Hilot

An electric fan, oscillating with a jittery whir, nudging the stale air from one side of the room to the other

"I happens all the time."
"What does?"
"You know -- girls get pregnant. That happens all the time."
I tried changing the subject. "Where do you live now?"
"Los ANgeles," She said. "You ever been there?"
"No," I said.

Hilot

A woman, supporting herself on a cane, knocked on the door.

The front room was paneled with artifical walnut planks and the low, fiberglass tiled ceiling is stained with water marks. A linoleum floor separates the kitchen area from the carpeted living room, which is furnished with a worn gold velvet sofa and two matching easy chairs that face a low table bearing the scuff marks of a now absent television set. Two of the walls are lined with windows, and the other supports a loarge ornamental carpet picturing a family of polar bears occupying an ice floe. My bedroom, like that of my poetential roomate's, is cell-like in both size and simplicity, furnished with only a bed and a small cheast of drawers that easeily accomodates the little I brought with me.


The room was furnished with tables and chairs. Beside the front desk was a small kitchen, its serving windows framed with packages of freeze-dried beef and bags of potato chips. There was a grill, a deep fryer, and a menu board offering possib le choices for breakfast and lunch. This was clearly the snack bar, but where was the restaurant?

The two rooms were separated by a bedspread that hung from a wire, of which both ends had been wrapped around nails in the walls.

I pushed the curtain aside and stared down into the littered alleyway below. "What am I doing here?"

As a young woman, the hilot had had many suiters. This was in the day of kundiman, the practice of young men stood outside a young girl's window and sang love songs to proclaim their interest.


vacuum

cyotec, an ulcer medicine. ingest one and stuff two in the vagina.

pincer-like grip, rough strokes

bled, passed out from the pain.

deep, abdominal massage

In the provinces, NGOs cite reports of women who use clothe hangers, midribs of coconut fronds, or knotted roots of plants to scrape off fetuses. These lead to infections.

The hilot arrived.

Kneading her lower abdomen like it was soft dough. Fingers pressed deep, probing, searching out the unborn child. Lying on her back on the wooden floor of the bedroom. Her eyes closed. No, tighter than that. Squeezed shut. Her lips drawn back to reveal small, clenching teeth. Perspiration bubbling up at her temples, and rolling down to dampen her hair.

The woman I was with thought it was funny.

"Of course," she said. "Would you want a baby? An American's baby?"

She handed her some leaves and told her to drink them with water. In the morning, the body would expel the dead fetus.

"Why don't they just take birth control pills?"

The wind nudged the faded bedsheet that served as a curtain.