We called her Aling Paz

We called her Aling Paz. Aling Pacita, not Aling Paz, my childhood friend's mother corrects. She wore her long hair in a bun and ran a sari-sari store near our house for as long as I can remember. With her lived Mang Mando, a man her age whom some people referred to as her brother, some as her lover. He manned the store on days when Aling Paz was away to buy supplies. Pagbilan, we would call. Ano yon? He would respond, annoyed. We would point to the item. This? He would ask. No. This? He would ask again. 

Aling Paz cooked well. Lumpiang shanghai, palabok, spaghetti, champorado, ginataan—snacks we usually bought on Sunday afternoons. These dishes weren't originally for sale, though. She cooked them for car-owning people who visited on Thursdays and Sundays, for whom she also closed the store until their biweekly exercise of a religion with a long name was over. 

There were years when Aling Paz owned a credit list of a mother and her daughter's subsistence—shampoo, bath soap, toothpaste, corned beef, sardines, noodles. The daughter would grow up to be someone who now lives far away from the store that once sustained her life.

I have been away for years, and everything around the store had transformed into something else. Yet save for the simple upgrade, the sari-sari store looked the same. Aling Paz, the same woman. I learned that Mang Mando passed away, and I have to ask her a question. 

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