Names People Give You
Mara pressed a pillow over Nico’s ears, knowing she could not block the world forever.
“I’m sorry,” she whispered—not to him, but to the life she could not give.
Once, she had worked in Makati, wearing a clean uniform and believing effort led somewhere. When Nico’s father left, he took that belief with him. What remained was judgment.
And judgment, she learned, was harder to escape than hunger.
Hunger eventually demanded payment.
Near Recto, a security guard kicked her basket aside.
“No permits,” he said, already turning away.
Her rice cakes spilled into dirty water.
“Please,” Mara said, kneeling. “That’s food.”
He shrugged. “Not my problem.”
People stepped around her as if she were debris.
Nico screamed. “Mama!”
She gathered what she could, hands shaking, dignity dissolving with every movement.
That night, she counted zero coins.
And for the first time, she wondered not how to continue—but whether continuation was expected of her at all.
The landlord came the next morning, as consequences often did.
“You’re behind again.”
“I’ll pay,” Mara said. “Please.”
His eyes lingered too long. “There are other ways.”
She closed the door and slid to the floor, the meaning settling heavily in her chest.
That night, she fed Nico and did not eat.
Her body learned a new language: dizziness, trembling, restraint.
“I’m still here,” she told herself, repeating it until it sounded almost true.
But being here, she understood now, came with conditions.
Collapse did not arrive as drama. It arrived quietly.
She fainted on the sidewalk.
When she opened her eyes, a woman was standing over her.
“Do you want work?” the woman asked.
Mara nodded, because hunger answered faster than pride.
The café was small. The hours were long. Customers complained.
“She’s slow.”
“She smells like the street.”
Mara absorbed the words the way she absorbed pain—without reaction.
At home, she stood before the mirror, practicing a posture she remembered from another life.
Dignity, she realized, had to be relearned.
The body keeps its own records.
Nico collapsed at school.
At the hospital in Sampaloc, Mara sat on the floor, shaking.
“He’s malnourished,” the doctor said. “You too.”
“I tried,” Mara whispered.
Later, the café owner paid the bill.
“Why?” Mara asked.
“Because you didn’t disappear,” the woman replied. “Most people do.”
That night, Mara cried—not because she was weak, but because she had been seen.
And being seen, she learned, was its own kind of violence—and mercy.
Life did not become gentle.
Mara still woke early. Still counted coins.
But she no longer knelt on the street.
Years later, Nico stood on a public school stage in Quezon City.
“My mother never gave up,” he said. “Even when people treated her like nothing.”
Mara stood at the back, her body marked by memory.
The sun was as harsh as it had always been.
But she had learned its lesson.
Survival was not grace.
It was resistance—and she had learned how to endure it.