DWP - lost in the jungle

Leigh slithers down the fireman's pole wearing a pair of white lace thong panties, skimpy see-through brassieres and large angel wings. Her audience, mostly well-dressed men, and the occasional older women, for a moment stare in awe of her body's agility. She sees Dorian, the club's manager, sitting at his usual table with a new customer. She smiles at them; she knows it would be more money for her. She tries to think what she would do to this man when the sight of Henry tending the bar catches her.

Ah, dear old Henry. She tries to remember how tender he used to touch her, like she was a delicate crystal. Henry wanted her to quit her job and marry him. He said he'd give her everything she wanted. She wanted to believe him, but she was not a fool.

She is "damaged goods". No man in his right mind would marry someone like her. She who had been with hundreds, perhaps thousands of men. All for money. Only money can make her happy, that's what she has conditioned herself to believe. And Dorian brings her the men who would give her money, spend their money on her - jewellery, cars, vacations to places like Bali, Fiji, the Azores, the Riviera. What more can a woman as beautiful as her want?

As she moves her hips and surveys the hungry looks in the eyes of her audience, she suddenly remembers the day she told Henry that she was pregnant. He looked happy, but she was in a panic. She cannot be pregnant. Her body is her fortune. The money would stop. Dorian told her so. When she went to that secret clinic out of town, she knew she didn't only lose the child, but also her soul. Life is a great big jungle and she is so lost in it.

PROMPT - a secret revealed

From Judy Reeves' "A Writer's Book of Days" - "Write about a time you found out about something you weren't supposed to know."


A Secret Revealed

Aunt Leena tosses her tenth bottle of beer on the floor. She giggles and slaps her hand on the table then staggers to the kitchen and comes back with another opened beer bottle in her hand.

"Don't you think you had enough?" Lulu asks, concern etched in her face, but she says this with a smile.

"You don't know me," she jabs a thumb at her chest. She motions the hand holding the beer bottle towards me. "Ask your friend here," she says grinning at me, "C'mon, tell Lulu how many bottles I can down normally in one afternoon."

I chuckle as I remember the many Sunday afternoons Aunt Leena spent at our house just drinking beer. On the fifth bottle, she would become invariably obnoxious, or dramatic, or sentimental, depending on what was going on in her life. Aunt Leena is a lesbian, had been in and out of many failed relationships with women. When she had had more than seven bottles, one can bet, if you know someone she knows who has a secret, she would be sharing that secret with you.

I haven't seen Aunt Leena in a long time. She has been here in Singapore for almost five years. My friend Lulu and I are touring Southeast Asia, doing some shopping for our little boutique back home, and since we are in the area, I deem it would be a good idea to call on her.

I wink at Lulu who mouths her concern for Aunt Leena. I shake my head, meaning not to worry. First of all we are in Aunt Leena's own apartment so in all likelihood she would just fall asleep anytime.

Presently, Aunt Leena gets up and retrieves a photo album from a small bookcase. She flops down beside Lulu on the sofa, opens the album and identifies the people on the photographs. Some of the photographs are old and some of which I had seen before as a young girl because we had copies of them at home. She turns the page and fingers the edge of the sepia photograph. She is quiet and for a while Lulu and I surmise she is about to fall asleep. But she isn't.

"Here," she mumbles, "this is my yayah." Suddenly, she is crying. Lulu looks confused.

"It's the alcohol," I say.

"No," Aunt Leena says. "I just feel sorry for my yayah."

I stand up and look at the picture. It shows three toddlers on a bench, one not quite two years old, the second about four, the third is aged about six or seven. Behind the bench stand two young girls, Yayah about 14 or 15 at the time, and one of their older cousins. Yayah was my late mother. Aunt Leena was born when the war broke out in the Philippines. Their family was very poor and all children stopped going to school to find work in neighboring farms. Yayah was left at home to take care of the household and the new baby. That was how she was called Yayah, which means "Nanny".

"Well," I say, suddenly feeling nostalgic for my mother who had passed away some twelve or so years ago. "She's in a better place now. Let go then."

Aunt Leena continues to cry. "Yayah! My poor yayah!"

I grab the photo album to put it away. Lulu tells Aunt Leena that she has better sleep off the alcohol. I look at the photograph. We had one like that at home. My mother always hid it in her cabinet, along with a few other old photographs. Once I remember seeing it and asking her who those children are. Mother explained that the baby was Aunt Leena, the bigger child Aunt Merce and the taller child a cousin.

"You were a pretty baby, Aunt Leena," I tell her. "But what happened to you?" I say this laughing to lighten the situation for she is still bawling herself. Lulu makes a small laugh and tells me I am bad.

Aunt Leena grabs the album. "Yes, I was about four in this picture."

"No, this is you," I correct her and point to the youngest toddler on the bench.

"That's not me," she defiantly says. "They had you believe that this is me and this is Merce and this is someone else. But look closely."

I know I had stumbled upon what is like a gold mine. For years, after looking at those old pictures, I had suspected that the eight-year old child looked more like Aunt Merce. But then Aunt Leena, my mother and their other siblings all had the distinctive look of their parents, wide brown eyes, thick brows and lashes, wavy black hair, full lips, rounded nose, high cheekbones, and freckles. Whenever I would tell my mother about who should be those children in the pictures were, I always got scolded. What the hell do I know? I wasn't there? It's her picture, it's her siblings and relatives. She ought to know who those people are in the picture! After that, it would be a long time before we got to see the picture again.

"Sooooo," I tell Aunt Leena, "I have always told Mother that she got the picture wrong. That this is you, and this is Aunt Merce."

"Yes," Aunt Leena answers.

"So who is this baby? Whose baby is she? And why did you, guys, insist on getting yourselves mixed up about that?"

"That's my yayah's baby."

I feel my ears turning red. This is certainly unexpected. I have always thought the baby could've been someone else's. But I quickly do the math. My mother would have been 14 in the picture. No more than 15.

"Excuse me?" I say. I see Lulu's mouth gape, her eyes widen.

"That's your half-sister," says Aunt Leena.

"You are definitely very drunk. Mother could not have been more than 15 here."

In my mind, I know I am not stupid. Biology was my favourite subject in high school. I was tops in my class. I knew enough about sex and biology and that a girl, once menstruating, and has had coitus, with a man, of course, would be capable of getting pregnant.

"That's right. I'm very drunk and yayah was 15 in that picture."

I look at her in shock. Then I remember that I had an older sister who died of diptheria before her first birthday.

"Is that Herminia?" I ask.

"No," comes the reply.

"Tell me about it then." I lay back on the lounge chair and put my feet on the coffee table, interlock my fingers and rest my hands on my stomach.

"Are you sure you're ready to hear this, Virginia?" Lulu asks.

Aunt Leena continues to stare at the photograph.

Our father died before I was born. There was the war. Our mother needed to have a man in the house, for safety, you know. So she married again. My older brother and sisters did not approve of it but they couldn't do anything. The man had his own farm and he was able to feed all of us.

Yayah was a very pretty girl, I'm sure you know that. She was left at home to care for me and to do the house chores while everyone else worked the field. One day our stepfather came home at lunch and raped yayah. He threatened her but eventually she had to tell our mother what happened. But no one could do anything. If our mother would ask her husband to leave, we would have no food. Because of that, my mother's health started to fail. My older brother and three sisters left home. Yayah and I were sent to Manila. After yayah gave birth, we came back and our mother owned the child. But of course, everyone in the village knew what happened because our stepfather told everyone. Out stepfather was shot by the Japanese shortly before the liberation. Being married to my mother, his farm and the house went to our mother. She had always said she had paid a high price for those properties. She felt guilty about yayah. When the opportunity for yayah to marry your father came, they grabbed at that chance. That was why yayah was like a meek lamb with your father. She was damaged goods but your father still took her for a wife.

"Where is that baby now?" I ask her. I am torn between hating that child and wanting to see her at the same time. To think that somewhere I have an older sister rouse such interest in me. I know that our family had a big secret about my father. But now, this. This is totally unexpected. This one was a closely guarded secret. But I remember hearing hushed conversations from the older folks that had double meaning. This is one of those stories.

"She died when she was about two or three," Aunt Leena says softly. Her lids are getting heavier and I am afraid she would fall asleep and I would never know the end of the story. "Diptheria."

"So, just to make sure, this baby and Herminia are two different babies."

"Yes."

"Will you look at that!" is all I could say.

(tbc)

PROMPT - my ideal place

A quaint three-bedroom house situated in Summerside, PEI, facing the Northumberland Strait. The house is of white bricks with blue-green ceramic roof tiles. The floor to ceiling bay windows cover the length of the living room overlooking the sea and the kitchen has the same type of bay window. There is a veranda on the one side of the house, large enough to entertain during the summer.

I can just sit in the living forever and stare at the sea, sometimes blue, sometimes gray, depending on the weather, and watch as the tide comes and goes. To the north, there is a smaller room with French doors where I keep my books and a small desk where I do my writing. The sea is my muse, as well as the beautiful garden in the front yard.

On good days, especially during the summer, I tackle the long walk through the garden, down the steep rise to the shore, where I can sit on the sand and watch and listen to the waves that kiss and wash up the sands off my feet.

DWP - up for auction (prompt)

The screams and shrieks penetrate through the heavy drape concealing the backstage where Jandrick, examining himself through the large mirror, waits for his name to be called.

When he hears his name, he steps onto the stage, his body glistening in the bright kleigh light, and adjusts the long heavy chain made of 18-karat gold on his neck, the large pendant encrusted with hundreds of tiny diamonds reaching just above his pubis, sparkling as he moves about.

The auctioneer calls, "With a reserved bid of $500,000, Jandrick will satisfy all your sexual desires, in all positions you can ever think possible, and while he's a very versatile lover, he is also a trained classical pianist, an accomplished chef, and a certified car mechanic."

"The jewelry, of course," he pauses briefly, adjusts his tie, and solemnly clears his throat as the women start to salivate gawking at Jandrick's mid-section, "is extra."

DWP - the ghosts of St. George's Cathedral

We have come for you, Gracie.

We have come for you.

Gracie!

Gracie! Come with us!

Come!

The voices still ring in her ears from her dream last night. She feels a tinge of cold air blowing from behind and for a moment she shivers. The damp April air envelopes the whole church and she starts to feel pain in her joints. That and the three flights of stairs would do that to one’s sixty something body. But she wanted to come here, this place where she had spent most of her youth as an orphan. This church was her sanctuary from the cruelty of the outside world. This was where she found solace when the beating and the abuse at her uncle's home and the labourious work at the factory had become too much for her.

Gracie looks down at the rows of empty pews, the five tiered candleholders before the icons on either side of the church near the transepts, the large cross suspended from the ceiling that, in the darkness of mornings like this, gives the perception it floats. Has it been almost fifty years? The stained glass windows depicting various stations of the cross or scenes from the Bible are still the same. Behind her in the balcony, the old ivory organ, no longer in use, seems to emit small voices. She turns around and for a moment it seems she is looking at all of them, the other children, dressed in their blue gowns with large white doily collars, holding their hymn books. At the opposite end of the balcony, she pictures Delores Cashman sitting on the floor. Delores. Pretty, vibrant Delores. How awful that she died that long ago summer inside this very church, in this balcony. She was only twelve years old.

"Gracie, help me," Delores mouths as she lifts her head, her beautiful face drenched in tears. Delores stretches her arms towards Gracie, her hands soaked in blood, and more blood oozing out of her abdomen.

Gracie shakes her head and blinks her eyes. She has come to visit St. George's Cathedral and the ghosts have also come.

DWP - "The blind (wo)man said to me..."

The blind woman says to me as I stare at her in awe, "Yes, look at me, look at my eyes. Disgusting, aren't they?"

"No," I whisper. She is perfect: the perfectly oval face, framed by the perfectly white curly hair, the perfect nose, the perfectly full red lips. Even her eyes are in complete symmetry to the shape of her face, only they're totally white. She is like an unfinished drawing and the artist forgot to draw the iris. She looks like a white statue. But she isn't. She can talk and she can move. "No," I repeat, a little louder this time.

She turns her face towards the window and for a moment I imagine she was looking at the bright full moon that has risen above the shadows of the distant valley. She smiles.

"Twenty-four hours in this house," she continues, "twenty-four hours will do this to you. There is stil time for you to escape this curse."

"But I come to help. To help you and the others."

"No, you cannot help us anymore."

Tears roll down her cheeks.

"Can you see the door?" she asks.

I turn towards the doorway, it is open, and the wonderful scents of kalachuchi and ylang-ylang waft inside.

"Yes," I reply.

"Then leave. Now. For if you don't, that door will close and you shall never leave. Your eyes will become white. And you shall never see again."

She cups her ivory face in her pale hands and her shoulders tremble.

DWP - misplaced focus

Gregory eyes the redhead in the second row, trying to remember where he had seen her before. When his eyes catch hers, she makes a rather inconspicuous wave and pouts her shiny pink lips, suppressing a smile. Definitely not last night, he assures himself. But where?

For a moment he shifts his eyes towards the crowd, a sea of people with perflexed looks in their faces. He imagines question marks above their heads just like in some Sunday cartoons. Then he hears a buzzing sound, a collective hushed wonderment or puzzlement that spewed out of the people's mouth.

He looks again at the redhead who this time smiles sweetly at him. He smiles back. And that is when he hears Priscilla’s cries. He turns to look at her, leering at him through her white veil. The priest asks him, “Gregory, are you with us?”

Priscilla gathers the enormous skirt of her wedding gown, throws her bouquet of white calla lilies at him, and runs towards the church door. “Son of a bitch, you bastard!” she screams as she runs. “You had to bring her here.”

He felt something heavy and angry hitting his head. Marco, Priscilla’s brother. Suddenly he is looking at the murals in the ceiling, a collage of angels and humans in pastel colors. People are now screaming.

Then it dawns on him: the one night stand in Barcelona. But as he realizes this, Marco’s large and heavy foot comes crashing on his head.