Don't Stare, Please

***

Don't Stare, Please

On the way to the wet market my mother tells me not to stare at the old legless woman whose knuckles are jammed against the hot pavement. She pumps her arms, propelling the clanking wheels of the sheet of splintered plywood on which she rides. I do not tell my mother I felt her staring at me first.

After we leave the market we pass a small diner. My mother tells me not to stare at the two men who sit side by side in a booth next to the window. Before lowering my head, I catch the two men lean into one another, their fingers twine and their lips touch. Don't pay them any attention, my mother says.

Nevertheless, the instant we pass the diner window I cannot stop myself from glancing back over my shoulder. The two men have slid several inches apart and their faces are pressed against the glass in order to better see me.

On the jeepney ride back to the base, my mother tells me not to stare at the bloated children who are dressed in shabs and armed with broken branches. I cannot, though, drag my gaze away from the children. I continue to stare, even as they stop trudging through knee-deep flyblown garbage to raise their sticks in my direction and laugh.

When the jeepney turns left onto MacArthur Boulevard, my mother tells me not to stare at the women who have, in the middle of the balmy afternoon, already begun crowding the many nightclub doorways. Their groping hands reach out to seductively touch passing airmen.

Between the women and I, long understanding gazes are exchanged.

Making my way through the checkpoint at the heels of my mother, I can't help thinking that if a tiny beam of light bore through me every time someone stopped what they were doing to stare in my direction, I would cast a dappled, pin-pricked shadow onto the sidewalk behind me.

***
Possible Edits

Some days I could feel them watching me. It was quite a long way from the rafts to the line of palm trees, so I may have been imagining it. Or perhaps I was just oversensitive, but whenever I clambered up onto one of th erafts I got the distinct feeling that their eyes were trained in my direction. Sometimes the silver thermos would glint like a knife in the sunlight.