I Know An Immortal Who Lives On Rizal Street

Written by F.C.

Art by Jazztine Eve Paragoso

I know an immortal who lives on Rizal Street.


Every day, I delivered newspapers to her door. In return, she gave rusted old peso coins I would count to buy myself ice cream. Sometimes, instead, she offered me candy—yema—and a tale from the years long past. I preferred the latter.


“Did you have a husband before, ante?” I had asked, once.


She threw her head back laughing, “mija, I’ve had many! Too many to count anymore, and I’ve outlived every single one. I had tried to keep visiting their graves—but, ah,” her smile twists into something I cannot name.


“The people began to recognize who I am. They called me—they called me very bad words, mija. Said that if I had enough time to bounce between these many men, I should have time to cleanse myself and straighten my hair.”


Ante had dark skin and curled black locks that would shine a golden brown under the sun whenever she stepped out to greet me. Compared to my tanned skin and straight hair, I think she is the most beautiful woman in town. However, whenever I tried to tell ante, she would look sad—the kind of sad that someone would hide by trying to look happy.


“That was far too long ago, though. Now I can barely remember their names. You want to know something funny, mija?”


I did not; still, I nodded.


“Everyone I meet won’t let me forget them,” she said, stretching and draping her body on the couch like a cat. Her eyes seemed to be recalling something far, far away. “Even when I stopped visiting after they chased me away, people still kept asking if I had a husband—if I had someone to run back to. If I said I did, then why bother coming out of the house? If not, then I shouldn’t come out anyway, a man wouldn’t want such an outgoing woman,” they said.

“Funny, who am I to bend to an abstraction’s whims? Everywhere I go, I am defined by a man or his name. Even when I left it all by their graves, everyone still asks for their names. Not mine.”


She paused as if I had anything to say. I couldn’t.


“I don’t want to remember them anymore, mija. From now on, no one will—so don’t ask me again.”


She sent me away with both colorfully wrapped yemas and shiny new peso coins. I left feeling like a thief.


I continued to deliver her newspapers until I had none to sell. They were not popular anymore, and the remaining stories were written by journalists with their hands tied. As I grew older, Rizal Street became less friendly to neighborhood children and their games. Walking around there became difficult, if not for the memories, then because of the strangled walkways which had to make room for the barely functional roads.


The one thing that did not change was ante. Even if, as a child, I was firm in my belief that she was an immortal, it was a different experience confirming it with my growing awkward limbs and now aching back. When I came to visit, it felt unreal to see ante look like how I have always remembered her. Dark skin and curly hair that glowed beneath the sweltering sun—there was nothing to distinguish her from my memories and my reality.


“Mjia,” she calls out. “Have you come to deliver the newspaper?” She seemed proud of herself, as if she made a particularly clever joke.


“I’m afraid I have none with me right now, ante,” I said. “I was simply stopping by.”


In truth, I had only come here to see her. Rizal Street had nothing for me anymore, not with how its architecture was determined to swallow up every local sari-sari store, park, or school and replace them with gargantuan gray malls or skyscrapers that would take repeating my childhood three times to complete.


It had become too noisy. In the background of every blasting pop song was the sound of construction. Here, white noise consisted of rushed conversations, the drawl and the whizzing of vehicles, and the drills from construction sites on every block you turn.


“Do you plan on stopping by forever?” She scoffs, gesturing for me as I stood still by the gate. “Come here, I still have candy for you.”


I sighed. I did not even like sweet things anymore, but I followed her beckon; like an aspin, I could not resist the offer of a home—no matter how short my stay will be.


If ante was a statue in the face of time, then her house was a museum. Stepping inside, it was as if it was only me who could age. Everything else stood still, if not slightly shorter than when I was a simple delivery girl.


“Come; sit!” The un-aging woman said as she patted the space on the couch beside her. The same light green couch covered with a floral pattern, whose frame was probably made from acacia—cut down, sanded, and given a sheen finish by a craftsman long forgotten.


I sat down quickly, leaving a small gap between us.


Ante hums, “and what have you been up to all these years?” I see her eyes taking in all of me. From a scraggly child to a no less haggard woman. At least I could say my skin hadn’t become different. It had always been tan and rough, toughened by the sun and thankless labor I had to do.


My tongue suddenly felt dry. For all the menial work I have done, nothing seemed to be significant enough to tell ante, the woman who regaled tales of sultanates, wild romances and trysts, and even valiant resistance against invaders of her ancestral land.


“I—um,” I said.


“Ye—es?” She drawls, still looking at me intently.


“I met a boy.” There was no boy. “He’s promised to court me.”


“Oh,” ante said. Her face showed no change in enthusiasm, but her eyes became distant in a way I have seen before. “How is he?”


“He’s nice,” I barreled on. “We met at work. He’s a bit flighty but he makes me laugh.”


“Hm.” She’s still looking, but now also seems to be assessing me. “And his name?”


“Sorry? His name?” I could feel blood rush to my face. It was as if I had forgotten all the men I had known in my life.


Ante did not bother with a reply, mercifully and cruelly watching me stutter and panic for the name of a man who did not exist. Finally, when she had enough of me tripping over myself, she left out a sigh—tearing me out of my fit.


“Mija,” she said. My eyes snapped back to her face. “Could you tell me what street we’re in?”


“Huh?” I said eloquently.

“Our street,” she repeats; face bearing all the patience of a saint.


“Oh—Rizal Street,” I answered with reasonable incredulity. Had she really lived for my lifetime and more not knowing the street she lived on? To think it was the address I had memorized and the area knew better than the feel of calluses on my hand.


“Strange to know it’s named after someone who has never stepped foot on it, no?”


I stared at her for a moment as my brain tried to catch up with the conversation.


“Yes,” I finally said, still unsure of what she wanted to hear from me.


Then, she leaned back on her couch, all the excitable energy leaving her. I continued to stare at her, unsure. I did not imagine this would be how our reunion would go.


I squirmed in my seat. Had I done it all wrong?


When I had become old enough, I had started working in a factory mill. There, co-workers would gossip to fill the air with something else than the crank and wheeze of foreign machinery. Even there, I found myself terribly lacking in conversation topics; instead, I was content to simply listen. One day, however, I found myself at awe with a new co-worker, who had not been working with us for more than a week, but had already become one of the most popular and approachable people in our workplace. In a total of three days, she made more people laugh than I had ever said, “hi” to.


Her name was Jenelyn, and although she had introduced herself before, her name also came up whether or not she was actually around. From what I had overheard from her and the rest of my co-workers, she apparently had a drunken husband. That’s why it was her working tirelessly in a factory mill, instead of tending to the house as a typical wife. Strangely, Jenelyn also said he was a gambler, a thief. Other times, he would suddenly become the most romantic man to exist.


I had found myself quite jealous, yet emboldened as I saw her mingle easily with the people I had spent months with, but she made it seem as if she knew them all for far longer. I approached Jenelyn when she was finally alone.


“How do you do it?” I asked, cornering her in the hallway. In hindsight, perhaps I was a bit too forward—but I had become desperate; desperate to stop feeling so left out.


Thankfully, Jenelyn was not put off by my lack of manners or perhaps she was used to dealing with eccentrics. When she looked at me properly and recognized the wretched, silent woman who would always be staring at her and her gaggle of work friends, she understood what I was asking for right away.


“That’s simple; you just have to become interesting to them.”


I frowned, already discouraged. “But how?” I had nothing interesting about me.


She smiled at me—looking like we were both in on some joke. “Oh, don’t worry. People like us don’t have to be interesting ourselves.”


“Just tell them about a boy—any boy, really, he doesn’t even have to be real—and center your whole life around him. Complain, gush, or curse him, it doesn’t matter. Just make sure that he’s interesting and everyone else will be eating from your hands, begging for more stories—stories about him.”


I took a moment to process what she said, but then a realization struck me. “Your husband, then—”


She hushed me, still sporting a conspiratorial grin. It was like a dirty little secret privy to us, only. “I told you: it doesn’t have to be real.”


“Mija,” ante calls out to me again.


My wandering eyes snap back to the woman still laying back on the couch.


“I think you have misunderstood why I have invited you here,” she said with a little frown. I felt terribly disappointed in her.


“I invited you here in my house so that I can learn about you. About what you have been up to. Not about some boy,” she spat, screwing up her face in exaggerated disgust. I could not help but laugh at it.


The air became less tense, although no less quiet. It was when ante spoke up. Her voice was quieter when she said, “I am sorry, mjia.”


I became terribly confused. “For what, ante?”


Her smile was bitter, and for once, she looked her age. While her face still lacked any wrinkles and still maintained the visage of youth, her eyes looked terribly, terribly tired. When she met my eyes, she seemed to be seeing someone else. I wonder, how many were these ‘someone’s’?


“For thinking it would have changed eventually, over time,” she said. “Maybe it has, maybe it will be different, eventually. But not soon enough.”


She took my hand and gripped it with ages worth of sorrow, rage, and regret. “Tell me, mija, how many more of you will I have to watch suffer the life I’ve lived centuries ago?”


“I don’t know, ante,” I said, helplessly. “I don’t know.”


I know an immortal who lives on Rizal Street. Every day, she meets a girl—someone like me and the millennium of women before me—and mourns all over again.