We drove one day years ago
to La Trinidad, where a near-toothless
woman who could see the future lived,
surrounded by farmyard— heads
of cabbage and cauliflower, bean rows,
creeping vines of sweet potato on one side
of the house where tin washbasins leaning
against the wall reflected the sun’s rays
like the two giant radars on Mirador Hill,
built in 1900 and used for weather
observation and typhoon forecasting.
The clairvoyant did not take
money for payment, only accepting
a bag of groceries or bottles of cerveza
which we put into her leathered hands
before being ushered into her kitchen.
I don’t know what things my mother wanted
to learn about the days or years ahead, but
she was told barren women had gone to seek
advice and months later, conceived a child.
For other less pressing needs like fair
weather, no rain for important occasions,
it was the nuns we went to, in their Convent
of Perpetual Adoration. We wrote our petitions
on little slips of paper then slid them through
a window with a grille, along with a carton of eggs.
The eggs were no longer warm from the hen, but
they were speckled and brown and each could fit
and be carried in the palm of your hand,
then broken carefully on the rim of a bowl
so the good sisters could bake bread.
What I learned was this: we trust
in whoever is willing to listen. Everyone
and everything prays for something— the soil
for rain, fruit for sun, vines for something
to cling to. My mother for the body's doors to open
or close in certain ways. When we kneel and
offer what we can, it means the future can
still be placated, can still somehow be known
though nothing about our days seems to change.
