Every afternoon, at exactly three o'clock, Adriana prepared the long dining table for merienda, moving the flower vase to the other end, she covered half the board with a checkered red-and-white Ilocano tablecloth. On the rough textile which no amount of ironing could smooth, the ten-year old maid arranged small plates, tea and cocoa cups, butter, sugar, sliced calamansi, and a can of condensed milk.

This day, she placed Doña Marta, as usual, at the head of the table, her daughter, Señorita Nena and her granddaughter, Emma, on either side. Emma's older sister, Marina, was in the province with their father, having irrefutably rreasoned that the proximity of the town church to their provincial house would allow her to walk to church everyday, and practise her Lola Marta's admonitions for Lenten piety.

The fact was that religious rituals in the province were, to Marina, desirably intense experiences. The parish priest mustered a frezy of faith and penance among his flock, whose every sin he knew, so it follwed that their fear and shame were submitted to him for Lent's festive catharsis.

In Manila, observance of the Holy Week was tame. More prayers were quiety recited, less noise allowed, and Pasyon chants rarely wailed in the mournful nights before Good Friday.

Emma did not mind. She liked sitting in bed in the peace of early morning, staring at the clear blue sky reaching down to the calm ocean, its surface unbroken by waves except for a gentle swell near the shore. That early there already was promise of the day's yellow heat, thickened by summer's air.

Emma looked forward to the coming summer with her father and mother in Manila. And of course Adriana for games, the story-telling, the put-together picnics under the ratiles tree, or at the beach. The ratiles was a giant umbrella of soft overlapping leaves casting a huge shadow on the backyard. With each slight breeze, it dropped a thousand white petals which they cahsed with outstretched hands, hardly catching more than a few.

Adriana could climb the tree but Emma could no, its main trunk towering over her eight years. She could jump to reach a branch, but unlike Adriana, could not swing up. A high stool helped, but once there, she was too scared to crawl towards the slim branches where the berries grew thickly.

At the beach Emma could do all that Adriana did. They ran swiftly over long distances, feet digging into moist ground, their laughter riding the wind. Silently, ceremoniously, they covered half their bodies with sand, or waded waist-deep into calm water, shouting and splattering each other.

The ocean was across the house, held off from the street by a low wall. Steps led down to the beach where the girls played always accompanied by an adult, usually Felix the gardener. Until the day he walked into the ocean and never came back.

Emma was in the dining room alone with Adriana.

Of all the meals, she liked this one best, which was not a real meal. There was only ensaymada and pan de sal on the table, now and then native cakes or boiled corn.

She lifted the corner of the napkin covering a trayful of hot bibingka, rice pancakes the cook sometimes bought from a specialty shop near the house. Adriana giggled when Emma dipped her nose into the burnt-banana leaves fragrance of the bibingka, then replaced the cover before her Lola Marta could come in.

It had been a year since Adriana and her older sister had been brought by an employment agent dealing in young, inexperienced girls. Doña Marta wanted trained maids, but her daughter insisted Adriana would make a good companion to Emma, while Karia could help in their large house in the province.

Nothing much was said, but Emma and Adriana knew that Adriana was there for Emma's benefit. In turn, Emma owed no reciprocal obligations to the hired girl. This was no cause for conflict. Adriana, dark, wispy, with darting bright eyes and a quick smile revealing extremely white teeth, and Emma, fair, hair cut in straight bangs over round brown eyes and extraordinarily well-shaped eyebrows ­ both seemed to fit in every detail the forms molded by their parents, prescribed by their possessions, or lack of them.

In fact, Emma and Adriana had an easy, almost affectionate relationship strengthened by conspiracy against other generations, with no crossing of lines. For instance, when Adriana scattered ashes on servants in the kitchen, by blowing through the hihip, an iron pipe for breathing air to inflame red embers on the clay stove, all she received was a reprimand.

If Emma werre to do the same, everyone would be severely scolded, including Emma. She would be forbidden to ever again go to the downstairs kitchen, that entirely different world of high-vaulted ceiling, hard China stone floor, mixed fragrances and smoky fumes, and a scarred table over which Emma and Adriana had spent many enjoyable moments, tasting food with fingers dipped into salty, smelly bagoong, and thick coconut honey, to the bitter lambanog, coconut wine which they had discovered under the long-haired driver's bed, pushed all the way to the corner of the kutchen's connecting alcove.

Emma had never been forbidden, nor been given permission to stay in the downstairs kitchen, such decisions having been reserved for eventuality. But, had she ever attempted any of Adriana's mischiefs, or invented any of her own, a rule would have been worded, accompanied by a strict reprimand that it was highly improper for her, Emma, to have fun with the servants, even at their expense, except with Adriana.

Adriana took her place, standing by the corner of the table, facing Emma. She held the pagaspas, a long stick with a circle of plant bamboo nailed to its end. From it hung colored strips of crepe paper, to drive off flies entering the house through the sliding capiz windows.

The room was brightly alive with merienda colors, unlike the chaste and formal white of other meals. Emma cheerfully observed the Ilocano cover, its cloth so equal to her faults. On it, formerly, she had dropped butter, spilled cocoa and milk. There had been no gasp, nor quick rush for a deep plate half filled with water, to slide under the soiled spot, as would have happened had the cloth been the virgin damask or lace. On those awful occasions, a guilty Emma and sympathizing Adriana watched silently. Under Marta's measuring gaze, Nena passed the dull edge of a knife over the material soaking in water, until all of the food had been scraped off, and a napkin placed under it so it could dry without leaving an obstinate stain. With the Ilocano cloth, nothing was said, except perhaps a reminder that the cloth be laundered soon.

There wasw something else about merienda time. Perhaps, it was the short sleep they had at noon, when heat made the elders take to their rooms and their beds, and which melted the starch off Doña Marta. Awakened from her nap, the siesta's lassitude washed off by afternoon ablution, Marta would take her place at the table with a smile for all, looking cool and refreshed in her new change of gossamer-thin kimona with hand-embroidered edges.

Best of all, she spoke in Tagalog. Not Spanish, which was the language of lunch and dinner, when conversations matched the linen. Those times, a bored Emma was left to watching the others' faces, wondering at the gravity of their voices, the change in the women.

This was specially so when her father was there. Her mother, Nena, usually silent and gentle mannered turned over-attentive. Or she would be nervous, talkative, bidding a reluctant Emma to conversation.

A less imperious Marta still occupied her place at the head of the table, but she made fewer remarks on manners and proper speech to Emma and Marina. Instead there were plesantries. Or she would dwell on subjects way above the understanding of Emma, couched in a language more elegant and polite than usual.

Once, when they werre back in their room, Marina said that their Lola was doing a program number. She laughed when she said it and Emma did not understand. Neither could she understand why her Lola would get into arguments with her father. Often, towards the end, he turned quiet, or with a laugh, would tell his mothjer-in-law that she was thinking like a woman, an observation that seemed to please her even as she rejected it.

Now and then Emma cast quick, trenchant glances at Adriana, who understood nothing of what was said, but who appeared to greatly enjoy the fluency and mystery of what she heard.

Merienda was vastly different. There were no preambles, no routines. Emma could talk freely. There were times when Marta laughed. Often Adriana was dragged into the talk. When she fidgeted, Emma came to her rescue, digging into the trove of their shared experiences to introduce their world to the elders.

After a while, Adriana's eyes would begin to sparkle and an unleashed flow of words revealed wisdom only she had access to, described with anecdotes from a different past.

Emma, proud of her, marked the others' silent attention, as her friend described the garbage mountain near where she lived and which she climbed daily, or the swamp water lily bulbs she and her sister Karia boild for their skimpy suppers. Sometimes, during a lull, Nena would sigh and Doña Marta would order Adriana to get a fresh pot of tea. By the time she came back, the conversation had moved on.

The girls waited, wondering what delayed the older women. The steam from the covered bibingka had dwindled and moistened the covering napkin. Adriana went to the kitchen to get a fresh pot of tea.

Señorita Nena's voice reached her first. She sounded annoyed, nervous. "You blame her?" She spoke in Spanish. Marta's answer was inaudible.

They entered the dining room. Nena in a long dress with short sleeves, her hair in one thick braid hanging behind her head. Marta made the usual brief survey of the talbe, her eyes taking in every detail, including Adriana's attention with her pagaspas. Nena glanced at her daughter, Emma.

"We have bibingka today," Marta's level tone, laced by a foreign language, intimidated Emma.

Nena took the teapot, poured for Marta. "You have your cocoa?" she asked Emma in Spanish, her voice tight and precise.

It was not going well at all, Emma felt. "Yes, Mama," she answered quickly, rushing through the single-syllabled Spanish. She offered the tray of bibingka to her grandmother.

Marta shook her head. "No, thank you," she acknowledged, while absent-mindedly picking an ensaymada, tearing up small, unbuttered morsels to put in her mouth. Emma watched suspiciously.

Adriana had been trying to catch Emma's eyes, to communicate her own confusion and anxiety. Was it the bibingka, she asked silentl7y, leading Emma's eyes to the tray. Had the cook's choice been wrong and therefore irritating Doña Marta? Small error for them in the kitchen below, nothing to be angry about. But Doña Mart would have her reasons, correct for people of her kind.

A slight turn of Emma's head said no. Still Adriana noted the apprehension on her face. Adriana moved the pagaspas nervously. The colored strips came dangerously close to Marta's arms. The old lady moved an impatient hand, as if shooing a fly.

She turned to her daughter. "There are too many things happening here," she said.

Emma knew she was being shut off. She stirred the hot cocoa with a small spoon, kept on stirring, waiting in the long silence. When finally her mother spoke, it was to Emma.

"Would you like to spend the summer holidays in Lagalag?" she asked. Lagalag was their farm, some kilometers from their house in town.

Marta added, "You will come with me, and come back here for the opening of school." Her inflections were severe, with rigidity of punishment.

Emma drew in her breath. She sat up straight, laid her spoon down carefully beside her cup, on the saucer. Not a drop was spilled.

She waited for her mother to say something more, to explain why the promise of summer in Manila was to be broken. Only from her mother could she get a reason. Marta never explained her decision. She just made them. Not even her green hazel eyes gave away her feelings. Cold and curtained, Emma could never guess from them what stirred her grandmother's heart.

Marta was delicately built, her small bones covered by white almost translucent flesh, with skin stretched youthfully, without wrinkles on her face. It was a complexion women coveted and even men admired.

As a young woman she had been prone to fainting spells, perhaps caused by the anemia her doctor diagnosed. She was a woman of extreme fragility, he said, making it sound like an asset.

The color of her eyes were inherited from half foreign parents. A tiny nose and small mouth, with lips often drawn into thin if well formed line, were etched on a pale face from which dark brown hair was pulled tightly away, and caught in a bun at the nape of her neck.

Her cheeks were colorless. But once, an amazed Emma had seen the soles of her feet, as her grandmother reclined on the perezosa. They were pink, like the inner petals of a rose, and so smooth that Emma was tempted to touch them.

But she did not. At the age of fifty0five, Marta, to Emma, was ancient, and never to be disturbed.

And even less, opposed. Even if it mean crushed plans for all the extravagances she and Adriana had dreamed up for the sixty days of summer, when Marta was to be away with Marina and Karia in the farm, and Emma's father and mother with her in Manila.

Marta seemed to have finally become aware of the merienda. She placed the red can of Bruun butter near her plate, meticulously smearing an ensaymada. "Adriana can come along," she said.

"Can we not stay here for the summer, like you said?" Emma spoke in Tagalog to her mother, stubbornly avoiding even a sidewise glance at her grandmother. Marta frowned, as Nena answered gently.

"Someone's just died in this house. It will be better if you go."

"You mean Felix?" Emma was genuinely amazed, "but he wanted to die."

Marta exploded, "You see what I mean?" Her eyes glittering like splintered glass, she turned to her granddaughter. "Only God has power and decision over death. Remember that, always!"

Almost to herself, partly to Nena, she said angrily, "The child has much to learn."

Scum gathered on the surface of the cocoa. Emma held back her tears, causing her head to ache heavily. If only her Lolo Pepe were still alive, though Emma.

Even merienda could not protect her from her Lola Marta. Nor bring her closer than from where she sat at the head of the table. If only she could give a reason, a cause, whether as stark reality or contrived mythy, Emma would have accepted it with childlike faith.

But Marta would not give her the comfort of either, and Emma refused to weep in her presence.

Adriana stood in her corner, the pagaspas still in her hand, motionless, except for the slight breeze rippling the colored paper. She barely understood what had been said. But Emma would translate it for her, and she would get to know what had made the afternoon meal so different from meriendas past.

Watching Emma closely, the unfamiliar, if hidden anger on what had always been a quiet face, Adriana wondered if merienda would ever be the same again.