Fifteen

Copyright © 2019-2020 by VeryWellAged

Back to In the Beginning...3

Author's note: These chapters are NOT stand-alones...The story starts here.

In the beginning...4

The taxi pulls up to our new home.

For me, it is a bit of incredulity. This place might well be worth half a million dollars, or more, if in Boston. Yet here, a stay of thirty-four days at the hotel, at the low-low cost of thirty-six bucks a day, is not really cheaper than this place is for an entire year. I am having a very hard time integrating this into reality without wondering when the other shoe will drop.

For the two girls with me and, I suspect, the one who will appear later, they must feel like their ship reached a safe harbor. And in this port city whose bay opens southward onto the Pacific Ocean, the metaphor is apt. They are giddy as they take the bundle of keys from my hand and determine which opens the manhole¹.

Once the manhole is opened, the bags, (my carry-on case and their plastic 'garbage bags' plus backpacks filled with all their belongings) are brought inside the walled enclosure before the manhole door is closed and securely shut.

This act, this entering into a secure enclosure, clearly has a meaning to them that only now do I see. This is safety. This is a safety they have never had before.

Yes, when they are in other places on occasion, like the hotel, with the armed guard at the door, there is safety, but it is not they who pay the guard. All their lives they have been, in a real way, unsafe. The only reason why they had any hope of protection was that they had nothing of any value other than their bodies. And here, bodies, it would appear, are cheap.

That is what I represent to them. It is not my looks. It is not the actual size of my bank account. It is not what I will buy them, so that they can flaunt such to others. It is the safety of these walls in which, I, in a matter of hours, have surrounded them.

Getting through the manhole in a real way is more important than what they are about now, divining which keys open the door to the house.

The front door has both a lock on the knob and a second deadbolt lock. I suggest working on the deadbolt first. I get a confused look but they accede to my suggestion while continuing to struggle. There must be close to twenty keys on the ring.

I will learn why there are so many in a few minutes after entering the house, but now, I ask and they hand over the bundle.

Most of the keys are for five-tumbler locks. The key we used to get into the manhole was a seven-tumbler lock. I see four more seven-tumbler keys. My best guess is that two are for this door and two are for a back door.

My guess is paying off. The second key I try opens the deadbolt. Going back to the first one I had tried on the deadbolt without success, I find it opens the lock on the doorknob. The door opens.

The place is clean and I see no problems. The reason for the many keys becomes clear. Every bedroom has not only a keyed entry, but a dead-bolt as well. That accounts for twelve more keys. Each bathroom is also keyed. And so, inside the house there are fifteen locks. The front and back doors account for four more, a lock for the big gate and the one for the Manhole, yet another one. Twenty-one keys, so far, but there is another key. There are twenty-two keys on the ring. Exactly where that last one goes remains a mystery. But there is one thing that isn't a mystery.

It is safety. Personal safety.

And here is the conundrum.

Before, the girls were in some ways safe from danger simply because they weren't seen as having anything of value. So there was nothing to lock out.

Now, here, their presence in this house announces value to the bad guys of the world. This house and those who live within it will be a target. Therefore the locks. Locks upon locks.

Can't get through the manhole? Climb over the wall. Find broken glass shards on the top of the wall? Throw some fabric over the shards. Can't get past the house doors, pry off the steel grates in front of the windows and open the windows and break the glass. Now you are inside the house. OK, steal what you can from the common rooms on the first floor, but the occupants are behind locked doors on the second floor, where getting to the grates on the windows is harder and on the third floor where there are no grates on the windows, but how to get up there?

No, it isn't perfect security, but for the most part it works, and if there is a handgun in the nightstand by the bed, entering into the bedroom might be a death sentence for the bad guy. Best to not try!

Welcome to the third world. It is different from your world. It is coarser. It is more brutal. It is more honest. It is a Hobbesian world.

These girls, a few meters from me, as I stand in the entryway, with the bundle of keys in my hand, are the yin and yang of the truth of it all. If before they were safe, it was because they had nothing. Now that they are here, they are less safe and the keys are needed to keep them safe.

Yet, for them, all they believe is — keys make you safe.

As the weight of all the keys makes an impression on my mind, I realize the practical need for a number of duplicate sets.

The girls are investigating the kitchen. They announce that tomorrow morning they need to go shopping.

I am curious. Lyn when do you need to go back to work?

Craig, I quit. No way to work and care for you!

I see. OK.

Yes, I do see. If I am staying, she may well be right. But I have not made that decision yet. She is gambling. Look, we also need to make duplicate keys and some of these keys are special and not easy to duplicate.

No problem. There a guy down on Pioneer, he do that. We see him tomorrow also. Not far from palengke.

Lyn, what does palengke mean?

It the public market. We shop there for fruit, vegetable, fish, pork... better than supermarket I think. It not far from your hotel, Craig. You know, that where the city begin... down there. That why everything we need close to there, really.

It makes sense. That's where the bay comes to shore. These 'heights' grew up from the city as it expanded up from the bay.

Wealthier folks, along with more simple but employed individuals, moved up from what has become, in some ways, a more squalid place, surrounded by the businesses, and by products of their trades, along with the effluent of human activity never foreseen in the original settlement.

The formal downtown survives, but its streets are a thin veneer hiding that which sits right behind it.

In these few hours I have been here, that much is coming into focus. This house and its multiple locked doors provides me with a lens through which I can see what I had not seen before. It helps me better understand the girls, too. It helps in that it provides me with a window into their way of seeing the world.

This is not the world I knew. This is a world I must learn about. This is most assuredly the only world they will ever know and its rules, boundaries, limitations, and options are the ones I will be functioning in... if I stay. And yet, this part of their world is new to them, too. Yesterday they lived 'at risk' lives. Not so now. At least, not so if I stay and keep them. Once again, they are gambling on me.

Once again, the question is front and center in my mind. Do I stay?

Without a doubt, I now believe the girls very much want me to stay. They are betting that, if they treat me right, I will stay. For them, I am a real answer to their lives here. But are they and this place the answer for me?

Quite clearly, my safety is not assured here. That has become crystal clear, right along with the heft of these twenty-two keys. I will have to be careful where I go. I will need these locked doors. My money, as I have it, will suffice, so that will no longer be a problem. It is the problem I was looking to solve. But there are some hurdles.

This house is nice for now, but if I stay in this city, I will eventually have to leave this house. At some point, the owners, now overseas, will return. So, if I plan to stay, I will need to investigate getting my own place.

I am holding a tourist visa. I will need to investigate what options I have to get a different visa.

I have my life in Dorchester. People, though not many, plus my things. I have a house there. I can lease it out, or sell it. Selling seems far too final. I am most assuredly not nearly ready to be that final in my choosing, no matter what I decide to do here, for now. So, if I stay here, leasing sounds like the best option.

Craig?

Huh? Oh, what, Jana?

You hungry? There no food here. It OK if me and Lyn get something from Malakas? Food stores there. Maybe we get some bbq pork for you, we buy a kilo of rice for the cooker here, we get some beer and buko juice?

How far is it?

Not far. We close. You not see it because it up the street more. Maybe three minute by small tricycle.²

How much do you need?

It OK if you give two hundred pesos? That OK, Craig? We promise we bring back your change.

What they have asked for is about $4.50 to feed the three of us and that includes two beers for me. Just try to feed three people in Dorchester for that much money. OK, maybe a few slices of baloney and a loaf of white bread. But really...

I give them the money, but before they leave they caution me to keep an ear out for their return, as they will have to call for me to open the manhole for them. Security. The doors must stay locked.

While the girls are gone, I wander around the house a little. The master bedroom is on the third floor and it does have a balcony. And the balcony door has a lock. That's the twenty-second key.

I can see a fair bit of the street from the balcony. It isn't exactly private. Is that another lesson? Do Filipinos not value privacy like we do in the States?

It is actually cooler up here on the balcony than it is downstairs. I have not turned on any air conditioner yet, so this nice, breezy and cooler air is a welcome change to what being outside, up to now, has meant to me here. It is actually cooler than it was on the roof of the hotel. Being in the heights has real value.

I need to get a chair or two onto this balcony. There is nothing here now. I am just leaning against the wall, looking out over rooftops and between trees. I see activity in every direction. Not hurried activity, but purposeful. The activity of those living out their lives.

All around, clothing hangs on lines. All around, I see dogs, chickens, and small children. There is a fecundity here. You can feel it. Everything grows, breeds, moves and in some cases crawls. Yes crawls, as I watch a lizard on the wall of the house.

It has been three quarters of an hour since the girls left. I see them now as they emerge from a tricycle. I call down to them, both startling and entertaining them. I will come down and let them in.

One thing is perfectly clear. Filipino bbq is radically different from any bbq I have had in the States. That is not to say it isn't good. It's wonderful. Just really different. The girls got me around ten of the diminutive bamboo skewers of bbq pork. They, it seems, have skewers of bbq chicken entrails. I decide to never try these things. There are just some places I am not going. It's that simple.

We have some black colored, watery, dipping sauce that came in a small plastic bag. It's good, though I don't have a clue as to what it is. One thing is certain, it bears not one bit of any connection with bbq sauce we use on our plates in the USA. There is nothing sweet nor savory about this.

The white rice is good with it, though I do miss my fries, beans and slaw that I usually have with bbq.

I haven't mentioned the rice here. It is ubiquitous and it is also radically different from how we know rice in the States. And no, I am not referring to Uncle Ben's. No, I mean that I was always told that rice should not clump. Properly cooked rice should allow each grain to be distinct.

Not so here. And that is not by accident or because they cannot afford good rice. They want the rice to be starchy and clump. The traditional way to eat rice, I am being told tonight, is to eat it as they are doing now, making little balls of the stuff with fingers and then popping the rice into the mouth via those same fingers. The girls are not using any utensils. Everything is by fingers.

How we do that, if it not stick together?

And this rice is not long grained. It is medium, if not short grain. They have never seen long grained rice. The rice they eat is grown here, right here. Here, on the outskirts of town, I am told. They are quite sure that this is the best rice in the world.

See how soft, Craig? Lyn asks as she squeezes a clump. Imported rice and cheap rice, it is hard, not soft like our good rice. Our rice taste better too!

Does rice have flavor? Can't say I noticed it. I guess I should try from now on. There are things in this world that have passed unnoticed. Another lesson.

Is Lyn's insistence that her rice is better true? It is true for her and how her culture eats rice. That is all I can say. Better is not an external concept. It requires context.

In the world Lyn inhabits, some rice is better than other rice. The rice preferred in restaurants with top Michelin ratings would be rejected here... and vice versa. That, my friend, is one of the reasons that truth is hard to know, and it may be why there is no eternal or external truth.

Truth requires context.

We are finishing our meal and I note that a sizable number of the chicken laden skewers are untouched and a significant amount of rice also remains. I ask if this will be for breakfast.

No, we go out to get breakfast tomorrow. This for Mel. She will be here tonight. Me and Jana know we need to feed her.

I am putting what little I have in a couple of drawers in our bedroom. My passport sits atop the dresser as Jana comes in.

Oh! You need to hide that. Dangerous to leave it out, I think.

It's true I don't want to lose it, but I am not sure how it is valuable to anyone else. But assuming I am clueless and she knows something I do not, I simply ask, Where do you think I should put it?

You need a safe, I think. But for now, is there a pocket in your suitcase? Maybe put it in there.

I am not sure about the need for a safe, but the suitcase makes sense to me and I put it in the outside pocket on the bag. I think I will need it soon enough.

I have been thinking that, if I plan on staying long enough to see if this will work, rather than extend my initial stay here and then go back, I should go back within the twenty-one days of the visitor's visa, and get my place in Dorchester ready for leasing. Close up things there as much as possible without completely shutting all doors and burning all bridges.

I will need to deal with my bank, too. I need to see about opening a bank account here before I leave. There is no way I want to live here without a local bank account. The cost of using the street-side currency exchange operations is far less desirable than using bank to bank transfers; Transfers between banks gets me a better exchange rate, far more to my advantage.

As I noted earlier, I don't play well with others. One of the ways that shows is that I spend far too much time inside my own head rather than with the things around me.

Right now is a prime example. Jana is sitting on the bed and, I guess, waiting for me to engage with her. My failure to do so has caused a small hiccup.

Craig, it OK I am here? You not sorry it not only Lyn or maybe Lyn and Mel?

Why do you ask that?

You not talking to me. You not touching me. I am here on the bed, but you ignore me. I am too young? Too ugly? Too silly? What?

Are you experiencing whiplash? I am, but only for a moment.

See it through Jana's eyes. My position is secure. She is the supplicant. In all likelihood, it's backward from your experience. It is backward in mine, but I get her point.

I stop what I am doing, take a good look at this pretty teenager. I give her as much of a smile as I can muster, while at the same time feeling incredibly sad for her and all the girls just like her, who have the desperate need to find their own prizes.

Jana, I am happy you are with me and you may not leave. Is that clear?

Truly, Sir?

Yes, truly. It is also true that I have much to think about if I am staying. I have a whole life back in the USA. You put all your things in that plastic bag in just a few minutes and were done. I can't do that. My life is far more complicated.

You leaving?

No, at least, not for long. I will have to go back and shut some things down, but I will come back.

I scared you will not return, if you go.

Before I leave, for a little bit, I will try to do some things to prove to you that I will come back.

Like what?

Oh, opening a bank account, buying a motorcycle, buying a chair for the balcony so I can sit out there.

You get a motorcycle? Really?

I think it is better than using those tricycles all the time.

Yes! Very good. OK, you do that and I will believe you will come back. The bank account and the chair, that I am not sure of, but the motorcycle... yes, that.

Banks mean nothing to her. Little plastic chairs, common here, are cheap. But a motorcycle? That is proof of economic stability and status. To own such a thing has significance.

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In the Beginning... 5