Collected Philippine Short Stories

The Doll | Egmidio Enriquez

His father and mother met him at the head of the stairs. He looked at his father's angry face and said without flinching: "Were you calling me, Father? My name is not Boy!"

"It is Boy from now on," his father told him. "That will help you to remember that you are a boy. A boy, understand?"

His father looked ugly when he was mad, but he was not afraid of him. He never beat him. He only cursed and cursed. "I don't understand, why?" he asked.

"Because little boys don't play with dolls," Don Endong thundered at him, "that's why!" And snatching the doll from the boy, Don Endong flung it viciously to the floor.

Boy was not prepared for his father's precipitate move. He was not prepared to save his doll. One moment it was cradled snugly in the crook of his arm. The next it was sprawled on the floor, naked, and broken, an arm twisted limp beneath it, another flung across its face. as if to hide the shame of its disaster. Suddenly it was as if he were the doll. There was a broken feeling within him. The blood crept up his face and pinched his ears. He couldn't speak, he couldn't move. He could only stare and stare until his mother taking him in her arms cradled his head between her breasts.

ONE day in May his mother came home from a meeting of the "Marias" at the parish rectory in a flurry of excitement. Our Lady of Fatima was coming to town. The image from Portugal was making a tour of the Catholic world and was due in town the following week. Doña Enchay had been unanimously elected chairman of the reception committee. ''What shall I do? What shall I do?" she kept saying.

"To be sure, mujer, I don't know," Don Endong told her. "Ask the Lady herself. She'll tell you. maybe.

"Endong! you mustn't speak that way of Our Lady of Fatima." she told him in as severe a tone as she dared. "She's milagrosa. haven't you heard how she appeared on the limb of a tree before three little children—"

"Oh, yes! Also the countless novenas you have said in my behalf."

"Ah,. Endong, it is your lack of faith, I'm sure. If you would only believe! If you would at least keep your peace and allow Our Lady to help you in her own quiet way, maybe—" She sighed.

He couldn't argue with her when she was suppliant. There was something about feminine weakness which he couldn't fight. He kept his peace.

But not the boy.

It was like the circus coming to town and he had to know all about the strange Lady. He and his mother kept up an incessant jabber about miracles and angels and saints the whole week through. Boy easily caught his mother's enthusiasm about the great welcome as he tagged along with her on her rounds every day requesting people living along the route the procession was to take from the air port to the cathedral to decorate their houses with some flags, or candles. or paper lanterns... She fondly suggested paper buntings strung on a line across the street. "Arcos" she called them.

"Don't deceive yourself," Don Endong told her. "You know they're more like clothes-lines than anything else. Does the Lady launder?"

"Que Dos te perdone, Endong!" Doña Enchay exclaimed, crossing herself and looking like she was ready to cry.

Boy wondered why his father loved to taunt his mother about her religious enthusiasm. Sometimes he himself could not help but snicker over the jokes his father made. Like when Mr. Wilson's ice plant siren blew the hour of twelve and the family was having lunch. His mother would bless herself and intone aloud: "Bendita sea la Hora en que Nuestra Señora del Pilar vino en carne mortal a Zaragoza," and begin a Dios te Salve. His father would ostentatiously bend over the platter of steaming white rice in the center of the table and watch it intently until someone inquired, "What is it?" Then he would reply, "I want to see by how many grains the rice has increased in the platter." If Boy had not seen his father's picture as a little boy dressed in white with a large silk ribbon on one arm and a candle twined with tiny white flowers in one hand, he would think maybe, he was a protestante—like that woman his mother and he happened upon one day on their rounds.