Angel

by Zoe Daniel

  THROUGH MY EYES: NATURAL DISASTER ZONES

  Hotaka (Japan)

  Shaozhen (China)

  Lyla (New Zealand)

  Angel (Philippines)

  THROUGH MY EYES

  Shahana (Kashmir)

  Amina (Somalia)

  Naveed (Afghanistan)

  Emilio (Mexico)

  Malini (Sri Lanka)

  Zafir (Syria)

  First published by Allen & Unwin in 2018

  Text © Zoe Daniel, 2018

  Series concept © series creator and editor Lyn White, 2018

  All rights reserved. No part of this book may be reproduced or transmitted in any form or by any means, electronic or mechanical, including photocopying, recording or by any information storage and retrieval system, without prior permission in writing from the publisher. The Australian Copyright Act 1968 (the Act) allows a maximum of one chapter or ten per cent of this book, whichever is the greater, to be photocopied by any educational institution for its educational purposes provided that the educational institution (or body that administers it) has given a remuneration notice to the Copyright Agency (Australia) under the Act.

  Allen & Unwin

  83 Alexander Street

  Crows Nest NSW 2065

  Australia

  Phone: (61 2) 8425 0100

  Email: info@allenandunwin.com

  Web: www.allenandunwin.com

  ISBN 978 1 76011 377 3

  eISBN 978 1 76063 658 6

  For teaching resources, explore

  www.allenandunwin.com/resources/for-teachers

  Cover and text design by Sandra Nobes

  Cover photos: portrait of girl by Juanmonino/iStock; waves by H3k27/Getty; palm trees by Richard Whitcombe/Alamy; submerged cars by Jeoffrey Maitem/Getty

  Set by Midland Typesetters, Australia

  For the people of Tacloban City

  CONTENTS

  One

  Two

  Three

  Four

  Five

  Six

  Seven

  Eight

  Nine

  Ten

  Eleven

  Twelve

  Thirteen

  Fourteen

  Fifteen

  Sixteen

  Seventeen

  Author’s note

  Timeline

  Glossary

  Find out more about …

  Recovery and reconstruction

  Acknowledgments

  One

  Angel and her father are heading home. They have been fishing all morning and the baskets in the small boat are filled with silvery fish. Angel is perched at the front above the bangka’s pointy prow and her father is at the rear, steering the rudder as the outrigger churns through the waves. Juan’s normally calm, untroubled face is creased with worry for a storm is coming, and coming fast. The sky is getting darker every second, the wind is up, and rain is beginning to pelt down.

  The little craft hugs the shore and Juan squints. He’s trying to make out the distant outline of Tacloban City as they cut through the water, riding wave after wave, each one bigger than the last, but the horizon is obliterated by mist and rain.

  Angel, gripping the seat hard to avoid flying out as the boat leaps high, turns, trying to catch her father’s eye. He looks through her as if she’s not there, scanning the ocean, trying to read the next roll of the waves that threaten to flip them over.

  A big black seabird is here too. Angel keeps catching it out of the corner of her eye as it circles, tracking them from a distance, but each time she tries to look at it properly it melts into the mist.

  There’s a peal of thunder and a flash of lightning. The rain is almost horizontal. Angel’s head is full of the roar of the wind. She calls out to her father but the words are blown away before they reach his ears. Again and again she tries to get his attention with her cries.

  ‘Papa! Papa!’ It’s futile. Juan is entirely focused on the task at hand.

  He guns the motor hard, doubling the roar in Angel’s ears, and the boat surges forward and up the next mighty wave. It can’t be much further, we’ll make it home, Angel thinks. But then, the acceleration suddenly drops away. The little boat hangs, silently suspended on the brink of the wave as if teetering on a cliff.

  ‘PAPA! HELP ME!’

  She screams in terror, and is flung into the sky, the wind carrying her up into the whirling eye of the storm …

  Angel wakes with a gasp and is quickly swamped with relief. Her bed is rumpled and cosy and daylight is peeping into the upstairs platform where the family sleeps, but the other beds are empty. Everyone is awake now. Downstairs in the living area, her mother is moving about preparing breakfast. She can hear her twin brothers, Carlo and Cristian, scuffling about teasing each other.

  Angel burrows into the bedclothes, her mind still troubled by the nightmare. She often dreams of being on the sea with her father in his sturdy little bangka and she always feels safe and happy when she is with him. Not this time.

  For the last few days there have been regular radio reports predicting that a major storm is brewing in the vicinity. A few neighbours have TV sets and yesterday Angel and her father dropped by a friend’s house to watch the news bulletins. They saw grim-faced journalists and maps of the Philippines covered in vast, swirling pinwheels. People were arguing: were the reports exaggerated or should they all be heading for the hills? At home later her parents brushed off the warnings. Fierce storms regularly pummel the coastline where they live, but Angel’s family is well prepared and they always make it through unscathed. Why should this one be any different?

  Angel pushes her uneasiness aside and bounces out of bed. Nothing is going to spoil her special day! She scrambles into her simple school uniform: white shirt, grey and blue tartan skirt and matching tie. Then she runs a brush through the long hair that ripples all the way down her back and draws it into a strong metal clip. This is how she wears it every day. Even though it’s beautifully thick and shimmers like black silk she prefers to keep it neatly out of the way. Her best friend Issy sometimes looks at her and sighs, ‘What a waste!’

  She climbs down the ladder and her mother, Veronica, glances up from the rice cooker and says jokingly, ‘Ah, here she is at last. Sleeping in on your birthday. I hope this is not a sign of things to come!’

  ‘Lazy bones! Lazy bones!’ chants Cristian from the table where he and Carlo are working their way through bowls of sweet boiled green banana.

  Angel smiles. She usually gets up early like her father, before her mother and brothers. She loves the quiet house in the morning as Juan potters about. Sometimes father and daughter sit quietly on the front porch together while Juan sips his scalding, sweet black coffee and plans his day.

  ‘When did Papa leave?’ she asks her mother.

  ‘Very early, just after dawn, I think. He’s trying out the new motor on the boat and he wants to make sure he gets plenty of fish for tonight.’

  Angel feels a thrill of excitement about the birthday feast as she crosses the cool cement floor out onto the porch. The atmosphere is still and muggy and she fills her lungs with the salty air. She barely notices the strong fishy scent that she has lived with all her life. Their house sits just metres from the seawall, with a steep drop to the water, and a clear view across the narrow San Juanico Strait to the island of Samar. Her grandparents live over there on their patch of farmland. She wonders if they have heard the storm warnings. They don’t even have a radio. It’s a good thing that they’re coming to the party tonight and will hear all the news.

  The silvery morning sky is streaked with pink – a sign of bad weather – and giant thunderheads are gathering. When she looks to the left, she can see far in the distance the thin line of the San Juanico Bridge snaking across
from Leyte on her side of the strait all the way to Samar. To the right, her gaze follows the long curve of the foreshore as it stretches away towards the busy city of Tacloban. She can just see the tower of the Santo Niño church in the centre with its five storeys painted a deep orange colour, and the big storage sheds where the boats unload their fish down on the seashore. Beyond that she can make out the huge white dome of the convention centre. Angel barely remembers the small fishing village that she was born in. Tacloban is now a buzzing capital with shopping centres, government buildings and even a cinema.

  Angel scans the shoreline, studded with fishermen’s houses just like hers. They make up a colourful mishmash of different shapes and building materials. Some are stronger and sturdier than others, but she suspects most of them are the same inside, small and basic, with a living space downstairs, a sleeping platform upstairs, a narrow roof-space for storage and a porch out the front to catch the breeze.

  Her father built their house with his own hands. It’s not big or fancy like the new, Western-style villas that are popping up on the hillside overlooking the city. Some of them stand behind high security fences with guards on duty. Her house is simple, but solid, made of timber with a floor of cool, grey cement and a roof of iron built to withstand the seasonal typhoons that cartwheel across the Pacific and through the central Philippines. Next door, the Filipino flag on Mrs Reyes’ flagpole hangs limp and still, the proud yellow sun concealed among the drooping red and blue folds.

  ‘Pangaon kita, let’s eat!’ calls out Veronica. ‘Have some breakfast now before these greedy boys wolf down the lot!’ The twins are eight years old and it seems to Angel that they never stop eating. Cristian is larger and stockier than Carlo, who is small and slim like his father, but they both have the same huge appetites and seemingly boundless energy.

  Before she can move inside, Angel’s attention is drawn to a dark shape in the sky overhead, and a black seabird glides into view. The bird swoops in low, almost as if it has its eye on her, and then it turns and flaps away over the water.

  Angel shivers.

  Come on, Angel. It’s just a bird, she tells herself, and with one last glance at the gathering clouds she goes back inside for breakfast.

  Two

  The radio is on and the announcer is reciting another grim weather forecast. ‘No need for that this morning,’ says Veronica and she switches to a music station.

  As the children eat their eggs and rice, Cristian can’t resist teasing his big sister. ‘Hey, you’re getting old. Soon you’ll be a wrinkly little lady like Mrs Reyes!’

  Angel just rolls her eyes as the boys shriek with laughter.

  ‘At least when Angel is a wrinkly old lady she will have more teeth than Mrs Reyes!’ jokes Carlo.

  ‘That’s enough, you two. Have some respect for your elders,’ scolds Veronica, who is busy making noodles for the party in the kitchen. It has a wooden table and chairs for dining and a cooking area off to the side with a single tap over a sink. Juan whitewashed the interior walls and Veronica has added little personal touches with colourful pictures of beaches and mountains as well as Bible scenes and a plain wooden cross hanging on the wall.

  ‘Now get going or you will be late for school.’ Her voice is sharp but there is a smile on her lips.

  ‘Sorry, Mama. Love you, Mama.’ One after the other the boys hug her goodbye.

  ‘Cheeky scoundrels,’ she calls after them. ‘Be good!’

  Angel kisses her mother and Veronica regards her daughter approvingly.

  ‘Have I told you how much like your father you are?’ she says.

  Angel smiles. Her mother has told her, many times, and Angel never tires of hearing it.

  Veronica returns the smile and waves her tea towel at Angel. ‘Have a wonderful day, birthday girl.’

  Angel walks along the busy Pan-Philippine highway towards Tacloban with the boys skipping in front. Up ahead the dark thunderclouds are blotting out parts of the sky. It’s only 7 a.m., but the air is already stifling. All that moisture means there is plenty of lush green vegetation around. People say all you have to do is poke a plain old stick into the ground and a day later it will have sprouted leaves!

  The children pick their way down the busy footpath leading into the city. The roadside is jammed with stores selling fruit and snacks, motor oil and plastic containers, and the road itself is seething with cars, motorbikes and jeepneys.

  Tacloban is divided into more than a hundred barangays and Angel’s family lives in Barangay 74. After about ten minutes they reach Angel’s old elementary school in Barangay 6, where she leaves the boys at the gate.

  ‘See you here at three-thirty,’ she calls after them as they disappear inside the drab grey building. They will eat their school lunch of rice, meat or fish and gravy in their classroom. It’s a long day, but they have been coming here since they were five years old and are used to it.

  Angel keeps walking along the busy road for another ten minutes to her junior high school. She is in her first year and she is determined to study hard so that she can graduate from high school and go on to college. She is good at all the basic subjects at school like Maths, Science, English and Philippine literature, but Social Science is her favourite subject, and she is looking forward to that afternoon’s geography lesson.

  ‘Angel! Angel! Wait up!’

  She turns around and there’s Issy, her best friend, running up with her brother, Justin, behind her. ‘Happy birthday to you!’ Issy chants, grabbing Angel by the hand. ‘Now we are both teenagers – woo-hoo!’

  Issy and Angel have known each other forever. Their mothers have been good friends ever since they were both newlyweds and sang in the church choir together. Issy’s father also started out as a fisherman like Juan, but some years ago he opened a market stall and now he makes a very decent living selling fish that other people catch. The two families often go to church and socialise together.

  Issy and Angel are devoted friends but they are also different in many ways: while Angel is quiet and serious, Issy is loud and playful. She loves make-up and following all the latest fashions and music trends. Today her shoulder-length hair is coiled up into an elaborate plait and she has hot-pink studs twinkling in her ears. Her warm, infectious smile draws people to her and she is well liked and loves to be sociable.

  ‘I can’t wait for the party tonight. I’ve been praying for the storm to hold off until tomorrow. Justin has too, haven’t you, kuya?’

  Issy’s big brother is fifteen and in his first year of high school. He acts like he is annoyed by his chatty, popular little sister but he is secretly very proud and protective of her and diligently walks her to and from school every day. A full head taller than the girls, he flicks his long fringe to the side and peers down at Angel.

  ‘Good luck being a teenager, pipsqueak,’ he says sarcastically, ‘you’re going to need it.’ And he strides off. Angel frowns after him. She just doesn’t get Justin; he always seems to be as grumpy as Issy is cheerful. She wishes he’d stop treating her like a silly little girl.

  ‘Don’t mind him,’ says Issy. ‘He’s got to study for a big maths test tomorrow so no partying for him.’ Angel knows Issy thinks that she and Justin are very similar – both serious, sensible, and highly motivated – and hopes that one day they will stop being at loggerheads.

  The two girls link arms and chat excitedly the rest of the way to school. Even though the plain boxy building was painted bright green a few years ago, it is already faded and grubby again. Inside, the students are restless, most of them fidgeting in the heat, wondering when the storm will hit and whether it will be bad enough for them to be sent home early. The lessons are mostly taught in English, but sometimes in Filipino and even a bit of Waray-waray, which is their regional language.

  As the morning wears on, Angel keeps watch out the window. Storm clouds pile up over the city and sharp gusts of wind tip motos onto their sides and send plastic bags and pieces of loose litter twisting into the sky
.

  The rain begins bucketing down and the teacher covers the classroom windows with long wooden blinds, tying them down at the bottom to strong metal bolts. There’s no real need for glass in the windows in such a warm climate, except when the rain turns horizontal and pelts in, damaging their few precious books and leaving big puddles on the cement floor.

  The day seems to drag on forever. Even the geography lesson seems dull and boring as the rain pours steadily outside. At last it’s three-fifteen and the students burst out of the classrooms. Luckily, the rain has stopped and Angel hurries to collect her brothers. On their way home the boys cavort in the wind, skipping and spinning, chasing the flying leaves and litter kicked up by the gusts.

  ‘Hurry up, you two, we have to get home before the rain comes back.’

  Carlo and Cristian laugh and tease her, running around her in circles. They’re so glad to be free after being cooped up inside all day. When she finally gets to the house, Angel sees her father’s bangka securely tethered but fighting the ropes as the wind and swell push it up and down on the heavy wash of the waves. The old taklub basket Juan uses to catch fish is swinging wildly from the mooring post and she runs to untie it before it’s torn away into the gale. A deafening thunderclap booms overhead and the sky opens. A few heavy drops soon become a teeming downpour and Angel ducks into the house, completely drenched.

  Her mother is at the timber table, filleting piles of fish.

  ‘Is Papa still at the market?’ Angel asks.

  ‘Yes he is. It was a good catch today so as soon as he got home he went straight there.’

  At that moment Juan comes in the door behind her, shedding a dripping raincoat as he goes.

  ‘Hello, birthday girl!’

  ‘Papa! How was the market?’

  ‘We sold out of everything, but I kept plenty of fish for the party,’ he says happily.

  Angel’s father is not a big man – only about a head taller than her – but he is lean and agile and very strong. He could pass for much younger than his forty-odd years, if it wasn’t for the vivid white streak that flares up from the side-part in his thick black hair. He jokes that it gives him an air of wisdom and authority.