After

The night Lucia died, David and I were screaming at each other. She came downstairs complaining of a fever, and we stopped long enough to put her to bed. Then we kept on fighting until David threw an armchair out the window. I saw it laying in the grass and said, I’m leaving you. He said nothing. I went to a friend’s place and ignored his calls all night. But in the morning I answered and couldn’t believe it.

            Back at the house her door was still open, the bedsheets on the floor as if she threw them there. I bent down to pick them up. But two officers came and said they moved the body already. One of them brought me to David. He was standing by the shattered window explaining about the chair. Somebody took a picture of it—the flash went off, and I rubbed my eyes as his voice droned on without meaning.

            Soon we were walking down the hospital hallway looking into rooms that were all the same. We found her in one laying on the slab, and David cried, but for me nothing happened. It was like watching from above; I closed my eyes and waited for it to end. I opened them again to Lucia.

We stopped talking once the marriage was annulled. Five years passed, and I barely thought of her anymore. After the funeral, I moved to Manila and found work writing articles for a union newspaper. Accidents mostly. The gruesome cases other reporters wouldn’t take. It was one like that when David finally called: a scaffolding collapse in Quezon City, one worker dead, the widow ignoring all requests to interview. So they sent me in person to convince her.

            At the apartment, she let me in, but only off the record. Her two kids were there. They weren’t told about the accident yet and played around the room like it hadn’t happened.

            I know this is hard for you, I said, But we can stop them from doing it again. I don’t want any trouble, she answered. Then they go free, no consequences, and somebody else will get hurt, I said. But she wouldn’t even look at me; her eyes were following her kids instead. Have you seen it? I asked. I took out the photo of his body crushed beneath the scaffolding, legs sticking out in a pool of blood. Horrible, I said. She started to cry. The youngest son came over and peered up at the table. What’s wrong, nanay? he asked. But she pushed him away. Nothing, anak, nothing’s wrong, go play with your kuya, she said. She waited for him to leave. Then slid the photo back and agreed to do it.

David’s call came after the interview. His number had changed, but I knew the voice—frantic again like those first months when Lucia died. He started telling about the dream like no time passed between us.            In it, he’s walking down the hospital hallway with all closed doors opening to emptiness. It goes for hours that way. Until he comes to one no different than the rest, yet knows she’s there. He tries to skip it, tries to go on, but can’t, and the door opens to reveal her fraying at the edges like being pulled back through a dark tunnel. And in the last blurred seconds before waking, he sees her move again—he sees her living.

            It must mean something if I keep having it, he said. They’re just dreams, I said. But they feel real! Like she’s about to tell me something! he said. He was breathing heavily through the speaker. I waited for him to settle. She can’t do that, David, she’s dead, I answered. I know she’s dead, I’m not crazy, he said, But maybe we could’ve saved her, what if that’s what she’s trying to say?

            Then his wife walked in. He put the phone down to speak with her. Hushed whispers. Muffled sound. No clear words at all. But he came back calm and steady, a new person entirely. I’m fine, everything’s fine, he said, before the line cut out.

My next case was up north, where a factory fire spread and burned down an entire barrio. 39 people died. The rest were moved to the shelter in San Nicholas, an old gymnasium packed end-to-end with dirty cots across the floor.

            The first woman I spoke to had her whole face bandaged except for the eyes. They bulged red and looked right through me. We are trying to help you, I said. How? she asked. By holding them accountable, I answered. I took out the photos, but her eyes never wavered. Her hand flipped as if swatting a fly. I was there, I saw it already, where were you? she asked.

            Others were the same. None talked to me, except for a man named José Salvador, who told anyone that would listen. The night of the fire he got drunk and latched his children’s doors from the outside. Somebody found him passed out when it started and carried him to the street; they didn’t know about the children. José woke eventually to their screams and tried to stand, but was still drunk and kept falling over. He tried and tried until the house caved in and everything around him fell silent.

            José stared at the ceiling. Then he shouted, It should’ve been me! The words echoed and faded and nobody paid attention to them at all. It doesn’t help to think that, I said, just to say something. But realized he meant it for God.

            I called David first that time. He was surprised to hear from me. His kids were there in the background, so I asked about them. But he wouldn’t say much. Only that they were older now, that’s all. When he asked why I called, I told him about José.

            The paper won’t take a drunk, I said. David sighed. This is about the paper? he asked. It’s about my job, I said. Your job; his family is dead, and you’re worried about a job, he said. What’s that supposed to mean? I asked. But the line went quiet for a while. His hand was covering the receiver. Then he spoke again, and I couldn’t hear his kids anymore. You feed off of it, you know that? Ever since Lucia died, like it distracts you from the guilt or something, he said. Guilt? I asked. Yes! Guilt—the guilt, he answered. You don’t know what you’re talking about, I said, and he shouted, Stop it! Stop saying that! Stop acting like we didn’t kill her!

            I put the phone down. His voice went on faintly. I was crying but knew only after.

It rained all night, and in the morning, out the bus window, farmers were at their rice patties planting new seed. For miles I watched those bent-back shapes rooted in muddy water, hands reaching down like asking the earth for something. But they always came up empty. Until fields turned to houses, and the burnt arch of the barrio revealed itself exactly like the photo.

            I passed through on foot. Faces from the shelter looked at me without recognition. A group of children came and told about the fire like I didn’t know already. They pointed at ash and empty space and said what used to be: the schoolhouse, the restaurant, the store. Then they led me in the street to the lone house standing—sitting on its porch was the woman with the bandaged face. People were lined up to see her, and at the front, they dropped pesos into a can and bowed at her feet. Milagro, one of the kids said, pulling me forward, She took away the fire.

            But I shook my head and went on.

            Further down the road I found José Salvador. Already he seemed different—as if born again, standing in front of the half-built church giving orders to the working men. When they broke off, he saw me and started over.

            They put me in The Manila Times, he said. Your paper didn’t use my story. I shrugged. I don’t work there anymore, I said. You don’t? That’s too bad, he answered. But he smiled like he knew already. Like he’d been waiting for me to come. He turned to the church and waved grandly, as if raising it from the ground there and then. We’re building this first so God can see to the rest, he said. You still believe in God after this? I asked, the words falling out before I even thought them. He looked back at me. It’s harder not to, he said. If you don’t believe, they’re just dead.

            Besides, you don’t feel something greater? he continued. Like all of this was ordained? A fire that brought you here. Listen. I’ve decided to run for captain. I know that He wants it of me. And I know what He wants of you too—to help these people, to change their lives for the better. That’s why you came. Understand? We spend our whole lives in the dark, hoping we’re chosen to see—

            He clasped his hands like crushing the world between us. He let it go.

            Don’t you see now? he asked.

            At first I didn’t answer. I looked away from him, back to the woman instead, her hand stretching at the bowed man and directing him to the can. Then I looked up: the cloudless sky, the pure and perfect blue, the horizon line cutting across until it met earth, the skeleton of the church with the sun above the spire shining through the bare foundations at me.

            I squinted against the glare.

            Okay, I’ll work for you, I said, I will stay.

They built the church in days, the rest of the barrio soon after, and buried the dead in their own graveyard by the entrance gate. At its center a monument went up, a statue of man, woman, and child with each victim’s name engraved. For José’s campaign, I wrote a speech about the fire, and he gave it one Sunday in front of that statue. He said rather than forget, we should remember and rise from it as stronger people. He said the names of the dead, all from memory without reading the plaque, and refused to ever stop saying them. He told about his family again, though we knew the story already, and when he finished, the entire barrio lifted their hands and shouted his name.

            After José won, I stayed with his office to write speeches. Years went by and I was happy. Until David called. I wasn’t at my desk, so he left a message—the flat voice this time, not the frantic one—saying that his wife had died. He said it was cancer and that she fought for months without telling him. He said he found out near the end, but she told him there was nothing he could’ve done anyway. He asked if I remembered at our funeral, when he looked a long time into the casket before they took it away. He said he wouldn’t do that again. He said he didn’t want to see her how he still saw Lucia.

            I called back the second it ended. As the line rang, I thought of what I could say to him—about faith and memory, about learning from loss. How unimaginable things happen in this world, yet still we must go on. Words formed cleanly in my head like a sermon. But David never answered. I tried all week and it was the same. So I stopped calling, and used up those words for José.

            That’s when the dreams started, as if David set them loose like some disease. Every night exactly as he described it: the hallway, the opening doors, Lucia’s dead body on the slab again. Except the ending was different—for me she stayed dead. She wouldn’t move at all, even though I wanted her to, even though I clung to the light like all she needed was a few more seconds. But nothing. Always nothing. Only death. Then waking alone in the middle of the night and calling out her name.

            One morning I found myself sitting in José’s office after four days without sleep. I could hear his voice, but the room dipped in and out to me. It appeared as the hospital hallway, then as eternal emptiness. I blinked: back to the room again. José putting the phone down and waiting for me to speak.

            Do you still think about them? I asked. About who? he said. Your family—not how you say we should, but in the bad way, I said. The way that makes you want to die. Remember? You felt that once, you told God you don’t want to live anymore. Does it still get like that? José stared at me. He shook his head. So what, are they symbols? Just names now? Is that all? I asked. No, not symbols, not names, he said. Then what! Tell me what they are! I shouted, and he reached across the table and took hold of me.

            Maria—be strong, he said. First you must believe, then after will get better.

            The phone rang. José smiled. He let go and picked it up again and spoke into the receiver. I sat there looking at his eyes, seeing nothing, knowing those words because I wrote them.

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 M. Guillermo currently works as a video editor and writes fiction in their free time. They hold a BFA in Journalism and Design from The New School.