The Flowers of May
by Francisco Arcellana
It is May again. It is still generally sultry but it has begun to rain in
the afternoons and the evenings are clear, the skies are of the utmost
blue; new grass is breaking from the earth everywhere.
It is specially pleasant in the afternoons after the rain. The air is
clear and fragrant, the sky has a new washed look, and everything looks
clean and newborn.
Maytime makes me think of rain and flowers. It makes me think of
my father and my mother, my brothers and my sisters, the living and the
dead. It makes me think of churches and how it is inside churches on
May afternoons.
Maytime is running in the rain and gathering sampaguita buds. It
is Father standing by the window, watching the rain, his grief for the
dead Victoria deep and unspoken; and it is Mother too standing beside
Father, trying to share and understand that grief. It is Manuela and Juaning
and the dead Victoria and Peping and Narciso and Clara and Ting and
Lourdes and Paz and Gloria and Monserrat and Toni and even the dead
Josefina and the dead Concepcion whom I did not know. It is the church
in Tondo and the chapel in Gagalangin and the churches in the Walled
City and the churches in Ermita and Malate and San Andres and Baguio
and all the places that I have ever been.
This is how it is inside churches in the afternoons in May: there are
girls all dressed in white. They wear blue girdles. They stand or sit in
chairs arranged in two rows beneath the church dome in front of the
altar. The smallest are in front and the tallest bring up the rear. They
have reed trays filled with flowers: sampaguitas, camias, lilies, plenty of
lilies; all the flowers of May. They pray and sing. A woman in white
wearing a blue girdle claps her hands and the girls sit down. She claps
The Flowers of May
Francisco Arcellanaher hands and the girls rise. The girls sing and then they dip their hands
into their flower trays and pick up fistfuls of flowers which they throw into
the middle of the aisle between them until the path is well strewn with
petals. The path is meant for the Blessed Virgin Mother to tread upon,
the flowers are meant to receive the imprint of her small white feet. The
girls march up the altar and disappear into the refectory. Long after they
they gone you still hear their voices. The air is heavy with the scent of
crushed petals.
I do not know why on May afternoons I should seek the inside of
churches. Unless it is because I like watching the flower festival; or
because I like looking at girls all dressed in white or because I like the
pure chaste look of blue girdles; or because I like the sound of young girl
voices; or because I like to listen to singing, young girls singing; or because
I like the sight of an altar all decked with flowers, the flowers of May; or
:ause I like the cool clean smell of flowers (a May afternoon inside a
church is like a May morning anywhere) or because of all these things
together.
It is usually a different church each time. Before the war it was
mostly the Lourdes church in Intramuros. Now it is mostly the ProCathedral in San Miguel. It is other churches too. The young girls are the
same, the voices are just as young, sweet, and innocent, and the fragrance
that of the same May morning.
It is surely not anything like what it is to my brother, Narciso, who
has become a Catholic priest. And it can not be like what it is to my
sisters, every single one of the seven of them, the living and the dead
Victoria. It is certainly not anything like what it was to the dead Victoria.
It is not anything like what my brothers know: I can't imagine Juaning
doing it; I can't think of Peping doing it either; Ting who is going to
medical school would—but it would not be at all the same thing; and
Toni? Toni who is going to intermediate school? Perhaps Toni.
And I don' t know that it is anything like what father might have
nown when he was living; and Mother only does Father's wish. Father
might have known it; if he did, it was surely before Victoria died—not
after, hardly after.
Maytime is an afternoon in May. The year is 1934. It is the year of
Victoria's death. It is an afternoon in May and Victoria has been dead two months.