By Christine V. Lao
EVERY MORNING, BEFORE rolling up
the security grill, Eloisa Henares, a woman of substantial heft but otherwise
fairly attractive, lights a couple of joss sticks and jams them into an
ash-filled bowl by the cashier’s counter. As the first wisps of fine smoke curl
upward, she closes her eyes, and waits until the scent of faux sandalwood rises
above the stale, musty-sour odor of decay and the lingering smell of mothballs.
Though every item has been washed, sanitized, and ironed—Eloy makes sure of
this, she is a professional—pre-loved garments can never smell new. Most
patrons can’t even tell that Eloy’s stocks are pre-loved: Holes have been
patched; ripped seams, mended; missing buttons replaced. Occasionally, a canny
customer brings a sleeve to her nose, smells the old beneath the smoke, and
makes a face. “It’s vintage,” Eloy then volunteers, from her perch by the
counter. If the mark lingers (though her
body turns toward the door), Eloy says, “That’s the smell of love,” and smiles.
Charmed, the other smiles back. They all do.
When Eloy opens shop, the reek of
old garments rises from the sidewalk and slaps her face in greeting. “Good
morning to you too,” Eloy mutters. It is early, and only the vendors without a
city permit are milling about, surveying each other’s piles of fabric like
seasoned scavengers. They ignore her, as usual, unconcerned by the permanence
of her puesto—one of the few registered enterprises in the heart of an
otherwise unregulated district—having had its start as the neighborhood
modista’s work area, long before the ukay-ukay vendors had moved into the
district.
In her early days at the store,
Eloy had attempted to make friends, but quickly realized that the sidewalk is a
mere way-station, and the faces that strike her as familiar, only similar in
the manner that a brand new T-shirt on a shelf at the city mall’s department
store is similar to the others of its kind lying beneath it, or on top of it,
each crisply folded and encased in plastic.
Eloy knows a thing or two about
these shirts, fresh off the factory line. They’re all she allows herself to
wear when she tends the store. It is easier to transact with a stranger, but
only if that stranger appears sufficiently familiar, sufficiently
non-threatening, sufficiently reasonable, a particular type. With jeans and
flip-flops, a white cotton shirt suggests: Laid-back vintage store owner behind
the cashier’s counter—but that’s the jeans and sandals talking; the white
shirt says nothing.
A white shirt fresh off the
factory line is sufficiently quiet, if not mute, and so allows Eloy to quickly
model the merchandise, without having to disrobe completely—to play the part of
a helpful friend, if a client lacks such a friend. Beneath a pink notch-collar
jacket with three-quarter sleeves and matching skirt, a white T-shirt says:
Cheerful executive assistant happy in her cubicle. With a gold satin skirt and
suede sandals embellished with coral beads: Woman stepping out of the cubicle
for a supposedly casual dinner with the boss. If fat Eloy in her white T-shirt
can look like a secretary with a pleasing personality in this jacket and in
that skirt, why, imagine the wonders the same ensemble can do for you.
No one asks the white shirt what
it wants. No one even asks what it can do.
And so when the white shirt finally speaks (as all the pre-loved
inevitably do), it says: No one sees me. No one knows I am here.
When this happens, Eloy makes a
fire out of the pile of leaves in her back yard and burns the shirt. Now there
is nothing to see. There is nothing left here. •
> Christine
V. Lao’s short stories have appeared in the anthologies Lauriat: A Filipino-Chinese Speculative
Fiction Anthology and Philippine
Speculative Fiction; and in the publications Expanded Horizons, Philippine Genre Stories, 
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