entered St. James Academy in June 1957 as a high-school freshman at the premature age of 11, and immediately felt overextended, overmatched, absolutely out of my class. An extension of Maryknoll (now Miriam) College and run by the same order of American nuns, St. James spoke English, and I didn’t—not, at any rate, with any degree of familiarity, let alone skill, such as might afford one the minimum confidence to get by. I’d have gone to another school if it had been up to me, but my father had been sold on St. James, sight unseen, mesmerized by its reputation. He spoke about it as if my very future depended on it; he spoke on faith: James, suddenly, was his patron saint of secondary education. St. James stood, walled in all around, right in the sociopoliti- cal center of the rich fishing town of Malabon. It had nearly an entire block to itself. A short tunnel connected it to its
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