short of proof

During summer vacation back in second grade, my cousins and I had this routine of running all over Grandma's house, shrieking as we pushed the kitchen screen door open, shoving the maid aside, scaring the cats away, jumping over our wash lady's pyramid of laundry, and rushing back indoors, to begin the cycle once more.

By lunch time, our monstrous appetites could only be appeased by Grandma's cooking, particularly her sinigang na baboy sa sampaloc. We would heave rice on our plates and fish out the long green chili from the soup bowl and crush it in our small bowl filled with patis—this as we recounted how many times Loloy tripped on his own toes, if Yeeyee's dress got snagged again on the Aratiles trees lining up the looban pathway, and how many times I bit my own tongue while talking loud and fast as we ran.

Rest after lunch meant a ceasefire on shrieking, running, and teasing each other. After that we bathed, and went through the obligatory rub of prickly heat powder on our necks and napes and backs. And like sleepy penguins, we would hobble inevitably to the bamboo papag in Grandma's garden, that open space between her room and Yeeyee's mother's sewing shop. The afternoon sleepy trance would take over, and we would doze off in the garden, which remained cool despite whatever slant the afternoon sun took.

After one such long morning of running and a grand lunch of Grandmother's cooking, I found myself staring at the snoring faces of my cousins. I wanted to wake them up, and remind them not to sleep right after a hearty meal, because that would give you nightmares, but I was fast sinking into sleep myself.

I remember waking up, still dazed, but I managed to stagger to the covered drain near the pathway, to pee. Our wash lady waved to me from the other end of the pathway, which stretched four rooms beginning with Grandma's, and ended in an open-air wash area. A breeze must have lifted the white bed sheets and shirts, sending them sideways, tugging at the clotheslines. A wall, whose cemented bricks were greened by moss, enclosed the pathway's right as the room windows did on the left. I waved back to the sheets, waved back to our wash lady.

The lights had not been turned on, as they usually were by nightfall. I rubbed my sleepy eyes, looked back, and saw my cousins snoring into the pillows they hugged on the papag. At the wash area, white sheets and shirts still swayed to a cold, whispering evening wind. I shivered as I worked with my shorts. Moonlight had magnified the concrete pathway into pale gray, darkened the moss wall to an ominous hue, and made the flowing white sheets emit a strange and humming white brilliance.

Rubbing my eyes with my right hand, and holding my shorts down with the other, I peed. Then, the wash lady waved at me again, all the way from the wash area. I smiled back, taking my hand away from my eyes to wave back weakly. All that sinigang must have made me slow and dizzy.

The wash lady stood up and stared at me.

I had never seen her hair that long, her dress that white. I had never seen her walk without moving her legs. She was never that pale. That was not our wash lady.

Quick shallow breaths fogged out of my mouth. I couldn't feel my legs.

She was halfway across the pathway, past two rooms, and I shut my eyes because I could see hers: they had no whites in them. And I saw why she didn't move her legs: under her long dress protruded none.

Loloy's name managed to whimper its way out of my dry throat. I pounded on the mossed wall, hoping the sound would get someone's attention.

I opened my eyes again. Her translucent dress from another era barely moved as she hovered, just one room away from me, on legs that weren't there.

I pounded and pounded. If only palms slamming on concrete made the same sound they did on plywood.

I could still pee but nothing wanted to come out. I leaned on the wall and pushed against it, hard, sending me flat on my back and coughing thin, cold air when I hit the ground.

Eyes squeezed shut I covered my face with my arms, as though bracing for a blow.
Nothing happened. I opened one eye to squint: she was gone.

I crawled to the papag as fast as I could, not trusting the wash lady's disappearance, expecting a bony hand on my nape any moment. I pulled the pillow from Loloy's tight embrace, annoying him awake. He sat up, grabbed the pillow from me and hit me with it.

“May momo, Loloy,” I whispered, not wanting to turn around.

“Ano?” he said.

Then it left us. The cold air was gone. My breath had ceased to mist when I exhaled. My voice was back. I could move my legs again. Moonlight was simply moonlight once more. I turned around to face a familiar but dimly-lit pathway.

“Ano sabi mo, Kuya?” Yeeyee asked. She was awake, too.

And I was going to tell them what I saw, what almost got me. But all I had to show were my mossed hands and my wet shorts.

I never told them.