Part 3
On that night Danny promised to help me to run away from home and to settle in Cebu City. But the next morning my hopes evaporated like fog in the sun.
He went away without saying a word to me. I was again miserable feeling desperate and alone at night. Then a few days later he came back.
Over the last days, I asked myself how could be possible that my grandfather and Danny had met my mother after she had returned to Australia with my father. I knew they married secretly away from the consent of my father’s family and left for Australia in the same day. From my knowledge, Mother had never returned to the Philippines. It was a mystery that I needed to clarify. I took a mental note of asking Danny.
In the meantime, my life with Grandma became more difficult. She used to pick on my mistakes in my daily chores and continuously punished me, and silently I cried for her cruelties. At night I went early to bed, but sleepless, I kept remembering with pleasure the night I made love with Danny and that made me desire to have him again. One night, I was craving for him and with his vision in front of me, I went to the kitchen and sit on the doorstep. Closing my eyes, I saw Danny coming toward me and smiling asking to spend the long night together. It was only my over-excited fantasy, only a dream.
Then the miracle happened. I saw Danny’s shadow taking form from the nearby fields and coming toward me and moved rapidly but without noises and see me he sent a mute order to be silent; then he took my hand and guided me to the nearby garage.
“Why have you ignored me for so long? I don’t mean anything more to you? Have you been with another woman?” I asked in a whisper.
While I talked, I raised his hand to the crevice of my legs to let him know that it was urgency in me. As I expected, feeling my passion aroused him. He couldn’t resist longer and hurriedly stripped me. We finally were lovers again.
We lay on the bare garage floor but my body didn’t feel the hardness or the discomfort of the floor, so intense was the urge to share our bodies.
Unexpectedly Danny told me, “I came to take you away. Dress up quickly we are leaving in no time. You don’t need to take anything with you; going upstairs you may wake somebody.”
“Why such great urgency Danny, I need you more. Don’t you desire me?”
“My dear Miriam, I really crave for you, but is time to go now, while people are fast asleep, or else you will lose forever the opportunity to run away from this place.”
His car was parked in the paddock, away from the house to avoid noises. It started at the first crank of the motor and Danny took the road to Cebu, a couple of hours drive away.
~*~
The long trip was the opportunity I expected to ask Danny about my mother,
“Danny, what really do you know about my mother? I have been told she died in Australia in a boat accident, what have you heard about it?”
Danny didn’t reply immediately. He was measuring the right answer, then:
“Don’t you mind passing me a cigarette?” and he dragged twice deeply from it.
“I’m not sure what really had happened to your mother. I have raised this question to myself since your father died. I believe to have by now most of the answers, but the picture is not completed.”
After a few more minutes of meditation kept on:
“Your mother came to Cebu as a teacher’s aide at San Carlos University. It was on those days that I had begun my clerical work at the same university, and we crossed on the floor continually. Your mother… how can I explain properly to you…Well, she had an uncommon personality and everyone looked at her. Yes, she was different and aroused ravenous looks from the males for the way she walked, talked, and sensual desires floated in the males around her. Whispers moved around the offices and were gossiping, particularly after the weekends, people were commenting your mother’s doing.”
After a pause he kept on, “Do you want me to go on? What I’m going to tell you now, will be something unpleasant. Some revelation that I’m sure is not what a daughter likes to hear. Do you want me to keep on?”
“Ok. Danny thanks for warning me. But I think it’s something that sooner or later I have to front. I need to know who my real mother was.”
Danny kept telling what he knew.
“I told already that your mother was a teacher’s aide and she was good in her work. But her private life after work was a quite different matter and can I say capable to raise the people’s eyes in disapproval of her doing. Bluntly, I have to say…, how to get the right word? From the very beginning, she raised interest in many men … yes, how to say? She was been seeing around at night a lot.”
~*~
End Part 3
CarloGabbiWriter 