The Trap

By: Kerima Polotan Tuvera

I was fourteen when we moved to Cabuyao. We reached the town at night and though it was
notquite seven, the streets were empty. I had hoped we would get to it before dark, while there
waslight enough for people to see us come. We knew no one, of course Well make friends,
myfather had said and expected no welcome, but having left Tayug with reluctance, I had
urgedmy father during the trip to drive faster so that we might arrive in Cabuyao early enough
forsomeone to see us drive in.That was important to me.Why, Elisa? my mother asked, and I
could not tell her why, except that I had left behind inTayug one friend very dear to me. When
the day came for us to go, we could not leave soonenough. I wanted the pain of missing Salud
to start quickly. She said goodbye to me that morningby the plaza, asking, Are you taking
everything, Elisa? Youre sure? When Mother frowned, Ihated Salud for betraying me.Several
times that past year I had told Salud I felt that something was happening to me. I felt Iwas
growing to be another person entirely. Somethings wrong, Salud, I said one day Imgoing
crazy. She had laughed and looked pointedly at my breasts and said. Theyre growinglike
mine, Elisa. She had a way of saying things like that, that angered and also disarmed me;she
was 18 and the four years between us yawned like an abyss. During all that time I hadwatched
her turn into a lovely, graceful girl, unfazed by adolescence, leaving me far behind,eaten with
envy and yearning. When she laughed at me that morning, I refused to be shaken off.I dogged
her all the way along Calle Santa, round the corner to Del Pilar, and catching up withher a few
coconut trees from their steps. I said something that made her pull up and look at megravely.
Help me, Salud, I said.That past September I had come home one Monday from school, my
dress with a stain. Since thenI had lived with the terrible feeling that I stood on the brink of
something. I had dreams about thistoo, unhappy, frightened nights when my dreams took me to
an unknown precipice and I watchedhelplessly as my body dropped over the edge.It was of this
that Salud spoke when she asked, that morning we got ready to drive away, if I wasleaving
something behind with her. Some books I had given her, and tears, and a girlish promise Iwould
write faithfully. She stood beside the car, saying, Goodbye, over and over; she wouldnot cry
before me. Her eyes, though bright, were dry. I held her arms tightly, wanting to see hertears,
but my father said, All right, all right, and I let her go. She blew her fingers at me and wedrove
away.We live near the church, I wrote Salud, in a house that is all sawali, except for the roof
which isnipa, and the floor which is bamboo. The toilet is at the back, outside the house. It is an
outhouseset on posts and connected to the kitchen by a bamboo bridge. You will not believe me
but thebridge is the part I like best it swings when I walk on it. There are sugarcane stalks on

both sidesof the bridge and I never hurry to the outhouse. It is beautiful when there is a moon
up.I believe you, Elisa, Salud wrote back. But dont jump off.
The first day I resumed schooling, my father came with me. We saw the principal together.
Shewas an elderly spinster who wore tight rimless glasses on her nose. She rarely smiled and
whenshe did, it was to show big false teeth that clicked noisily when she spoke How old are
you,Elisa? she asked. Fourteen, I replied respectfully. Only? she remarked, and it was the
wrongthing to say. I had scrubbed myself that day and put on my best dress but at Miss Ramos
remark,I felt my knees grow rough and dark, my breasts start to swell. I wondered if she knew
about mynew condition. My days were full of bodily pain and a mysterious sense of growing; I
movedabout carefully, waiting for some bit of womanly knowledge to dawn on me, a grace, a
mannerof self, but I fumbled as before and dropped things and was miserable before people.
Only theunnerving dreams persisted, the nightly journeys that took me through the labyrinths of
my mind toemerge always on the sharp rim of some mountainside from which I flung myself
even as I calledfor help.Miss Ramos stood up, took me by the hand, not companionably, not
with palm about my wrist, butwith index finger and thumb, with clear distaste, and led me thus, a
sullen specimen, through thecorridors of the school, and without bothering to knock, pushed me
ahead, through a door markedMr. Gabriel, and said, Mr. Gabriel, this is Elisa.Miss Ramos is a
witch, I wrote Salud. When shes around, she gives off a smell that makes me sick.Everyone
smells, Salud replied, but you will smell most of all, Elisa, if you dont stop hatingpeople.Not
everyone, I wrote back. I like Mr. Gabriel. He is a good man.Mr. Gabriel was small and thin and
stooped, with a way about him that made him seem evensmaller. His eyes laughed even when
his mouth did not, and when that happened, the tendernessspilled down the cheeks to his quiet
lips. When Miss Ramos blazed into his room, demanding formsand reports and C-156s, Mr.
Gabriel met the storm with soothing coolness, as though he dealtwith just another wayward
student.One day, we were weeding the grounds when I swung my scythe and hit my leg
instead. I stoodbleeding, watching the red fluid flow down to the soil, stain it momentarily, then
sink anddisappear, leaving nothing but a wet spot. Miss Ramos walked up to me, smiling thinly.
She said,Why, its only blood. Mr. Gabriel took me to the clinic. He stopped before the door,
fumblingthrough his pockets for the key. A dark flush had spread over his face and neck. Inside
the clinic, Isat on a white stool while Mr. Gabriel opened a window. He took a long time
searching for swaband iodine and bandage but when he sat in front of me, the flush had
disappeared from his face.It was not a deep wound but it was ugly. The tip of the scythe had
drawn a gash across my leg,leaving a piece of flesh dangling by a thread of skin. Mr. Gabriel
washed and bound it. Exceptfor some throbbing, it had ceased to hurt me. I said so as we left
the room Its not painful, Isaid wonderingly. It will return later, he said.I followed him out of
the room. The yard was empty; the other children had left. A frown passedover the face. He

hurried down the steps and sloshed through the mud, his shoes squeezing downon the wet soil.
Bits of clay clung to the cuffs of his pants. It was a brown suit he wore. I had seenit on him
several times before. It was loose and it fitted him badly. As he walked, the back of hiscoat
swished about his thighs. In the light of early evening, he was a weird sight, like an earthbound
ghost hurrying through the countryside. I trotted after him. When we reached the fork,he raised
his hand quickly and disappeared in the twilight.We had begun to write themes again and I
looked for words like agony and happiness and soul.Each time I used such a word, a bell
seemed to ring inside me. One morning when Mr. Gabrielread one of my themes in front of the
class, I sat still, trying to recall my feelings as I wrote it. Butit was no use, something was gone.
Perhaps, it was Mr. Gabriels voice: it was soft and low, like awomans, and I kept thinking: I
wish I could talk to him alone. Perhaps it was the memory of what Ihad written about a white,
long-legged bird skimming the rice fields while I stood on theshoulder of the road watching, the
great sky above me.If Mr. Gabriel had seemed amused, I might have hated him. But he smiled
faintly and lookedaway, and then as gently as that, between one heartbeat and another, I fell in
love with him.I did not write to Salud about it. I was certain her answer would come, underlined
with mockery:Yes, but is he in love with you, and if he is, is he a married man, and if he isnt, will
he marry you?I betrayed myself in a hundred ways.When Mr. Gabriel stood beside me in class,
watching while I wrote a theme, his presence, wouldundo me so completely that my mind would
go blank and I would ask to be excused. Outside, Icrawled beneath the school building, where it
was damp and I could be alone, but as soon asclass was over, I lingered by the door of the
teachers room, compelled to stay by a new,frightening necessity.One day, he surprised me
beneath the building. He had gone to look for the boys who haddisappeared as soon as the
gardening assignments were posted on the board. He looked underthe schoolhouse and saw
me on the ground, hugging my legs together. Elisa? he called. Mr.Gabriel, I replied. Come
out, he said. I crawled to where he waited by the hedges. Wereyou hiding? he asked. I stood
mute. I felt that if I began to explain I would say more than Ishould, I would in an onrush of hope
tell him everything Salud and my dreams and the sense ofsin that possessed me because I
had begun, despite myself, to span with aching arms theemptiness of my youthful bed at night.
For one, instant, I could have, but someone came to ask fora hoe, and Mr. Gabriel handed me a
trowel and I headed for my garden plot.In February that year, I fell ill. On the fifth day of my
illness, a friend passed by the house andleft a note. How do you do, Elisa? It read. Are you
better? Hurry up and come back to us, we missyou. Sincerely Leonor. Then P.S. What is wrong?
It was the postscript that completed my betrayal Leonors girlish prescience. In my
ownhandwriting, I replied to that question, I wrote: I love Mr. Gabriel. I trembled as I wrote
thewords. Dimly, I realized I had identified the precipice at last. I had met the forlorn stranger in
mydreams, face to face, no longer, would she go wandering tremulously on mountaintops, dying
herlonely deaths, she was where I sat in my sick clothes, writing the fateful words that accepted

theknowledge of womanhood.When I returned to school the next Monday, it was all over the
place. The damning note hadmade rounds and reached Miss Ramos, before whom I now stood,
awaiting judgment. The principal smiled that grim smile of hers and said, A costly mistake. A
very costly one. You haveinvolved Mr. Gabriel that may mean his job. I said nothing, accepting
suspension.When I returned to my room, I saw on the blackboard someone had written Elisa
Gabriel. Ipicked up my things and left. I took the long road, the one that led past the market
and thebilliard hall, past the empty south lots, around the graveyard, then I cut across the plaza
andheaded for home. But on the porch of our home, I had no sooner put my books down than I
turnedaround and ran back to school, taking the narrow dike this time. I ran so fast that my heart
rose tomy throat and beat there, heavy strokes, that made breathing difficult. To my right, the
river lay,untouched by the panic that led me to the building on top of the hill. It was dark when I
stumbledinto Mr. Gabriels room and found him, not bleeding and helpless and dying, but seated
at hisdesk, correcting papers. We frightened each other, I think, because his jaw dropped, and
at thesight of him, I missed a step and fell to my knees, and there on the floor, in that
grotesque,unintended curtsey, the words were wrung from me, Mr. Gabriel. Sir, I love you.I
never found out if he went to my father about this, or even told Miss Ramos, but I can see
myselfin the dusk of that room years ago, in that absurd posture, along with the strange, gentle
man towhom I had lost my young heart. For what seemed forever, Mr. Gabriel did not move until
I stoodup and, in my shame, burst into tears. Then he approached me and led me to the door.
The windhad picked up a mournful sounds, like the far-off despairing wail of an animal caught in
sometrap, and now it reaches us both where we stood in the deserted corridor of the school .
Runhome, Elisa, he said. Run home.
AUTOBIOGRAPHY OF
Kerima Polotan Tuvera
Kerima Polotan Tuvera(born in Jolo, Sulu on December 16, 1925) is a Filipina authoress.
She was christened as Putli Kerima. (Putli means princess)
Her father was an army colonel, and her mother taught home economics. Due to her father's
frequent transfers in assignment, she lived in various places and studied in the public schools of
Pangasinan, Tarlac, Laguna, Nueva Ecija and Rizal. She graduated from the Far Eastern
University Girls' High School. In 1944 she enrolled in the University of the Philippines School of
Nursing. In 1945 she shifted to Arellano University where she attended the writing classes of
Teodoro M. Locsin and edited the first number of the Arellano Literary Review. Her education
has been repeatedly interrupted by illness, financial difficulties and later marriage and the care

of children of which she has five. She is a prolific writer. Some of her stories have been
published under the pseudonym of Patricia S. Torres.In 1949, she had married Juan Capiendo
Tuvera, a childhood friend and fellow writer, with whom she had 10 children. Between the years
1966 to 1986, her husband served as the Executive Secretary of then President Marcos. Her
husband's work drew her into the charmed circle of the Marcoses.During the Martial Law years,
she founded and edited the officially approved FOCUS Magazine as well as the Evening
Post newspaper.Tuvera has taught in Albay High School and at Arellano University.She has
worked with Your Magazine, This Week and the Junior Red Cross Magazine. Recently she went
to the United States on a Department of State Specialist Grant.In 1952 her short story The
Virgin won two first prizes - the Free Press short story prize of Php1,000 and the Palanca
Memorial Award. In 1957 she edited the Carlos Palanca Memorial Awards for Literature, a book
containing English and Tagalog prize winning short stories from 1951 to 1952.[1] Her novel The
Hand of the Enemy (1962) won the Stonehill Award of Php10,000 for the Filipino novel in
English. Some of her famous short stories are : "A Place to Live In", "Gate", "The Keeper", "The
Mats" and "The Sounds of Sunday". Adventures in a Forgotten Country is her latest collection of
essays. She is the editor of Focus Philippines, the Orient News and the Evening Post.In 1968,
she published Stories, a collection of eleven stories which she claimed a "thin harvest" for the
twenty years she had been writing. But they were certainly her best, several among the most
frequently anthologized stories even today.In 1970, she wrote Imelda Romualdez Marcos, a
Biography. That was the same year that she collected forty-two of her hard-hitting essays during
her years as a staff writer of the Philippine Free Press and published them under the
title Author's Circle. In 1976, she edited the four-volume Anthology of Don Palanca Memorial
Award Winners. In 1977, she published another collection of thirty-five essays, Adventures in a
Forgotten Country. In the late 1990s, the University of the Philippines Press republished all of
her major works.She now has a book titled The True and The Plain, a collection of essays about
her childhood memories. The city of Manila conferred on Polotan-Tuvera its Patnubay ng Sining
at Kalinangan Award to recognize her many contributions to its intellectual and cultural life.