I looked at her. She was staring intently at me, her lovely dark eyes trying to see what was behind mine. Even though all the adults treated me as if I were an older child, the Madame was the first one to talk to me as if I were an adult.
“Sometimes,” I said, “I see and hear things others don’t. I dream things, know things that I shouldn’t know. Sometimes, I know things even before they happen.” This wasn’t a boast. To boast would be to add that sometimes, Mang Ambo, the local albularyo, came to me when he had a patient whose sickness was too stubborn to cure, or when he couldn’t reason with the entities that were causing trouble to some of the folks that sought his help. I never liked it when Mang Ambo asked me to talk to the spirits; they were always asking me to go off with them, to tr
