Reality check

I found 17 still very much around: Dex (1) washing clothes in the river with her partner, the same girl she eloped with after getting back home in the island some time in the middle of last year. How thin she has become, her skin burnt dry. Susan (2) has grown her hair long, and unkempt, too harassed with work to get a trim. Still within beck and call, and still the cad that she is, hasn’t finished high school and is now working in a big house at Chinese Pier, cleaning and washing mountains of dishes, maybe piles of laundry, swarmed by legions of flies singing round her head. She earns one thousand and five hundred a month, said she, and wants to save up for her entrance fee this coming June, three thousand pesos, which Aisa says is putting, a fib. Her sister Alex is now lost to them or the family has lost track of her, they have no idea if she is in jail or out of it, the last they heard is she was still into pickpocketing, she and her Bajau crew in Manila, and they have a preference for Melikans and Koreans in their trade. Vaness (3) is sweet on me again. Last time her father shooed us away, shooed me out of his way, apparently informed by Inah Cely that I am out to bring harm to his daughter, exposing them to the elements, them and their young minds and precious lives which I supposedly don’t care about. Ivy (4) is still out of college, but wants to reenrol in June, is interested to join the writing workshop at Notre Dame of Jolo College, where she used to go to. She’s still with the girlfriend a bit older than her, the same one who walked with her when we crossed paths. Nuralyn (5) looks the same as last seen, surprisingly, and still the shy one I remember her to be. So that’s where they go to hang out? Where they get stoned, someone said, if they made so much noise or did unpleasant things, like making out with their girlfriends. No wonder that old man there dreads most the population explosion of tomboys. Nashra (6) is much bigger and taller and the same timid girl we first met at Subah Datuh. Mherz (7) colored her hair brown, LoL, and he looks a Bajau prostitute with it, something I couldn’t say to his face. All she needed, I said, was a lipstick and she may dance. What I wanted to say was stripdance or stand at the doorway of a beauty parlor like an authentic hustler that she is. Kept on repeating Ingat lang, Te, obviously aware that so many people want me dead. Earlier she refused to do the legworking, cannot bring a friend to the meeting with the MNLF, she said. I have not a single friend here, you know that, said she. What freedom. I wish I could say that and not be damned. Aisa (8) seems doing well, healthwise, only that she is making of her girlfriend her househelp and has two other girls on the side. She also dropped out of second year high and has another important gang, Klan Adventures, of which she is a founder. Mherz said she and Coms are still into drugs, but it looks like she and Coms are not even very good friends now. Cannot even call Coms’ girlfriend by her name. Amun iban niya babae maitum, they kept on saying. Gema (9) is still the big baby that she is, though mentally she is way out,  most of the time. Like Vaness, she is very hard to involve, intellectually, in the work and study level. Riyang (10) looks well, but who was it who reported she has a boyfriend beside the older girl she has been living with? She denies it, of course. “Who told you that?!?” Arnalyn (11) is doing good and appears like she actually has time to go out if she likes or if she finds group activities worthwhile. I wish she were a little rebellious, but she makes good compensation enough beside all the ungrateful and heartless cads that surround me. I still don’t know what to do with Amrina (12) and her gang. She doesn’t look like she is capable of any independent thinking or any thinking at all outside bread and shoes and brokenheartedness. Told that Tumba Lata is a goner, she believed so. Told to burn down the group resolution, she complied so. Suppose they ask her to shoot me down, would she shoot me down, too? Should be on her way out if only she knows of other ways out. Her gangmates, Ness (13) especially, seem way too unreliable to be counted on. Chanda (14) though has a set of parents wise and good enough to see her through, if only she would put more mind to what we are trying to do. Arriana (15) I still have to know; same with Ziana (16). Next trip to Jolo I should sit down with them two. It is Robina (17) I much trust better, always ahead of herself performance-wise, she indeed will make a good Pinay sweetheart for some gullible Melikan.