“Betty, I’ve never slapped anyone before, and if I didn’t know any better I’d slap you now,” she said in a trembling voice, and whirled and ran, dodging blindly through the crowd.
“Pie!” exclaimed Katrin, struggling out of her seat and almost falling over the bench. She picked herself up and ran after her friend.
She made it out of the gate without knocking anyone down, and looked down the street, to see Pie’s fleeing figure, and people turning to look at her. She also began to run, just as Pie disappeared into the shadows at the end of the street.
“Kat!” Michael caught up with her. “Where did she go?” Gasping for breath, Katrin pointed down the street.
“I’d gladly push Betty into the pool and hold her down,” she said, putting her hands on her thighs and trying to catch her breath. “She’s… grrrh.”
“Why, thank you,” said Michael, in such a tone of voice that made Katrin look at him.
“It’s hard to believe you’re cousins,” said Katrin, beginning to walk down the street again. “Pie is so nice, and she always says the right things… why does Betty always want to say bad things about other people?”
“I don’t know,” said Michael, following her. “She’s always been like that; when we were little she always used to make Pie cry.”
“I wanted to smack her,” Katrin confessed. “The first time I met her, at your house, she gave me the impression that she viewed me as a worm within five minutes of being introduced to me.”
“From all accounts, you handled her pretty well,” said Michael. “Pie told Mommy about it, that you kept your cool even when everything Betty said to you was calculated to make you mad.”
Katrin shrugged.
“Well, first of all I was a guest in your house and Mama and Papa always told us to behave whenever we were guests in somebody’s house. And secondly, I don’t know if you’ve noticed, but I have this strange tendency to be more and more polite the more people are rude to me. I guess it’s due to Mama always telling us never to stoop to someone’s level; that just because someone’s rude to you doesn’t mean you automatically get to be rude back.”
Michael laughed suddenly.
“So that explains…” he said.
“Explains what?” Katrin looked at him suspiciously.
“Nothing,” said Michael, still laughing. By then they had reached the part where Acacia Street crossed the lane. Katrin looked both ways.
“That way,” she pointed, and began to walk in the direction of the co-op.
“I guess you’re wondering what Betty is talking about,” Michael said softly. Katrin slowed down and turned and looked at him.
“When she called you a thief?” she asked.
“Yeah,” Michael said. “I didn’t actually take anything, though. Now that I’m here, I keep kicking myself over how stupid I was to believe what my so-called friends told me.”
“Why?” Katrin asked, stopping. He also stopped.
“I made a mistake in my friends, that’s all,” Michael said. “For a moment I let them persuade me that there was nothing wrong in what they were doing because all of them were doing it. But then I’d never met people like you and your brothers.”
“Uh,” Katrin said.
“You work,” Michael said. “You work for what you have, and you help your parents with everything. You and your parents talk to one another and you don’t get mad at them. You actually listen to them; you don’t think they’re old bores who don’t know anything. You’re proud of what you are and don’t care what others think of you.”
“Er, not quite,” said Katrin, remembering how she’d agonized over not looking as good as Pie and Betty.
“And Andy actually stood up for me, even when he didn’t know me that much,” Michael said, scuffing his foot in the sand. “Eddie told me. Andy went to see the other kids and talked to them and said that he thought I was all right, and that they should at least give me a chance before they listened to whatever Betty was saying.”
Katrin smiled at that.
“That sounds like my big brother, all right,” she admitted.
“Anyway,” Michael said, and fell silent. Katrin felt awkward.
“Let’s go look for Pie,” she said instead, and they walked on.
“You think I’ll like it at your school?” Michael asked.
“Of course you will,” Katrin said.
“I hope Pie convinces the parents to let her go there too,” he said.
“Look, Mike, is that someone in the cottage?” Katrin said, as they neared the co-op.
“Looks like Pie,” said Michael, walking ahead of her.
It was Pie, wiping tears off her cheeks with her handkerchief.
“There you are,” Katrin said, climbing the one step up into the bamboo gazebo by the basketball court. “We were worried about you.”
“Kat. Mike,” Pie said. “Sorry about running out like that.”
“It’s okay,” said Katrin, sitting down beside her. “You okay now?”
“Yeah, I guess,” Pie said. “Betty is so horrible, I wish she’d go back to Manila.”
“She will in a couple of days,” said Michael, sitting down on her other side. “Meanwhile, didn’t we promise Mommy we wouldn’t let her get to us? Come on, Pie.”
“She hasn’t really had a good vacation, has she?” Katrin said. “She’s been grounded all the time; this is really the first time she’s been out of the mansion.”
“Yeah, and then everybody was all over her earlier because of how she looked,” Pie said thoughtfully. “I knew she got mad when she heard what those old women said earlier. She was going to say something then, only Mommy was glaring at her so she kept quiet.”
“Well, what can she expect?” Michael asked. “She sleeps till noon, then wants to watch TV and play music. She got mad because there weren’t any boys around worth meeting, she said, and nothing worth doing. We asked her if she wanted to go to the orchard yesterday and all she said was that it would be hot and sweaty and there would be no one there anyway.”
“Anyway, Mommy did ground her, that’s why she didn’t come along today,” Pie said. “She was really mad about being left behind and complained to Daddy that she was being left out of everything. Daddy said she should come to the wake so she could get out of the house and meet people, as long as she behaved.”
“I’ll bet she gets grounded till she goes back on that plane,” said Katrin, shaking her head. “Do you guys want to go home, or back to the wake?”
“Back there, I guess,” Pie said. “I’m okay now, Kat, really.”
There were little or no people on the road by then as they headed back to Isang’s house, as it was getting late.
“My dad will have you in jail for this! Let go of me!” The three of them heard the faint shout and exchanged glances.
“That sounds like Betty,” Michael said, just as they reached the lane leading back to Isang’s house.
“It is Betty,” Pie exclaimed, as they looked the other way into the shadowy lane, and saw the struggling figures at the far end.
Katrin could make out a thin figure with long hair struggling with two men, who were gripping her arms and hauling her down the lane.
“What are they doing! Where are they taking her?” she gasped, and began to run.
“Kat!” both Pie and Michael exclaimed. Katrin heard Michael tell his sister, “Don’t! Run back to the wake… tell them Betty’s been kidnapped. Tell them we need help. Run, Pie! Kat, wait!”
But she was already running towards the figures struggling in the shadows of the trees that lined the lane. The thoughts that went through her mind were absurd; surely this could not happen here, here in Riverside of all places where people would even bring home wandering cows and goats that they recognized as belonging to their neighbors. Where people watched over their neighbors’ houses and belongings and children as if they were their own. This was Riverside, one of the safest places on earth. Why was this happening to them?
“You don’t know who my dad is!” Betty was berating her captors. “When he catches you he will have you thrown in jail and make sure you never get out again!”
“Ah, all this is getting on my nerves,” said one of the men and clamped a hand over her mouth.
Katrin glanced around her as she ran. None of the houses on the lane showed any signs of life, though the dogs were barking. Yes, she remembered seeing Eddie’s whole family at the wake. Rona’s too. And Panyang’s. No one was home but the dogs, and people would just assume they were barking at the passersby going to the wake.
Noise, she thought. I need noise.
“Let go of her!” she screamed.
“Another one!” said one of the men holding Betty. “What is with this place!”
“I said let her go!” Katrin said.
“Geez,” said the man. “Here, hold this one for me, Boy.” He shoved Betty into the other man’s arms. Betty could not scream because the other man’s hand was covering her mouth, but she kicked and struggled and clawed.
Katrin clenched her fists and screamed in her best voice.
“EEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEE!”
And again.
“EEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEE!”
Her mother had often observed that her scream could be heard in the next purok. I hope she was right, Katrin thought, drawing breath for another scream.
“EEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEE… pfff,” as the other man grabbed her and clamped a hand on her mouth. She bit the hand.
“Aaaaaargh!” the man screamed, nearly dropping her, and she scrambled away, but he caught her hair.
“EEEEEEEEEEEEE!” she shrieked, genuinely this time as her scalp hurt.
“Let her go!” Michael was suddenly there, hitting the man who held her hair. He cursed, and was suddenly joined by three more men.
“Bong! We have company!” one of the men said, catching Katrin and clamping a hand on her mouth.
“This one came along and started screaming!” the man called Bong said. As he turned, Kat saw his face clearly for the first time and would have gasped if she could. He was that rude laborer whom she always kept running into. “Be careful, that one bites. And then this boy came along!” He had an arm around Michael’s neck by then. “Stop struggling, boy, do you want to break your neck?” he warned.
“Ah, what’ll we do?” asked the other man.
“Let’s just go to the cottage! No one will find us there as long as we don’t make a sound! Quick now! How about the sacks?”
“Already full, though the other houses had dogs!”
“Good! Let’s go!” The man was already hauling Michael up the lane. The men holding Betty and Katrin followed.
When they stopped and dragged the young people off the lane, Katrin felt her blood run cold. It was the back entrance to the Barrios land. Were the men going to take them down to the river? Their parents would never find them; the marshlands were too broad.
She struggled again as they made her go through the wire, roughly, so that her clothes snagged on the barbs and one of her slippers fell off.
“Mmmmpf!” she cried. Suddenly, sparks burst behind her eyes. “Mama,” she thought, and then she remembered nothing more.
