With enormous dignity she awaited him. I was aware again of her loveliness. It amazed me. The existence of it. Here.

     A market exists for beauty. To be base but realistic. Prices are bid, goods are shown and find their niche; rare goods bring high sums and are consumed in stylish places. By the logic of the marketplace she didn't belong in this toilet, at forty pesos. If anyone did.

     She looked directly at me as she opened the robe.

     Her stomach was a mass of welts, horrible scars mottled dark and light. They wrenched the eye from her beauty. Once she exposed her midriff, she might as well have been a hag; it didn't matter any longer.

     The man was affronted. He called out roughly. She didn't answer him. He took off his shirt and snapped it at the scars. His friends found this hilarious, and he began to circle the mattress, waving the shirt. She turned to keep him in front of her. In turning, her back came into my view. It was a vivid road map of mutilation. Grooved depressions scored her muscles, some straight across, others slashing at a diagonal from shoulder down into buttock. What had created them, I couldn't imagine. She had no skin: only tissue that had hardened into slick lumps.

     As I was saying: Vangie. She is happy here, she is thriving, but she is not like us. She has too much in her. Most often I am aware of it when she has gotten some news from home: a letter, or the occasional Bacolod dateline on a newspaper squib. The news is almost always bad, and it always affects her. I know; she would never insult me with false good cheer.

     Our private life is rich and quiet. I approach her when she is hurt. I am privileged to touch her bruises and to behold their depth. I embrace her in the night. We do not speak. I stroke her with utmost gentleness. I am reminded