Murdering the ants

I live alone in the penthouse of an old residential condominium, not so high up, only on the ninth floor but far enough from the ground. The building is old, therefore, the apartment is not too small for one person. The living-dining area doubles as my classroom for my writing classes. The dining room table is long and narrow. At the far end I eat and watch TV. Down by two feet from where I eat at the center of the table and directly under the halogen lights that come with the unit is the beading section.

I love fooling around with beads. I have hundreds of them — old and new — and I keep stringing them together, hanging them up or giving them away. These days I am selling them at the market, worked around anting-antings (Filipino ethnic charms). The necklaces I sell are all made by me.

I have other beads that are mine. On my last trip to Abra as chairman and president of a corporate foundation, I bought two antique necklaces from the area. I always intended to restring them because they would not go through my head. That was maybe 18 years ago. These days, I am tidying up so I decided to spend the weekend turning the two pieces into one necklace for me. I figured it would take one afternoon to do that.

I sit at the beading section of my table. I undo six rolls of long cable wire. That’s something new about beading. You don’t use thread any more, you use a cable wire and you fasten it with tiny metal crimps. I end up with yards of tangled, unwound wire at my feet. My landline rings. I get up to answer. Wire is tangled around my slippers. When I return to the table I find the beads I strung fallen to the floor. Also little tiny ants are skittering around the plastic containers of my beads. So I pause to kill about 10 of them. It isn’t difficult. You just have to predict their movement, squish them with your finger then look to see if you got them. I sit down and — ouch — there’s an ant up my leg. I have to get her, too. There’s another one running up my hand. I get her, too.

After moments of murdering ants I have some peace. Often I think of getting my insect spray and spraying them but they are hidden in the table, the place I eat. I don’t like insecticides anyway. I prefer to kill ants with my bare hands.

I begin to undo the necklace. The black beads are so small. They keep spilling over and scattering on the floor where they become invisible. I decide I should pre-cut the wire. I know how long it needs to be anyway. That way I can probably work better. So I pre-cut and after a few more mishaps I get the pattern.

But it’s 6 p.m. and I am hungry, must have some bread and cheese. When dinner comes to the table, the ants appear. Once again, I squish them dead as I see them and feel them crawl on my arms and legs. Where they bite me they leave small red marks but no hives. They are little, little ants. You just feel a tiddly ant bite but it is irritating.

By 9 p.m. I was almost done with the necklace but I could not do the fastening at the back. It was late. I looked at what I had almost finished. It was beautiful.

Tuesday morning I am up early and shower. If you look at my body, it has quite a number of ant bites. But never mind. I sit down at the necklace again. Maybe I can finish it before my massage. I still don’t finish. I would have finished six anting-anting by now. In the afternoon I sit down again. Now to trim. I am cutting off the end of a wire. Ants come out and I am determined to kill them. The wire is getting hard but I need to get that ant — and snap! I cut the wire off and beads sprinkle everywhere. I cut the wrong wires. To make it whole I have to do the necklace all over again.

Aaargh! I almost shout. One whole weekend wasted! I dump the whole necklace and leftover beads in a box. I sit at the table pouting. I kill every little ant that saunters by. Who told you to come up here? Squish. Who told you to distract me? Squash. There is no room for you in my apartment. Splat. You are all dead now. Sadly, I know they still aren’t.

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