My name is Juan Marlin Madero and everyone thought I killed my father.
When the policemen drove me over to the Oslob Police Station yesterday morning, they clamored among their squad for the return of the death penalty for people like me.
Only a few days ago, I was in Cebu when Eloy, a cousin from my hometown, found my lodgings in Barangay Mabolo. It was a dark quiet evening, but down the alleys leading out to Pope John Paul Avenue, the wind whistled from a brewing September storm.
Clarita and I had just finished placing buckets on the floor where the roof had leaks, happy not to trouble ourselves with the flood anymore since we moved upstairs, when three slow knocks came on the door.
Eloy stood in the doorway. Last time I saw him was in January, at a Sinulog Novena in Basilica del Sto. Niño. For a moment his eyes rested on Clarita’s breasts, then slid down her belly, which she was caressing, before they were raised on mine.
“Marlin, it’s about your father. He’s asking . . . no, he’s begging . . .”
Eloy stopped because I was already shaking my head. Clarita, perhaps sensing I was about to shut the door in his face, said:
“You two should talk inside. Eloy, please come—”
I shut the door before she could pull him in.
Eloy’s knuckles banged on the wood. I thought he’d kicked the door down, but he bellowed:
“Marlin, your father doesn’t have much longer . . . he begs you to see him before he . . .”
“He can die and go to hell for all I care!”
Rain pounded on the roof, and not long, trickled into the buckets. Eloy swore under his breath, and his footsteps slammed out of the hallway. Down creaked the wooden stairs.
Clarita reached for my hands. Her soft white fingers felt like bandages around my clenched, trembling fists.
“It’s been nearly ten years, ’Ling,” I heard her say. “He’s still your father.”
Then she asked me, as always, what would make my mother and sister happy . . . and what if we had a boy? A boy whose face, eyes, and voice would soon remind me if not of myself but of my father’s?
I was about to tell her to shut up, I was sick of hearing that, when she turned me toward her and leaned her slim body hard against mine, and pulled my head to her warm breathing bosom. Before I knew it, my arms ran like snakes under her dress and wound around the small of her back. Her weight pushed me down . . .
Rain still dripped into the buckets as we lay sprawled in sweat, naked on the cold tiled floor. She climbed back on top of me again, and her hair fell in my gasping mouth. She bit the lobe of my ear, “’Ling, make me pregnant again,” when another knock came on the door. We didn’t open it.
It was the landlady asking us about the fight a while ago. There had been complaints from the other tenants, she said through the closed door.
“Just a misunderstanding with my cousin, ’Nay Belen. We’re sorry.”
She apologized for disturbing us and left. Clarita giggled like a girl nearly caught in the act, and she put a finger between her teeth as her eyes mirrored mine.
I stood up. She hung from my chest, her arms and legs wrapped around my neck and waist. I laid her down on the wooden bunk bed where we made love three more times as the rain pounded heavily on our lives.
The sun was nearly up when we fell asleep, but the rain kept coming as if it wouldn’t end. I kept thinking about my father.
Days later, I awoke not to the sound of rain and waves but to the noise of cops barging in and handcuffing me. I was back in our old house, my father’s house, in Oslob, as I had promised Clarita.
A cop aimed a gun at me as the others sat me up on the long bamboo couch where I slept. They discussed how drunk I must have been that I didn’t even try to escape. Hoy, Satanas! one of them called me and asked how I could kill my sick, dying father.
I jumped to my feet to see my father’s bed, but the cops pulled me back down and threatened to shoot me if I dared to move. But I had glimpsed long enough at the bed. When I came home past midnight after I tried drinking myself to death my father was still there on his bed. Now it was empty.
A tall officer, made taller by his erect back, told me that some fishermen out in the sea at daybreak found his lifeless body afloat not far from the shore. They knew whose body it was and quickly alerted my relatives who then reported to the police and told them about me, who arrived last night. A fellow officer with gray hair growled at him to shut his fucking mouth.
“But I didn’t kill my father . . .”
The same officer told me to shut my trap. But I couldn’t think of anything else to say. I knew I was innocent, but my head throbbed so bad I was no longer sure of what I remembered. I wanted nothing more than to sleep everything off as if it were all a dream. “I didn’t kill my father,” I said again, more to myself, perhaps to break the spell of this nightmare.
They brought me up on my bare feet and dragged me out the door. There was a crowd gathered outside, and it struck me that I would soon face a firing squad by the sea. The faces of the spectators were blurred by my drunkenness, and the steady downpour of rain made things more unreal.
With one eye, I made out Mang Julio, Papa’s younger brother, who was held back by his sons and wife. His cries were muffled by the rain. When he began raising his sundang, an officer growled at him: “You put that blade down, Sir, or we’d bring you to the station,” which backfired since Mang Julio got down on his knees begging the cops to lock us two alone in a single cell.
Amid the grove of coconut trees across our house, there was someone standing alone. I shouted, “Eloy, I didn’t kill my father!”
The words tasted bitter in my mouth, my knees folded from under me, and I kneeled and vomited on the black sand. The officers told me to get up. When I didn’t, they repeated the words and punctuated them with kicks at my sides. I stayed on my knees and vomited once more.
When I felt close to collapse, or perhaps death, an officer said, “Jesus Christ, that’s enough. Are you trying to kill him? Who’d carry him if he passes out?”
“Yes, we are trying to kill this animal. Drown him in the sea just like what he did to his father!”
They put me in the holding cell of the police station. I passed the time in and out of sleep on my bunk bed. No one came in to see me other than the ridiculously tall cop, who must be six feet tall. He was the one who told me about the fishermen finding my father’s body and stopped the others from beating me another inch closer to death.
When he gave me a hot cup of instant noodles, I recognized him. Only his voice was familiar; the years had turned him into a tall, baldheaded man with a hard jaw. I muttered his name, slowly as if to make sure, Noel.
He nodded, and nothing more.
We used to get into a brawl playing basketball when we were kids but always remained close friends. Years passed, we all had grown not only older and further apart but became different people. We felt we hardly knew each other.
“I didn’t kill my father, Noel,” I told him when I finished gulping down the hot soup.
“Me neither,” Noel said somberly, shaking his head. “Whatever happened to you, ’Ling?” He handed me a pack of menthol Astros, the cheap brand we smoked together as teens, and a box of matches and walked away.
I fished out a cigarette from the pack, and lit it. I had the impression, always had, that my life was like smoke sifting through these iron bars and disappearing in the rain.
My father’s name also begins with Juan—he’s Juan Manuel Madero. I dreamed of becoming just like him. He was a proud Oslobanon fisherman. He had named me Juan Marlin and my little sister Juaña Marina to honor the sea that gave us life.
Although we were poor and lived in a small nipa-roofed bamboo house, we were long in health and happiness. Papa Juan was a huge man, as tough as nails, and strong. His long arms were thick and hung on his sides like coils of rope. But he was just as kind and gentle as Mama Juaña. He had never raised his voice in anger, nor laid a hand on any of us.
That was how I knew him. That was how everyone knew him. Until he changed.
On the days leading to that horrible night, my parents kept arguing and had to send me and Maria outside.
Our little house by the sea was settled amid a grove of tall coconut and palm trees, quite far from our neighbors. Marina and I chased each other along the black shore and played with the stray dogs digging up their treasured bones in the sand.
We sat on Papa’s white banca, where all our names were painted in blue. That banca made us proud, we dreamed of it becoming a ship someday. We paddled in the sea of air and imagined we were sailing across to the beautiful Sumilon Island.
Later, we heard Mama calling for us, and we ran back home, the dogs alongside us. Papa wasn’t there each time we returned.
Our worries grew intolerable. So, one night, when Mama sent us outside again, we sneaked our way back. I sent Marina back to the shore. She was too young to be eavesdropping. I kissed her forehead and told her things were all right.
The door, only hooked by rope to a nail, swung a little back and forth from the sea breeze, and the sound of crashing waves drowned the words.
Then I heard Mama crying in pain. I pushed the door open, and I saw Papa kicking Mama down to the floor. There was blood in Mama’s mouth, and I feared Mama would die if he didn’t stop. I jumped at Papa and hammered my fists on his face. But he just shoved me back, then grabbed the back of my neck, and threw me out the door.
As though possessed by a demon, I rushed to the dirty kitchen at the back of our house to find the sundang we used to break coconut shells and wood.
I was about to lunge at Papa when Mama pulled me back and took the blade away from my hands and threw it on the floor.
“Marlin, how could you think of killing your father?!” Her eyes were wide with disbelief. She slapped me. My face stung, I tasted blood inside my mouth, but I couldn’t understand the pain. She was crying. Marina was also crying, asking me the same, how could I think of killing Papa . . . My little sister had seen everything.
Before dawn broke, Papa left us without saying goodbye. I stayed in bed until noon as if figuring on how to wake from this nightmare. Mama didn’t tell us why Papa left, but days after, I got wind of rumors running in our sitio: my father left us for a young woman who was from Siquijor, that the woman must have used gayuma, a love potion, on Papa, because Papa, as everybody knew, was a person with a pure heart who loved his family.
“Mama, Mama, is it true?” I asked Mama one afternoon when she was sewing our old clothes, but she didn’t answer. She sighed and set aside the needle and thread on the table. She pulled me to her bosom, as she always did, and told me in her meek voice:
“Remember, he’s still your Papa, Marlin. I know he’ll return to us someday. We are his family.”
I wanted to hate Mama, too, for being too weak. I wanted her and Marina to hate Papa as much as I did. But women, I learned, were too forgiving. Their hearts were more enduring and stronger than mine.
Our lives went on. Surprisingly, we were happy just to be together. Even without a father, we were still a family. Because Marina did not quite understand what was happening, she remained as jolly as ever and was now learned to stew fish, fry eggs, and raise chickens.
I realized that all we needed was Mama. I hated myself for always siding with Papa when I was a boy, since I wanted to be like Papa. But Mama was unbelievably stronger, she carried our family on her small back, taking on all the jobs she could and even went to sea to throw nets and catch fish herself and went to the market and house to house downtown to sell her catch.
I had always thought it was Papa keeping us together. I was wrong. It was Mama, after all. I didn’t see her cry even once after Papa left us. Whenever Marina would ask her about Papa, she’d kiss her and tell her to be a good girl and pray so Papa would return very soon.
A year later, we were on a ferry full of passengers bound for Camiguin, Mama’s hometown. But we had packed too many clothes to be just visiting. I knew we would be moving out to live there with Mama’s relatives. I realized Mama didn’t want to live in Oslob anymore when Papa didn’t return to us after a year of waiting.
Maybe it was around midnight. I remember the waves were quite strong, and the metal body of the ship shrieked from time to time. We were sleeping when a large explosion from the belly of the ship woke us up.
Then it began to get hot, and clouds of smoke thickened so quickly we couldn’t see anything. Everybody was coughing, screaming, crying. All the lights had gone out. The engine was dead. The ship slowed to a halt. All I heard was that every child, including me and Marina, was crying. Mama held Marina and me, hugged us tight, in the darkness, crying, “Don’t worry. God will protect us.”
The top deck, where we were in, seemed to be bursting at the seams with passengers. Everyone had gone to the top deck because the lower part of the ship was burning when another explosion sent everyone mad with panic.
We laid low to keep ourselves together, with Mama hugging Marina and me. But we were caught in a stampede because the fire was already reaching the top deck, and I could feel it starting to singe my hair and everything smelled of fire. As if led by some young fatherly instinct, I thought it was time to be the man of the family. I forced myself up to find a way out, but all that did was cause me to be dragged away from Mama and Marina, who was screaming out my name the farther I got until I couldn’t hear them anymore.
I saw fire reaching up from the lower floors, it was so red it looked as if it had leaked out from hell underneath. I heard people were telling everyone to jump into the raging waters. I kept calling out, “Mama, Marina!”
But a shadow grabbed me by the shoulders, and together we jumped into the sea. Salt stung my eyes, and the cold pierced through my skin. Deep down, when I plunged into the sea, I had a strong feeling I wouldn’t see Marina and Mama or Papa anymore.
But I saw Papa again, after ten years since I left Oslob. It was Clarita’s wish. Clarita was just like my mother. She saw all that was good in life, just the opposite of me. I met her at a fiesta disco in Sitio Birgen sa Regla and fell for her with all my body and soul. Oddly enough, it was the same way my Papa found Mama. For years, Clarita asked me to go back home and settle things with my father before it was too late. She was right. I had to tie the tangled ends of my life.
And now Papa’s dead, and I am sleeping in jail, accused of murdering him, I began to piece the minutes and hours together, like recalling fragments of a dream:
It was around eight o’clock last night when I got to my father’s house in Oslob. The bus ride from Cebu took five hours, giving me just enough time to prepare myself. Not one of my relatives spoke to me, because they all hated me for abandoning my father, and they never liked Mama either and always sided with their blood.
My father’s house smelled sweetly of coconut oil and atis leaves. Eloy was inside, sitting on the bedside chair. He was massaging my father’s swollen feet and legs. He got up when he saw me. He shook my hand but said nothing. Then he left and shut the door behind him. I remained standing in the doorway.
“My son,” Papa said, weakly, and out of breath. He was almost as still as a corpse.
At once I felt sheer pity. Under the white fluorescent light, Papa had aged a lifetime or two. I couldn’t recognize him, but it was deeper than that . . . I no longer knew him. He resembled a bag of bones, with bones poking through his skin, a man about to turn to dust. Whatever disease he had had torn him apart. Deep down I knew he wasn’t the same person ten years ago who made my family suffer. Now he was so frail it was impossible for him to hurt anyone anymore.
I took the bedside chair, and he tried to sit up and reached for my hand. I gently pushed him down, not wanting to strain him. It was the first time I held my father. It felt strange, I couldn’t move, I could only look at him dying.
I bowed my head as my tears fell, and I began massaging my father’s cold legs, rubbing my hands against them and warming them as if to give them life . . . my life. I found myself pleading God for a miracle . . . Heal my father, take his pain away, smoothen out the lines on his wilted face, fill his body with flesh again, and give him fifty more years so I could never have a chance to grieve over him.
“Please forgive me, my son . . .” my father said, gazing at the ceiling, and he cried as if those were his last words. I wanted to pull him close to my chest, the way Mama did whenever I cried. But my hate beat back to life at seeing his tears. I began screaming.
No, don’t cry! You don’t even have the right to cry! It’s all your fault, Pa. You left us, you cheated us of a happy life . . . Where is your other woman now? Your other son and daughter? Yes, I know about them. Where are they now, the ones you’d replaced us with? Were they worth Mama and Marina and me? Mama and Marina died because of you. My life is hell because of you. For years, I felt like drowning every day! Want me to forgive you? Go drown yourself in the sea so you’d know what Mama and Marina and I felt!
I went outside and slammed the door. I bought a strong rum at a sari-sari store. I went to the grove where Marina and I played when we were young. There, I nearly drank myself to death and asked the tireless sea as if in their depths lie the answers . . . What should I do? Was it how I wished it would end between me and my father? What would I tell Clarita? What would I tell my son when he asks about his grandfather?
When it started raining hard and the waves reached my feet, I realized I should go back home before I did something grim. I walked and stumbled. I was drunk and soaked in rain and salt, and I cast my ramblings to the sea, waiting for answers . . .
But I know the truth. I know what happened, only I was too afraid to admit it to anyone, even to myself . . . I had killed Papa. I had sentenced him to death.
The door in our home was left open when I returned. Papa wasn’t inside. I went out to look for him. In the black sand, I found someone crawling. It was Papa . . . he was crawling toward the shore. He got on his knees when he reached the sea. From behind a grove of coconut trees, I stood as if I was dreaming what was happening. I watched him swim with his last strength, going against the waves. I saw his head bob up and down as he was going farther and farther out into the dark open sea. When I couldn’t see him anymore, I went back to our home and collapsed into sleep . . .
I remember something like this happened when I was a boy, before Marina was born. Papa used to scare me. He’d swim so far into the sea and dive and never surface for a long time. Sometimes I’d cry and swim after him. But Mama would hold my arms, laughing, telling me not to worry about Papa, he was so strong he could swim from island to island, wherever he wanted to.
So I kept my eyes on the wide flat sea, eyes that always watered at the sight of my father swimming back to the shore.
