[SHORT STORY] The Rationing: Part II of VI
by Frances Rey
I look at Mama as she rummages through the waste bin. Her bony, wrinkled fingers pick through its contents and from it, takes out a single shriveled vegetable. I touch Mama’s hands lightly. She jumps and turns, but calms when she sees me. Let’s go, I gesture to her. Mama nods and follows me slowly, careful not to upset her aching joints. Mama lost the ability to hear a few months ago, when a Peace Officer near her suddenly fired his gun in the wet market. A young man stole dried milkfish from a fishmonger that day. To the Peace Officer, it didn’t matter that the vendor had forgiven the lad’s actions. The punishment was a bullet to the hand: two fingers in exchange for a fish.
People emerge from their ramshackle homes of metal-and-wood patchwork, all with darkened skin and withered bones and sunken cheeks. Project 7 was one of the few villages in Quezon City where overpopulation was most prevalent. This was why the government came up with the Rationing, so that resources like food, water, and medicine would be distributed thinly across the populace. My mouth waters at the thought of the rations that will be provided. The rations are never enough — from the expired food packets to the bottles of stained, stagnant water — but it’s all that the country can spare for us.
“Move along, child!” A Peace Officer bellows, jabbing the end of his long-nosed gun haphazardly into the crowd. The hollow gunpoint collides with my rib at a painful angle, and for a moment I am forced to curl into myself. The tide people continue onward, too weary to reprimand me for staggering the lane. Mother is swift to pull me back to my feet.
A familiar figure pushes through the wall of bodies behind me and stops to match my pace. “Theresa,” I greet the pregnant woman, a friend of mine in the slums. Mama smiles warmly at the infant that Theresa is cradling to her bosom. The baby cries weakly for food that his mother cannot produce. Droughts were cruel to lactating mothers.
Theresa does not respond until after a moment. “There are only Peace Officers.”
“What?”
“I saw the trucks arrive this morning. No Rationing personnel came. Only Peace Officers.”
ABOUT THE AUTHOR
I am Frances Pia Alexy C. Rey. I think of myself as an optimistic and passionate writer who likes to challenge and further develop my writing prowess.
I won the 2018 Essay Writing Contest of APEC Grace Park West, composed the graduation song of APEC Grace Park West for the batch of S.Y. 2018–2019, and have written fictional short stories and poems that focus on the human nature and condition.
I also enjoy watching and evaluating movies; listening and singing along to music; and experimenting with poems and narratives.
