Ed, this was brought on by your "abortion" post... I couldn't help but remember her.

Over two years ago (I was severely depressed at that time), I had another roommate before Zoe... let's call her Alma. Like me, she was a "stokwa" who refused to go home because she wanted a life of her own in Manila. She couldn't find a job in her field, so she found a job in an internet cafe just to keep body and soul together. A few months after she became my roommate, her sister Heart (the names we Filipinos think up for our kids!) unexpectedly arrived on our doorstep, claiming she needed some space from the atmosphere at home. It didn't take a month before we found out the real reason why she always placed a pillow over her tummy when she was sitting down... she was about three months on the way, her boyfriend was nowhere to be found, and she feared her father's wrath if he found out. Alma burst into tears when she realized that even when she was hard up just supporting herself, she needed to support her younger sister and a baby as well.

Anyway, it wasn't so bad in the next six months, because Heart made no complaint about food even when she always felt hungry and all we had to eat was instant ramen (Lucky Me pancit canton) that Alma and I tried to supplement with eggs. Alma was adamant about abortion not being an option... this baby would come into the world if she had anything to say about it. We pooled our resources to buy baby clothes and little pillows and blankets, and there was a free prenatal checkup at the barangay health center. We were going to buy baby things--- bottles, diapers, etc--- the payday before Heart thought the baby was due, but one afternoon, three weeks before Heart thought she was going to give birth, I got a call from a panicking Alma.

Heart's water had broken and payday was a week away. Alma barely had enough to get through the next few days, let alone pay for the hospital bills. She begged me to come home quick and watch over Heart while she went out to look for someone to borrow money from.

I found Heart in our room, kneeling on the floor in a pool of bloody fluid, her hands clinging to the top deck of our bunk beds, wailing with pain. She begged me to rub her back. I idiotically asked her, "I thought it wasn't until the end of the month?" She gave me a strange look and wailed, "I must've made a mistake in counting!" But when she hurt so much that she wanted to lie down on the floor, one of our boardmates helped to bring her downstairs so we could take her to the hospital. We didn't have money for a taxi, and our alley was too narrow for one anyway, so we called a "trisikad" or "padyak", a bicycle with an attached sidecar, to bring Heart to the nearest public hospital. We must have been a sight, the padyak driver pedaling for dear life straight down a busy city boulevard, yelling "emergency! emergency!" in lieu of an ambulance siren. When we got there, I realized just how little we really had. I had arrived at the hospital with only the pregnant woman, no layette, no baby things, and 500 pesos cash (about 10 dollars).

Alma arrived soon after with 2000 pesos (about 40 dollars), all that she could beg or borrow from friends and acquaintances. And not too soon. Heart delivered a beautiful baby girl not half an hour after she arrived at the hospital... she recounted that the doctor yelled "Not yet! not yet!" because he was still putting on his gloves when the baby's head crowned. Alma and I went out and bought the basics: a bag of diapers, a couple of baby bottles, etc.

Two days before the birth, we had been watching the (German or Austrian?) made-for-tv movie on HGTV, "Antonia", about this college girl, a commoner, who married a count. When the baby was born, everybody in the boarding house vied to suggest a name. Finally we just put the names in a hat and had Heart draw one. She drew my suggestion: Countess Antonia.. and that was what we named the baby!

Our little countess stayed with us for two months before Heart got up the courage to tell her parents. During that time, she grew amazingly. Although older women said babies can't roll or hold up their heads until they are at least four months old, she was rolling on her side or on her tummy on her own, and tried to hold up her head on her wobbly little neck before she was a month old. When she was at least a month old and we were having a conversation in the room, she would look at the person who was talking and babble as if trying to put in a word of her own. Alma and I missed her terribly when their parents sent for Heart to come home and bring Countess with her. And despite the hurt and anger they felt with having a daughter who got pregnant out of wedlock, Alma and Heart's parents soon found Countess to be the joy of their old age.

Heart says that Countess is now two years old, a pretty little girl with a pixie face and dark curls. As a baby, she had this thoughtful look on her face as if she was planning some mischief, and it shows up in almost all of her pictures. To hear Heart tell it, Countess is a whirlwind of motion who wears out her grandfather chasing after her, and who talks, talks and talks even though no one can understand what she says. Heart still isn't married until now.