November 19 2007 9:25 am- November 21 1:35 pm
Anger is gray:
In his house in Mahinhin St. U.P. Village eight years ago, I had once stood inside this box--- four gray-white walls that could be reached by my hands if I reached out. I had felt at home inside that box. There, no one would hear me scream; no one would know my thoughts; no one would witness my memories; no one would be hurt.
Just the gray-white walls going up to a ceiling of gray glass. You cannot see anything in the glass but gray— gray sky, gray rain, gray light. Gray, thick and heavy that no scream would break
He called it their atrium and it was empty except for my presence. He had said that there used to be plants there but then nothing could seem to survive. Of course, I had thought, How could anything live in this grayness?
The atrium and I weren’t different--- it was gray and I was gray. That was what I had said to him. He stood by the door to where the atrium opened to the outside while I stood in the middle, inside. Outside, he looked at me.
Inside, I had looked away, up--- gray sky, gray rain, gray light---- angry.
That anger took on colors.
Anger is gray that becomes red:
Anger makes me gray, not red. Anger in red makes me only see black spots amid a red that doesn’t make sense. The black spots are body parts--- face, hands, legs, back, buttocks, skin--- that I touch in a haze of red. The black spots become my handholds as I swim out of that sea of red, as I struggle to reach the surface to breathe and see light.
And once I breathed light, I see that the black spots are no longer black--- they have become red, blood, looking at me in accusation, in pain, in horror.
I had once been always angry in red. Perhaps it was my air-trigger temper (that they thought had been beaten out of me), unleashed when I couldn’t get what I wanted or when I was hurt or when I didn’t like something. In our language we call this “maisug”, “buringutun” or “pupung-utun”. My mother simply calls it “pistolera”.
But then again, being this and that could not be beaten out of me. I refused to be beaten, after all.
I remember being angry in red when I was in grade 1 and she was younger. I don’t remember why it happened, only that I slapped her and pushed her. She fell: her back had hit the low table in the middle of the living room and the slice of pineapple she was holding had fallen to the floor. She didn’t say anything, just gave me that look, rubbed her back, picked up the pineapple from the floor, brushed it off with her fingers, and took a bite as if nothing happened.
I wanted to tell her that I was sorry. I wanted to hug her. But I couldn’t do or say anything--- feeling my right palm tingling, stinging--- feeling her soft skin on my tingling stinging palm. She didn’t cry and had even offered a bite of her pineapple to me. I wanted to cry.
After, I had said to myself never to be angry in red. I did not like hurting anyone without a reason.
I did not like hurting anyone at all.
Anger is gray that was red that becomes black:
Then there is that anger in black--- when I try to make peace, when I see the futility of it, when I am fed up, and I snap. Being angry in black makes me only want to reach as much as I could and hurt.
How many times have I snapped in black?
I think back: this summer, when I had held a badminton racket, wanting to hit her, stopping, hitting the kitchen sink instead on and on until the racket was a wreck. They could only watch; wait; wonder if I would finally swing it towards her. Pistolera: how could they stop my hands when my hands are always too fast and can strike at them too?
I had taken a deep breath, walked away shaking…only to reach for the sword in the living room, unsheathing it, coming towards her again, a voice softly calling my name, a warding hand, telling me, “Give me the sword.”
I gave it up, walked away shaking from black…going back to gray.
I think back: holding on to my womb, I had screamed at them to stop as they rolled on the floor. I had heard her head hit the floor as she reeled from a slap. I had pulled the one hitting her off her, uncaring that I might pull my stitches open. I had placed my right hand on her chest as she sat up, blocking her blows, shushing her screams. I held out my left hand in a halting gesture to the one who was hitting her: she was older.
“Stop it,” I had said to my older sister.
“Don’t think that because operada ka I won’t hit you, too,” she said, always angry in red and black.
I quietly replied, angry but still in gray, “Don’t think that because operada ako I won’t hurt you.” She had walked away, and I was left shaking my head…shaking at how close and easily gray becomes black.
I think back: She came home for her first semester break and a fight broke out among the four younger us. I don’t remember why. I remember that there was screaming, hitting, running, doors slamming, and the housekeeper begging for us to stop, always mindful that it was not in her place to physically interfere. We didn’t stop, even when she had threatened to call our father.
She didn’t stop hitting. I was trying to stop everyone, trying not to hurt anyone. Then she slapped me. I just snapped, from gray to black, held her head and punched her nape. She went gray, fell to the floor. We all stopped.
Quiet and calm once more, she whispered as she rubbed her neck, “Next time, don’t punch the back of the neck.”
I had nodded, helped her up and rubbed her neck, too. I never wanted to hurt any of my loved ones, especially an elder.
I think back before that slap: I was slapped one time for several times and it went on and on as I sat there taking the slap to my left cheek, a backhand to right cheek, slap, left, backhand, right…I had allowed it because the one doing the slapping was my father and I understood him.
I had told him that I was not lying. Call my classmate, Daddy, I had said; talk to her parents. I was there and we were studying for our Applied Physics exam.
I had thought as I sat there, feeling that tingling stinging palm on my burning skin, “Am I supposed to take every slap? How long until you had enough?” It went on and on and I was afraid it wouldn’t stop. Pistolera: my right hand began to raise itself to block a slap, just block.
His left hand holds my right hand and pulls it down, right palm to deliver another slap to my left cheek. He lets go of my hand to backhand my right cheek. My right hand would raise itself, blocking his backhand. It begins again.
I had thought, “Why isn’t anyone telling him to stop?” I was not afraid of the pain. I was more afraid of the pain it would give him after, when his anger had stopped being red.
It had finally stopped. He walked away, went into their bedroom. I knew that sometime in the night he would cry and say to himself, “Nakulgan ku na naman su igin ko.” Nobody knew that I had peed on my underwear, wetting my navy blue school skirt, in fear.
I was afraid because somewhere between the slaps my gray anger had almost become black. In black, I do not simply block--- I hit and hurt back.
Nobody has been allowed to slap me after.
Anger is gray that was red, turns black, and can become white:
Once.
Anger in white can make me do things that I know I should not do. In white, everything becomes clear, and I know what I should do--- the necessary and that is most of the time what should not be done.
I remembered being angry in white: sitting with these people; who did not touch me; but made my skin sting; calmly laughing; drinking as we played cards; as we played out what I wanted from them; what I wanted done; as if I were simply reciting a list.
Or like that night that I had spoken of being angry in white in that voice to my sweet, my soulmate, my lover. She had said, “I have never heard you this way before.” I had smiled, “I sound at peace, no?”
I wanted peace for all of us and things had to be done.
“What do you want this to say?” I was asked.
“Simply: I want this stopped,” I had smiled and then unsmiling, “I want us, her, to be left alone. After this, we’re all even. After all, I think they’ve forgotten that she is mine, that this family is mine.”
After seeing it through, I had gone home and took a long shower, needing to go back to gray as I washed white off me.
“Where have you been today?” my mother had asked me after.
“There was some things I needed to do, Ma,” I had said, “Everything’s okay.”
Anger in white gets things done. I don’t wonder who would forgive me: I don’t need forgiveness from others. But in gray I sometimes wonder if I can forgive myself. Then I remember anger in white and I say to myself: I don’t need forgiveness. I have not sinned.
When I was dying, I was almost angry in white, as white as the sheets I was lying on in a hospital bed.
“What do you want?” my father had asked.
“I want him dead,” I had said, “Only then can I sleep.”
He had looked at me for a long time, seeing for the first time what his daughter is capable of doing. That same night, I had told my father that I had changed my mind. I had thought, you believe in Hell and you will go to Hell if this is done. He simply nodded.
And I had played chess instead in my head, with human pieces, to win sleep, thinking I am in Hell already.
Anger in white is about peace-- either you leave things be in peace or you do things for peace. And the color of peace is gray-white.
Peace is gray-white:
Gray-white makes me see the starkness of red, black, and white. It makes me see that I am standing in the gray.
In the gray, I make sure I remember to be the sky blue of the Lady of Immaculate Conception’s veil for kindness; the purple and sometimes baby pink of love; the variations of rose and orange and aquamarine blending into laughter; the green of carabao grass or mango trees in the summer for patience… I make sure that I become colors that are not red, black, white or gray.
In the gray, I make sure I don’t feel angry. I do not like being angry. Anger simply makes me gray, forget other colors, and just remember red, black, and white.
In the gray, I and the rest of my world would always be laughing. We prefer to laugh. The way Michie had laughed as I had clipped about this game--- seeing red, black, and white--- that I was not playing but had ensnared me.
“Why the fuck are you so angry?” he had asked, laughing.
“Because this is hurting those I love. And this offends me. And she just goes on and on and it’s just getting uglier,” I had snapped and then another snap: “This makes me feel like I’m being slapped and why the fuck are you laughing?”
He said, “Because you know you can stop this. You can make it stop. Now, why don’t you? You know you can.”
“Hell,” I had said, disgruntled.
“Yeah, put them there. Do what you do,” he said.
“I’ll think about it,” I had sighed.
“Yeah, you do that you fucking bitchy-witch,” he laughed.
And I had laughed, too.
In laughing, I had returned to gray and I thought about it.
I had asked them, her, to pick a color.
Choose a color
Now, I am angry:
You are toying with them, they who are my friends. I do not (even think to) own them but they are mine. Play your games, test your wiles, gain your power and fodder but not through (1) him, on (2) him, over (3) him. Create whatever it is that you want to create but leave them alone and out of it.
Summer has ended; time for games is over.
It is almost Christmas; time to learn love.
How can you be loved when you only use people? I protect those who are mine: that is love not just on words but at the level of events. I cannot allow you to use them, use those I love.
I am not asking you to stop.
I am telling you to stop.
Otherwise, what color do you want for my anger?
In his house in Mahinhin St. U.P. Village eight years ago, I had once stood inside this box--- four gray-white walls that could be reached by my hands if I reached out. I had felt at home inside that box. There, no one would hear me scream; no one would know my thoughts; no one would witness my memories; no one would be hurt.
Just the gray-white walls going up to a ceiling of gray glass. You cannot see anything in the glass but gray— gray sky, gray rain, gray light. Gray, thick and heavy that no scream would break
He called it their atrium and it was empty except for my presence. He had said that there used to be plants there but then nothing could seem to survive. Of course, I had thought, How could anything live in this grayness?
The atrium and I weren’t different--- it was gray and I was gray. That was what I had said to him. He stood by the door to where the atrium opened to the outside while I stood in the middle, inside. Outside, he looked at me.
Inside, I had looked away, up--- gray sky, gray rain, gray light---- angry.
That anger took on colors.
Anger is gray that becomes red:
Anger makes me gray, not red. Anger in red makes me only see black spots amid a red that doesn’t make sense. The black spots are body parts--- face, hands, legs, back, buttocks, skin--- that I touch in a haze of red. The black spots become my handholds as I swim out of that sea of red, as I struggle to reach the surface to breathe and see light.
And once I breathed light, I see that the black spots are no longer black--- they have become red, blood, looking at me in accusation, in pain, in horror.
I had once been always angry in red. Perhaps it was my air-trigger temper (that they thought had been beaten out of me), unleashed when I couldn’t get what I wanted or when I was hurt or when I didn’t like something. In our language we call this “maisug”, “buringutun” or “pupung-utun”. My mother simply calls it “pistolera”.
But then again, being this and that could not be beaten out of me. I refused to be beaten, after all.
I remember being angry in red when I was in grade 1 and she was younger. I don’t remember why it happened, only that I slapped her and pushed her. She fell: her back had hit the low table in the middle of the living room and the slice of pineapple she was holding had fallen to the floor. She didn’t say anything, just gave me that look, rubbed her back, picked up the pineapple from the floor, brushed it off with her fingers, and took a bite as if nothing happened.
I wanted to tell her that I was sorry. I wanted to hug her. But I couldn’t do or say anything--- feeling my right palm tingling, stinging--- feeling her soft skin on my tingling stinging palm. She didn’t cry and had even offered a bite of her pineapple to me. I wanted to cry.
After, I had said to myself never to be angry in red. I did not like hurting anyone without a reason.
I did not like hurting anyone at all.
Anger is gray that was red that becomes black:
Then there is that anger in black--- when I try to make peace, when I see the futility of it, when I am fed up, and I snap. Being angry in black makes me only want to reach as much as I could and hurt.
How many times have I snapped in black?
I think back: this summer, when I had held a badminton racket, wanting to hit her, stopping, hitting the kitchen sink instead on and on until the racket was a wreck. They could only watch; wait; wonder if I would finally swing it towards her. Pistolera: how could they stop my hands when my hands are always too fast and can strike at them too?
I had taken a deep breath, walked away shaking…only to reach for the sword in the living room, unsheathing it, coming towards her again, a voice softly calling my name, a warding hand, telling me, “Give me the sword.”
I gave it up, walked away shaking from black…going back to gray.
I think back: holding on to my womb, I had screamed at them to stop as they rolled on the floor. I had heard her head hit the floor as she reeled from a slap. I had pulled the one hitting her off her, uncaring that I might pull my stitches open. I had placed my right hand on her chest as she sat up, blocking her blows, shushing her screams. I held out my left hand in a halting gesture to the one who was hitting her: she was older.
“Stop it,” I had said to my older sister.
“Don’t think that because operada ka I won’t hit you, too,” she said, always angry in red and black.
I quietly replied, angry but still in gray, “Don’t think that because operada ako I won’t hurt you.” She had walked away, and I was left shaking my head…shaking at how close and easily gray becomes black.
I think back: She came home for her first semester break and a fight broke out among the four younger us. I don’t remember why. I remember that there was screaming, hitting, running, doors slamming, and the housekeeper begging for us to stop, always mindful that it was not in her place to physically interfere. We didn’t stop, even when she had threatened to call our father.
She didn’t stop hitting. I was trying to stop everyone, trying not to hurt anyone. Then she slapped me. I just snapped, from gray to black, held her head and punched her nape. She went gray, fell to the floor. We all stopped.
Quiet and calm once more, she whispered as she rubbed her neck, “Next time, don’t punch the back of the neck.”
I had nodded, helped her up and rubbed her neck, too. I never wanted to hurt any of my loved ones, especially an elder.
I think back before that slap: I was slapped one time for several times and it went on and on as I sat there taking the slap to my left cheek, a backhand to right cheek, slap, left, backhand, right…I had allowed it because the one doing the slapping was my father and I understood him.
I had told him that I was not lying. Call my classmate, Daddy, I had said; talk to her parents. I was there and we were studying for our Applied Physics exam.
I had thought as I sat there, feeling that tingling stinging palm on my burning skin, “Am I supposed to take every slap? How long until you had enough?” It went on and on and I was afraid it wouldn’t stop. Pistolera: my right hand began to raise itself to block a slap, just block.
His left hand holds my right hand and pulls it down, right palm to deliver another slap to my left cheek. He lets go of my hand to backhand my right cheek. My right hand would raise itself, blocking his backhand. It begins again.
I had thought, “Why isn’t anyone telling him to stop?” I was not afraid of the pain. I was more afraid of the pain it would give him after, when his anger had stopped being red.
It had finally stopped. He walked away, went into their bedroom. I knew that sometime in the night he would cry and say to himself, “Nakulgan ku na naman su igin ko.” Nobody knew that I had peed on my underwear, wetting my navy blue school skirt, in fear.
I was afraid because somewhere between the slaps my gray anger had almost become black. In black, I do not simply block--- I hit and hurt back.
Nobody has been allowed to slap me after.
Anger is gray that was red, turns black, and can become white:
Once.
Anger in white can make me do things that I know I should not do. In white, everything becomes clear, and I know what I should do--- the necessary and that is most of the time what should not be done.
I remembered being angry in white: sitting with these people; who did not touch me; but made my skin sting; calmly laughing; drinking as we played cards; as we played out what I wanted from them; what I wanted done; as if I were simply reciting a list.
Or like that night that I had spoken of being angry in white in that voice to my sweet, my soulmate, my lover. She had said, “I have never heard you this way before.” I had smiled, “I sound at peace, no?”
I wanted peace for all of us and things had to be done.
“What do you want this to say?” I was asked.
“Simply: I want this stopped,” I had smiled and then unsmiling, “I want us, her, to be left alone. After this, we’re all even. After all, I think they’ve forgotten that she is mine, that this family is mine.”
After seeing it through, I had gone home and took a long shower, needing to go back to gray as I washed white off me.
“Where have you been today?” my mother had asked me after.
“There was some things I needed to do, Ma,” I had said, “Everything’s okay.”
Anger in white gets things done. I don’t wonder who would forgive me: I don’t need forgiveness from others. But in gray I sometimes wonder if I can forgive myself. Then I remember anger in white and I say to myself: I don’t need forgiveness. I have not sinned.
When I was dying, I was almost angry in white, as white as the sheets I was lying on in a hospital bed.
“What do you want?” my father had asked.
“I want him dead,” I had said, “Only then can I sleep.”
He had looked at me for a long time, seeing for the first time what his daughter is capable of doing. That same night, I had told my father that I had changed my mind. I had thought, you believe in Hell and you will go to Hell if this is done. He simply nodded.
And I had played chess instead in my head, with human pieces, to win sleep, thinking I am in Hell already.
Anger in white is about peace-- either you leave things be in peace or you do things for peace. And the color of peace is gray-white.
Peace is gray-white:
Gray-white makes me see the starkness of red, black, and white. It makes me see that I am standing in the gray.
In the gray, I make sure I remember to be the sky blue of the Lady of Immaculate Conception’s veil for kindness; the purple and sometimes baby pink of love; the variations of rose and orange and aquamarine blending into laughter; the green of carabao grass or mango trees in the summer for patience… I make sure that I become colors that are not red, black, white or gray.
In the gray, I make sure I don’t feel angry. I do not like being angry. Anger simply makes me gray, forget other colors, and just remember red, black, and white.
In the gray, I and the rest of my world would always be laughing. We prefer to laugh. The way Michie had laughed as I had clipped about this game--- seeing red, black, and white--- that I was not playing but had ensnared me.
“Why the fuck are you so angry?” he had asked, laughing.
“Because this is hurting those I love. And this offends me. And she just goes on and on and it’s just getting uglier,” I had snapped and then another snap: “This makes me feel like I’m being slapped and why the fuck are you laughing?”
He said, “Because you know you can stop this. You can make it stop. Now, why don’t you? You know you can.”
“Hell,” I had said, disgruntled.
“Yeah, put them there. Do what you do,” he said.
“I’ll think about it,” I had sighed.
“Yeah, you do that you fucking bitchy-witch,” he laughed.
And I had laughed, too.
In laughing, I had returned to gray and I thought about it.
I had asked them, her, to pick a color.
Choose a color
Now, I am angry:
You are toying with them, they who are my friends. I do not (even think to) own them but they are mine. Play your games, test your wiles, gain your power and fodder but not through (1) him, on (2) him, over (3) him. Create whatever it is that you want to create but leave them alone and out of it.
Summer has ended; time for games is over.
It is almost Christmas; time to learn love.
How can you be loved when you only use people? I protect those who are mine: that is love not just on words but at the level of events. I cannot allow you to use them, use those I love.
I am not asking you to stop.
I am telling you to stop.
Otherwise, what color do you want for my anger?
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