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.