A’s anyway. From that point on my grades in her subjects only went up. That told me she thought I was a deserving student. It verified that she liked me as much as I liked her. But I was a student with perpetually messy hair. I combed my hair every morning, but by the time I got to school, after a two-hour bus ride before the time of air-conditioned buses, my hair would be a mess. I would comb it, but there’s something undisciplined about my hair. It always escapes clips and hair- bands. It always falls into my eyes. This drove Sister Aquinata up the wall. “Can-sep-si-own,” she would summon, “don’t you ever comb your hair?” I did, Sister, I would say. “Well, comb it again,” she would insist and get really annoyed when it would slip off the rubber band that held my ponytail. What could I have done? Nothing had been invented yet. No gel, no mousse, not even hair spray. It was time for the Voice of Democracy contest. I hate public speaking but she thought I was the best person in class to do it. “I can’t, Sister,” I sort of lied. “My first cousin is the Ateneo del- egate and he is an excellent orator. He will beat me, then there will be bad blood in our family.” She looked at me skeptically but after about a week she came back and said, “I understand. You will not be our Voice of Democracy delegate.” I loved her immensely for not forcing me. I realized later that she had taken a week to get back to me because she double-checked my details. Was the Ateneo delegate, in fact, my first cousin? Yes, he was, she found out. What she didn’t find out was that his coach was his father. When my uncle found out that Sister Aquinata was asking me to represent Maryknoll at the Voice of Democracy, he volunteered to coach me together with his son and, “May the best person win,” he said. But I demurred. The truth was not
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