Portrait of the author as a young geek

It’s a sunny after-noon in 1977 and on the playground of St. Theresa’s the girls are playing Open the Basket or Doctor Quack-Quack. In Open the Basket, two girls stretch out their arms and hold hands. They are the basket. One girl stands inside the basket. She is the chicken. When the It cries, “Open the basket!” all the chickens run out and find another basket. The chicken that can’t find a basket becomes It. 

The girls run to the edge of the grass and scream, “Join us!” I shake my head. “My doctor says I can’t do any strenuous activities like running and jumping because I have a fractured skull and I might have a seizure...” but they’ve already returned to their game. The accident happened years ago, and I don’t know what a seizure would be like, but I don’t tell them that. I hate Open the Basket because I’m always the chicken without a basket. 

I can’t play anyway because I’m studying for the Spelling Bee. The Spelling Bee city final is next week, and I am the official representative of the school. Years ago a student from STC won the national final. The teacher says I must uphold the school’s honor. It would be a terrible shame if I L-O-S-E. On the bench next to me is a stack of dictionaries. My review method is simple: I open a dictionary, read the first word I see, close my eyes and spell the word. “Phlegmatic.” “Abattoir.” “Salmon.” 

Someone lands on the bench with a thud. It’s the noisiest girl in class — we’ll call her Agnetha because ABBA was big at the time. Her hair is parted in the middle and held down with clips that say “Left” and “Right.” “Hi. Want some chocolate?” 

I hesitate. Is it right to take chocolate from someone you don’t like? I mull this over for a few seconds, then I nod. She burrows in her pocket and produces half a Hershey bar. I gaze upon the Hershey bar with something like awe. A Hershey bar is imported, Stateside, PX goods. You have to go to the American military base to buy it, or have relatives in America send it to you. Everyone has relatives in the USA. When they come to Manila to visit they bring large cardboard boxes full of M&Ms, cans of corned beef, roll-on deodorant, rolls of quilted toilet paper, and shirts called Imported. The American relatives look like all your other relatives, but they speak differently, as if they were chewing gum. This is called an “American twang.” 

“Did you hear what happened to Anni-Frid?” Agnetha says in a very loud whisper.

“What?”  

“She saw the white lady last Friday.” 

“I don’t believe you.” 

“Yes, she did,” Agnetha says. Everybody knows that there are ghosts in St. Theresa’s, the spirits of the dead nuns buried on campus. No one has ever seen a tombstone, but that only means that the school is hiding them. In the evening, after all the girls have gone home, the ghosts roam the corridors and visit the empty classrooms. You can tell they’re ghosts because one, you can see right through them, two, they float at least six inches above the ground, and three, they have no faces. 

“She forgot her shoes in the ballet room so she went back to get them and there was someone there and she thought it was a janitor so she went to her and asked if she saw the ballet shoes and then… and then… and then—” Agnetha pauses for a gulp of air— “when she was right beside the janitor she saw that it wasn’t a janitor but a white lady! Anni-Frid felt cold all over then the white lady leaned towards her like she was going to touch her and Ann-Frid ran away!” On that note she refills her lungs. 

“How did she know it was the white lady?” I ask. 

Agnetha rolls her eyeballs. “It was the ghost! Anni-Frid was sure!” 

“Was it transparent?” 

“Of course it was!” 

“Then how come she couldn’t see through it?” 

“I don’t know. Maybe she was too scared.” 

“Maybe it was a janitor,” I point out. I eat the last crumb of chocolate and toss the wrapper in the trash. “Can you watch my bag? I have to wash my hands.” 

“My driver’s here,” Agnetha says, sounding bored all of a sudden.  

“I’ll be right back,” I tell her. The nearest bathroom is at the end of the kindergarten building, and when I get there it’s locked. I’ll have to go to the bathroom in the ballet studio, where Anni-Frid says she saw the white lady. She’s always making up stories. One time she says a flying saucer landed in her parents’ garden. 

But what if there is a ghost in the ballet studio? I can’t not wash my hands, I don’t want to smudge my books. Anyway it’s stupid to be afraid of ghosts. Ghosts can’t hurt you because they’re not solid. They can’t hit you or pick up something to throw at you. I make the sign of the cross three times and proceed to the bathroom in the ballet studio. 

I soap my hands very carefully. There are no ghosts, no white ladies, just the cracked blue and white tiles and the faucets under the long mirror. It’s like when I was four and I thought I could hear noises in the kitchen in the middle of the night after everyone had gone to sleep. They weren’t just noises, they were the sounds of people talking, eating, laughing as if they were at a party. This went on for several nights until I told my mother. “Listen,” I whispered. From the bedroom I could clearly hear the kitchen door opening and closing, chairs scraping on the floor, glasses clinking. A woman laughed. My mother stirred. “It’s nothing. You’re imagining things. Go back to bed.” 

Someone is playing the piano in the ballet room. Maybe someone had come in and I didn’t hear because the water was running. It could be the piano teacher practicing, or one of the girls. It could even be a janitor. Maybe after she swept the floor and polished the barre she liked to play the piano. Or it could be my imagination. I-M-A-G-I-N-A-T-I-O-N. I take a deep breath and walk out as fast as I can. 

Agnetha has gone, abandoning my two schoolbags. The smell of burning leaves is in the air; I take out my handkerchief and cover my nose. Every afternoon at the orthopedic hospital next door they burn the fallen leaves and dead branches. Some girls say it’s not really leaves and branches they’re burning, but the arms and legs of A-M-P-U-T-E-E-S. Roberta says the brother of the maid of her aunt was in the hospital, and in the basement he saw a secret room full of sawed-off body parts. 

“Psssssssssssst.” It’s my mother, calling me from the gate.  

I leap up and gather my books. If I’m quick enough I can be at the gate before the second call — Too late. Every girl in the playground has picked up the signal, and now they’re all hissing “Pssssssssst” as if a swarm of insects has descended on the campus. This is how we call the stray cats who live around our house. My mother has turned me into a cat.