The orphanage was old, far older than the name of the street it stood on. The years had seen countless children within its walls. Some were adopted by loving families. Some were not, and instead dreamt, grew up, and left the old home behind. Now, it only housed four children and three women, all of whom were bound simply because of circumstance and not by choice. The house was too big for the seven of them, and loneliness spread within its old, empty halls. It was an old house, indeed, with wooden floors that creaked, and a roof that let whistles of air through, though no repairman could ever find the holes.
To some it may have been creepy, but to Noel, it was as proper as a house could be. It stood strong and distinguished, and the other houses seemed pale in comparison to it. How could white, box-like homes compare to the orphanage’s character? Its jalousie windows reflected light, even the dimmest ones, and if you looked from the front gate, the windows seemed like eyes. When the floorboards creaked, Noel imagined it was the house laughing with him when he slid and ran across the wood. When the air whistled at night, he would whistle along and find that the wind sang melodies and harmonies with him. Why should he fear a stupid old house? He did not listen to the other children, who seemed to delight in terrorizing themselves with tales of ghosts and hauntings and monsters in the dark.
“They say a mangkukulam lived here long ago!” said Isabella, an eight-year-old girl whose hair was always in two pigtails that bounced and swayed with her emotions. And she was such a nervous, excitable girl that her pigtails never stopped moving. Even now, as she declared this witch story of hers, Noel had to stop the urge to pull her pigtails.
“How can a mangkukulam live in a children’s home?” answered nine-year-old Pedro sniffily, putting his hands on his waist. “No mangkukulam here, Isa! That’s so silly! What is here is a ghost! A ghost of a kid who died of sadness when a family promised to adopt him but adopted another kid instead!”
“Father Delos Reyes said not to tell scary stories,” cried cowardly Manuel. He may have been the oldest at ten, but he still sucked his thumb and chewed on his shirt, a habit he tried to break but still popped up especially when he was scared. “Stop it, you two! Or you might just invite the devil with such tales!” He was particularly given to believing and clinging onto the warnings of the visiting priest, even when they were already so out of this world as to be laughable. All the other children and even the women of the house thought Father Delos Reyes was a bumbling, exaggerating man who used Scripture and spun the holy words into tales that would support his tainted, sullen view of the world. Only Manuel took him seriously.
The three children squabbled and whined, voices overlapping with each other. Noel kept to himself, because they weren’t talking to him anyway. And he didn’t particularly care for scary stories, not when there was so much to explore. Just now, he was crouching under the dining table, looking at a line of ants travelling toward a small hole in the sink. He imagined that they were holding a Christmas parade. Maybe the crumbs they gathered were enough to be a feast! If only he could be as small as an ant and see what magic they had underneath the sink.
But the three other children turned to him and said, “What do you think, Noel? What do you think haunts this old, scary house?”
He did not know how to answer. He wanted to ask, what was a haunting anyway? Was a haunting the presence of something that nobody wanted there? Because he knew that Ma’am Cook did not like that there were ants in the kitchen. She wanted them gone, so the ants were unwanted. Could he tell the others that maybe the house was haunted with ants?
Before he could open his mouth to speak, Ma’am Grumpy came into the kitchen holding a broom and a dustpan. “Out, children! Out! For heaven’s sake, you do nothing but dirty the house with your crumbs and your dusty feet. Get out before I hit you with this broom!”
Then Ma’am Grumpy did raise the broom, and the three children all ran away squealing and howling, even though the broom never touched them, and it never had before. Noel stood slowly from his spot, looking at the line of ants sadly, knowing they would be swept away soon. Ma’am Grumpy looked at him impatiently, but not with the same irritation she had earlier when Isabella, Pedro, and Manuel were still at the table eating pan de sal and chips.
“Out now, Noel,” Ma’am Grumpy said, voice quiet but firm. “I need to clean this kitchen. Go out now and play with your friends.”
Noel looked back at the ants. Then he left the kitchen and said, “That’s alright, ma’am. I have no friends.”
Maybe the house was haunted with children, thought Noel. Children nobody wanted. Not even the keepers of the orphanage. He did not look back to see Ma’am Grumpy looking at him strangely, with a pinched, concerned look on her funny, grumpy face.
In the days to come, the street grew bright with light displays from neighbours. Red, green, blue, all twinkling and flashing in dizzying displays. The orphanage did not have any Christmas decorations of the sort, except for one single parol that hung on its front door. Every day and every night, Isabella, Pedro, and Manuel all whined and lamented the house’s nakedness compared to the dressed-up houses of the street. To Noel, the lights were pretty, but they did not have much use. After all, the street was already lit with lampposts, was it not? The orphanage already had its fluorescent bulbs in orange, white, and cool white, depending on which room you were in. Sometimes, in the older rooms, the lightbulbs even flashed and twinkled, like the Christmas lights outside. But the other children all mocked him, saying he was too stupid to understand. That the lights going off and on and off and on in the orphanage was not by design. It was just another proof of how horrible, rotten, and old everything was.
“Why couldn’t I be adopted by that family that lives across the street?” Isabella sighed. “I could be a good sister. They have an older boy and a young boy. I can be right in the middle.”
“Nobody wants a stupid girl,” Pedro said, playing with a stick that had fallen off the old tree with the rubber swing nobody used because it was dirty and smelled of rainwater that sat too long. He aimed the stick at Isabella and said, “They would rather have a boy who is strong and can do chores!”
Isabella grabbed the stick and snapped it in half. “You stupid mean boy! They would like me better than they would you! And when did you do chores? You always get scolded by Ma’am Superior anyway, because you can’t even clean the glass you drink from!”
Isabella and Pedro chased each other around, the girl waving the two broken sticks as if she would use them to hit Pedro, and the boy laughing at her for having shorter legs and therefore being slower in running. Manuel did not join the roughhousing, and instead sat at the porch, staring at the house across the street. Noel stood in the open doorway, watching the children with a curious but distant eye. He wondered about what Isabella said. Did he want to be adopted?
Noel felt like he didn’t belong anywhere, but he also didn’t think that being adopted into a family would change that. Here in this orphanage, he didn’t even belong with the children. The ma’ams also didn’t want anything to do with him, although they had never been unkind. Even Ma’am Grumpy was just that. Grumpy. Instead, he floated in a liminal space between the kids and the adults.
Suddenly, someone knocked on the orphanage’s tall gate. From between the slats of iron, he saw a couple of adults wearing green shirts and red Santa hats. They carried with them a bunch of opaque plastic bags that Noel could not see through to guess. Manuel shied away from the knocking guests, who could see the children in the front yard. He stood on his wobbly legs and ran inside to fetch the Ma’am Superior, calling out, “Ma’am, ma’am! There’s someone at the door!”
Meanwhile, Isabella and Pedro had raced to the strangers and talked with them through the gate. They were instructed not to open it for anyone without the Ma’am Superior’s permission, so instead they chatted while keeping an arm’s distance away.
Noel listened. The people were from the barangay office, they said. They were there to deliver Christmas ayuda to the children. He watched as one of the strangers bent down to take something out from the many plastic bags. The man’s hand came out holding a piece of bread uniquely shaped into a mouse. Isabella gasped with delight. Pedro pinched her and told her not to take bread from strangers, all the while inching closer and closer to the treat.
When the Ma’am Superior finally came out, with Manuel following closely behind like a little shadow, the children all stood behind her as she greeted the people. Noel stayed in the doorway. Beside him stood Ma’am Cook, who was wiping her wet hands on her shirt, and Ma’am Grumpy, who looked at the strangers with thinly veiled suspicion, as if these people from the barangay were dangerous folk who would intrude upon the orphanage’s customary functioning.
Noel, despite himself, wanted to approach and have a look at the mouse-shaped bread. Even from a distance, he saw it was prettily formed, with white sugar powder he only ever tasted once when a family looking to adopt had stopped by, with a box of powdered doughnuts for everyone to share.
Ma’am Superior ushered the barangay people inside, her warbly old voice trilling with eagerness and thankfulness. “Come in, come in! Thank you so much for visiting!”
The barangay people unearthed rice, cans of sardines, packs of instant noodles, and a long string of coffee sachets. It was the common ayuda that the orphanage received when there was a typhoon or when a politician was campaigning for the next election. The only special treat for this “Christmas” package was the spaghetti packet that contained pasta and sauce. And the mouse-shaped bread, which, according to the man who showed it off, was a special gift from the mayor to the children left in this orphanage.
The dining table was full of food, and the mouse-shaped bread took center display. The women and the kids all gathered to sift through the goods, with the adults making plans of when they could eat what, and the children already fighting about portions for meals that had yet to be cooked. When Noel approached, he saw the mouse-bread in all its glory. Beautiful tiny ears, delicate tails, and eyes and whiskers carved expertly onto the bread.
But then he counted. One, two, three.
Isabella, Manuel, and Pedro were already holding the treats, getting their grubby little hands covered in sweet sticky sugar. Noel approached, already feeling his shoulders slump in an effort to make himself smaller, as if existing and not having a sweet treat from the mayor was his fault. One of the barangay people finally noticed him, and the woman exclaimed, “Oh no! We don’t have enough of the pastries.”
And having someone acknowledge this fact — the fact that Noel was always left behind, always excluded — finally brought stinging tears to the child’s eyes. He sniffed and immediately regretted crying. Now the others would have more reason to make fun of him, with his strange words, his strange games, and now his silly tears. Pedro was already smiling devilishly, delighting in his superiority of having a little bread mouse. Manuel refused to look at Noel altogether.
But Isabella, sweet, mean Isabella, lifted her nose haughtily and approached Noel. She said, “Because you don’t have a mouse, Noel, I will give you a piece of mine. But only the tail of my mouse bread, just the tail!”
Noel nodded, wiping his tears with his arm. Isabella broke off the tail of her mouse bread, and Noel extended both palms to receive it. But the little girl did not give it right away. Instead she said, “You must understand how I’m being kind to you, Noel. So you must say thank you.”
And Noel, already embarrassed from being forgotten and being seen crying, mumbled a quick thanks. Isabella seemed eager to prolong his suffering and humiliation, and she said, “No, you must say it out loud. Say, ‘Thank you, Isabella, for being kind to me and giving me the tail of your mouse.’”
“Thank you, Isabella, for being kind to me and giving me the tail of your mouse,” mumbled Noel, loud enough to be heard by everyone who stopped and went quiet to watch the childish exchange, as if it was a ritual or ceremony that demanded their attention and solemnity.
“‘And I promise to obey you and do what you say,’” dictated Isabella.
“And I promise to obey you and do what you say,” copied Noel.
At last, Isabella dropped the tiny tail of the sugared mouse bread into Noel’s waiting palms. It lay flat, hardly even as long as his longest finger or as fat as his thumb. Suddenly, Noel wasn’t quite sure if it was better to have this tiny tail or have nothing at all.
The merriment of the day continued. The adults all gathered around the table, chatting about boring mundane things that the kids did not care about. Aside from the ayuda they brought, one of them, a senior barangay officer, ordered cheap pancit from the karinderia at the corner of the street, and they all ate pancit for merienda. Even Noel. But he ate at the corner, on the floor, with his back against the cabinet door underneath the sink. He dropped little pieces of meat and veggies near the hole where the ants all came and went. He knew that these tiny bits were already huge feasts for such creatures. No one paid him any attention. If they had, Ma’am Cook would scream at him and say that it was his fault the ants were still there, despite how many times she cleaned and swept.
But it turns out someone was watching him, indeed. Before he knew it, Ma’am Grumpy’s face came into view. She squatted in front of him, her tall, angular body cramped into the tiny space. Noel blinked at her. He thought she might scold him in Ma’am Cook’s stead. But instead, she brought out a tiny cup. A sundae. She gave it to him and put a finger to her thin lips. “Shhh,” she said. “That’s for you only. Don’t let the others see, or else those little monsters will take them from you.”
The unexpected kindness brought more tears to his eyes. But instead of the tiny streams earlier, Noel found himself sobbing, clutching the sundae like a lifeline. Ma'am Grumpy wasn’t sure how to comfort a crying child. Her warmth extended only to the cold ice cream sundae that Noel now cradled close to his chest.
She instead settled for patting Noel’s shoulder awkwardly. And then she said, “Santa will come on Christmas, and he will give gifts. And I will make sure he doesn’t forget about you, Noel.”
Just before she could stand up and walk away, Noel asked quietly, “If Santa could give you anything, Ma’am, what would you ask for?”
Ma'am Grumpy almost answered, “A sundae,” as a way to make a joke of her unexpected kindness. But even as she said it, she realized how cruel it might sound to Noel, that he might think she was making fun of him crying over the treat. So she stopped herself in the middle of the word and found herself saying, “A son—”
Both she and Noel went quiet and looked at each other. The others had now moved to the living room, and the merriment carried over with voices echoing, and the old house creaking and whistling.
And then Ma’am Grumpy asked quietly, thoughtfully, “And you, Noel, if Santa could give you anything you wanted?”
Noel answered simply, “I would wish for a mother.”