Karia stared at the drawn pinched face of her mother lying in the rough coffin, mouth slightly curled up at the corners revealing stained teeth, at the skin tightly stretched over bulging eyes, rough scarred skin with a pronounced yellow cast. The frozen immobility fascinated Karia, and immobile too, she stared until one of the neighbors pulled her away.

"Don't carry on so," the woman said. "She is better off now where she is. Come and drink some coffee."

Karia finally drank the black water, sitting on the bamboo floor, her back to the wall. All the chairs had been lined up in the center of the room to hold to coffin. The candles standing at either end of the oblong box remained unlighted, to be save for the last minute before the body was carried away. On a small wooden table pushed close to the wall opposite where Karia sat, and directly under a picture of the Holy Mother, was another lighted candle, its small flame tapering off into black smoke blown by the slight wind in the direction of the picture of Veronica Lake in different shades of pink.

Karia glanced at the pictures indifferently. They were pale and ineffectual beside the living ugliness of the familiar dead. It did not matter that later they had hidden her mother's face from Karia, nor that they had covered her dead body with shovelfuls of stone, earth and dried leaves. Death, when it came that way, was the ugliest thing in the world, and one remembered its face.

Now Karia had to walk daily to the huge pile of earth and garbage where the city waste was deposited. She joined the small band of women, marching off together before dawn. Thirty minutes each day, as they made their way to the deposit there were friends. Never any other time, and least of all when, with clawing fingers, each one tried to get the best there was out of the mountain of filth and plenty. For half an hour they told stories and sometimes the songs they sang of the city echoed in the slums. But always, as they neared the mound, there was silence, hurrying steps and aloneness.

Karia became swiftly habituated to the daily routine. One day it struck her that now she was breathing freely in the air reeking of rotten food, dead animals, and live insects. The physical revulsion she had felt at the beginning had disappeared. It was then that the ugly dead face recalled itself to her, and the rank odor coming from her mother's body as they removed it from the rented coffin and lowered it into the grave lined with a white sheet. That is where it all comes from, she thought. The filth and foulness being absorbed daily was hidden inside the living body rising to the surface only in death. Holding the still meaty head and stomach of a fish, Karia imagined the ugliness spreading on her own dead face.

This day. after lunch, Karia walked out of the slums into the city to look for work. She tried ten places. At nine of them, after one look at her pale face and ragged clothes, they said no. The tenth, a small smoke-filled cafe, noisy with the grating music of an old phonograph, refused her too.

"No. You are too young," the fat heavily powdered woman said. "And thin," she added after a pause.

Karia held on. "I'm sixteen," she lied. "And I can cook and wash."

"I can do those things myself." The woman grinned.

"I can learn to wait on tables, like those girls."

"I still say you're too thin. You'd faint before the day was over," the fat woman smiled. "Go home, put more weight, and then come back."

As Karia passed out of the door the woman called loudly after her, "Be sure to put those pounds in the right places."

Karia went home and told her father what the woman had said.

He was staring out of the window as she talked. After she had stopped, he turned around and asked her how old she was.

"Twelve, going on thirteen."

"Stop going around looking for work. And don't ever go to that place again, or any place like it."

"But Father, what shall we eat?"

"We'll manage. . ."

"We can't go on this way, Father. It's so ugly and filthy out there," she gestured towards the mountain of garbage.

"So that's it." He walked to her and, with hands on her shoulders, made her sit on the chair. "I know how ugly and filthy it is. But the work that this woman has for you, it is worse. . . "

"No, Father," Karia cut in. "The girls wait on tables and they're clean."

"Karia, listen to me. There are rooms in that place where girls serve a different purpose. That's what she wants you for. That's why you are too thin for her, because you are too thin for men. That's the kind of work you will do, give yourself to men. And the first and the second and the third time, and maybe even to the tenth time, when it still hurts you to earn money that way, you remain clean. But later the ugliness and filth will seep inside you and you'll be part of it. Do you understand what I mean, child?"

Karia nodded, though garbage piles and noisy cafes were muddled in her head. Her father turned away.

"I'll find some work tomorrow," he said.

That night before sinking into deep sleep, she heard him tossing on this mat. In the middle of the night she was awakened by his dry rasping cough and the creak of the window as he opened it to spit out. He would never find work, not with his bad health. He had tried before, when her mother was still alive, and shortly after she died, and it had all come to nothing.

The next day Karia woke up later than usual and hurried off to the garbage pile. The other women were already there. digging into the dirt, bringing pieces of food to their nostrils, brushing dirt off fragments of vegetables, once in a while pocketing small luxuries like broken combs, safety pins and torn handkerchiefs.

She did not stay long. There others had been much ahead of her and there would be little left from the day's fresh garbage. She walked in the direction of the swamps, half a mile away, close to where the river flowed. There she would find the rich patch of water lilies. She picked a long stick lying on the edge of the pond and started drawing plants. Swiftly, she gathered enough young growths for the day. These, boiled with dry salted fish that she had hoarded for a week, and some boiled rice, would last them the whole day. She wondered if her father was going out to look for work after lunch.

It was late afternoon, Karia leaned out of the window of her thatched hut and looked out at all the other thatched brown huts. The two-peso-a-month houses were squeezed in the small space, like a crowd of brown-haired beetles, their thin legs sunk in the muddy earth. Laid carelessly on the soft mud that, here and there, was covered with green stagnant water, were large stones connecting each door to the main path that led out to the small dusty street. No plant every grow on this earth except for hardy weeds. If there had been just a bit more water, Karia thought, maybe water lilies would thrive, a bit less, she imagined, and maybe vegetables would.

Impatiently, she walked to the door to have a better view of the path of single-filed stones to see if her father was coming. It was getting dark and the rice would not remain soft much longer. Besides, he should not be out at this time of the day, especially with the cold wind blowing. Only a week ago he had spat blood again.

Their last candle was out by the time he arrived. She had eaten her share of the rice and soup and was sitting on the steps, trying to get some comfort from the faint, erratic beams of light from the neighbors' windows.

"Come up," she said, a note of urgency and excitement in his voice.

"Supper is ready, Father," she said.

He asked for light. When she told him that they had no more candles, he pulled the table closer to the window, and sat to eat. Karia stood by silently. After he was through, she picked up the empty dishes and carried them out to the small bamboo floor projection that stuck out beyond the back door, where a small earthen stove and a big jar full of water stood. She washed the dishes and put them back on the table to dry.

Her father sat quietly by the table. She walked around the small room pushing back a few chairs against the wall, still waiting for him to speak. Instead, he got up and walked to the water jar. She heard water splashing on the ground, guessed he was washing his hands. She took an old dirty rag that hung under the table and gave it to him, hoping that now he would say something. He took the piece of cloth and turned away.

"Let's go to sleep," he said. "I'm tired."

With the cloth hanging unused in his hand, he sat on one of the chairs watching Karia pull out two rolled mats from behind a corner post and lay them out on the floor, tossing a pillow on each, and putting a chair at the ends to keep them from rolling up again.

She sank into her own mat. A while later her father walked over and sat down on his. For a long time he said nothing. Finally he fumbled in his pockets.

"Here, Karia, keep this." He stretched his hand towards her. Although her eyes had long gotten used to the dark, Karia could not see what he held out.

"Keep it well. Put it inside your dress."

She reached out and felt a paper bill. Money. Here she was in the dark with money in her hands. It was a new sensation. A paper bill, not a copper coin, not hard and round and begged off people.

"I have some more here," her father continued. "That is for you, it's yours."

Without another word, he stretched out on the mat and turned his back to her, his silence shutting out all questions. She had to content herself with the wonder of her possession. She wanted to rise and look at the bill by the outside light, but her father's back forbade her. At leas it could not be any less than one peso.

"Keep it well."

Her father's voice came as a shock in her quiet excitement, and she hastily slipped the money inside her dress, tightening her belt so it would not fall out as she slept.

The first thing she did on waking was feel for the money. She pulled it out quickly from her bosom, and trembling, smoothed out the little roll. She caught her breath at the amount. Ten pesos! Enough money to feed her and her father for a whole month. And Adriana. Maybe now, her younger sister Adriana, banished to their grandmother's house after their mother's death, would be able to come home! And it was all hers. He had more with him, he said. She glanced at his back. Where could he have gotten it? What sort of job did he have? She smiled happily. He had a job, she was sure, and it could not be too hard, because he had not coughed much the whole night long. She had to wait until he woke before she could find out. All she could do now was get some food while he slept.

She tiptoed to the jar and splashed water on her face. Wiping it with the hem of her skirt, she went down the steps. On bare feet she ran swiftly over the stones, out into the street. She hurried past the small store on the corner, where the narrow street joined the main one, and ran on to the bigger store that sold canned goods. She would buy a can of sardines. Not that they did not have them in the smaller store, but she did not feel like seeing anyone she knew.

The storekeeper counted out the change, one five peso bill, yellow and crushed, and four one peso ones. These he took from his pocket. Then he went behind a small desk and produced a cigar box from which he counted out seventy centavos, all in small ten-centavo pieces. Karia tried not to appear too eager as she waited. The folded bills fit into her tightly closed fist, but she did not know where to keep the coins safely. She looked around the store and spied what she was looking for.

"How much is that handkerchief?" she asked, pointing to a small square cloth, with white border stitches dotting its red.

"Ten centavos," the man said.

"I want it." She put one of the silver coins on the table. The man took the handkerchief and smiling said,

"You'd better explain the ten centavos well to your Señora. I don't want her to think I charge too much for the sardines."

Karia did not immediately comprehend, so she smiled back, but as she walked away and thought more about it, a frown came to her face.

From the store she walked towards the garbage pile. They never ate breakfast until ten, her father no getting up much before that. That way, they ate only two meals a day. But of course, it was different now, she smiled.

She did not intend to search for food in the pile today. She had this can of sardines and had no need for what the daily provider had to offer. But she wanted to go and look at the garbage mountain.

She was almost there when she thought of the women. Suddenly she knew she did not what them to see what she had. It was different when they exhibited to each other proudly what they had wrested from the mound. But this was bought with money and was not the same. She walked on to the lily pond and with a stick drew some growths to the edge of the pool. She looked at them closely, sniffed them, and then threw them back into the water. She stood there for some minutes, then slowly retraced her steps, passing by the garbage mountain. The women were all gone.

As she tuned the street to her own road someone brushed past her, running quickly in the direction where she lived. What could be a van or a car, she could not clearly distinguish from the distance, was parked near her home. It was probably the Charity Institute van that came once every three months to give them food, enough to last each family a week. She hurried on.

But the van was green, not the blue of the institute. A large group of people crowded around it, but for a small space leading to the the open rear of the van. Karia stretched her neck but could not see what was going on, so she tried to squeeze herself between the crowd. Some of the people made room for her to pass.

There were three men, two with their backs to her. All of them were in khaki. And then there was a small man in a white undershirt and blue pants, to whom the third man was talking.

Karia approached them, her heart beating faster.

"Father!" He turned around and so did the three men.

"Your daughter?" one asked rudely.

"Yes."

"Does she have any of the money?"

"No."

"Then where is the rest?"

"I told you. I went out drinking last night."

"This is not the first time you've robbed a house, is it?"

"I told you it is. We were hungry. I never stole before."

"You could have worked."

"No one will take me."

"Hah, that's what you say. None of these people steal, and they're all as poor as you are." The man nodded his head at the crowd, "Do you now?" A small murmur went around.

"You're a thieving old rat, that's what you are." He struck Karia's father on the shoulder. The old man doubled up and grasped the side of the van. He coughed.

"Go on now," the man said, shoving him. "Get up in there. We'll finish this in court."

The old man was still coughing and unable to move. The man in khaki gave him another push. His coughing increased and he bent his head lower, his shoulders hunched away from the side of the van, his legs supported against it. He spat and it was mingled with blood.

Karia ran and clung to his arm. With his other hand she massaged his back. Slowly his breathing eased. Some of the women covered their noses with their hands. Others turned away.

"You go now," one of the policemen said, pushing Karia away.

When they had all gone, Karia climbed up the steps and sat on the chair where her father had sat the night before. She felt for the small lump of money inside her dress. She though of the smell of swamp water and the lilies floating on them, and the smell of the garbage mountain hiding half-rotten bananas and sour milk and half-consumed sandwiches. She could see the fat heavy flies circling the heap, alighting on the barely edible food, and the women driving them away.

She thought of her father's face as he spat out blood, the faces of the neighbors, the faces of the police. The face of her dead mother. She remembered the tears streaming down Adriana's face as their grandmother led her away.

"But later the ugliness and filth will seep inside you and you will be part of it," he had said. But what if, wherever you turned, it was there?

Slowly, she wrenched the key that was glued to the top of the can of sardines.