THE GENERAL AND THE IV

The General called me by my childhood name, his normal voice that was always a shout and which had become softer and gentler through the years was this time a shout. And trained since childhood to jump and start running towards him when he called us that way even as we his children would say “POOOOOOOO!”, that’s what I did exactly even at 33.

I quickly put “Funny People” on pause--- my third movie after finishing How Do you Know and Water for Elephants--- my slippers pattering down the stairs from the second floor of the penthouse towards the kitchen, coughing through the last painful stages from this caught summer flu, and ready for action. Or ready for war, as we siblings joke.

The General had taken apart the Daewoo Hot & Cold Water Dispenser we’ve had for seven or so years (the way I had seen him take apart car engines and broken appliances throughout life) which as of yesterday his four daughters were convinced needed replacing. Because the thing just leaked out all the water from the 5-gallon-round, his daughters had shrugged and would have willingly paid 7 000 pesos for a new dispenser, too.

“Okay Pops, what do you want me to do?”

“I need you to insert this tube into that,” the General said, pointing to a narrow protruding aluminum pipe, “That’s where the leak is coming from. You have smaller hands.”

Of course the General would find out what the problem was and how to fix it. I nodded and set my smaller hands--- which my guy best friend always says look like a man’s hands or panda paws--- to inserting the tube. The tube’s circumference was smaller than the pipe’s and I did not ask the General how I could make that work because he had taught us not to ask other people until we’ve tried all the possible ways to figure something out on our own.

It wasn’t working out and the brittle tube tore. The General took over and muttered about “brittle” and “old”, pulling out the other intact end and trying to fit it into the pipe. I looked at the pipe from another angle and said, “Give me that, I’ll put that in from here.”

And so I slip the tube into the pipe by feeling my way and pushing it down to fit until in place. The General nodded and in my head I was laughing Just like when you roll down a condom. The wild child in me wanted to tell the General that, but I wouldn’t dare. I wouldn’t want to give the General a shock or another opportunity to ask me about my sex life the way he had done so last year which had shocked me into giving him a snorting reply then laughter after.

I couldn’t wait to tell my guy best friend about the condom-insight though, something like So I should tell women that the skill of putting on condoms on guys is also useful when it comes to fixing appliances. That would make him laugh and hell that would make my girl-friends really laugh.

There, done, and it was back to putting the screws and bolts back. I saw that the General’s hands were not as steady with smaller things the way they were when I was younger. As I picked up a screwdriver, I was remembering how he used to pass the screwdriver and other tools to me when I was maybe two or three years old while he was fixing the engine of the Beetle. Way back when we used to live in San Roque, it was something to distract me from my wailing like a turtle and clinging to my mother because I didn’t want Mommy to leave for the bank in Naga where she worked which was an hour away. Or as the General said, he did that too when my older sisters would leave me so that they could do their own things.

The General would tell me then, “Here, help me fix the car.” The distraction always worked. I would really be only stabbing or intensely turning the screwdriver into whatever part of the engine or the tire rim the General said and I didn’t feel like a sucker. I would mock myself whenever that story is brought up in conversations over drinks with the General and whoever among my boys who’d come over to join us, “Boy was I just a sucker.” And we would all laugh. But I still find banks evil to this age, because the big, bad, bank had taken my Mommy away from me. And yeah, as one of my girl-friends who’s supposed to be a doctor would reiterate whenever I require her presence, “I don’t mess with your abandonment issues, man.”

“Here,” the General laughed this time as he handed the bolts to me, “Isn’t this what you used to do when you were a kid.”

I laughed as I took the bolts from him, wry, “I was thinking of that actually. I don’t know if this is a downgrade or upgrade--- from a Beetle to a water dispenser.” And I remembered then as I screwed the dispenser’s panels in place how I was taken by the General as his sidekick around construction sites until I was in maybe Grade 2 or 3. The General made sure from then on I knew how to mix cement and make hollow blocks and construct a house and fix electrical problems and know farming stuff and all the other things that fathers would teach their sons. Including all the stuff that daughters are supposed to know like how to properly market, cook, do and fold the laundry, iron, housekeeping stuff.

“Dude,” I would tell my guy best friend, “I wasn’t just a little girl. I was a little boy too haha.” Which led me to tell the General seven or eight years ago when he was asking me to help him cement the laundry area in our old apartment in Masikap Street in UP Village, “In case you haven’t noticed, I am a girl, Dad. GIRL! Young WOMAN NOW! I don’t wanna do guy stuff anymore!” The General had laughed and shooed me away then.

I remembered too how the General taught me in high school how to do a balance sheet, which was easier than what my accounting teacher was drilling into me. My siblings and I would rarely go to the General for help in assignments though because that was just not done. In fact, that was “STUPID ASKING FOR AN EVIL EYE OR A WHOOPING”.

I was just given tips in driving by the General though because he had his driver teach me when I turned 18. The General didn’t have the time because the Army’s money was keeping him busy. The driver just told him after that he didn’t need to teach me because I already knew how to drive but I was a speed-freak and if I didn’t learn to slow down then I would likely kill someone. The General did show me how to take care of cars and how to drive through 400+ kilometers of the South Road of the Naga-Manila and vice-versa route in just 6-7 hours. I have yet to beat his 5 hours.

The General was the one who taught me to get back into driving though six months after I crashed my ex-boyfriend’s car into an 18-wheeler-truck when I was 21. (I was drunk and my ex and I were fighting. The truck driver thought I was a guy given my GI Jane hairdo.) I couldn’t bring myself to drive anymore and the General never barked and just gently gave me instructions and told me to take things slowly as I guided the family van through our subdivision’s back roads. And until now he still teaches me how to parallel-park whenever we’re in the same car because I still suck at that.

And handling guns I learned on my own though the General was all for my owning one. I declined, said that my temper would kill someone given that I was younger and angrier then. And all he had to say about guns in relation to the events of my life in the past two years is “I want your ex to return the gun I gave him. Because that was given to him so that he had something to protect you.” I nodded but like everything that was left behind I consigned that to everything else that’s radioactive from a nuclear fallout.

When the General would ask me now and then about the gun I want to own, I would say, “A C-60 rifle or maybe a .22 rifle.” Or maybe an AK-47 because it’s just durable. I still want a Glock 9 though. And a couple of months ago he just asked me to show him how I was holding a knife and so I showed him. “No, no, not like that,” he had said.

“Oh, you mean like this?” I had laughed as I flipped the knife, crouched, the blade parallel to my inner wrist, ready to swing the knife like a fan in Singkil to slash through the death points, “Pops, this is how I automatically hold a knife BUT I’m gonna chop vegetables, hello.” I had to stop with the knife-fighting classes when I broke my middle finger last year. The General had looked at my taped finger when he came over to check up on recuperating-me and heckled, “Well I thought you already lost your finger!”

The man-stuff-trainings, my guy best friend said, are all locked in place and shit I am really capable of killing someone when I just lose my cool. Because I almost maimed him months ago when I lost my cool and a cracking punch to the nose was thankfully re-directed. “Hell yeah,” I said in disgust, “I’ve been fucking trained well…” to kill hurtful men by hurtful men.

The General’s Wife would always say that I think like the General and move like the General and drink like the General and smoke like the General (and that my temper is like the General’s AND my army and guerilla WWII grandfathers). “Genetics,” I would laughingly reply. Sometimes the General would shake his head and wonder out loud, “What would have happened if your sisters and you were guys?”

Just like he asked again when the baby sister of the family finally graduated at 30 years old and with three kids last month. I laughed, “Jesus Christ, did you see how your youngest daughter went all Xena The Warrior Princess on the Ateneo guards a while ago? And how she moved those huge blackboards? You and Mom would have always ended up bailing one or all of us out! We would have been more of hellions! All blackest of sheep! So be grateful that we turned out daughters instead.”

Nowadays I think that I’ve become kinder like the senior citizen General AND the God-fearing General’s Wife and that I’d like to be with a guy who’s maybe like the General. Maybe someone like the General would make me feel womanly and soft enough given all the history without breaking my spirit and individuality. Someone who’d teach my future daughter someday things like what the General taught me. And no shit it was the General who taught me how to use the sanitary napkin too when I first got my period.

So the General and I were done fixing the dispenser. Before sitting down for coffee and cigarettes, the General told me to text my sisters to tell them that we owed him 7000 pesos. Or that maybe kid them that we bought a new dispenser and the General was the one who paid for it.

I laughed, “Your eldest daughter would ask you where you got the money.”

The General laughed, “Then she’d borrow money.”

I laughed again, “Fat chance that your baby girl would pay you back!”

In fact, we still owed him the money for the dispenser because he was the one who paid for it. Then my nose noticed a burning smell and I thought it was my laptop overheating. The General stood up and checked the dispenser and we saw that there was a little fire going. The General quickly unplugged it while I scrambled around the penthouse looking for the fire extinguisher with, “Oh shit! Oh shit! Where the hell’s the fire extinguisher! I saw it somewhere here!” (C’mon, give me a break, it was the first time I saw a burning appliance inside my own house.)

The General laughed and calmly said, “It’s here. No need for it”. Then he shook his head, muttered It was dry, nodded while still thoughtful, “Well, it’s time to buy a new one. Can we get the round gallons changed to those with a faucet in the meantime? Just use containers and put them in the fridge.”

The General would always say that he does not regret raising us the way he did because it had taught his children to work hard and not to be afraid of labor. And it’s true because even if I were all decked out in heels and skirt I know I can change a flat tire or push cars or lift appliances or yeah mix cement, unafraid of grease or dirt or sweat. Or yeah kick some asshole’s ass even when looking like a pink marshmallow. And yes he had taught us to survive.

“Yeah, Pops,” I said. And I thought that it’s just like the General to try to fix something first before it is thrown away or replaced even if it fails. And to think straight to alternatives even as the “why” or “how” of something broken or something burned is constantly thought of until discovered and understood. Just as I do.