I WAS IN JAIL, AND YOU VISITED ME

Angela was apologetic. “Before Papa died, he told me to take care of Auntie Trining. Don't worry, Tim, it all comes out of my funds, and it's not much, anyway.”


Tim was nonplussed. “But I would be quite happy to help her,” he protested. “And you're right, five hundred pesos a month isn't much these days. What's more, I could do with a nun praying for me.”


“She's not actually a nun,” Angela said, “she's a lay sister, working for some charitable organisation or other. Right now they're doing prison visits.”


“Too bad,” Tim said. “I thought she was a nun. I would have asked her for some help translating some Latin phrases I came across in my books. I can't assign the articles as reading material to my students until I actually know what the Latin words mean.”


“To be quite truthful,” Angela said, sitting down and putting her arms around Tim's neck, “she's not very educated. I get exasperated with her sometimes.”


“Well,” said Tim magnanimously, “she's family, and that's all that matters.”


“You're so sweet,” Angela said, and gave him a kiss.


Angela and Tim had asked the maid to whip up a nice lunch for the visitor. Auntie Trining was unfamiliar with the spaghetti and meatballs and only dutifully ate what was in front of her.


“Don't you like the food, Tita? ” asked Angela, concerned.


“Oh, it's very good,” Auntie Trining said, brightening and eating bigger forkfuls of the meatballs which she ate with rice, disregarding the noodles.


She used only the fork, cutting the meatballs with the side of it, and spearing them on its tines. To manage the rice, she would push it around on the plate with her left thumb until enough of it had gathered for her to scoop it up with the fork. And after she had brought food to mouth, she would rest her elbow on the table, fork poised in the air as she chewed and gulped.


She said, “It's just that I can't help but think of all those poor souls in prison who don't get enough to eat.”


She would be in her early forties. Short and squat. Her plump cheeks were pockmarked, and her naturally frizzy black hair, done up in unflattering curls by her hairdresser neighbour in the slum, was turning gray at the roots. Her clothes were old and worn but neat, and had been visited by a great deal of needle and thread over the years. The woman was no oil painting, to be sure, but Angela had always emphasised the positive about her Tita Trining: “She's such a kind and unselfish person, hardly a cranky old maid.”


“I understand you visit prisons, Tita, ” said Tim, the gracious host trying to strike up a conversation. “It must be very stressful sometimes.”


“No, it's not stressful,” Auntie Trining said around the food in her mouth. “My apostolic group is always welcome. The prisoners always look forward to our visits. But the conditions they are kept in! The jails in this country are crowded and filthy.”


Tim ventured, “It's clearly not meant to be so, but the very conditions in Philippine jails end up being part of the punishment, over and above the prison sentence that judges impose on criminals.”


Angela felt that, in spite of himself, Tim was slipping into his wonted mode of Lecturer in Political Science. She looked at her aunt, who went on chewing without acknowledging the comment.


Angela offered her more food. “Have you made believers of many prisoners, Tita?”


“Yes,” Auntie Trining said with a sudden enthusiasm that startled her hosts. “In truth, not many, but I have managed to bring a grateful few into the fold. They now regularly attend mass every Sunday in the prison chapel, and three are now in the choir.”


“You must find it very rewarding,” said Angela, without being patronising.


“It is rewarding,” said the woman with a sigh, “but there is so much to do. If only the government could see the light.”


“The government?” inquired Tim. “You mean the prison authorities, Tita?”


“The prison authorities, judges, the mayor, the governor, the Supreme Court, the President,” recited Auntie Trining. “Every day I pray that they will see the light.” She seemed to have forgotten about the food in front her.


Angela opined, “If it's a question of money, Tita, then nothing is going to change. The Philippines has so many problems that improving conditions in prisons is hardly going to be a priority for the government.”


“The authorities need not improve conditions in prisons, they need to empty them,” she said with great feeling. She looked from Tim to Angela and back to Tim, as if to challenge them to say otherwise.


Tim did not know what to make of it. Perhaps, as fishmongers and barbers and jeepney drivers inevitably did, she had come up with her own idea of how to make society better, a very simple but astonishingly bold solution that would sweep away everything that was bad with the old system, and usher in a millenarian paradise. Tim was just musing on how to translate the word “millenarian” into Cebuano, when Auntie Trining said:


“Whenever I visit the jails, I look into each and every prisoner's eyes, and I see Christ looking back at me.”


Angela could not come up with anything to say to that, so she only said, “Yes, Tita.”


Auntie Trining pursued, “I see their suffering. They suffer, just as Christ suffered in jail. They are persecuted, just as Christ was persecuted. It makes my heart so heavy to see them like that.”


Tim could only take so much. Making the supreme effort to control himself, he said reasonably, “Jesus was a different case, Tita. He was a political prisoner. He was sent to jail for his beliefs, and not because he had committed a crime. In a way, he was like-oh, like the Communists.”


Auntie Trining's hitherto dull eyes now flashed with fire. “If there is anybody who deserves to be in jail, it is those godless Communists and their New People's Army.”


Tim was shaken by this momentary display of anger. “Perhaps the NPA is not a very good example. Very well, then: Ninoy Aquino. Ninoy Aquino was a political prisoner. He went to jail because of what he believed.”


Auntie Trining's unlovely face softened. “Yes, like Ninoy. Ninoy did not deserve to go to jail. He was a good man who did not do anything wrong. He should not have gone to jail, and he should not have died. Just like Christ.”


“Just like Christ,” Tim echoed, smiling through gritted teeth. Underneath the table he felt Angela's gentle foot pressing down on his toes.


“Your food's getting cold, Tita, ” said Angela.


Auntie Trining resumed shoving the meatballs into her mouth.


The conversation turned to safer subjects, such as whether Cousin So-and-so had finally settled down to raise a family, and what Uncle Such-or-Other had done with his winnings from the last cockfight.


The following month, when Auntie Trining came by to pick up her stipend, to which Tim was now contributing, she had a sad half-smile on her face, as if she were at once happy and troubled. By an unspoken agreement between the spouses, neither of them brought up the question of prison reform, and the three of them confined themselves to discussing the doings of the relatives that Angela shared with her Auntie Trining.


But the month after that, Auntie Trining stayed away, and likewise the one after that. Concerned, Angela resolved one day to visit her aunt that weekend, and Tim asked to come along.


Auntie Trining's one-room house was a little better than the shacks that lined the street on which it was, but not by much. It was at least clean and comfortable, if very basic. There was a bed for one, a small dining table, a cheap radio and an old television. The sheer curtains in the windows swayed in the gentle breeze that brought with it the stench of fetid water in the open gutters on either side of the narrow street, which was at least closed to most vehicular traffic.


“I'm sorry,” Auntie Trining was saying, “I should have told you that I would not be coming by your place for a while. I did not want to burden you with my problems.”


“It's all right, Tita,” said Angela with genuine concern, “you can tell us.”


“Maybe I can tell you,” Auntie Trining said, “now that I'm done crying. I'm still in mourning, but my black clothes are still on the clothesline.”


“Mourning!” exclaimed Angela. “Has someone died?”


Auntie Trining nodded gravely. “But it's all right. I came to terms with it long before-long before the day came. And both he and I made our peace with the world. He is in heaven, now, I am sure.”


It was then that Tim saw the snapshot that had been tacked on to the opposite wall. “May I?” he asked, and when Auntie Trining silently assented, he stood up from the rickety plastic stool on which he had been sitting and walked over to examine it. Angela followed him.


The picture had evidently been taken in one of the local prisons, with a grimy green wall for a backdrop. Auntie Trining, wearing that same sad smile they had seen on her face two months before, was standing next to a dark, gaunt and scruffy man whose height contrasted with her lack of it. His smile was a bit brighter than hers. He looked like a young man made old by imprisonment, so that man and woman looked the same age. They were dressed in their threadbare Sunday best. Standing next to the man was a grim, bespectacled priest in cassock and stole, the camera flash reflected in his glasses and obscuring the eyes behind them.


“The prison chaplain,” Auntie Trining said, joining them. “He performed the marriage ceremony.”


Angela and Tim were silent for a while. The first question that Angela could muster the courage to ask was, “What is your husband's name?”


“His name was Miguel. He was so kind, so meek. I never believed the things that they said about him.”


There was another lull in the conversation, until Auntie Trining went on, “He denied it with his dying breath. Murder? How could someone as gentle as Miguel be guilty of murder? I do not know how the judge who presided over his case can sleep at night. I can not imagine how the-the-how the executioner could just press a button to end the life of an innocent man with an injection.”


Tim swallowed and said, “When did you get married?”


“Two months ago,” she sighed. “I went from bride to widow in one month. I counted the days, the hours, and towards the end, the minutes. Not every wife can know the hour of her husband's passing, but with Miguel, I knew to the minute how long we had together. I am sad, but still I thank God for what He gave me.”


Angela embraced her aunt, while Tim stood by, shifting uneasily from one foot to another. In the end, when Angela released her, Tim gave Auntie Trining a brief but tight consolatory hug.


Later, as they turned to leave Aunt Trining's little home, Tim asked her, “Will you be visiting us next month, Tita?”


Aunt Trining said, “Yes. I will. We all have to get on with our lives. Others need me, still. Goodbye, and thank you. You are so good to me.”

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