,” Luna insists, “It knows what to do even when I do not.” 

She retrieves a used candle and a match box from the kitchen, and a katmon leaf from the backyard. She fills the bottom of a small basin with water, places this on a table. She lights up the candle, drips some wax on the water. She crumples the katmon leaf and lets the pieces fall over the lighted candle. Luna’s body grows rigid. She looks straight ahead as she says: “The man in a white tank top and basketball shorts is sleeping. He is dreaming of the time he and his friends are hanging out at the basketball court.” Then her voice deepens:  “Remember, Joseph, how we were thinking of what to eat? Cheetos that cost a fifth of your salary. Pasta that wasn’t red spaghetti. It was my birthday but none of us had any money. Remember the line of yellow ducklings that waddled our way? Now we had something to eat, you said. Do you remember?”

Joseph tears up once more. “Mike! Mike!” he calls out, as Luna comes out of her trance. “Do you know what happened to him?” he pleads. “Is he alive?” he asks desperately.

“He is dreaming of happy things,” is all that Luna says. Her body knows that her ability has nothing to do with the living. 

Luna’s new talent astonishes Pacita as much as it worries her. She shares her anxieties to the katmon leaves she had swept in a neat pile at the back of their house. 

News spreads about Luna’s new abilities. She and her mother now wake up to a line of people by their house. They bring  food, little gifts, and money. Pacita calls them “donations.”  Luna no longer joins the organizers and students at the basketball court. 

Luna quickly learns that she can only channel the presence of those who had died in the fires that had begun to break out in the  small communities surrounding Laon —the same puroks that had given in to Don Jaime’s offer to buy out their ruined homes, and were now abandoned. Luna wants to tell the people in line about the limitations of her new talent. But Pacita insists that she tells no one, and sees everyone. “Grieving people just need someone to talk about their lost loved ones.”

Things go back to normal. People go to work. Children play on the basketball court. Friends gather to chat. Chores get done. Less important matters become tomorrow’s problem. Day turns to night. Once a week a flaming cat visits somebody’s roof, but nothing burns in Laon. Children try to catch it, but every time someone gets close, the heat makes their eyes water and their bodies heat up.  Pacita and Luna make a life with the donations they receive. Some stray reporters get wind of the strange happenings in Laon. They visit once in a while, searching for their next scoop. But nothing about the purok appears on TV. 

From time to time Don Jaime’s men visit the purok. Some are uniformed. Some are armed. Some arrive with measuring sticks. Anxiety swirls like katmon leaves in the wind. The renters who hold no land titles begin to leave Laon. Some title holders begin to imagine what they can do if they take Don Jaime’s offer. After all, there are always bills and fines to pay, and children to send to school.

One day, the lanky man returns with his three bodyguards. This time, they appear with a tall man in his forties. The katmon leaves whisper that he is Don Jaime’s illegitimate son. It is his first time seeing the people of Purok Laon. It is the first time they see his high nose and pale skin. 

The lanky man  encourages them to sell their titles to Don Jaime. The money will be enough to start a new life, a life of comfort. He goes on about Don Jaime helping the mayor fund government projects. The resort they are building is a much-needed tourist destination. If the people of Laon agree to the sale and relocate, they would be doing the city a great favor. Don Jaime’s son  nods in agreement.

Aling Lily counters him, saying: “You sound very convincing. If we didn’t know any better, we might have been convinced to buy this promise of a new life. But we know people from the other puroks–the ones you’ve bought out. What you offer  for a single title cannot buy a house and lot anywhere else. It barely lasts a family six months. You might not think that life in the Purok is comfortable. But it is enough for us. We will never hand you our titles.”

“Don’t you want better housing? Isn’t Laon too small for you? For your children?”

But Joseph interrupts: “You greedy men… have not suffocated from the stench of burning plastic! You have no idea what it feels like to wake up to nothing. You are not haunted by the nightmare of losing your loved ones in the fire!”

The student volunteers and the lanky man’s bodyguards tense up, anticipating the worst. Suddenly, the stern expression on the face of Don Jaime’s son breaks and is replaced by confusion. Looking past the people in the basketball court, he sees a fireball jump from the roof of one house to the next. Alarmed by the sight, the lanky man screams, “Fire!”

“No it’s not,” Don Jaime’s son says, speaking for the first time. “What is that?”

“That’s just the fire cat,” one of the village kids says.

“The fire cat,” he said slowly. “Are those common around these parts?”

“They’re harmless,” a student volunteers. 

“Uh-huh.” 

The son of Don Jaime walks back to his car without uttering another word. The men accompanying him follow. The people of Laon receive no explanation as to what had just happened. Now they are unsure what is to happen next. 

After a week, the people of Laon would see smoke and flames coming from neighboring communities. But none of these ever came close to Laon, and Laon itself never burned. 

From time to time a silver van would appear near the purok entrance. A bunch of men wearing large thick gloves would scout the area. One day, the villagers hear one of the men shout that he’d caught the fire cat with his gloved hands. They throw the cat in an asbestos sack and leave  quickly. 

Since then, the silver van would come again, this time doling out payments to the people who decided to sell their titles to Don Jaime. At first, only the people on the outskirts of Laon choose to relocate. But after the silver van made its last trip, Purok Laon had shrunk to what the people of Molina now know it as.

Soon after, a tall cement wall is built around the purok, dividing the haphazard stack of houses from the red brick floors, manicured lawns, kiddie pools, wave pools, and other waterpark amenities of Don Jaime’s new resort. If you asked the hotel staff about the huge mural painted on the resort’s side of the wall, they would tell you that the hotel owner loved murals. 

The katmon leaves say that the wall was made to make sure that no fire cats can ever walk into the resort. But most of the remaining residents of Laon believe it was built so high so that the resort guests would not see Laon’s  half-naked kids playing in the basketball court, or mothers doing their laundry by the water pump.

If you ask the people who remain in Laon, they will tell you that the resort’s  walls  did not do them much good. Less sunlight and wind now come to the village. The katmon leaves hardly roam around the villagers anymore. Sometimes the smell of the trash and moldy waters from the resort lingers  in the purok. Barely any water flows out of their faucets, as the resort consumes so much of it. 

If you ask them how Purok Laon evaded the fires that consumed the rest of the surrounding puroks, no one can give  you a sure answer. 

If you ask Luna, she might tell you that soon after the fire cat disappeared,  she lost all her ability to channel the dead.  

Today, a day like any other, she dons a blue polo shirt with the words Splash Away! at the back. She waves goodbye to her mother before walking to work. 

About the Author. Ysabelle C. Bartolome teaches at the University of the Philippines Diliman. She likes reading women in translation and manga.