The Dam

Edith L. Tiempo

BAK-AG ELEMENTARY School boasted three buildings, two of them angular wooden
structures walled with a quaint imbrication of sawali and wood laths, and roofed with sheets of
galvanized iron. The third structure was the main building. It was low and flat-topped, built of grey
stone and concrete. The three buildings were wrapped around a square, a neat space bare of
grass reserved for the morning exercises and flag ceremonies. The school also had an athletic
field of about goo square meters, and next to it a cool wooded area that stretched toward the
surrounding rice fields. A creek ran through this wood lot, a trickle of a creek one foot deep, a
really respectable depth of water as many little feet were gratified to find on hot days. Tucked
away on the north side of town, the school was sufficiently isolated to render the learning process
free of distracting sights, away fi.om traffic and movie houses and food parlors and such.
At the end of the ordinary class day the three buildings were emptied of life within twenty
minutes of dismissal time. Twilight then came to Bak-ag Elementary School usually unremarked
by human eyes; except when there was a teachers' meeting, when the seventeen men and
women, much regarded as molders of future citizens of Bak-ag, were to be seen straggling home
in the dusk through the several narrow paths that cut away from the school grounds. These grass
grown paths were truly charming in a scenic rural way; and they all ended at the stile in the fence
separating the school bounds from the little street that shortly led to the main thoroughfare of the
town.
Twilight did not come unobserved on the afternoon when Mr. Rosales, the principal, chose
to have his decisive interview with Mr. Conde. one of the younger teachers. Besides taking charge
of the physical education period for the sixth grade two afternoons in the week, Mr. Conde also
taught history and industrial arts. Now Mr. Rosales had put off this interview with young Conde
out of a reason of which Mr. Rosales was not at all proud. For it was a reason that revealed a
personal weakness and he did not even want to think about it. But at last he deemed it absolutely
necessary, weakness or not, to chastise Conde for certain long-continued misdemeanors which
he as principal could no longer ignore.
Mr. Rosales stared unhappily at the blurring sky outside his office window. For half an
hour he had nervously set himself to finish certain papers. But Conde was somewhere out there
on the school grounds waiting to be summoned. Clearly Mr. Rosales must get it over with.
He mopped his broad forehead with a handkerchief already grown limp. Stiff and upright
at his desk. his long figure was reminiscent of half-submerged things. Like the amiable saurian
shapes that children years ago used to conjure on the wall by maneuvering the body around a
flickering candle. Or like the passable bird shapes earnestly contrived out of coconut fronds on a
Palm Sunday morning and carried off banner-like to High Mass. Mr. Rosales was reminiscent of
half-expressed things like these, so that he often startled an uneasy second look from the
beholder. As he turned from the window and peered again at the papers spread on the desk, it
was clear he was much upset. Fretfully he took up one sheet after another—teachers' reports.
Bureau circulars, minutes of meetings, PTA follow-ups—slapping down one paper after another
in a flurry of nervous disstate. Hardly noticeable were his tired eyes behind the spectacles but his
lower lip was conspicuous, full and wet-looking and just now tucked between his teeth in lively
annoyance. All the time, as his hands fluttered among the papers, the knuckles kept moving under
the skin and the petulant long fingers hooked and unhooked like restless claws. Finally he could
stand it no longer.
 "Samuel!" he screeched out for the janitor. He listened unmoved to the quick scrambling
sound that came from the Teachers' Room and the small thud of a broom falling to the floor. A
moment later a thin youth scraped through the swinging door. Mr. Rosales brandished the
handkerchief and mopped his forehead. The youth stared wordlessly; his pale face waited for the
worst.
“Tell Mr. Conde to come in now." the shrill soft voice cracked out. The youth looked
relieved. Mr. Rosales dismissed him with an impatient wave. The grey tiredness in Mr. Rosales'
face as he leaned back did little to soften its expression, much like that of some aging but vigilant
sea creature. How he loathed these interviews! Teachers having to be disciplined were a trial,
most embarrassing, and he came out of such conferences wishing he could really raise a welt on
somebody's back. His buck teeth were a little more pronounced, the eyes behind the glasses
more inscrutable and staring as he mopped his face again.
It had been a hot afternoon; it was going to be a hot night. Mr. Rosales chafed at the delay.
Where was that young fool? This time of the afternoon exhausted him, a hesitant twilight hour
between afternoon and night. As usual the empty building made him nervous. Yet he had no great
impatience to go home. He thought of the place he called his home and he grimaced at the walls
about him, the straight-backed chairs, the papers filling his desk—he wished he could be tidier—
on the wall the framed motto Silence Is Golden winking its precise syllables in the last splash of
sunlight in the room. Outside the office were the corridors, the classrooms; outside the buildings
the grounds, the grass paths, hedges, vine trellises, the neat square for the flagpole scrupulously
bare of grass.
Mr. Rosales found himself detesting his cubbyhole of a room at the boarding house. It had
a man’s disorder, even without the filth, but it had a crate-like sufficiency that sometimes sickened
him, like now. Leaning back stiffly in his chair, he let a smile flit with tremulous pride around this
place. It was no home but it was his kingdom. Eleven years since he came. A small school, true;
yet a position like his here called on a man’ abilities also. Administrative work could drain one's
patience and tact. And personal relations—more than ever recently he had found this to be true—
personal relations could be very tricky things. Of course an elementary school was not the best a
man could do—a man with ambitions, he corrected himself. But then he himself was a person of
many limits, his wants were easily named, his ambitions quite modest ...
Footsteps hesitated outside, the door moved open and Mr. Rosales looked up at Mr.
Conde inside the doorway. A compact and husky young man. He seemed rather crestfallen. He
did not look ashamed, but very anxious; in fact his ingratiating round face showed his anxiety
without shame or concealment. Mr. Rosales leaned forward in his chair.
"Sit down, please, Conde."
The principal's hands slid nervously along the edge of the table on either side.
“Why must I have trouble with you?" the high voice quavered as he went straight to the
point. "It seems it is not enough I have to discipline four hundred and eight children? Must the
teachers be watched also, and scolded and punished?"
Conde cleared his throat. His was a good-matured rice cake kind of face, somewhat red
now, with pasty splotches on the forehead and cheeks.
"It never happened but once before. sir," he smiled weakly. “Once or twice. You know how
those things happen, sir."
Mr. Rosales was outraged. "Do not lie to me. With a face like an innocent you come in
here and lie to me!"
Mr. Rosales was really aroused. His thin cheeks Sloped tautly down to his square Jaws.
His tight upper lip shrunk against his teeth, momentarily exposing the gum above. He threatened,
and there was much ominousness in the high, heaving monosyllables, “I give you one more
chance, Conde. One."
In his excitement he had been brandishing the handkerchief again. Mr. Conde stared at
him incredulously at first. As he realized what Mr. Rosales had said, he grew sober and his young
face looked more harassed than before.
Wearily, Mr. Rosales wiped his forehead. His eyes drooped behind the spectacles. "For
months I have heard these rumors of your drunken orgies. I refused to believe. I refused at the
beginning to believe that a clean-looking boy like you would do all those things. To jeopardize
your life career-to shame yourself and your position in this school! Sopping up that filthy tuba at
those filthy counters with common drunks...."
The voice cracked on a high, peculiarly complaining note. And Mr. Conde hung his head.
Under his lids the principal watched him. He observed that Mr. Conde was looking shaken.
Mr. Rosales could not suppress his gloating, even now, even as the thought came once again as
something to wonder at: how he looked so much like Nacio. The wide eyes set apart with brown
flecks in the pupils, the same open look in both faces. Nacio, his nephew. Mr. Rosales fluttered
his hands among the papers on the desk.
He made it known in his piping way, “Understand, I am not Just trying to make this a
chance to exert my authority. Not at all."
But he meant whatever he decided, Mr. Rosales wanted Conde to feel this in him. the
principal. If this matter were reported to the Division Office, it would mean not only Conde's job
now, but any future position in any public school. Mr. Rosales wanted Conde to realize this, aiid
the boy's shaken look showed he did.
"We all have failings, of course. To know our weakness. that is surely tragic. To be aware
of something shameful about us-that surely hurts. Many is the time it were better not to know
ourselves!"
Conde sat up but seemed to shrink back at once as he sensed one of Mr. Rosales'
philosophic moods coming on. Many times, Mr. Rosales had kept the seventeen teachers waiting
to be dismissed from meetings while he philosophized on life. At such times he found it irresistible
to allude to Tennyson’s “Tears, Idle Tears" as a fit complement to his elegiac thoughts. And so
the silent audience listened, or half-listened with drooping senses, coming awake by turns, jogged
now and then by a word or phrase, but mostly lulled by the gentle graveyard tone. O death in life,
the days that are no more. the sick awareness of separation from the living reality, the casements
growing to glimmering shadows, and into the group's collective ears this old boy's droning varied
by occasional nervous cackles exploding farcically high and false in the darkening Assembly
Room. But if Conde sensed any of all these, his polite face tried to give no sing.
"Understand, Conde, that by what I am about to say I am not excusing your behavior in
any way. I only want you to know that we are all friends here and we should understand each
other. Forgive to the limit, this is what I wish to say. But, you know, not for a moment excusing
what is wrong. Authority, understand, must do its duty. Always."
The words came clumsily. Conde shrank from the conciliatory efforts of Mr. Rosales more
than from the womanish flare of his temper a few minutes before.
"It is not easy to scold people for their faults," Mr. Rosales finished querulously, "but I am
the principal and what else can I do?"
Soon after Conde left, Mr. Rosales left, too. The janitor had gone, so he went about pulling
down the shutters himself. The building was completely dark now, Samuel had also put out every
light and disconnected the switch. In the darkened office Mr. Rosales had to feel around for his
newspaper on the table. He always brought the day's paper home to read in bed. His groping
hand identified the paper by its rolled-up length. Grasping it and somewhat peering in front of him
all the way through the corridors, he found himself out of the building.
On the way home he kept thinking of Conde. Why he had not succeeded in being more
firm with the fellow—this disturbed him, nagged at his conscience. It disturbed him even after
supper, which he ate alone because the three other boarders had already eaten and gone out
together—to a dance in the next town, the landlady said. In his room Mr. Rosales brushed his
teeth and put on his pajamas, only the trousers for the night was sticky hot. He threw off his
slippers and massaged his arches one after the other as he sat in bed, then he lay down and
opened his newspaper and read it through in luxurious time. He read absorbedly, meditating over
the items, those about the personal affairs of men in the government, in the public eye, people in
accidents and in trouble, criminals and lovers and such. Now and then he cackled over an item
that brought the folks involved very vividly to his mind, how angry this one was, how disconcerted
the other. The thief. for instance, who returned a purse untouched through the mail because it
contained only sixty-five centavos. Mr. Rosales found human nature very interesting. He read for
about an hour.
The newspaper was finished, and even while he started fixing his body into the proper
hollows of his mattress, he discovered that Conde teased him out of sleep; that in fact Conde had
been lurking on the border of his thoughts all evening. He composed himself under the net, after
turning his pillow; he tossed a little, sleep would not come.
That Conde was bound to be a trouble-maker. Even from his very first month in the school
two years before. He remembered the first incident. It was sometime in the middle of June during
the season of the dysentery epidemic, when he had prohibited the eating of mangoes on the
school grounds. The health authorities had called on him for cooperation and he had promptly
announced during the morning exercises that any pupil caught eating mangoes was liable to
suspension. Also, he had brought it up again at the Special teachers' meeting in the afternoon.
What was his chagrin, therefore, what was his almost horror at what happened only a few days
after! It was a bright, hot day and he was striding toward the creek at recess time for a brief
breathing spell, when he suddenly saw a group of his teachers in the woods, five of them. They
were seated on the grass around a flat basket piled with fat yellow mangoes and busily guzzling
at the juicy fruit when he came upon them. He stopped abruptly half a dozen yal.ds away. Even
now he could not help being annoyed with himself for the thought that came to him as he looked
at them. For all he could think was that the mangoes were so exactly the things for that hot thirsty
morning. There he stood, conscious of the acute embarrassment of everyone and wishing he
could say something. Santos and Tan stood up and Orenio laughed once and kept quiet. It was
excruciating. Suddenly this new teacher. this Conde, snatched at a mango from the basket and
flipped it across the air toward him.
"Look out, sir!" the voice rang out. “Catch it!"
He had caught it of course. Bouncing it in his hand he had stared at Conde's crimson
aghast face blinking back at him. That was the time; he noticed it then about the young man'§
face. Something, an expression frankly curious. The hot bright day seemed right again of course.
Though he could not bring himself to eat the fruit or even stay there. After all they were setting a
bad example for the pupils, really unpardonable. Too embarrassing for everyone. He gave the
mango one final bounce and put it in his pocket.
"Bury the peelings now," he had reminded them and turned on his heel and left. He gave
the mango to his landlady when he came home for lunch. But that was Conde. There were other
times. Should one wonder that he, Mr. Rosales, could withhold crucial disciplinary measures
against him? —there was something about the young fellow. One had to grant there was
something about him. Even at teachers' meetings while the others remained dumb as statues,
Conde’s face, once or twice. Importance, though it was more than that, more than that ....
He lay in the dark hearing the small noises of his room, the lizards' tails tapping Jerkily,
mosquitoes outside his net whirring around and keeping up a tinny whining. small creaks from a
wall panel or a loose board on the floor.
Mr. Rosales flung open the shutter petulantly. He sat up in a chair. For some reason he
was intensely conscious of himself, himself in this room. It was a small room but it seemed barer
than it was, and the unswept corners gave out an old odor as from a long unused closet. For the
first time in months he thought again of his old home, not his parents., but the one he chose after
his parents died. And as he thought of the widowed Cousin Marita, how kind she was to him, he
remembered the eighteen-year-old boy he was then, an almost incurably abashed one, as it
seemed; who wanted to be a teacher. ‘Na Marita. A kind tired woman. Five children. He could see
her broad back as she ironed at night, the wide flattened hips, the thick calves and ankles, the
graying head tilted to one side over the board. And how his sight blurred over his books as the
night grew later and later and he stumbled into bed. And still she bent over the board.
Mr. Rosales drank a glass of water from the tap at the lavatory. It was all that fool Conde's
fault, he muttered. He found himself getting peevish about it and checked himself. Anyway, it
would not do to lose his temper again like this afternoon. After a while he left the chair and lay
down, arranging his bony frame as he did so. ‘Na Marita's other children he could scold and
punish. Not Nacio. It was not because the boy was the oldest but that he himself was an only
child and Nacio was the brother he could have loved but never had. From the papers he read that
Nacio's battalion was to be sent to Korea as a reinforcement. Once or twice he thought of writing
to him, but what could he say? Writing, he was Just as speechless—he remembered how Nacio
became constrained those times he tried to talk to him, as one friend to another, But Nacio called
him Uncle and he meant it; to his nephew he was an old man; he should, Nacio thought, act like
an old man. With this thought Mr. Rosales finally went to sleep.
In his dream he was in a long dark room with all around hanging in rows the wrinkled
lengths of boy's trousers suspended from nails driven into the walls. It took him a little time to
realize with a start that it was the room, the one he shared in the old days with the three boys of
‘Na Marita. Next room was hers and the little girls' There in the corner by the window was the tall
clothes cabinet he shared with Nacio. There was Nacio's bed and beside it a larger one for the
two younger boys. His own cot was beside the door. There were Nacio’s rubber shoes-they
smelled so, as usual-n a low shelf between the two beds. In the dream a sick feeling swept over
him about he knew not what, and he grabbed at one of the thin tubular posts of Nacio's bed; it
was made of steel and was clammy to his touch. Then it was not a bedpost but Nacio's gun which
the boy sent back from Korea. And he flung it from him and gasped and wished to cry. He woke
up and he was really gasping. His first conscious thought was that it was chilly and he snatched
the blanket over him up to his chin and shivered under it for a while. The grey dawn came at him
like a steady gust of wind Through the window he had left open all night he watched the sky
gradually lighten, and though he still had about two hours he knew he could not go back to sleep.
As if to compensate for his restless night, something interesting happened in school, an
incident that showed him how much a person had to learn about human nature. Although Mr.
Rosales was constantly making discoveries about human nature, he was not sure he liked it, for
it made living with people a subtle complicated process and not so nice sometimes. But this
interesting incident happened as he was walking on the grounds to the other building to find out
why the bell for the last period was three minutes late. Ahead of him four boys were grouped
noisily under a tree. One of them had started to recite "O Captain, My Captain." The boy had a
good voice and Mr. Rosales listened to him with much approval. Only, the boy kept saying
captane, making the vowel a long a. Naturally Mr. Rosales was disturbed by the little error and he
stepped up to the boy.
At his approach the boys fell silent.
"Captain, captain," the principal said in his shrill way. “Now say it " Somehow the boy could
not say anything and his uncomfortable companions gave him no help. Mr. Rosales clacked
jovially, rubbing his pale hands together, his large teeth parted in a smile.
"Well, never mind, you can practice saying it at home. That poem, boys, is one of my old
favorites." And still grinning, he stood there with them under the tree and recited the first stanza
in his high voice. He got a little emotional toward the last lines and quickly stopped himself. After
he was done the boys moved self-consciously and Mr. Rosales laughed.
He clapped his hand on the boy's shoulder. "I know you can do it," he assured him.
"Yes, sir," said the boy, a young fellow in the sixth grade whom Mr. Rosales had seen in
one or two school programs. The boy stood erect now, half-enjoying a dim importance and yet
half-shrinking under the principal's touch.
Mr. Rosales walked away. A boy should be encouraged, he thought. Besides, it was good
to be with the pupils sometimes. He felt rather pleased, though he didn't know exactly why. Behind
him the boys looked at each other surreptitiously and were silent until he turned the corner of the
building.
It was as he was still thinking whimsically about the boys when Mr. Rosales made the
discovery. It was not really a new discovery because, truth to say, he had sensed it now and then.
Only, this incident clearly showed him what he had long felt, the importance of trying to be closer
not only to the pupils but to the teachers as well. For this was his discovery, and he was somewhat
abashed by it: the teachers in their relation to him were like children themselves. For example, at
the monthly meetings they behaved in the same way the children did whenever he was around.
Self-conscious. Even when he cracked jokes to make everybody feel at ease. In a way he could
understand why. For years since he first came, he had tried to drill himself into the stern principal
all of them knew and it earned him everybody's respect. But even respect and authority might not
be enough. In an administration, that was. Mr. Rosales smiled to himself. He had better watch out
or they would soon think of him as a tyrant. He would not like that. Yet even as the thought amused
him. it made him uneasy. To tell the truth this very uneasiness kept nagging at him every now and
then during the last few years. It was generally these new cocky young teachers who brought it
on. Quite annoying.
The hot days went by and then came the sporadic rains. Stepping near-sightedly over the
mud puddles on his way home, the rolled bulk of the newspaper hugged under his arm, Mr.
Rosales experienced a wave of futility suck into him. These spells were troublesome. Not only
that the rainy season depressed him, not only that he, as indeed like others he knew, always
reacted to the portion of the town he had to pass on his way to his boarding house. There were
the nipa roofs slanted wispily over dark windows, men leaning from the doorways or congregated
in the combination store-and-barber shop, the calamungay trees sparse-leafed at the fences.
children rolling home their water wagons from the artesian well ... And yet there was no trouble at
the school. No, he reflected, the occasional hopeless feeling he suffered was pervasive. having
no real object or focus.
Mr. Rosales realized pettishly that it must be the world situation, Recent world events
upset him. Whenever he read the newspaper these days, he took to opening the inside pages
first. Especially that time the American troops were driven from Seoul to that area in Pusan where
they were contained for a while. More than ever, now that MacArthur had finally landed at Inchon
and the Allied troops kept moving up, he could not help feeling sick whenever he thought of Nacio.
Poor Cousin Marita. It was all so futile. That poor country split into two. What could anyone do?
Nothing. Nothing.
And that night, as Mr. Rosales lay tense and wakeful in bed, he tried not to fret about it
anymore. For it was a cosmic illness, a pervading poison that crept into individuals, a condition
he could not help. The rain had started again and its washing sound mixed with the strains of a
band in one of the larger houses somewhere. A dance was going on. A baptism or a birthday. In
the dark he lay listening to the music of "Love Walked Right In''; after a while he even started to
hum it with the band; the tune was an old favorite of his. The band played another old hit and
again he hummed right along. Yet he was unrelaxed. Mr. Rosales turned his pillow to get the
cooler side. It was more than an hour before he fell into an uneasy sleep. Then he was vaguely
conscious of a commotion somewhere, or maybe he dreamed it. A fire or something. And it
seemed he was wanting a light in his room and he frantically worked the switch over and over,
and it clicked over and over each time, but his room persisted in remaining absolutely dark. He
half-awoke for some few moments, long enough to note with absurd relief that his room was really
dark as in the dream. After this he slept quietly.
Loud voices downstairs woke him. His luminous watch pointed to a quarter past three.
Downstairs the landlady's indignant words were drowning out the voices of two or three men, and
he heard his own name mentioned once or twice. Then he recognized the slurry laughing talk of
Mr. Conde. Misgivings crowding into his mind, Mr. Rosales got out of bed. He switched on the
light. He noticed that the dance band was not playing any more. He washed his mouth at the
lavatory, traced back the hair from his forehead. From the closet he got out the blue robe hanging
there. It was Chinese silk embroidered with four large white dragons. He put it on. drawing the
buttons through with small twists of his fingertips. He took much care with the buttons. When he
was robed, he sat waiting. He knew they were coming up, of course, and he was surprised to feel
himself quite without anger.
Even before the three men knocked and he had asked them to come in, even before he
confronted them, Mr. Rosales was calm. Seeing them there, he somehow knew in a distant way
what was going to happen, and he sensed it, in the same elusive way he had no time to define
that it was something momentous. The nightmarish effect of being roused out of bed at Such an
unreal hour heated the moment for him, and the room felt even closer with the three men inside,
all of them his teachers. The rain had stopped but it was still blurry outside.
"This must be very serious," the principal told them. "It can't wait until morning.,'
“We had to take him here," Mr. Fructido apologized. “We heard they were looking for him
to-to beat him up. At least we'll wait until they cool off."
Mr. Rosales made them sit. He waited, silent himself.
Mr. Fructido and Mr. Tan were shamefaced, especially as they were being forced to soak
in this strange silence of their usually excitable Superior. When they finally talked, they kept
speaking out together like two children doing a number. Mr. Rosales listened. It seemed a girl
was insulted at the dance .... they should not have served wine, an occasion like that, a baptism
... naturally, Conde ... before anybody realized ... forcing a dance ... drunk ... Conde and the
boyfriend boxing each other ... After a while Mr. Fructido and Mr. Tan untangled each other from
their confused account. Although Mr. Rosales, listening and a little grim, did not find it hard to
follow; it was really very much the usual thing.
All this time Conde had been staring soberly at the embroidery on Mr. Rosales. robe, a
white dragon’s jaw near the principal's stomach. The young man looked all right; he was only a
little bluish around the edges of his mouth.
 Mr. Rosales rasped impatiently, `The father said he was reporting it to the
Superintendent?”
“Yes, sir,” Mr. Fructido said. "In the morning. He said he was going to the Capitol in the
morning.''
Mr. Rosales turned to Conde. His manner was stern.
"I told you," his high voice quavered, "I told you, one more chance, Conde."
He waited but when Conde kept silent he rushed on, "I am not unduly merciless. I am not
being unfair, I want you to know. What you or I feel personally must give way here. Authority must
do its part, or where are we?"
Fructido's fat face darkened. His own manner showed plainly his disapproval of Mr.
Rosales. attitude as so much officialism. Another manifestation of bureaucracy.
Fructido said, "Of course, sir, the girl was indeed a little arrogant. Mestiza, sir, you
understand."
Mr. Rosales’ head snapped up as he stared at Fructido. “And is that a reason," he shrilled,
a suddenly losing control. “We are teachers and should know discipline. Self-discipline first of all.
Where do you go-where does anyone go with impulsiveness pushing you God knows where?"
Mr. Rosales checked himself. Of course Fructido would protest. Fructido was a married
man. With children. Three or four. He would feel most what it meant, losing a job.
Mr. Rosales looked straight at Conde. Now that he had heard the worst the fellow was as
calm as himself and returned his look with only an embarrassed show of guilt. The gold flecks
deep in his eyes were passive, undisturbed. Mr. Rosales found it hard to keep his calm before
the three men. They waited a while, hoping, Mr. Rosales guessed, that he might relent. Well, they
might as well be certain about it; he would not change his mind.
When they rose to go and he had seen them off, three surly shapes in the dark hallway,
he was glad. Without moving he stood listening to their steps on the road outside the house. Then
he went into his room and sat down. For no reason at all he felt again that sucking futility he knew
on the road home. He thought of Nacio. Or Conde. Nacio his brother, or his nephew. Brother, he
said soundlessly, as if calling out, and yet as if listening to the word, brotber, brother./

Reference:
Tiempo, E. L. (2012). The Dam. In Garcia, J. N. C. (Ed.) Aura: The Gay Theme in Philippine
Fiction in English. Anvil Publishing, Inc.