J.P. Rizal Extension, West Rembo
Makati City
College of Education
Creative Writing
Eng M-6
The Day Amelia Found the Ring
Ma. Theresa A. Fuentes
January 22, 2013
The Day Amelia Found the Ring
“Amelia! Hurry and help me prepare our dinner, your Father might be home anytime and will be mad not seeing his dinner ready,” Aling Delia shouted anxiously at her eldest and only daughter while cooking at their slightly roofed extension kitchen, smoke from the firewood hurting her eyes making her tears fall heavily.
“Yes ‘Nay! I’m coming,” Amelia shouted back leaving her two little brothers busy winnowing a sack of rice to be milled the next day for their family to consume. From their sala, it only took Amelia five easy strides to reach the kitchen area and saw her mother wiping its tears with her apron. Sometimes Amelia wonders if there’s something more behind those tears, not just the smoke.
Past six in the evening, the usual time they have their dinner prepared but not to eat it until their father is home from work in the cane plantation. Often than not, her father comes home drunk around seven or sometimes eight in the evening and that’s the only time that they can eat, their tummies already rumbling of hunger. Her two little brothers, Popoy and Lito, are the ones always complaining why it is that they have to wait for their drunkard father to be home before having their dinner when they’re already dying to get rid of hunger. Aling Delia would only shrug and tell them to be patient and that their father is on its way home already. The moment their father steps in their small old nipa house, drunk and unruly, Popoy and Lito’s complaints will be automatically replaced with fear that even hunger is not the big issue anymore. Lucky will they be if their father arrives weak and sleepy enough to just go straight to bed. But unlucky days always come by, when their father is home drunk and hot tempered and