Twenty-Eight

IT turned out they did not need to ask for help. There were people already in their house. As soon as they made the turn, she could see them in the short distance.
Someone was removing their curtains from the windows. Someone was also lowering their bamboo sofa down the small porch's stairs. And some of their stuff was already inside a truck.
"Why? What is that? What's happening?"
"Because I'm supposedly working in the hacienda, we need to move to a house closer to the fishery," Tommy told her in a casual voice while his face said differently.
He also looked as confused as she was. His mind could not keep up with what was happening, but he was willing to wait for it to catch up.
Meaning, that he was waiting for someone to explain further.
That would be her.
She turned towards Eric.
He remained silent, not looking back at her. Tommy wasn't finished.
"They also said it was timely because... the Señor has plans. The land is needed," Tommy added.
She turned back to Eric. "What does he mean? Why didn't you say this earlier?"
"I already told you."
"Yes, but I meant that people are taking our stuff. I didn't want to move. We haven't talked about it as a family."
"What to discuss? As Tommy said, it's near the fisheries where he worked. He is basically a worker now, so he is entitled to better accommodation like the others. And it would benefit your mother to have neighbors to talk with that would relieve some of her stress and sadness. She didn't want to be sick. Give her some slack."
"How do you even know she was sad?" she asked.
He did say he'd been observing them since he found out she lived there inside the hacienda. But their mother wasn’t someone who would easily succumb to sadness or hopelessness.
She had ways to distract herself, and she’d always preached to them it wouldn’t solve anything, as there was always something to be grateful about.
Yes, that’s their mother.
"She loves both of you. Why would she want to let you carry the burden of taking care of her when she should be taking care of you? She wanted you both to be at school, not working your asses off for a small compensation. She wouldn't want her son to earn unjustly for decent full-time work and I was told she was happy to learn about the move. Did you think your mother would not approve of this?"
She stared at him. He was right.
But their mother didn’t know about everything so he was, technically, also wrong.
"And Tommy was told the truth, too. My father does need to use this part of the hacienda. He has new specimens of hardwood that can no longer fit in our plantation in Davao, so the excess that needs to go to the ground will be moved here. It's killing two birds with one stone. Tommy's supervisor had plans to train him for more responsibilities, and it would help if he lived near because most of his everyday routine would include always being close to the ponds."
"What more responsibilities?" she asked, torn between being happy for Tommy and remaining suspicious of Eric. "He is young and he needs to go back to school. This isn't going to be a long time—"
"Ate!" Tommy butted in, his voice clear even when he was still paddling.
At the periphery of her vision, she could see the others in the house stopping and looking over at them, which reminded her how Eric must look in his garb—semi-nakedness—and the shirt he was holding behind his head.
"The Kapitan already told me about it. I can make it even if I go back to school. I need to study anyway and finish high school so I could go to the state college and learn more about the science of fishery. I'll work hard, ate." Tommy was talking so fast, trying to cramp all the words together in a minute, which meant he really wanted to do this work but was afraid she wouldn’t let him.
"He's to be groomed to become Kapitan's apprentice," Eric added, his voice shaking as the tri bike's outer wheel went over a few rocks on the dirt road.
She couldn't believe what she was hearing. Or the fact that the two were ganging up on her.
"Why is this the first time I've ever heard about this? Have you told mother?" she asked Tommy.
Tommy didn't answer right away. He'd stopped the bike almost near where the truck was and concerned people were gathering towards them.
She could see Mang Ben, one of the tanod guys, rushing from the side of the house. He was a good friend to her late father.
Everybody was also rushing toward them and there was no more time to quiz the two boys more.
"Señorito Enrique, what happened to you?" was mostly the question.
"I fell off one of Papa's horses," he replied in a gruff voice.
"Did you see it happen?" Mang Ben asked her, as he'd already reached them. Someone was already on the phone calling for medical help.
She nodded. "I... something spooked the horse and it just ran. *Señorito* fell. I—"
"That's a good thing you were there to assist. A good thing..." Mang Ben was saying as an older woman assisted a scowling Eric from getting off the bike.
He was taken to the truck to be assisted with what they could use to clean his wound while she rushed inside the house to get whatever medication they had that could help him.
"Yna!"
She turned to see Zoren, a friend and former classmate who lived in the hacienda because his parents worked there, too.
He's taking Civil Engineering at the city proper's university.
"Zoren! What are you doing here?" she asked as she continued walking into a house that was in total disarray.
He followed her. "I was home when Uncle Jose said they were going to need help moving your stuff to a house in our block near the fisheries. So, of course, I came here with them then.”
“Thank you…” she told him as she stared at the chaos in the living room.
“I told Chinchin and Giselle already. They’re very excited. We don’t need to go over here to fetch you when we need to swim in the river,” he was saying.
Chinchin and Giselle were our other friends. They were all the same age.
“So, Mama and the other titas are cleaning the house you're going to use. They've also cleaned up a part of the yard at the back so your mother can still garden over there.”
She was reluctant to smile at the thought that she would be neighbors with her friends again. Even now that their things were being bundled in the truck, she was opposed to this move.
She felt manipulated. No—she knew she was being manipulated.
And she didn’t even know who to talk to.
She used to tell her friends everything. Every girl stuff.
But she now had a secret and it didn't feel good at all.
How could she tell her friends she'd prostituted herself for one night and then slept again with the same man, who happened to be their señorito, the first hour after meeting him again?
"Yna?"
She looked at Zoren and she took a deep breath.
"Sorry. It's all happening too fast. What did I come here for again? Oh, the medicine kit. I hope it’s still in our bedroom. She climbed the stairs with him following her.
"Let me help." And he talked about what Chinchin and Giselle told him through Messenger, an app she didn’t have because she didn’t even have a smartphone.
They were lucky to find the first aid supplies where her mother's meds were, on a miniature plastic cabinet atop her dresser.
They took what they might need and talked about what else he could help with once she and her brother had transferred everything to the other house as they walked out.
At this point, she knew Eric had won. She would draw more suspicion if she fought this, and he knew that.
*Gago.*
Eric was sitting on a wooden bench somebody took out of the kitchen and Teresa, a hacienda worker who part-timed as a teacher for the daycare here had her hand on the shirt at his head.
She was in her late twenties and was clearly enjoying every moment attending the señorito, even when he wasn’t answering any of her questions about an event sometime in the future she wished he would attend if he happened to still be in the hacienda. He was scowling as he watched her and Zoren arrive.
Zoren was quickly getting another stool where she could put the alcohol and other stuff, while she carefully avoided looking at Eric's face.
“Thank you, Yna. It’s a good thing you live near here. What could have happened if there was no one there to see the Señorito?
She snorted but hid this by turning and looking for Tommy.
“Where’s my brother?”
"He's in the kitchen," Zoren told her, lowering his head a little because he was taller. Lowering his voice, too. "He looked a little lost, Yna. I wanted to go back there and talk to him like a kuya but I think he needed his ate. Go to him. This must be overwhelming for him, too."
Her heart melted. He always wanted to act like the big guy and people close to them knew this, too. But he's so young.
"Thank you, Zoren," she told him softly as she patted him on his upper arm, and managed not to jump when she heard a growl.
“Sorry! Did it hurt, Señorito?” Teresa asked, panicked. She was cleaning the wound with cotton soaked with alcohol.
Eric was looking at her hand on Zoren’s arm, then transferred those eyes to him who, gratefully, was looking at her.
She turned to Zoren. "Thank you. I’ll go."
“I’ll be with Kuya Ben if you need me,” he told her.
She nodded and didn’t dare respond as she rushed away from Eric.