Lost Women

angela lanuza

Lost Women

i needed to get rid of the thing inside me.

Yesterday, the facility doctor told me that I was thirteen weeks along and that I would start showing soon. He told me that I’d feel it move by eighteen weeks. He made me listen to its heartbeat and marvel at the beauty of life, of the gift that God had given me. All I could hear was a death march. I know I didn’t imagine the narrowing of his eyes when he saw the bruises on my stomach. He doesn’t comment on them, thankfully. He asked instead if I’d been sleeping well. He told me to eat more foods with vitamin A and C, fiber, and protein. He said he’s going to suggest to the kitchen staff to make them more available to me and to the other mothers. He told me I’m too skinny. The morning sickness took away my appetite. He told me that his mother told him to tell other mothers to eat only egg whites if they wanted light-skinned babies. He laughed after he told me this. I just stared at him.

My Lola Carmen would be disappointed with me if she knew I was being so rude. Ever since I was little, she would tell me that my smile was a gift that I should give often. She always told me that my smile would one day capture the heart of a handsome man. She would probably think this doctor was handsome. Tall. Long and pointed nose. The kind of skin you see on foreign movie actors. He had a polite smile but I didn’t trust him. I clutched the wooden cross at my neck. The only thing I was allowed to keep from the outside world. The only connection I had left from my grandmother. I wonder if she had already gone to the market. Her glasses didn’t help her see better anymore. I helped her pick the right vegetables and right meat, and maneuver the streets, and avoid bumps on the sidewalk. I often joked that I was her eyes. She answered that I was her heart.

The only way I can get back to my grandmother is if I get rid of the thing inside me. I don’t care about what the Bible says about babies.

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I wasn’t carrying a baby. It was a kidney stone or fat building inside an artery, a sickness, a sickness that I needed to be cured from. It never wanted this. I didn’t choose this.

I lie still on my small metal bed, waiting for the morning bell to ring. I stay still because one move elicits a noise from the rusted springs. I didn’t want the others to wake up. My eyes remain closed because I have to look asleep. Regina told me that there were cameras everywhere. If I was awake when I was supposed to be asleep, the Brothers and the Sisters would know. They’ll give me a lash on the arm for it. You earn three lashes and you’re going to be presented in the colosseum. You keep earning lashes or you do something extremely unforgivable and you might disappear.

The moments before the bell rings are the only time I have to myself. The only time I can think and know that my thoughts are my own. The rest of the day is filled with the voices of the Sisters and the Brothers. When the bell rings, the door to the bathroom opens. I wear my uniform even as I bathe. I lightly scrub soap on my stomach. I told the doctor that the bruises didn’t hurt anymore but they did. When I stood from my bed, when I stood for too long, when I crouched down, I’d feel a sting so sharp that it was as if I was still being kicked over and over again.

After thirty minutes, the door to the hallway opens. The girls and I walk in a straight line to the cafeteria, named the Cornucopia. All the places in the facility had names, the garden was Eden, the classrooms were alphabetical (Antioch, Bethlehem, Canaan, and so on). Regina and I wore the same uniform, a light pink collared blouse and a skirt that ended below the knees, and a pair of white rubber shoes. It identified us as pregnant women. The prostitutes wore apple red, and the insurgents wore washed-up gray. We weren’t allowed to speak or come near those outside of our group.

The cafeteria at St. Agnes’s Home for Lost Women was a great big hall, the high ceilings and stone walls were painted sky blue with puffs of white clouds scattered around, peeking behind the clouds were little cherubs—blonde, brown, and black curly hair, dimples, and innocent smiles. Across the left wall was the verse, in bold letters,

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And the LORD God said unto the woman, What is this that thou hast done? And the woman said, The serpent beguiled me, and I did eat. Genesis 3:13. There was a guard in every corner of the room, a gun at their side, a baton in their hands.

I sat at the same table as Regina’s friends. None of us could ever talk about what we wanted to really talk about. Regina’s friends devised a way to speak their truth without actually saying it. The first time we met, Regina gave me a crumpled piece of paper. It was torn from the journal that was given to us when we entered the facility. The journal we use for taking down our notes for classes and our prayers. I remember her loopy handwriting translating everything she and the girls were saying. If Grace said that she admired Sister Beatrice, she was saying that the woman was a bitch. If Susy talked about how she was learning a lot from our re-education classes, she meant that whatever they taught us was bullshit. They taught me those bad words. Lola would call them unladylike.

Regina told me to swallow the paper later that night. We couldn’t leave any evidence, she said. We couldn’t let them win, she said. I couldn’t understand how she could speak of The Order as if they were evil. I knew that Regina had lost her way when we entered high school, missing church, cutting classes, flirting with boys. But, I didn’t know that her rebellious streak would turn into blasphemous acts. The Order of Maria Magdalena was an affiliate of the Church. They’ve been around since Spanish times. They ended the plague of witchcraft that our ancestors practiced. They made sure that we all followed the will of God. They were the heads of our schools. They were advisers to our politicians. Our president is very proud of his close relationship with The Order’s leader. They enacted the president’s abstinence campaign, which was supposed to counter the new disease that was spreading in the country. There were news reports of pregnant women dying by the thousands every day.Scientists and researchers couldn’t figure out why. The most accepted reason was that some women were just stronger and better suited for pregnancy. Others said that it was like cancer, abnormal cells multiplying where they shouldn’t, a thing growing where it shouldn't.

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I was part of The Order’s youth division, every school had one. We were the eyes and ears of The Order. We arranged events where we would invite a representative of The Order to come and speak to the students. We planned donation drives and outreach programs for the poor. Well, we made the money and The Order made sure to take it where it was needed. I was the secretary because I had clean handwriting and I was organized. I was a good example for all the girls in school. I had good grades. I never raised my voice. I followed and never questioned the teachers. I wanted to be like the Sisters of The Order. Humble. Generous. Kind. I wanted to be like the Magdalenas, the largest women’s group in the country. Their most prominent members were the wives of politicians, doctors, lawyers, architects, engineers, and businessmen. They knew their place and they did it well. They bore the children of our country’s leaders. All the girls wanted to be like them. Regina made fun of me for wanting to be like them, for being the way that I am.

I miss who I was. I can’t help but compare myself to Regina and her friends. Regina was a wild child. She bought forbidden contraband from some underground market—makeup, cigarettes, and marijuana. She needed this place to get her life together. Grace was something the church would call unnatural. She liked having relations with other women. I couldn’t believe it when Regina wrote it down for me the first time and I still couldn’t believe it now. She got pregnant by some process called IVF. She went through it in the States. She and her girlfriend wanted to start a family. I had nothing against her as a person. I just knew what was wrong and right. The other girl, Susy, was a prostitute. Regina told me her father made her be one for years. During one of her gimmicks, The Order found her and took her off the streets. When she got here, they found out she was pregnant. My Lola would have had a heart attack if she knew the kind of people I sat next to during meals. But, I needed them. Regina told me that they might know a way for me to get out. I just needed to earn their trust.

I wasn’t the best at making friends. Even at school, I stayed around the other members of the Magdalena Youth. Lola told

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me I needed to surround myself with good people from good backgrounds. By this, she meant anyone but Regina. Lola always said that Regina was the way that she was because her mother worked too much at the office and her father couldn’t control his wife or his daughter. My Lola wasn’t an easy person to please. You either fit her standards or she wouldn’t bother with you at all.

After breakfast, we had our re-education classes that prepared the girls for assimilation. It wasn’t very different from school. We were reminded that Eve, the first woman, brought sin to humankind. All women are born with the great capacity to sin, as we inherited it from her. It was our job to fight against these urges, to triumph against them. The Sisters taught us how to be good mothers. We practiced how to swaddle and how to burp on plastic baby dolls. They taught us the proper way to sew, to cook, to clean. How to sit, stand, speak like a truly feminine woman. The Brothers would give lessons on the bible. Today, it was Brother Elijah. He talks about the mothers in the bible, Sarah, Rebekah, Bathsheba, Elizabeth, Mary. How we should be like them, though we are nothing like them. He shares with us that he has two daughters. He tells us that he talks to his daughters about us. How he hopes that they never end up like us. He tells us that we are sinners for not guarding our virginity. He tells us that we are sinners for bearing children out of wedlock. He tells us that our children will suffer for our mistakes. I look at Grace, who sat at the seat on my right. Her pale skin had gone paler and she looked like she was on the verge of tears. Susy sat at my left, her face bore no evidence of what she was feeling, though I could see the slight shaking of her hands.

Brother Elijah tells us to repeat after him. I am sinful. I am broken.

God can fix me. God loves me.

After classes, we had lunch. Since it was Friday, after lunch, we were headed to the colosseum. I’d asked the girls about it the first time I had heard of it. None of them wanted to talk about it. The colosseum was essentially a huge circular auditorium. The seats all faced the center of the room, where the ground rose into a stage. On the walls, in the same cursive as found in the cafeteria, said, The LORD preserveth all them that love him: but all the wicked will he destroy. Psalms 145:20.

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The girls and I were seated at the farthest part of the room, so much so that we had to squint to see what was happening on stage. The lights dimmed, but a spotlight remained on the stage. There were guards stationed around the room. The doors opened and another guard escorted a group of handcuffed women. Two wore pink. Four wore red. Seven wore gray. I could see three lashes on all their arms. Some even limped. Some had bruises on their faces. I noticed that one in a pink uniform walked with her head held high.

Once they were in a horizontal line on the stage. The doors opened again to reveal Brother Elijah. It reminded me of mass when the priest is always the last to enter. He held a bible in his hands as he walked ceremoniously to the stage.

“Today, we punish the wicked and exact the Lord’s righteous justice,” he bellowed.

The crowd was silent.

“Before you, stand your sisters who have disobeyed The Order, who have brought shame to themselves and to your sex!”

He looks at the woman at the end of the line and calls her name.

He tells her to kneel and places the bible in her hands. He tells us that she was caught reading forbidden literature. She will be whipped once for each page that she has read. When she was caught, she had read fifty pages. Brother Elijah nods at the guard. The guard goes to stand behind the woman and proceeds to slash the whip across her back.

The sound of it echoed around the room. I could barely breathe.

The woman screamed and screamed for someone to help her. Nobody moved. Everyone was rooted to their seats, frozen. We watched as blood began to pool around her knees, as the tears and the snot rained down her face. When it was over, Brother Elijah turned her around so we could see the wrangled mess of her back.

It reminded me of the pigs that hung from metal hooks in the market.

It reminded me of the first time I saw a dead body.

I was thirteen. It was almost night, the sky was the color of a fresh bruise, dark purple nearing black. Lola and I were walking home from

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the hair salon, chatting every now and then, about how the summers got hotter and hotter, how the prices of meat got higher and higher. We stopped in front of Heaven’s Burgers, the cheapest and most delicious burger stop in the city. While the cook was preparing Lola’s original burger and my cheeseburger, I looked around the street. There was a woman lying down in front of a lamppost. She wore a bright pink tank top and short shorts. The smell was every rotten thing mixed together but much much worse. When I got closer, I saw that her eyes were open, still brown with a slight film over them. I wonder what the last thing she saw was.

I looked down and covered my mouth in shock and disgust. Her bluish skin was cut from the throat all the way to her crotch, blood oozing, organs missing, flies circling her nostrils, and her mouth, frozen in a scream. On her arm, I read the word, puta. I felt a grumble in my stomach, I turned my head and expelled every meal I had today on the road. The vomit joined the pool of blood.

“Mariana, stay away from that!” My Lola whisper-shouted as she walked to my side. She barely spared the woman a glance, instead, she looked me in the eyes. “That’s what happens to girls who don’t follow the rules.”

As I grew older, I learned that bodies were dumped everywhere in this city. At the back of the grocery store. At the front of my school. In the middle of the road. Most drivers don’t even stop, they just run them right over, bones breaking, skin flattening until they looked like a huge wad of brown gum stuck on the cement. The president told the public to leave them to the garbage collectors, anyone caught near them or trying to bury them gets arrested. These aren’t people, he said. Enemies of the State. Prostitutes. All of them were cut in the same way. Just like the first woman I saw, most bodies had words carved into the stomach, or arms, usually on the forehead, for everyone to see. Puta. Malandi. Makati. Madumi. Makasalanan.

The other women were punished in the same way. One was found trying to sneak out after bedtime. One talked back against one of the Sisters during class. One was caught stealing bread from the kitchens. The last one tried to manipulate a guard into helping her send a message to her boyfriend.

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The last one wore a pink uniform, there was a big bump on her stomach. Two guards held her arms as she struggled against them. She was kicking and screaming obscenities. When they finally forced her to kneel and hold the bible. I narrowed my eyes and realized it was Regina. Her hair was out of its usual severe ponytail, matted and all over the place. There was dried blood at the edges of her uniform's sleeves.

She slept on the bed on the right side of mine. It had been empty for days. Susy told me that she must have been given some sort of time out and taken to a meditation room or something. At the time, I took her words literally. Now, I realized that she meant the opposite.

The first crack of the whip shook Regina's whole body. I didn’t know if I was imagining it but I saw the guard hesitate. Brother Elijah gave him a look. He mumbled something to Regina before he raised his hand again to deliver another strike.

She didn’t scream. She looked straight ahead, her head held high.

One after the other struck her back.

At my side, Grace was howling, begging them to stop. Susy was trying to calm her down, telling her to lower her voice unless she wanted to be next.

Regina and I were neighbors. No, we were best friends. There was a mango tree that stood between our houses. When the fruits were ripe, we’d climb the branches and pick as many as we could carry. When her parents scolded her for her stubborn attitude or her failing grades, she’d invite me to join her at the highest branch, where we could see the tops of the houses in our subdivision and the little rectangular buildings in the city.

We grew apart once we reached high school. She found herself a boyfriend and spent most of her time with him. I joined the youth division of The Order of Maria Magdalena. We didn’t talk as often as we did because Lola told me to stay away from girls like her. I remember the day she told me she was pregnant. I had just gotten home from church with my grandmother. I was part of the choir. She was sitting at the foot of the mango tree, staring at some faraway thing. The clouds were turning gray and I went out to tell her to go inside.

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When she saw me, her mouth curved into a smile and she motioned for me to sit next to her. She was planning to run away with her boyfriend, to go live in his home province where his family had a farm. She told me that she was excited to be a mother.

She told me she wouldn’t be like her mother.

She’d let her child wear whatever they wanted. Become whoever they wanted. I asked her what she would do if she caught the disease, the same one that took my Mama from me, the same one that kept taking our classmates’ aunts and mothers and sisters. She didn’t care. She didn’t listen. She was too happy to listen. I couldn’t let her die. I couldn’t let her throw her life away.

I was the one that reported her to The Order. I thought it was the right thing to do. They told me it would be the right thing to do. I did this to her. I brought her to this hell hole.

Without thinking, I sprinted down the stairs and made my way to the stage. I yelled her name at the top of my lungs. Regina. Regina. Regina. I’m sorry. I’m sorry. I’m sorry. I tried to crawl my way up the stage. I needed to get to her. I needed to save her. I couldn’t let her die.

Hands gripped my upper arms, pulling me back. One hand tried to cover my mouth., I sunk my teeth into soft skin and tasted the metal tang of blood. The guard growled and gripped his fingers. He called me a bitch. I spat at his face. He took the baton that was stuck to his side and raised it above my head. Everything went black before my body hit the ground.

I dreamed about the day my grandmother told me about how my mother died. I was six years old. We were in my room, folding the laundry together. She taught me the fastest way to fold shirts. She moved her hands around so much I got lost.

“Pretend that your fingers are birds,” she said. “The first bird is at the top of the shirt. The second bird is in the middle of the shirt—”

“What are the birds’ names?” I asked.

“Yan-yan and Celia,” Lola answered.

“Hey, that’s my name!” I exclaimed.

“Yes, now pay attention, Yan-yan will fly to the bottom of the shirt and Celia will meet Yan-yan on the other side, and together they will

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guide the shirt back to the ground, tucking the left sleeve in, safe and sound.”

“Lola, I did it!”

“Of course, you did, my little bird,” Lola smiled and stroked my hair.

“But, who is Celia?”

Lola’s hand stilled on top of my head. She was quiet for a while.

“She was your Mama, hija.”

“I had a Mama?”

“Of course! Jesus had a Mama, you know.”

“Did she carry me in her belly too?”

“Yes.”

“Where is she, Lola?”

My grandmother took a deep breath. Her eyes were shiny and she sniffed her nose. “She bled a whole ocean just to give birth to you. When you left her body, her beautiful brown skin, beautiful, just like yours, turned to dust and drifted off into heaven.”

“Whenever a soft breeze tickles your nose.” She pinched my nose.

I laughed and squirmed away from her. “Or cools your heated skin or brushes past you in the night, that is your Mama, saying hello, saying I am here, saying I love you.”

My eyes felt like bricks upon my head but I forced them open. I squinted at the fluorescent lights. I was in a white room. The air smelled like rubbing alcohol. I was in the clinic. Grace and Susy sat on the plastic chairs at the side of the bed.

“How do you feel?” Grace asked.

“How do you think, Gracie? She’s been unconscious for a whole day!” Susy snapped.

“Sorry, I didn’t know what else to say. Congratulations for waking up hardly seemed appropriate.”

I snorted. I failed to control my lips from forming a slight smile.

“See. I told you I could make her laugh,” Grace said.

Susy rolled her eyes.

“Where’s Regina?” I asked.

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The two women looked at each other, then looked around the room. Susy shook her head. It wasn’t safe to talk about this out in the open. With the stunt I pulled, I didn’t need to give The Order more reasons to punish me.

“She’s probably sleeping somewhere. You know how she loves her beauty sleep,” Grace said nervously.

Translation: The Order still has her. We don’t know when we’ll see her again. We’re terrified.

“Speaking of which, you should get some rest too,” Susy said.

Translation: Don’t do anything stupid. We can’t lose you too.

“Do you want us to leave you be?” Gracie asked.

I realize just how alone I’d been for so long. My grandmother made me go straight home after my meetings with the Magdalena youth so there was never a chance to just talk. My only real friend was Regina and I betrayed her. I know it’s awful and selfish and horrible but I couldn’t tell them the truth. I needed them. I didn’t want to be alone. Not anymore.

“Please stay,” I croaked. My throat felt scratchy and dry as if I swallowed a whole desert.

They smiled at me. I didn’t deserve it but I soaked up their warmth.

They fill the silence with stories.

Grace tells me about her best friend. How they met at the school library where Grace went to study abroad in the States. They both grabbed the same book from the shelf. They decided to share the book. Grace would have it on Monday, Wednesday, and Friday. She would have it on Tuesday, Thursday, and Saturday. They both knew it was just an excuse to keep seeing each other. And, the rest was history, as they say.

“It was a good thing that I went home. I love my baby and I wanted to tell my parents about her. The Order told me that my parents told them to meet me at the airport.” She doesn’t have to say that her parents sold her out. She doesn’t have to say that she hasn’t seen her partner since. I could hear the sadness in her voice. I saw her gripping the blanket on top of me, her knuckles white.

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Susy tells me about her happiest memories of her father. Her father liked to give her little gifts every now and then. Sometimes, it was banana cue, halo-halo, or pandesal. Sometimes, it was a hair tie or a new pair of slippers. She remembers when she was five years old, her father punished her for disobeying him. She probably forgot to buy rice from the sari-sari store or forgot to wash a shirt that he wanted to wear, she no longer remembered the exact details. But, hours later, she was crying outside their house. Her father went up to her and gave her a banana cue. She remembered the sweetness of the hardened sugar and the ripe softness of the banana. Even when he sold her, he kept giving her gifts as a reminder of his love for her.

Susy tells her story in a flat voice, with no hint of emotion. She stared at the floor when she spoke. You could feel her pain in the long pauses between her words as if she were scared of saying the wrong thing or revealing too much. I knew what that was like.

After a long long pause, I made a decision. I decided to share the story I knew they had wanted to know since they met me. It’s the story that keeps me awake at night. It’s the story I’ve been trying so hard to not think about. I was tired of keeping it to myself, feeling it fester like an unwashed wound, feeling it poison my blood and weaken my muscles. I don’t know if I’ll ever be able to tell my Lola this story but I wanted someone to know. I needed someone to know how I got pregnant.

I started at the beginning. He was the president of The Order’s youth division of my school. We only ever spoke about what we needed to do to make a project happen or how we were going to budget the funds. He seemed so nice and so polite, he had gelled hair and he buttoned up his shirt all the way to his neck, he looked so polished and straight as a piece of paper. One day, it was just us in the club room. The treasurer had to attend their mother’s funeral, she died from something called an ectopic pregnancy. Our batch representative’s pregnant aunt recently died by her own hand. I don’t know if it was something I said that made him think that I wanted, you know, but he pushed me to the floor and pulled up my skirt. The smooth wooden floor dug into my back. The lights hurt my eyes.

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He used my skirt to wipe up his mess and the blood and then he smiled at me, he just smiled at me. When I got home, I tried to clean my skirt but the stains wouldn’t come off so I rubbed some dirt on it and told my grandmother that I had tripped.

“Now, you know. You know I want to—no—I need to get rid of this thing inside me. I can’t let it kill me. I can’t leave my Lola alone,” I whispered, looking around the room, wishing I could see where the listening devices were.

Grace and Susy share a look, an entire conversation passing by just the shifting of their eyes.

“Regina said you know someone, someone who could help me,” I pleaded, my voice nearly inaudible.

“We can’t. It’s a crime,” Grace whispered to Susy.

“If you get caught… if you get caught, what happens to the rest of us?” Susy said.

“Please,” I pleaded again.

Susy let out a loud sigh and took out a crumpled piece of paper and pencil that she kept in her pockets. She quickly scribbles on it and places it under my blanket so my hand could grab it.

“We have to leave now before Manang Nena eats all the suman at dinner,” Susy said loudly as if she were speaking to a large audience.

Translation: Manang Nena will help you. She knows what she’s doing.

“We’ll see if we can save some for you,” Grace said.

Translation: Please be careful.

My grandmother didn’t like to talk about it and she would never admit it but my grandfather wasn’t a kind man. She likes to think that I was too young to remember before he died. But, I remembered everything. She was quieter when he was around. Hunching her shoulders, casting her eyes down, making herself look small enough to escape his notice. Lolo had thunder in his voice. When he was mad, plates would start flying. I’d always help Lola clean up after. She never flinched even when a shard would cut the skin of her palms. Storms come and go, hija, she said. You have to learn to bend whenever you can.

Brother Elijah was like my grandfather. He was used to people bending for him. I cried out as the switch landed on the skin of my

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back. I was shirtless, seated facing the back of the chair, my hands tied with rope.

“Complete the prayer, my dear,” said Brother Elijah, his annoyingly cheery voice bouncing around the gray stone walls.

I say nothing.

Smack

“I said, complete the prayer. You’re only making this more difficult for yourself,” he was talking to me as if I were a misbehaving child. I hated it.

The pain from my new wounds melded together with the lingering pain in my abdomen and my head.

“And forgive us our trespasses as we forgive those who trespass against us, and lead us not into temptation but deliver us from evil. Amen.” I couldn’t stop myself from trembling.

“Now, confess.”

I say nothing again.

One smack and then another and then another and I’ve lost count. Brother Elijah told me that once I gave birth and the child was taken to St. Elizabeth’s Home for Lost Children to become a servant of The Order, he would take me to The Farm. The final destination of all lost women who died from childbirth or refused to be rehabilitated. They would put me on a metal slab. They would tie me up to make sure I don’t disturb the procedure. Thin metal instruments would keep my eyes open so I could watch as they picked me apart, piece by piece. They would take out my heart, my lungs, my intestines, my liver, my kidneys, my pancreas, and my uterus. They would sell them on the black market. No one would ever see me again.

“Tell me who told you about Manang Nena? Who told you that she could push the baby out of your body?” he sneered.

I betrayed Regina. I couldn’t betray her again. I couldn’t betray my friends, my friends.

“You think you’re smart? You think you’re strong? Who do you think placed every president in power ever since the Philippine revolution? Who do you think controls the Church, the government, the media? We have orchestrated this country ever since Spanish rule.

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We made friends with the Americans. We sold girls like you to the Japanese. We are everywhere. We are God. You think we don’t know what you tried to get rid of your baby before? You think we’d actually let a woman like Manang Nena exist?” He laughed and laughed.

“Will you confess?” Brother Elijah asked again.

“Make me,” I replied, my voice small yet steady.

I’m sorry, Lola.

I’m sorry I can’t come back to you.

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