A Ticket to Me

“Number 76, please proceed to the counter now,” a lilting voice, warm like clay, croons out of the loudspeakers. 

 A tiny smile as thin as a twig forms on my face. With that velvety announcement, adrenaline pumps from the base of my spine upwards, like a tree emerging from the smallest mustard seed. A slip of paper with the number 77 is trembling in my hand like an autumn leaf helplessly shaking in a gust.

Perhaps, yes, in queue at the services counter of the only shopping centre in the small town of Lumangkahoy, three hours away from the hustle and bustle of Metro Manila, is not your typical place for nerves, for an inner tempest that feels as if an earthquake were ripping your insides apart. The familiar white fibreglass counter with the colourful print of an acacia tree on the wall, the same one I’ve paid many a utility bill in, now fills the pit of my stomach with dread, as if it were a seed sprouting out with the first thorny vine of a plant.

As soon as my number is called, I will buy myself a plane ticket. To where? Well, I have now until my number is blared out of the speakers to decide on that.

For as long as I could remember, my mother has drummed into me the importance of staying true to my roots, each word a heavy drop of rain in a torrent of admonitions. When I was a child --- just a little seedling full of potential and imagination, it was always her who answered that inevitable question blooming from the mouths of well-meaning adults: “What would you like to be when you grow up?” As soon as I entered school, she enforced a schedule as solid and unbending as Uluru; I would come home every day from classes and bury myself for two or three hours in science textbooks with a private tutor that she hired for me. On Tuesday and Thursday afternoons, when my parents were scheduled to see patients in their joint clinic in our town of 500 residents' public square, I was to watch them like a hawk so I’d learn the tricks of the trade, so to speak. 

As far as Mum was concerned, my destiny was set in stone for me the very moment my name was written on my birth certificate. I am, after all, Maria Amelia Aguilar, the only child of the only two physicians in the sleepy hamlet, the apple that shouldn’t fall too far from the massive tree of my parents’ extensive medical career and the fertile earth of our sleepy village. The town needed someone to save it from being a medical desert, and who else but the daughter of Doctors Bartolome and Petra Aguilar was to heed the call --- never mind if their progeny was more interested in finding out synonyms more than symptoms, of course.

When it was time to apply for university, I wasn’t all that surprised when Mum insisted on scrupulously inspecting every leaf of paper I wrote my petition for admissions in to make sure I was still on board with her plan. Neither was I shocked when as soon as I received my biology diploma, I was handed an application form for the University of the Philippines’ medical school. It was settled: I was to grow in knowledge as a doctor like the tallest narra tree in Manila before getting grafted back home in Lumangkahoy to take over my parents’ practice, to treat the same farmers who, as my mother insisted, were as dependent on me as they were on the land they tilled. I felt I had no choice. 

And then, Maya came into my life like a gale and blew all those plans away. 

With her chunky necklaces and bracelets that jingled like chimes in a summer breeze and floaty gossamer dresses, Maya certainly wasn’t afraid to be a whirlwind in that biology classroom. To me, she always seemed like she was flitting around like a butterfly ---one minute she’d be answering questions about the structure of DNA in class, the next, she’d be laughing with friends whilst singing a song at karaoke. The more I got to know her, the more she took my breath away ... .and the more I wished I could have encountered her when I was younger, let her breath of fresh air clear away the vines keeping me tied to the ground and dragging me to medical school.

I still recall that day I observed Maya, mouth so agape that an entire storm could brew inside and I wouldn’t even notice, as she giingly walked across the sunny university courtyard. Her lavender chiffon maxi dress floating as she strode made her look like an exquisite flower as she proceeded to the office of the school newspaper. In one swift, graceful swoop, she slid a large, purple Manila envelope under the door. Ensconced in it, a copy of the novelette she’d been working on since she was but a little sapling at home. I was so immensely proud of her, ecstatic at seeing her reach for the stratosphere. However, I couldn’t deny that my nerves were sending alarm bells to my ears, as if Vesuvius just erupted.

“This is beautiful, Maya dear. I don’t know what to say. It’s just…”

“Just what?”

“Well, I….”

“Out with it!”

“Well, aren’t you just afraid that your parents would find out,” I sputtered out like a blocked faucet. “I mean after all, they’re…”

Maya responded by sighing so deeply, I could feel her breath come out in puffs.

“This again? How many times have I…?”

“Maya, look, I know how you feel. Your parents…”

“Well, there you go,” she pressed with the weight of a tectonic plate’s shifting. “You know precisely what it feels like. Then, you should just let me submit this.”

“Maya, I..”

My eyes hone in on a sheet of paper peeking out of her large, amethyst binder. On it was an unmistakable cornflower blue crown logo. Like a sunflower bending to celestial bodies, my hand reached for it.

“‘Application Form: Columbia University, Master of Fine Arts in Creative Writing?’ Maya! Do they know?”

“Oh come on now,” Maya wailed. “Don’t tell me you’re chickening…”

“It’s not chickening out when I’m just trying to keep you safe, Maya. I just don’t want the earth you’re standing on to shake. You know how your mum…what?”

Across from her, I see Maya’s almond-shaped brown eyes release a single tear, a solitary raindrop plummeting into the placid lake of her resolve. 

“Be rooted in the soil that doesn’t nourish you or climb mountains as a free bird? It’s your choice. You have until after graduation.”

Indeed, it was. For the next couple of months, all I could think of, what was swirling like a cyclone in my head was Maya’s question. As I donned the white lab coat and trudged the hallways with leaden feet to the classroom, the fat liquid bulb flowing like molten crystal across her cheek carved itself in my mind. 

Even as my ecstatic, clapping parents hung a shiny gold medal around my neck, there was a tempest brewing inside me, one I had to dam off with fake smiles that never reached my temples. My mother’s coos about me being magna cum laude and being a shoo-in for medical school might as well have been pelted to the wind. I just went through the motions, just like the skies changing from summer to autumn, as I walked down the stage; one day, I knew I had to pick a path — trodden or not — and give my answer to Maya.

That day is today. As the number in my hands quakes, a whirlpool forms inside my belly. Anytime now, the call will come for…

“77, please proceed to the counter.”

“Here I go,” I whisper to myself as jelly legs prop me up to walk the short distance to the golden voiced lady behind the microphone In my brain, the path might as well be strewn with broken glass, every shard scratching my throat as I approach.

“What may I help you with today?”

“Uhm, I’d like to buy a plane ticket please.”

“Okay, Ma’am. May I ask to where?”

The typhoon inside of me rages, seeming to sweep up all the bile and lift it in my mouth. It was time. 

“Manila please.”

“Very well. Anything else, Ma’am?”

Of course, it would have been easy to leave it at that, to stay rooted in what I know simply because it was easy. However, Maya’s tear-filled eyes immediately flashes in my consciousness. I knew she was right; it was time to take a leap to try to fly.

“Actually, I’m not done yet. Could you also reserve a Manila-New York flight for the next day? I’m thinking of sleeping over in the capital so it would be less stressful.”

“But of course, Ma’am. Let me just do that.”

I give the booking agent a smile, wide like an open window as I picture Maya’s bejewelled arms raised in a thumbs up gesture. I imagine her nodding as I fish for my mobile phone in my purse.

“Go on. One last thing to do,” I hear her say.

I let my thumb hover over the screen for a couple of seconds before dialing the familiar number. I swallow a gulp as I hear a click.

“Hello? Hi, Mum. It’s me, Maya,” I sputter out. “Listen, we need to talk…”