Goddess of the Clouds

By Alfredo B. Diaz, 2005 Fellow

“Were you our student in the High School before?” she asked, looking at my class card.
“Yes, ma’am. Class 1988,” I answered, rather too alertly.
She stared at my class card, hoping it would show me in my high school uniform eight
years ago. But the class card was not a crystal ball, so she gave up and asked, “Who were your
batch mates?”
“Kevin Villa, ma’am. Lisa Lopez.”
“Oh, yes. Kevin. Where’s he now?” she asked in her firm and husky voice, without
looking at me.
“Last time I talked with him was two years ago, ma’am. He had just left Spain for
England,” I answered, glad that I knew Kevin’s whereabouts.
“Do you teach?” she inquired, while scribbling something on my class card.
“No, ma’am.”
“Then what do you need this course for?” You might find this difficult without a
teaching context.”
“I might teach, ma’am,” I replied looking at her.
“Where?”
“I don’t know yet.”
Then she puffed out what seemed to be the thickest smoke I’ve ever seen coming out of a
teacher’s mouth.
Seven years in college might not have bored me after all because right after getting my
diploma, I went back to school. To the same decrepit school. This time to study Language
Teaching. My classmates in my previous course B.S. Biology were already in their junior year in
Medicine proper and my classmates in Literature and Psychology were already working and
earning. Maybe I never had enough of my college education that’s why I enrolled in post-
graduate studies.
“I know that Lisa graduated from UP Manila’s 7-year Medicine Course,” she said as she
let out a smoker’s cough.
“The Intarmed program, ma’am,” I added, looking at her trying to suppress her cough.
“Yes, Intarmed. Is she married?” she inquired, again, without looking at me.
“I don’t know, ma’am. Haven’t seen her for a long time.”
Lisa and Kevin were the first names I mentioned to her because both of them excelled in
her English and Literature classes. Lisa was said to have topped the Reading and Language parts
of the 1987 UPCAT; Kevin was ma’am’s favorite orator, winning Rotary’s oratorical contests, and
landing as vice-mayor in Iloilo City’s Boys’ and Girls’ Week celebration.
From where I was sitting, a few feet away from her maroon table, I could see the white
smoke slowly moving up, finding its way to the clouds, undisturbed by the weak wind.
“Your batch is one of the best crops this High School has ever produced,” her words
pushing the smoke to all directions.
“You wrote that in our yearbook, ma’am,” I reminded her.
“I did?”
“Yes, ma’am.”
The longer we talked, the more she disappeared from my sight; the smoke hiding her
from me, her words finding their way out of the white wind.
“You were the principal during my senior year, ma’am.” I proudly reminded her.
“I was?”
“Yes, ma’am,” I answered, wondering how she could forget. Being principal is a
significant thing. How could she forget?
 She was the principal when my boyish and nerdy Physics teacher brought me and my
lesbian repeater classmate to the principal’s office after he caught us spraying each other with
tear gas during recess. Mr. Joseph, an inch shorter than me at that time, fuming with anger,
grabbed me and Sonny by the shoulders and dragged us to the Principal’s office. We were like
prisoners of war, only that our weapons were two bottles of tear gas. On our way to the
concentration camp, Mr. Joseph, whose polo shirt was now losing its buttons, was verbally
insulting me. “Ikaw pa naman ang presidente sang class nyo. Kahuluya!” (“And you are
supposed to be the class president! What a shame!”) He paraded the two POWs along the rooms
of the seniors, who, with hands and mouths full of food, went out of their rooms, cheered and
guffawed. Others even followed us to the principal’s office.
“I was principal from 1986 until 1988, so you’re correct,” she recalled as she lit her
Winston.
She was a pro at lighting cigarettes. She could teach actresses how to do it. She started
smoking again, and in a few minutes, she disappeared in the thick smoke. And then she talked
about teaching, and her students who have become famous and infamous (mentioning Senators
Miriam and Frank), her voice hoarse, cracking in certain words.
I felt uneasy listening to her without seeing much of her. I wanted to blow the smoke
away so I could have a glimpse of her face, but I was afraid she wouldn’t like that. I just hoped
the wind would do the job for me. But it did not, so we just conversed with the clouds
surrounding us.
“Why did you decide to take this class?” she sounded like the principal I had eight years
ago, and I felt nervous. I thought I’d stammer.
I walked out of my Composition class in my junior year after a stammering experience.
“Who wrote essay number four?” our English teacher, beaming with a pretty smile, asked the
class. My group mates yelled, “Alfredo!”
“It’s a well-written piece. Alfredo, please come forward and read your essay to the class.
Class, please listen.” My teacher’s mild voice made me shudder.
I signaled to her that I did not want to, moving my hand and my head to indicate refusal.
But she said, “Class, will you accept that as an answer?” And of course, rowdy teenagers that
they were, my classmates bellowed a big “No!” Although I knew I would stammer if I read my
essay in front of the class, I still stood up. The teacher asked me to go up the platform. When I
opened my mouth to read, my tongue could not produce any sound. I was able to say the first
word only after some eight seconds. And the following words were even harder to say. The easy
way out was through the door, so I stepped down, and headed to a friendlier environment: the
green football field.
“I might teach, ma’am. I met Ma’am Saure in the Philippine Science High School last
month and she invited me to teach there. But I need to have education units,” I told her, trying to
find her face in the thick smoke she had surrounded herself with.
There was no reply from her. I thought she’d drowned in the smoke. Then all of a
sudden she stood up, emerging tall and confident from her smoky mound. She looked like a
goddess of smoke. She had affinity with the smoke; they were comfortable with each other, like
old friends.
“I need to buy cigarettes,” she declared.
I wanted to do it for her but she had fled before I could volunteer.
“You don’t smoke?” She was back before I could totally fan the fumes out of the room.
“No, ma’am,” I said, my words sounding like an apology.
“Good,” she said as she lit her Winston.
Among my friends, there are always women who smoke. In my PhD class of five
students (three males, two females) and a female professor, all the women smoked, while the
men didn’t. When the reports would begin, the women would sit near the open windows and
smoke. The three of us men would make way for our women smokers. They would puff out
white smoke as we talked and listened. The circles of smoke finding their way to the windows,
the words finding their way to us.
 “Don’t start smoking. You will like it. You will be its slave,” she said while sucking on
the cigarette butt.
I wanted to ask her when she started smoking and if she has ever tried quitting, cliché
questions asked of smokers, but I could not. I could just stare at her and listen. She was smoking
in a regal way. Blowing the smoke with both power and gentleness, directing it upwards. The
Winston wind obeyed her. She was indeed the goddess of smoke, not its slave.
“How are you related to Ernie and Thelma Diaz?” she asked, looking at the imperfect
circles of smoke she has made.
“I have often been asked that, ma’am. No, we’re not related. Thelma and I are friends
though. We are both members of TAGUPCI.”
“You’re into theater,” she said, giving me a passing look, lifting her eyebrows when she
mentioned the word theater. Then she was gone in the forest of smoke again.
I remember the play she directed when I was a sophomore. It starred two famous senior
students: the pretty class valedictorian and the brawny football player. I loved that play. Rebecca
in her black and white checkered apron, and Marky in his red and blue Chuck Taylor. They were
my brother’s batch mates. Rebecca later married Roy, the boyfriend of her friend and father of
her son who later became my student. Marky developed lung cancer. He was the youngest
person I knew at that time to have died of cancer. He died two summers after reaching college.
“Come back next week.”
Before I could say anything, ma’am was out of the smoky den, leaving me with her
maroon table. I looked at her as she made her way to the faculty room. She was the thinnest
woman I’ve ever seen. Her thinness emphasized by her tall frame. There she was: Ma’am Claire,
walking confidently, poised, smartly-dressed, clutching my class card in her left hand and her
pack of Winston in her right. Her smoke following her, surrounding her, carrying her.
“This is a class which will discuss and experiment on the many ways and techniques of
teaching a language --- be it a first or a second language.” After a week, she was standing in front
of all seven of us graduate students, listening to her introduce to us the course, and watching her
interrupt her speech with trips to the window to spit. She was wearing a red violet blouse and
black pants; her shiny red shoes making sounds as if to punctuate her sentences. She stood as she
lectured, her shoulder blades proudly displayed.
“Next meeting, we shall discuss the definitions of method, technique, and approach.”
She picked up her class cards and her pack of Winston from the table and headed towards the
door. Before she took the stairs, she spat on the trashcan.
“What did you major in College?”
“I finished Comparative Literature and Psychology, ma’am, but I started out in the B.S.
Biology program,” I answered, looking at her, trying to see her reaction.
“You got bored,” she declared as if she knew my reasons for shifting from Biology.
“Yes, ma’am,” I agreed.
“How’s Literature in UP Visayas?”
“Fine. We just need more books.”
“Books,” she said while puffing out another ring of Winston smoke.
“Yes, ma’am, more books. More books on literary criticism and Asian Literature.”
“Was Zenie French your teacher?” she asked, looking at her yellow lighter.
“Yes, ma’am,” I answered rather too alertly.
“What genre do you like?” she reminded me our class years ago in High School when
she taught us the word “genre,” pronouncing it like she owned the word.
“I used to write poems, but I am a partial to plays and essays now.” I said, not sure if I
used the word “partial” correctly.
“I love poetry and plays,” she said, lighting another winston, covering it against the wind
the electric fan was blowing. “Walt Whitman.”
I would always join Ma’am Claire in her favorite nook at the cafeteria near the restroom
where she would go to spit. The table was without a table cloth because, according to her,
“smokers’ tables should not have tablecloths.”
 “You’re also an addict.”
“I am?” I asked.
“Yes. A coffee addict.”
I laughed; she did not. She just looked at the circles of smoke she was making inside the
very warm cafeteria while I was drinking my Nescafe. She was like a kid blowing bubbles. And I
was a parent watching my kid.
I looked at her hands. They were all veins. I could not believe that there was life inside
them.
“My mother made me love coffee. When I was very young, even before I entered school,
I would observe how she prepared coffee. It was a very solemn and intimate ceremony. As she
placed condensed milk in her coffee, as the milk slowly blended with the coffee, we would watch
it with excitement; until the coffee and the milk were no more, until they became one. Then she
would quietly go to her favorite cozy corner, sit down, close her eyes for a few moments as in a
meditation, then take the first sip of her coffee, as if she was making love to it.”
“The making of an addict,” Ma’am Claire declared, without even smiling or looking at
me. Then she blurred her face with smoke. With very thick smoke. And she was gone.
The next Saturday, Ma’am Celia took over her Second Language class.
“Good day, ma’am. How are you?”
She nodded. The student nurse told me that Ma’am Claire could not talk because she was
being fed through a tube. When the nurse had left, an uncomfortable silence between ma’am and
me took the nurse’s place. There she was, slumped in her bed in front of me, left with no other
choice but to look at me because of her physical condition. And there I was, not knowing what to
do and what to say. There was no thick smoke between us anymore. I could look at her face
now, but I felt strange. I hoped someone would open the door and break this thick silence
between us. I thought the nurses would come anytime, if not relatives or friends. But an hour
later, I was still doing what I was doing and she was still staring at me. I wondered why no one
visited her. I was afraid she might ask for something. What would I do if she needed to go to the
restroom? Maybe she was about to ask for something, but she just did not.
“Good day, ma’am, I brought yellow flowers.” And then the long silence between us
again.
“Good day, ma’am, here are white and yellow flowers for you.”
“Good day, ma’am, here are white flowers for you.”
The more often I visited Ma’am Claire, the thinner she became. Her body being eroded
by the days. After three months in St. Paul’s Hospital, her folks decided to bring her to her
hometown, some three hours away from the city.
Her room was a small space with a decrepit table beside her dark brown bed. A small
pillow supported her head. The walls had cracks on them, like veins on Ma’am Claire’s hands.
There was a tiny window near the door. She was alone most of the time, her relatives out in the
sala playing mahjong.
When I arrived, Nang Iging, her cousin, brought me to Ma’am Claire’s room and then
she went back to the sala. And then I was left with Ma’am Claire again.
“Hi, ma’am, I brought yellow flowers for you.”
“Hi, ma’am I brought white flowers for you.”
”Hi, ma’am, I brought yellow and white flowers for you.”
But the yellow and white flowers were only beautiful; they could not cure Ma’am
Claire’s lung cancer.
I read the whole “Leaves of Grass” to her, but poetry was just beautiful; it could not cure
Ma’am Claire’s lung cancer.
She was all bones and veins. The smart clothes had been replaced by a drab hospital
gown, her nails were dark, her fingers and toes curled, her face had sunk. It had been two weeks
of yellow and white flowers, and some poetry, and I was still visiting Ma’am Claire. And she
was becoming thinner and paler. And her relatives were still outside.
 On a hot Saturday afternoon, I was the one who sponged her face and hands. “Here’s
my Language and Literature teacher who taught me how to pronounce correctly and read poetry
beautifully, now mute and stiff, almost lifeless.” Despite the deformities, she remained calm and
resolute, her eyes fixed on me. When I said goodbye to her that afternoon, she pressed my hand
and would not let go. I stayed for a while. When she had gone to sleep, I slowly went out and
took the last bus going to the city.
The day after, she died. A week later, she was buried and I delivered a eulogy. The
month after, I was accepted into the High School Department as a Literature teacher.
Now, every time I look at the clouds, I smile and remember Ma’am Claire. I believe the
smoke from her cigarettes brought her home to the clouds. Now she is looking down, puffing out
her Winston towards me, making imperfect circles.