She let me lean next to her as she finished her cigarette. I looked up, and her mysterious beauty moved me then, the way light reflected off her large, dark eyes, how the end of her cigarette burned right before she exhaled a puff of smoke through her nose. I felt the power she held to entice whatever man she wanted through my nerves as my body tingled. It was a power Mama didn’t have, nor anyone else in my vicinity, and looking at her, realizing it was a power I myself would never possess, I felt a sadness I couldn’t explain.

“Promise me you’ll never smoke,” she said as she flicked the cigarette butt away. “It’s very bad for you.”

I nodded. She rested her hand on my shoulder, and we went back to set.

—

One Sunday afternoon when I was eight, early in Bisoy’s run, I kneeled on a chair over our glass-topped rattan table to work on an assignment. I loved the permanent scrawl of pens and the narrow lines of my elementary school paper unlike the wide spaces in kindergarten. I was writing a letter to President Ferdinand Marcos for school, on the occasion of his upcoming birthday, September 11, 1983. The TV was on like it usually was during the day, though I was focused on making the letter great, so the president would read it and invite me to his palace. I loved President Marcos with all my heart because he was the man who restored order to our country, the man who saved the Philippines from the NPA, according to my social studies teacher. I had no idea who the NPA were, but I knew to fear them because they were evil; they lived in the mountains and killed people. My eyes were inches away from the page as I wrote, “Thank you for everything you’ve done for our country” in English, then “Salamat po. Salamat. Salamat.” I was so engrossed that it took a few seconds before I registered the shift on the TV, the stern voice of an announcer, and the jarring images on the screen.

I walked to the television and sat when I couldn’t understand what I saw. Mostly gray pavement, a wall of white with windows in the background, metal stairs leading to the ground, a bloom of darkness next to a body clothed in white. Then the announcer’s solemn words: Ninoy Aquino had been shot.

The man explained that Ninoy was a senator, but the president had imprisoned him for being a dissident before allowing him to go to the United States for medical treatment because of a heart condition. Ninoy lived there for many years but had decided to return even though there was fear for his safety. The announcer said all this in vague, careful language, but I began to feel uneasy at the thought that Marcos put Ninoy in jail just because he disagreed with the president.