As the maid’s everyday routine, she dusted in Ali’s room and wiped clean the furnitures which had barely caught dirt (it seemed to her). No matter, she continued the work, wiping the tables, the chairs, the pc, the pieces of angular and funky-looking furnitures. She arranged the comics, the magazines and other reading materials on top of the table.

Then she stopped. Again, she saw that cabinet, standing against the wall but in front of Ali’s bed. It was begging her to look at it, desire it to be opened. The feeling was like when that boy next door seemed to want her to unbutton his tops. She had been here for sometime now, always looking at this peculiar cabinet but never attempting to open it, or at least try to open it. She felt she would betray Ali’s trust even in his absence.

But with unexplainable force of nature, she rushed and yanked open the two doors of the cabinet. (Never mind Ali.) Out spilled the contents of the cabinet - panties in different colors, lithe, skimpy, lace and all.

Posted by narissa | 7 Comments »

When I was little, about six years old, and in grade one, I get shivers when I hear the teachers and the older students talk about a rapist that had been in the school premises.  I thought of the rapist as some big monster with a hairy body and that eats little children like me.  I was so afraid that time that I did not dare ask what it looked like or what it meant when they talk about the rapist.

More than two decades after, I heard of the news that a little girl a year younger when I was in grade one  was abducted in that elementary school and was gone for a week.  She was brought back to the school, at the gate, bleeding to death.  She was raped.

Posted by narissa | 4 Comments »