At home, whenever I was running a fever and I would obsti- nately refuse to take the tablet of Cortal, which was concealed inside a slice of banana—I was smart enough to know this trick then—my mother would threaten to call in Doctor Goody, everybody’s doctor in town, to give me an injection. The doc- tor’s syringes and needles over burning cotton balls dipped in denatured alcohol scared me stiff. So at the sight of these doc- tors coming in through the school gate, I started running home as fast as I could until I was caught by my elder brother and his friend who chased after me. They dragged me, crying and trembling and frightened, back to my classroom. My Maestra Moning was there to assure me that the vaccination was no more painful than the bite of an ant or mosquito. Indeed, the vaccination did not hurt much, but I had a fever for days after that and the vaccination left a permanent scar on my right arm. In her 50s, Maestra Moning, who had been the Grade 1 teacher of everyone in our barrio, was apparently resigned to stay an old maid, until a chivalrous neighbor decided to marry her. A year after I graduated from the university, I received a letter from Maestra Moning inviting me to give the commencement speech to the elementary graduates in the old school. I told her I had nothing to show yet as I was just a few months into my first job as a cadet engineer in a glass plant. “But you’ve passed the board exam,” she said firmly. “That would be enough inspiration to the graduating pupils.”
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