An officer pointed a searchlight on to the outhouse and checked the hole in the ground. My mother wailed. It was too much to imagine her baby down in the pit of shit.
A Bird's Life by Nita Noveno
The first time she showed me the scar, she traced its path with her finger along the soft underside of her knee, like a small winding creek on a map. She was around five or six years old when it happened. Her life back then consisted of farming on the mountains of Luzon with her family and peddling vegetables door to door. One day, a large tuber she lugged on her head slipped and shot down like a cannonball to the back of her leg, splitting open skin on impact. That is how she remembers it.
