Even with eyes closed, Emma could tell when the car turned off from the highway to the smaller road flanked by scenery of green and purple slopes.

The village air had always been cool and fresh. Yet now, in the backseat of the car, there was only intense heat wrapped around her legs, pressed against her face, coiled about her neck. Her outstretched hand felt the rush of air outside the window. The wind was hot, as if blown from an oven fired by embers. Like the heat which burns sinners in hell.

"How is Lola Marta, Macario?" she asked the driver.

"All right. The same,: he answered. That meant that her grandmother still kept to her wheelchair, her life turning with the revolution of its wheels.

"And Marina?" She glanced at the driver's rearview mirror, saw only his eyes flicker, revealing nothing. From his pocket he pulled a scented handkerchief and wiped his face. "She is all right too." The heavy fragrance, the nauseating heat, pushed her back against the seat. She closed her eyes.

As the car drove through the iron gate, the front door opened. Her Lola Marta wheeled out to the veranda. It had been three months since Emma's last visit. Her grandmother's face was unchanged, except that a few more wrinkles had disappeared as her skin stretched taut against her bones. Her eyes seemed younbger too, still holding a child's secretiveness in their gaze.

"You're here to stay?" She glanced at the suitcase Macario carried up the broad stone steps. It was the same question each time.

"Just a week."

"You can't leave the city, can you?" A crafty wisdom diminished her eyes, aging them.

"Lola, I have a job."

"With you it's a job." She laughed mockingly. "For your father it was business. You don't need a job, Emma. Something else keep you there. Pleasure perhaps?"

Emma was used to the tone of voice, the way she had finally gotten used to the protestations whenever she tried to help the wheelchair. "No, no, I can do it alone. Don't help me. You're just like your parents, thinking there was not much I could do. But look who lasted longer!"

Emma ignored her Lola Marta's words. Instead she asked for Marina.

"Out in the farm. But she'll be back soon. I don't know what I would do without her." Emma looked down at her grandmother and thought, Well for one thing you would not be in that wheelchair.

In the past it had not been all praise for Marina, not when she could no longer control her eldest grandchild. There had been many quarrels every day, to the time Marina married Rodolfo and more quarrels after the marriage was over. One day Marina had come home raging. "He has women. He comes home after midnight, only to compare me with his queridas." Lola Marta had stood by the door of what was now Marina's room with neither sympathy nor censure and said, "I told you so." Then she looked at Emma sitting on the bed, and said with sarcasm that puzzled the young girl Emma was then, "You're not like Emma here. She would take it."

Less than two months later Marina tried to run off with the driver, the one before Macario. Down the steps she ran in her high-heeled shoes, and would not have stopped except that their grandmother, running after her, had taken a fall right by her feet.

Emma was standing by the window of her grandmother's room when Marina arrived, moving leisurely along the garden path line with trees and flowering shrubs. She and her companion were half hidden from the house. Before reaching the open space in front of the veranda, they stopped. Marina turned on booted feet to move closer to the young man walking beside her. They were concealed by the low-hanging branches of the chico tree, and as Emma turned away from the window she heard Marina's tinkled laughter.

"Is Marina there?" their grandmother asked, wheeling into the room.

Emma nodded. "Does she go to the farm often?"

"Very often, She attends to everything."

"The overseer. What does he do?"

"Overseers are not to be trusted. Not anymore. Nor are they much help in collecting debts. They side with the tenants. After all, once there were tenants also."

"Debts?"

"Yes," her Lola Marta chortled. "But of course you do not know. All you know is Manila," she said with malice. "Like your father." Contempt shadowed her face, "That weak man."

Emma winced. She thought of her father. Was it weakness to want to live fully, and not having that, wish himself to die? Once he tried to explain to Emma, "Your mother, she was brought up to be a saint . . . a virgin. You understand?" Vaguely he continued, "You and Marina were born because . . . I willed it. . . Women like your mother should have stayed in heaven."

His sadness was tinged with regret, even a plea for understanding.

Marina had not changede ­ the same slightly flared nostrils in a nose saved from flatness by the upturned tip, eyes slanted, shadowed by extraordinarily long lashes, full lips set in stern, ungracious lines when she was displeased, or on occasion, breaking into a sensuous smile, fawn-0like ears on a narrow face, like those of a doe seeking to escape. They gave her a look of fear, desire, cruetly.

Her white silk shirt clung to her still young body. Emma tried to recall her age. Thirty-two, since she herself was not twenty-three. Age did no come early to the women in her family. Not to their grandmother whose few gray hairs were like ornamental wisps of time on her head, nor to Marina, her dark tresses hanging over her shoulders softly, lending an agelessness to her face. And least of all to Emma, her close cropped waves framing the open , happy face.

Emma heard the sensuous laugh again. "How you stare at me, little sister."

Emma blushed, ruffled the notes Marina had handed her. "Kario, 10 cavans. Angge, 25. Why do they borrow so much?"

"Silly. That's what they owe, not what they borrowed."

"You charge interest?" Emma exclaimed.

"Certainly."

"Lola Marta knows?"

Marina shrugged. "I suppose so. We don't talk about it." She paused, "Maybe you don't approve?"

"Of course not! It's wrong."

"That's up to you. They're your tenants."

"What about yours?"

"That's my own affair," Marina said coldly. "You should not concern yourself with my soul. Save yours first."

Emma crumpled the notes in her hand. This always happened whenever she visited, barbs tolerated, perhaps even encouraged by their grandmother, had become second nature to Marina.

"That was uncalled for," Emma said.

"As uncalled for as your window-watching me and Sencio?"

I have not said anything."

No. But I am sure you have made judgements."

"You're wrong, Marina. I do not judge." Her anger faded as she watched her older sister standing by the window, the riding whip she held in her hand twisting and untwisting, as if alive. It was not at Emma that the harshness was directed, and both knew it.

That night Emma slept fitfully, beset with dreams broken by wakefulness. Nightmares shuffled with remembrances, like parenthetical notes: the lessons learned from nuns in elementary school, and the jokes heard in her office.

She saw hell in the dream, a place strangely supervised by St. Peter, who took turns looking like her father or the Mother Superior. There were rooms with smoky dividers, and sinners of many types. Poor liars ridiculously standing on their heads, a greedy duck drowning in gold coils, sinners against the sixth commandment, a ghostly vaporous mass without sensation. In unbidden seconds of wakefulness, Emma recalled the Ten Commandments, the Seven Death Sins, but not the Virtues.

Towards the end of the dream, Marina floated in with a warm coat she tried to wrap around Emma. Emma screamed, awoke. Her blanket was gathered around her chin, and her nightgown was twisted around her body. She threw off the covers and rushed to the window for some air. There, shivering, she looked out at the quiet town, the sky glittering with stars and the trees casting black shadows against the heavens.

The next morning the town held a procession to ask the same heavens for rain. It had been dry for months. If the soil's thirst were not quenched, there would be no harvest this season.

From the grilled garden gate, Emma watched the procession, women holding candles in their left hands, rosaries in their right. Between the double line of the pious, the priest walked under a canopy of gold and white, chanting encantations, accompanied by the tinkle of the sacristan's bell.

Almost at the end of the file was Marina, in pale blue, a white cordon around her waist. Her eyes were downcast, on her head a black lace veil. Behind Emma stood Sencio, the overseer's son, also watching the procession.

"Are you waiting for Marina?" Emma asked him.

He flushed, removed his hat, and nodded awkwardly. "Yes. Yes, Señorita. She said she would go to the farm after."

"The procession will be over soon. You can wait," she said kindly.

He was silent. Emma studied his square-jawed, young face, already weather-beaten and furrowed.

"Sencio, this year's crop will be bad?" He seemed to relax.

"Very bad," he answered. "Everything is dying. The wells are dry, the irrigation ditches have only mud."

"The dams?"

He shook his head.

"Is there nothing that can be done?"

"We need rain."

"If rain does not come, what then?"

He shrugged, "I don't know."

"How will our tenants eat? Pay debts?"

He stared at her. "We need rain. Maybe they will do what they have talked about. Make a sacrifice to the gods."

"Sacrifice?"

"If after this, the God in church still does not send rain, the harvest gods will."

"Would it not be better to keep the animals as food?"

"Animals" Harvest gods want more than four-legged creatures!"

"Sencio!" Emma exclaimed. "What are you saying? How . . . ?"

"Suertehan. They draw lots."

They could not do it, Emma thought. It was not possible. "You don't believe in that, do you?"

Sencio shrugged. His eyes were drawn to the street. Emma saw her sister at the corner, coming from church. Marina's face was calm, almost saintly. As she entered the gate, she smiled at Emma and walked with her up the front steps. Sencio followed far behind. Before reaching the door, Marina turned to him.

"Wait there, I shall be down in a few minutes."

She was making a quick trip to the farm, she told Emma. "I'll be back by dark. Shall I tell your tenants you'll be there tomorrow? Sencio can fetch you. I leave ahead, at dawn."

"We will not go together?" Emma asked.

Marina laughed. "Better not."

It was late when Marina returned. Their grandmother had spent the day interrogating Emma.

"Maybe I will go with you to Manila and meet your young men," she said.

"I have only one." Emma was exasperated by the endless questions and insinuations. "I will bring him next time I come, if you wish."

"Ah, so you'll marry him?"

"I don't know. Maybe."

"Maybe? . . . But already he is like a husband to you," she accused.

Angrily, Emma retorted, "I please myself."

Confronted by an admission of sin, the grandmother was silent. "What keeps that sister of yours out so late?" she finally asked. But when Marina came, Lola Marta said little. While wheeling out of the room where she and Emma had been talking and reading, she told the elder girl, "Emma might bring her young man next time. Maybe we'll have a man in the house at last." The sarcasm lingered behind her.

Silently the sisters climbed the stairs, Emma trailing Marina to her bedroom. Marina stretched out on the bed, closed her eyes.

"You're gettingmarried?'

"Maybe. Yes."

"Make your man happy."

"I love him."

"You're not much different from Mother, you know." Marina spoke in monotone, as if half-asleep.

"What do you mean?"

"Two sides of the same coin. Chastity. Love. Passwords to heaven."

"At least I discriminate." Emma wished she had not spoken rashly, but the words were out.

Marina opened her eyes. "So you have heard. Not from Lola Marta, of course. She refuse to know." She laughed, as at a joke. "She'd have to send me away, otherwise. And of course . . . What would we do with Marina . . ." She mimicked their grandmother's genteel effusions.

"Marina, please . . . "

Marina sat up, gave Emma a quick hug, then turned to remove her clothes. "I need a shower. I have to leave early tomorrow."

"Can we not go together?"

Marina ignored the question. She sat beside Emma, speaking thought-spaced words. "What you know is their need to eat, to be out of debt. Rice. . . money . . . the familiar and unattainable. Landowners are central to those needs. Whether or not they get them, we must keep up the class myth."

She paused. Emma was silent, trying to read Marina's thoughs. Outside, cicadas made crisp, staccato sounds. The air was heavy. "I have my . . . sins, as Lola would say." Marina smiled wryly. "But I am still the batang Señora, ang mayaman, a tradition, and beyond their kind. Anything else would spoil it for them."

She rose to go to the shower. "Unlike you, Emma, they are not prepared to become iconoclasts."

"They have a right to eat," Emma said as soon as Marina came back to the room, wrapped in a white bathrobe, her hair within a turbaned towel. Beautiful Alladin, Emma thought, what magic do you possess?

In a few minutes she had been alone, she had sorted out thoughts, forming the words. "Marina, what you do is your business. But they have to be helped."

"I can perhaps be party to their sacrifice" The mockery was evident. Ignoring it, Emma continued. "Write off debts, increase their shares."

Marina laughed. "Next thing you'll say I should give them land." She faced the mirror, her back to Emma, creaming her face, then wiping it off with tissue, and dabbing lotion on her neck.

"Why not?" Emma snapped back, her impatience edged with sharpness.

"Emma!" Marina turned to face her sister in disbelief. "You're crazy, really crazy. Give what we got from our great, great grandparents?"

"Why not?" Emma repeated obstinately.

"Lola would never . . . you're mad!" Her voice was harsh, nervoous. "This is our life. You, you come and judge. You say, give them rice, land." Her voice rose as the words rushed out. "You don't know them. They're ignorant, prodigal. They'd gamble, drink, buy televisions. They'd lose it all."

"You don't lose what you need. They've lived on the land all their lives, given it more than we ever have."

Marina threw her brush on the dresser. It bounced and clattered to the floor. "You're stupid, as stupid as they are. Give them yours, not mine!"

They were both on their feet, facing each other. In anger Emma spoke the unguarded though. "You give yourself, but not your land?" When Marina slapped her, she turned and left the room silently.

Marina had left by the time Emma came down for breakfast. Their grandmother, dipping toasted strips of bread into hot cocoa, her eyes on the cup, asked, "You quarreled with Marina?"

"We argued."

"When Marina was small and even as she grew up, she spent long months in the farm with me. She loves the land."

Emma rose. "It's getting late. I have to go."

Sencio helped her jump the ditch that separated the town road from the small footpath. It was a kilometer to her own land. They passed the parched fields of the first plantation. Undergrowth was sparse, the dry leaves hanging limp on scrawny branches.

"Where can we find Marina?" she asked Sencio.

"She did not wish to say." He sounded sullen.

"Sencio, have you talked to my sister about the hard times our farmers are facing?"

Yes, Señorita." He hesitated. "She does not want to promise anything."

"You should insist."

"How can I insist to the batang Señora?" He pointed to a dry irrigation cana. "Across this, your land begins."

They walked on the narrow raised path enclosing rice paddies. The soil was hard and cracked. From a distance they could see nipa huts under mango trees with dusty leaves.

"Sencio," Emma questioned. "There is no one around. Why?"

He looked around, peered at the distance. The morning sun was gone. The air was heavy and still.

"Yes," Sencion said, quickening his pace. Emma behind him, attempted to keep up. "They must be near the well. They said they would hold it by the well." He began to run, pointing to the edge of the vast rice fields, towards a clump of trees. Her shoes slowed her down, but she kept Sencio in sight.

"The batang Señora . . . " He turned his head so Emma could hear his words, rasped with anxiety.

"What are you saying?" she shouted, but he ran on. What about Marina? Sencio was afraid, but of what? Emma frightened, cried out, "Sencio, is it the sacrifice?" His terror was unashamed.

A few meters away from the well, a large crowd was gathered. With heaving chest, Emma caught up with Sencio. Men, women and children stood around listening to an old man who was stirring bits of dried banana leaves in half a coconut shell. As Emma approached, they eyed her curiously and the hum of whispers began.

"That's the Señorita Emma, the younger one," someone said. Two small children approached timorously.

Emma searched among the crowd, finally saw Marina standing apart, in her white cotton shirt and riding pants. She disengaged herself from the group around her and walked towards Emma.

"Marina!" The relief in her sister's voice made Marina smile. As she passed Sencio who had moved closer to the well, she ordered, "Sencio, get the young Señorita something to drink. She is exhausted from so much running."

Emma stared, awed by her composed, imperious sister. The crowd watched them, their batang Señora and her younger sister. Emma laughed nervously. Marina was every bit the master of the land and its people. As she made her way through the crowd, they quickly stepped aside, apologizing for being in her way. Bending low, one hand pointing to their path, they scuttled off.

"We . . . I thought . . .Sencio suddenly began running." Emma stammered.

"The drawing of lots? No, They have not done it." She looked up at the sky. "And now it looks like it might rain. You can even smell it in the air. My God might win, they say." Marina laughed cheerfully. "I had offered myself for the sacrifice, but they would not have me." Emma tried to read her sister's face. Was she joking? "They would not even have me pick from the lottery slips. I'm not one of them, they said." She tossed her unbound hair back, put an arm around Emma. "You see, little sister, I was rigfht. Their gods also protect their human idols."

"You're crazy," Emma said. "Mad."

"That's what I said to you yesterday." Marina smiled as she led Emma towards the farm house. "Remember this place? she asked.

Emma nodded. Here, as a little girl, she had often rested after a day of riding with Marina on the elder girl's horse. Emma rode in front, Marina half-embracing her to keep her from falling, because she did not know the dips and turns and the lie of the land. Marina would point out the best parts of the river where one could swim or catch shrimps and tiny crabs, or the mounds Emma should skirt because of the elves who lived in them. And all the rice field and valley plantations their grandparents owned, and which one day they would have to preserve for their own grandchildren.