The Mystery on 17th Street

By Annie Gorra

I remember playing under the moonlight and under the heat of the sun with marbles or rubber bands, catching grasshoppers and climbing trees. Dogs barked and hens cackled, and in the gardens grew an abundance of fruits and vegetables, spices and herbs. Creation unfolded and we smelled her symphony of scents—the sharp, tangy, soft, gentle, oily, bitter and sweet—mingling in the tropical heat.

Such was the life on 17th Street, a narrow strip of thin asphalt where families were raised and lives began and ended. But not all was simple or idyllic. The old and quarrelsome woman Iya Vellit lived alon in her nipa hut under a mango tree, fascinated by the moon. Everyone said she was a witch until a stranger's arrival began unraveling her secret.

• Language: English
• Publisher: Anvil Publishing, Inc.
• Release date: Nov 15, 2017
• ISBN: 9789712733246

Book preview

The Mystery on 17th Street

Annie Gorra originally hailed from Cagayan de Oro, Philippines and presently lives in Vancouver, B.C. She has written another book, City of Gold, about the people who made their home and history in Cagayan de Oro. It was published in 2010.

The Mystery

on 17th Street

Annie Gorra

THE MYSTERY ON 17TH STREET

By Annie Gorra

Copyright to this digital edition © 2016 by

Annie Gorra

All rights reserved.

No part of this book may be reproduced in any form or by any means

without the written permission of the copyright owner and publisher.

This book is a work of fiction. Names, characters, businesses, places, events

and incidents are either the products of the author’s imagination or used in

a fictitious manner. Any resemblance to actual persons, living or dead, or

actual events is purely coincidental.

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Book design by Andrew Drilon (cover) and Joshene Bersales (interior)

ISBN 9789712733246 (e-book)

Version 1.0.1

For my mother, Natividad, and my husband, Benny, and for all who love the beauty of creation and work toward the preservation of this beautiful earth.

To the people of 17th Street, long may your stories live.

My mother said that I was born with the head of an old man and the heart of a child. Simply put, I was born bald and have remained so my entire life. Looking in the mirror, I see that I have oldness etched in the square shape of my face and in the expression of my eyes. There is nostalgia in them, Nanay would say. Those eyes hold many memories, and I hope they will be good ones. The heart of a child made up for the oldness. I liked to play in the trees on our street with my childhood friends, Noli and Rhuel, and in our accidental park.

The park was shaped like a triangle. Its sharpest point was where my street and the next one intersected. It came to us by accident. The person who owned the block and sold the residents their pieces of land was left with this small triangular piece that no one wanted. He decided to donate it to the neighborhood to become a park. Nanay said it was not an accident, but a blessing, so the children would have a place to play.

My neighborhood, commonly known as 17th Street, was a narrow strip made of thin asphalt that was giving way to dirt in some places. On both sides, families were raised and lives were lived. Rhuel lived next to me, and right across from him and diagonal to us was Noli. We became good friends because they saw beyond my hairless head. Others teased me about it, but Rhuel and Noli were different. They made me feel all right. There were other families in our small community, including the thorn in everyone’s side of this neighborhood, Iya Vellit. She lived directly across the street from us.

Iya Vellit was old or looked old to my friends and me. We were just seven years old then, and it seemed like everyone else was old as we were very young. She lived alone in a nipa hut under a mango tree. Her day began with sweeping the fallen mango leaves into a pile and burning them. She swept her yard clean; she would have swept the entire earth clean given the chance. She wore a patadyong of brown and faded red squares matched with a brown cotton shirt onto which a black piece of cloth was crudely sewn with white thread to function as a pocket. She kept to herself, refused to make friends with anyone in the neighborhood, and was always—this is not hyperbole but a reality—in an ugly mood. She was unkind to everyone, but she reserved her unkindest cut for my mother.

"Bal-bal kana siya, was how our neighbors described her. I have seen her fly with only half her body and with intestines hanging out, said one. It was a dark evening. The stars and the moon hid behind the clouds when I heard a shriek coming from her hut, and this figure came flying out," said another. So began the many stories about her. Rhuel, Noli and I sat listening, enthralled and scared of the brown, wrinkled woman.

Once, Iya Vellit came up to Lerma, a neighbor who rented out rooms, and called her attention by swiping a spot on her arm in the unique way that only Filipinos do, like they are carving out a hole from someone’s body with their index finger slightly hooked. We call it kuhit or kablit, and the words appropriately sound like the act: sudden, startling, and attention-grabbing. Lerma was startled and horrified that a witch had touched her. We were told that a witch can pass on her evil soul just by touching you, no matter how lightly. The only remedy is to return the kuhit. Lerma did just that. She touched Iya Vellit back. Iya Vellit, maybe out of grouchiness or perhaps in yearning for human contact, returned the gesture. This went on for quite a while, each one touching the other on the arm until Lerma made the last touch and dashed away before Iya Vellit could return the kuhit. My friends and I laugh about this incident when we remember it.

We remember a lot, or at least I do. I remember playing under the moonlight and under the heat of the sun with marbles or rubber bands, chasing butterflies, pale, yellow and small, catching grasshoppers or fireflies, or climbing trees. Families and friends gave birth, and there were deaths. Dogs barked and hens cackled. Houses had gardens of vegetables, spices, herbs, fruit trees like calamansi, guava, guyabano, macopa, lomboy, star apple, and flowers like sampaguita, rosal, champaca, bougainvillea, kalachuchi and gumamela. Some days, creation unfolded and we smelled her symphony of scents—the sharp, tangy, soft, gentle, oily, bitter and sweet—mingling in the tropical heat. All that is needed is a dash of salty sweat, and we can have a drink, Tatay would say, inhaling the fragrant cocktail.

"AGUSTIN, MATA NA! I heard my mother calling out to me. The rooster crowed a long time ago," she said.

Our neighbors’ roosters crowed at the crack of dawn and served as our alarm clock—perhaps worse, perhaps better, depending on how you see it, for unlike the clock, the roosters could not be turned off. They crowed and stopped whenever they pleased. The crowing of the roosters set off the hens cackling in our backyard; the hens’ cackling set off the dogs barking; and the dogs’ barking woke up the entire neighborhood. I groggily sat up on the edge of my bed for a few minutes and forced my eyes open. It was six o’clock on Saturday morning. The sun was up. It rose early every day in this tropical place. I stood and fixed my bed, which was made of woven rattan, covered with an abaca mat crisscrossed with red and green stripes that my mother had bought from a Maranao in the Cogon Market. My blanket was a thin cotton fabric, appropriate for hot weather.

I could hear Nanay annoyed at something in the kitchen as she was preparing breakfast. It was unlike her. She was a hardy woman, not given to complaining even after a full day of cooking, laundry, cleaning, or even when we were short of money or when she was sick. My pants must have disappeared again. Yes, my pants or my shirt or my blanket. They have been disappearing from our clothesline since the day I was born. There had been other items hanging on the line, but only mine were fancied by the thief. He had discriminating taste. Yet he did not take all of them. He only stole one piece every few months. Just when we thought he had enough, he would come back and steal once more.

If I find out the crook, said Nanay, I will send him to prison for the rest of his life. I would not want him to have rest.

Why don’t you dry Agustin’s clothes inside the house? asked Tatay, seated at the table reading an edition of the Mindanao Sun, one of the town’s weekly papers. He was the editor. He was drinking his tablea, a hot beverage made by boiling dried and ground cacao seeds in water. Rhuel’s parents, Honesto and Diosa Abellana, had a few cacao trees in their yard. When they bore fruit, Rhuel’s parents asked the kids on 17th Street to crack them open, scoop out the seeds, and suck off the flesh. We joyfully spat out the bare kernels into tin containers. Mr. and Mrs. Abellana collected and dried them out on abaca sacks in their backyard. They ground the dried seeds and shaped them into small circles of pure chocolate tablets that we called tablea. When boiled with water, the chocolate oil percolated to the top. Tatay put a little bit of coconut sugar to mellow it out. The purity of the early-morning brew was savored in its slightly bittersweet taste.

I can’t. They will smell if not seen by the sun. I like the clean smell from the sunshine, my mother said. She was going back and forth between the dining table and the kitchen, serving us breakfast. Her footsteps were heavy, making our wooden floor creak with her annoyance. It is getting expensive for us. I have to buy him another shirt.

My father and mother were seated at the table, patiently waiting for me. When I came out, Nanay stood up to go to our abuhan, the dirty kitchen where we cooked our food with wood. She opened the kolon, made the sign of the cross on the rice with the wooden ladle, and spooned it out. The sign of the cross was an act of thanks for this blessing. Rice was our staple; it was to be respected. Pick up every morsel that’s left over and keep them for the next round of cooking, Nanay would tell me. If there were plenty of leftovers, she left them in the kolon to become bahaw.

The rice was steaming fresh. I could smell the aroma of the pandan, the green shrub that grew in our garden. Nanay cooked our rice with its long leaves, giving it a sweet-smelling aroma. She mixed in a little bit of pilit. I loved the feel of the soft stickiness of the rice on my tongue and the fragrance that went up my nostrils. It was not only my mouth that rejoiced when I ate but also my nose. We had eggplant omelette to go with it. Tatay planted eggplants in our garden and raised hens for eggs on the side of our house. On the days that we got eggs, it was a given that we would have an omelette. A bowl of kalamunggay soup, with fish Nanay bought early that morning from our public market, was spiced with garlic and onions. The vegetables and spices had been picked a few hours before, while most of our neighbors were still asleep. I could taste the freshness on my tongue. The conversations, the breaking of bread, and the fruits of creation served on my plate made our time together seem like a miracle in our otherwise ordinary existence. We said a prayer of thanks for what we had in front of us.

My father scooped rice onto my plate and cut me an omelette. He was still reading the paper, with its banner headline about the abuse of power by General Rogelio, the commander of the region where our town belonged. The headline in big, bold letters screamed, SOLDIERS LACK BOOTS WHILE ROGELIO LIVES IN A MANSION. The story opened with Our soldiers fighting the war against the New People’s Army are doing so with holes in their boots. Their boots are so tattered that some no longer wear them. They engage the rebels in the mountains and forests in bare feet. Rogelio, on the other hand, lives a life of luxury: He has a mansion in Manila, a house in Cagayan de Oro, and an air-conditioned office in Camp Evangelista.

Do you worry that he will have you shot? Nanay asked Tatay.

Rogelio?

Yes, who else?

I do, but if I don’t do what I am called to do, I will die more often.

Nanay tasted her soup before speaking. It seems like you are the only one among the journalists in our town who is doing his job. All the others are very friendly with him. Our nipa hut will not give us cover if they come and shoot you here.

She was very realistic when it came to death and spoke about it without any hesitation. Everyone dies, so why talk around it? was her philosophy.

It was not exactly the type of topic most people discussed early on a Saturday morning, but it was part of our life because of my father’s work. He was a one-man band—the paper’s editor, reporter, writer, investigator, and layout designer, all rolled into one. But he was passionate about what he did. He loved the smell of ink and paper, the sound of the printing press as each copy was made. The Mindanao Sun was the only paper in town that had its own print shop in the 1970s. He stood at the end of the machine and randomly snatched a copy to make sure everything was right as the sheets of paper rolled out. He took pride in his work. He had a special place in his heart for justice and community, and the paper became the medium for this passion. It is my fire, he said.

Tatay liked to read his paper to us at breakfast. It was his opportunity to discuss ideas with my mother and get her thoughts on the issues. She was his number one critic and fan. She was the star by which his moral compass took its bearings.

"The problem is you have no friends. You criticize both the military and the rebels. No one will protect you. If you are friendly toward one of them, at least, you can be assured