For Egg who said, “…read
For Vin Simbulan: Welcome to the labyrinth of CNF, where the mythical and fantastic--- like the Minotaur and the Kapre--- is remembered and made real. Sir Jimmy Abad said on May 16 2007 that “To remember comes from the word Recordar from Latin re-cordis, to pass through the heart.” I think he was quoting Eduardo Galeano’s epigraph in his “Book of Embraces” (1989). And I say what passes through the heart draws blood and that’s why it is remembered. CNF is a bloodier discipline.
Por mi amiga: Bienvenido! I missed you! I’m glad you’re back! Olé to Spanish lunch! This one’s yours to do with what you want, a gift. Please don’t cry, too.
For Twiggy: No crying. Didn’t you hear that Goths hate it when their eye-make up gets smudged?
For Sir Butch Dalisay and Sir Krip Yuson, in memory of May 16 2007: Yeah, I’m the one writing my family stories because I’m the one who finally chose to write. I think this one goes beyond “reportage” and “rant”, yes? If not, this one can be trashed this year, too. (As if they read this blog anyway.) Cheers!
I dreamt last night that I was making love to Pamela Anderson and Meredith Gray, from being just Pamela and I, and then to three, then I disappeared---
We were in a bedroom in our former Kalayaan apartment which had wooden floors, only two or three apartment units were connected, all ours, spacious but cramped.
In that apartment I saw Ma and she had left Dad for someone she has always loved, someone she met before he came, her first love--- “the boy who left town,” the voice in my dream said. Dad had remained quiet--- wearing his white sando and shorts--- grieving but letting her go.
Ma had looked happy and smiling. She was there with him, the boy who left town now an old man, while Dad was lying down on the sofa, still and quiet. He was just looking at them.
The way Dad had become quiet when Ate told him, “Yan-Yan’s pregnant.” Dad stood up, went out the front door, and tended to the garden. Ate started crying the moment he stepped out of the door, crying for him. That was on a Holy Week, four years ago
I was the first to know that she was pregnant, barely even a month. I did not even ask her. I told her. When she heard the words, she started crying. She had just returned to us once more, barely even a month, after months of disappearing, hiding, thinking that then she could finally begin.
How could I not know when I bathed that body when she was still a child and had even taught it how to ride a bicycle?
She was just about to turn 22 or maybe she already had that January, still very much our baby.
I wonder how Ma and Dad are now---
It seemed they returned to how they began, just the two of them, returning to Dad’s family--- their house, their fold.
But this time they are happily welcomed.
This time they’re the ones taking care of Lola.
Ma had said the last time I spoke to her, “It’s only now I’m seeing again what a good son your Dad is. He’s the one cooking and he’s the one minding your Lola the whole time.”
I had laughed, “Men and their Mamas, Ma!”
Ma and Dad had both warned me eight years ago, “That’s the way things are, mothers will always have a hard time letting go of their sons.”
This time they’re not in San Nicolas.
I think about San Nicolas---
About how we were not allowed to play taguan when night had risen in that sprawling yard and in that old house which was built some time in the 1960s. Because, they said, a kapre would take us and hide us in its ear.
They said that we would smell burning tabako first before we disappeared.
They said that no matter how loud we screamed to show where we were being hidden-- even if we were right in front of them--- no one would hear and no one would find us.
They said that if we were good the kapre would maybe release us. Sometimes, they said, someone taken by a kapre would be released years later. And sometimes that someone would feel like years have passed even when released just seconds after.
They told me these before I turned six.
I never asked why a kapre would take someone because it seemed I have always known but I couldn’t seem to put it into words.
Children have always known but very few of us remember.
I think about San Nicolas in the 1980s---
About how Ate and our older cousins would talk about a ghost in the second floor of that house who would use the typewriter. They would be walking towards one of the bedrooms, knowing that no one’s there, and they could hear the typewriter’s tak…tak…tak… inside.
No one would stay in the second floor of that house alone.
One by one, all had left that house alone.
I think about how we found books lying around on the floor of the deserted second floor--- scattered, unminded--- when Dad took us with him as he returned to his home in San Nicolas for a visit. Dad had just come home to us in Naga from
He and another of his younger brothers who was left to live there with his own family barely spoke. His brother had studied Law, and liked playing chess and sabong and silence. He would berate the children for playing noisily. Nobody really asked him questions but he had called Dad “Manoy” and answered when he was asked questions that day.
When we were still living in San Roque, I remember that uncle taking me for a motorcycle ride with his wife once when I had a fever. I remember that he had bundled me into my sweater and that he spoke to me gently, telling me that I would be all right. Maybe I was going to be taken to our Lolo Doctor for an injection. I remember that I was taken to an aunt’s shop in the centro after.
Maybe it was Egg or Ate who once told me that just before or after Ate was born that uncle had pointed a gun to Ma when she had placed herself in front of him, shielding his wife from more of his beating.
He had said to her, how dare you interfere, who are you, you are just a “sampid” in this house.
Dad had been out of the house. When he arrived and found out, he had looked for his younger brother and found him…I’m trying to remember if Dad had pointed a gun then at his younger brother, too. Dad was 24 or maybe 25. They didn’t speak to each other after and for a long time. I don’t know what Lolo or Lola said about that.
Later on, Ma and Dad left the house in San Nicolas.
Later on Lola and Lola would leave the house too for
I had wondered when I saw the books on the floor---
If the ghost had played with them because it was alone or had flung them in a fit because it no longer had a typewriter.
I was almost eight and Dad was almost 39.
Dad had said that he had read those books and all the books they had in their library as a teenager while eating the local oranges his yaya had peeled for him, picked by Lolo’s trabajadors from their orchard.
What was left in that house in San Nicolas were all forgotten, all neglected, all left to decay.
That house had witnessed the death of Uncle Pempe in the 1970s from a ruptured appendix before he even turned (or maybe he already was) 21. Dad’s favorite younger brother--- the one who Dad said was “witty” and a prankster and had liked playing chess and table tennis, too. He was the one who looked Chinese-mestizo the most, lanky and fair and had a very visible Adam’s apple.
Uncle Pempe was the reason why Dad was so quiet when they cut me open to take out my enlarged appendix, just hours after my stomach had cramped at recess when I was in Grade 3. The reason why he was so angry when months later Gnomie also had been cut open and her enlarged appendix taken out but then a week later the wound had gaped open, bleeding blood and pus.
He was afraid that I and especially she would die, too.
I thought that he was angry because we didn’t listen when they kept on telling us not to run around after we have eaten.
That day that Dad had come to visit his home, we took all those books (and later aparadors, tables, more images of old Virgin Mary and saints, and some other things) from that house to our own home.
To take care of them.
Just after---
Four-year-old Yan-Yan had been asked by Dad in our old home in Naga when he found her alone in their bedroom, “Siisay kausip mo, Igin?”
Who are you talking to, my baby?
She had answered, “Lolo. San bagay ya Daddy.”
She said Lolo was there.
Gnomie, Dad, and I all froze.
Yan-Yan only began talking coherently at four years old.
The first clear English word I heard from her at that age was “pickles” (picked up from that Atari video game “Burger City” which Dad had played obsessively) and she spoke that word on and on… pickles…pickles…pickles... and never stopped chattering ever since.
One of the reasons Dad had come home was because there was one time that he spoke to Yan-Yan on the phone and she had asked him, “Siisay ika?”
She didn’t know who he was.
Dad would usually pick her up from nursery school in Colegio de Sta. Isabel and then take her after to eat in a restaurant in Naga. If you asked Yan-Yan where they had gone, she would say, “Sadtu agko ulaan na orange.”
That place that had orange seats, that
Sometimes we just had to tell her to shut up but she would just keep on chattering even when nobody would listen to her or the one listening to her had already fallen asleep.
Before Dad came home, before all the children were gathered together, Ma’s younger sister and her spawns had starved Yan-Yan when she was left alone in
Ate used to be with her there, taking care of her and being woken in the middle of the night to find that Yan-Yan had wet the bed. Sometimes, Ate said, she would be still be too sleepy and tired so she would just change Yan-Yan’s clothes and place a dry towel or the blanket over the wet area and then she would cradle Yan-Yan back to sleep.
Then she was left alone because Ate began living with Lola and my cousins in San Nicolas.
So while they ate hotdogs and eggs in the dining room in Santiago-- taunting her by making her watch and telling her she couldn’t have any--- she would just eat tomatoes, tuyo, libi-libi (a vegetable that looks like a shriveled smaller and greener variation of lettuce cooked in coconut milk) and a lot of rice with the family housekeeper, Auntie Kuring, in the dirty-kitchen.
She never said anything about that and some other things.
I had asked Auntie Kuring about this nine or eight or seven years ago. She apologized that she couldn’t sneak an extra hotdog or egg to cook for my baby sister because they were all accounted for. She would just tell Yan-Yan then, “Yang na Igin, masiram man ining kinakaun ta. Mas masiram pa sadtu.” She was telling her that what she was eating tasted good and better than hotdog.
It explained why we would find Yan-Yan hiding with food under her bed when she was younger. If and when we rifle through her things, sometimes we would still find canned goods hidden here and there.
I cry when I remember that.
We all just mostly want to forget.
But I am not as forgiving as my family.
Those people never said “Sorry” anyway.
And I do not forget though I do try.
Where would my memories go but into this?
Like the rage, it all had to go somewhere.
At least in San Nicolas, they always made sure that anyone who visited and stayed was fed equally.
I have seven of those books we took from San Nicolas with me here---
Seven volumes of Grolier Classics published in 1956. The volume I had secretly and first read when I was in Grade 2 or 3 had Baruch Spinoza’s “Ethics”. Spinoza said that Science and God had no conflict, that Science brings us closer to God, that God + Universe = Totality of Existence.
Years later I said “ah” when I read that Einstein said, “My God is Spinoza’s God.” Einstein also said that genius is nothing without imagination because he had simply imagined the Theory of Relativity and made it come true.
There were supposed to be ten or twelve or maybe twenty volumes.
We only found seven that day when Dad had taken us with him to San Nicolas.
Maybe the rest had been taken or maybe hidden by the ghost, too.
Then I think-- Anne Sexton was told by a catholic priest that “God is in your typewriter” and then her collection The Awful Rowing Toward God (1975) was made possible.
Tak…Tak…Tak…
That house in San Nicolas had witnessed parties in the 1960s until the 1980s.
In 1985, Lolo and Lola had returned to that house.
It had housed the wake of Lolo when he died at 65 that year.
Dad had laughingly told me that when Lolo died he saw and heard the cabinets rattling in their house in
Then quietly Dad said to me that he and Lolo had already said goodbye to each other before Lolo and Lola returned to San Nicolas. Lolo told him that he knew he was dying from smoking too much--- that the men in their family die at 65--- and he wanted to die at home.
Egg told me when I was in
Dad is already 60 and he smokes too much, the way I do.
Ma used to say, “You drink and smoke just like your Dad!”
I always used to want to tell her, “How can I not be like Dad when I was born on his birthday?”
Just like when I returned for a high school friend’s wedding in Naga almost four years ago and Joey and I had joined Ma and Dad for dinner after the reception. Their friends saw me smoking and drinking with Dad in a restaurant while Ma was eating and talking to Joey.
I asked Dad after their friends left, “Dad, aren’t you ashamed of me? Don’t you feel ashamed that they see your daughter smoking and drinking? Kababayi ko bagang tawo.”
I am a woman, after all, a girl to them.
Dad said, “No. You are already old and you know the consequences of your actions. Let other people talk all they want.”
After dinner, we joined my friends again for more drinks and I had almost wailed to them, “My baby is now married!” Joey and I gave the newlyweds a microwave oven because the bride didn’t really know how to cook. When she opened our gift during the reception, she had squealed and looked around until she saw me, “Mommy! Thank you! Yay!”
Joey-sober and I-drunk had come home at past three in the morning with my bellowing “Daddy!” Dad was woken and had rushed out of their bedroom, asking me what was wrong. I wanted to tell him how sad I was that someone I regarded as my baby was already married.
Just like how he felt after Yan-Yan’s wedding reception almost four years ago when I had been left alone with him, the two of us still drinking and finally smoking in non-smoking Innotech while the waiters from the catering company were almost done keeping everything. He was saying, “Ulat
All I said was that I needed help unzipping my dress. In my drunken haze, I thought that of course I couldn’t ask Joey to unzip me at home because it didn’t feel right.
Dad asked if I were drunk, “Burat ika?”
I nodded, “Yep.”
That was the first time I accepted being drunk to him. He shook his head, sighed, unzipped my dress and told me to follow after I was done changing, be quiet your Ma’s sleeping, and go to sleep on my bed in their bedroom.
He had laughingly told Joey once, “When Mia gets pregnant, she stays with us. You can just come and visit if you like.”
This was just after they witnessed Yan-Yan give birth to Pao-Pao. Ma had said, “Ay, Diyos ko, kung si Mia yan dapat Caesarian talaga!”
Pregnant, I would likely drive people crazy.
In labor, I would probably maim someone.
Giving birth all natural, I would definitely murder a nurse or the doctor or Joey.
Joey once joked, “If ever I get you pregnant and we’re not married yet, I would just offer the kid as a peace offering.” Then he mimed, with a scared smile, “Sir…
When I told Dad this, he said, laughing, “Yung apo kukunin ko. Siya sisipain ko.”
Dad had said to me one morning in Naga almost three years ago while he was fixing the crib, “So you should get married soon because I want to be able to take care of you when you’re pregnant and so that I could take care of your child, too. The way we take care of Yan-Yan and Biboy and now this coming baby.”
Joey once said years ago, “I would rather never get you pregnant than have you suffer through a miscarriage. I don’t think you would survive that, Beh. You will not come back.”
And once I said years ago, “I have this image in my head, that I’m just lying in bed crying while you go pick up our child from nursery school. I am afraid that he would see me so quiet and so far away. He will ask you ‘What’s wrong with Mommy?’ and you will say ‘Sshhh, don’t disturb her, Mommy’s just not feeling well.’ I don’t want my child to see me like that. Or when I’m angry. ”
San Nicolas had not witnessed these nor will it house our deaths or witness other things in the future.
Was it in San Nicolas that I first saw Michael Jackson’s “Thriller” music video?
I was changed--- afraid of zombies and yellow eyes--- thinking that I wanted to marry him someday. Or someone who had the name “Michael” because I also wanted to marry Jan Michael Vincent from the TV series “Airwolf”, too.
Was I four?
Maybe it was in our popular older cousins’ house in
Later on I had wanted to marry Michael J. Fox in the movie “Teen Wolf”, too.
I know Lola liked gathering the grandchildren to watch horror movies with her in San Nicolas. Dad had often teased her about that, then when female squeaks and shrills would erupt he would exclaim in exasperation, “Kayang magpara silung kitun! Pundo raw kamu!”
I know it was in San Nicolas that an uncle (Dad’s first cousin on his mother’s side) had me and cousins sit on a circle in the paved court to the left side of the house. He was going to teach us something, he said, while the elders were inside talking and playing mahjong. I was sitting close to the sliding doors that opened the house to it, barefoot and just wearing my underwear.
Dad was still in
She had taken off my dress that afternoon because I had no spare clothes to change into from the dirt of sweat. I was still very young and female children were allowed to run around half-naked and participate in boy activities.
That uncle stood in the middle of the circle teaching cousins and me how to slide away from someone or disable some boy, some man, someday. He taught me that afternoon how to inflict pain on some boy, some man, someday if an unwanted hand would be placed on my then flat chest. How to make someone bend and break by just placing my palms on his palm, pressing it close and tight to my chest, and simply bowing forward.
Which after, that uncle said, you could swing your locked elbow hard to his face. Or hit the chin with my knee. Or let go and punch the exposed throat. Then stamp my foot on his groin on and on and just keep on hitting with my hands or with anything I could get my hands on until he’s unmoving. Then I should run away.
I never ran away from fights because of that and other things I learned along the way.
That uncle, Dad and his male cousins had fondly said one time or another, is just downright kapay and loco-loco--- crazy and naughty, the way they all are, if you ask me.
Later on that uncle would be broken by life and would slide into a crystal wave, sometimes even with his godson-- a cousin who was his namesake and who was as young as my baby sister.
Recently, the elder had asked the younger to call Yan-Yan and asked where they could get more of those crystals so that they could slide some more and be taken away by the wave.
Yan-Yan had said to that cousin, “Di na ko nagigibo
She told Dad about that when he called her from
I was tempted to make my own calls too but there are just certain rules that I have yet to break.
It was on a 27th of December---
A long time ago--- eight or nine years before--- that she disappeared once more.
Dad had been stoic, “She was the one who left; she should be the one to return.” Don’t look for her.
Ma’s silence said to me, begging him, Look for her. Find her. You always find her.
I had looked and looked but I couldn’t find her.
Days later, Dad relented. It was said that soldiers had come for her to that place where she was hiding, sliding. It was said that they took her way from there screaming. They had taken her back to us, quiet, home in time for the New Year.
It was said that days later Dad had come to his younger brother’s house, asking for that cousin. His brother had offered his son to his Manoy, his Manoy who was their prince. Even if the prince would choose to strike his son or anyone, he and they could and would not do anything about it.
There were rules in their kingdom, rules of another time--- like being friends with cousins but not with siblings which I and my sisters and brother broke in our time--- and would rule into this time, sometimes.
It was said that Dad had said to that cousin, “You took your cousin there. Your cousin is female. You’re supposed to take care of her.”
The way he had taken care of his Manay and his younger sisters and especially one of them who ran way to get married when she was 14 or 15. He had looked for her to take her home, even when Lolo had declared, “Don’t look for her. She was the one who left; she should be the one to return.”
We’re all supposed to take care of family.
My family is Dad, Ma, Ate, Egg, Gnomie, TJ, Yan-Yan, Biboy, Pao-Pao,
They all have relatives.
I don’t.
And now I wonder---
I wonder…I wonder…if one night that night had risen in that house in San Nicolas, I had played hide-and-seek with that ghost, disobeying the kingdom’s rules---
And a kapre had taken me and hidden me in its ear.
Sometimes I wonder…I wonder… if I am still screaming.
I am still screaming.
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