An unrelenting stream of jeepneys with their singing horns zoomed and halted unpredictably in the street. When traffic brought the entire parade to a standstill, pedestrians wove their way in and around, filling any vacant space. Across the street, a restaurant offered kare kare, sisig, and ojos de vaca, traditional food, the last of these items being the boiled eyes of cows. The sleek, glass cube of an air-conditioned bubble tea shop occupied the space next door. Students swarmed the sidewalks and filled the restaurants, all in their neat uniforms and tidy black shoes. A few trees struggled upward between the buildings, waving their feathery leaves, as if trying to fan themselves against the heavy air. At the corner, a team of construction workers, their chests bare and T-shirts wrapped around their heads, was desperately trying to clear a drain in anticipation of yet another deluge. The rain was just beginning to get going when my aunt’s white minivan pulled up.

“Mannie, are we picking up Tito Ben?” It was Wednesday, the day of my uncle’s weekly visit.

“Oo po,” he said. But first we had to stop by my cousin’s son’s house to drop off some tools and then collect Tita Dom. If I wanted to join my aunts and uncle, they would be attending five o’clock Mass at Christ the King, as they did every Wednesday, despite not being obligated to do so.

Mannie began to navigate through the streets as I sat lost in my own thoughts in the back seat. The air-conditioning in the van was working hard, but it was still warm, and the interior of the van smelled of a bubblegum-scented perfume, a result of the bouncing-cat air freshener fastened to the dash. Weeks had passed, and I had not heard from my husband, which seemed a variety of mercy. I thought, indulgently, that my mother had never liked him, but that was not true. She had liked him but not for me. Was that it? Or was it rather that she hadn’t wanted me to get married? No, that also was not true. What she’d wanted was for women to not to have to be wives, and if we could pull that off and be married, all would be fine.