It is Saturday morning. I am down on all fours on the bathroom floor. My hair is kept up by a plastic clamp; my face, bare. Keeping everything pristine is my compulsion. Today is no exception. Using a rag soaked in Zonrox, I scrub the white tiles of my bathroom floor with excessive vigor, while I catch the faint voice of Carly Simon in the other room: “Nobody does it better. Makes me feel sad for the rest…” I take a deep breath, inhaling the cathartic scent of sterility.
I cast a quick glance at the living room behind the open door of the bathroom where I am still crouched. Except for a rattan sofa upholstered in white linen in the center of the 80-square meter room, the décor is sparse, almost brutalist. A green mother and child Orlina lies on top of a side table. An iteration of BenCab’s Sabel hangs on the stark white wall.
The harsh late morning light streams directly from the curtain-less glass window behind the sofa; below, the dark wooden floor gleams from the newly-applied wax.
A co-worker once asked me how I, a copy editor of a fashion magazine, can afford a condominium unit in Makati. Or how a barrio lass can have such an exquisite taste for objets d’arts, displayed with the studied restraint of the old-rich. I smile at the memory of her impertinence, and continue my scrubbing.
The telephone rings. Abruptly I stand and rush into the adjacent room, my slightly damp feet imprinting half-arches on the floor. I wipe the sweat on my brows and forehead, using the back of my hand before lifting the telephone from its cradle.
I expect to hear the deep, raspy voice of The Congressman, telling me that his wife is attending a gala dinner, and that he will be spending the whole evening here. Instead, I hear the squeaky voice of a woman at the end of the line.
“H-hello? May I speak to Clara please?” I recognize the distinct Ilocano twang immediately.
“Inang? This is Clara. Is everything alright?”
It had been months since we last talked. And it had been years since I had last seen her. A pastor’s daughter, she was a deaconess in her twenties. She had delicate hands with thin, long fingers, and played the organ during worship services. Mother had a petite frame, with gamine features and sucked-in cheeks like those of emaciated models on the runway. She taught younger members of the congregation in Sunday school. It was she who taught me one Sunday about the virtue of obedience. “For God commanded, ‘Honor your father and your mother,’ and, ‘Whoever reviles father and mother must surely die.”
“Not quite. I’ve got some bad news.” The tone of her voice makes my pulse quicken. Her usual calm voice is amiss. A hint of premonition hits me.
“I do not know how to tell you this, Clara. I don’t know where to begin.” The slight quiver confirms my early suspicions.
“Tell me, Inang. What is it?”
“Your father. Your Papang’s gone, balasang.” I hear her repressed sob at the other end.
“How did it happen? When?”
“Last night. He died in his sleep. Suffered from cardiac arrest, the doctor said. God has been so merciful, sparing him from pain in the end. But I still can’t believe it. I just can’t.”
“I do not know what to say.”
“Me neither. It all came as a shock even if he had been ill all these years.”
“Yes, Inang.”
“His b-body’s in the m-morgue right now. When can you come home?”
“I don’t know, Inang.”
“I need you so badly, Clara. You’re the only one I have in this world now. Come home as soon as you can. Please.”
“I’ll see what I can do.”
I resolve to resume my task as if nothing happened. Like a drugged invalid, I walk back to the bathroom. Midway, reality sinks in. He’s dead, dead, dead. Dead. My mind chants like an incantation.
Resting my entire weight on my feet, squatting barefooted, I scrub hard. Only this time, I scrub harder with surprising energy I never knew I possess. The suffocating smell of muriatic acid overwhelms me.
An hour or two pass, and I am still scrubbing hard. The spot I have been scrubbing for an hour stands out like a marble among dull, polymorphic pebbles. I breathe faster but less deeply. My head throbs; a wave of nausea fills me. I begin shaking from head to foot like someone delirious with fever, chilling at the slightest drop in temperature.
I hear Papang calling me in his sonorous voice. My mouth trembles.
“Have you finished cleaning yet?” His commanding voice fills the room as I, huddle up in the narrow space of our bathroom, scrubs even harder.
As a retired military officer, he exacts the same discipline on me, his only child, as if I, too, belong in the army. Every day I have to wake up long before the rooster crows in the backyard. The day’s activities are parts of a clock that tick with military precision: feeding pigs in their muddy enclave, washing pots by the river, fetching water in an enormous pail from an artesian well at the back of our house, keeping the bathroom immaculate.
It is my obedience and desire for a “long, full life” that Inang once promised me in Sunday school, should I honor and obey my parents, that cast all doubts and rebellion. Since then, I stopped questioning.
“N-n-no, not yet, Papang.”
“Susmaryosep! What’s taking you so long?” I hear his mucus-filled snort resound with impatience.
His dirty, callused feet on his tattered rubber slippers greet me. I see his spindly legs, the long keloid on his left knee, his paunch above his low-hanging shorts. I quickly look down to avoid meeting his eyes. Four years ago, his arms and legs were bulky. A sedentary life of occasional fishing and plowing reduced his physique to leanness.
“I just started a few minutes ago, Papang.”
My white sleeveless kamiseta and shorts are now drenched with sweat. It is nearly time for lunch.
“Hurry up. I want to take a bath,” he says in a warning voice before leaving the bathroom.
As soon as he leaves, I work with twice the speed I had before he came. It is one hour later when I, sore and numb, scurry out of the room at the back of the house behind the kitchen.
The faint voices of my father and mother filter through the cracks and holes of the unpainted cement wall. I press one side of my face in the porous wall and listen, making myself silent and inconspicuous.
“Punyeta, Severina! I told you so many times I don’t want to see you working there,” he hollers.
“Watch your mouth, Eduardo.” I hear Mother speak in a soft yet defiant manner.
“I don’t care. I already made a decision. I do not want you working and telling ridiculous stories about someone crazy people made up.”
“What’s the problem? I get to work there only during Sundays. I work like a carabao in the house six days of the week.” From where I am, I hear my mother’s implacable voice.
“I already made up my mind. There’s nothing to talk about.”
He stomps out of the room then bangs the wooden door. His heavy footsteps thud against the floor.
I can hear mother stifling her sob. In my fifteen years of existence, I think it is at this moment I feel closest to her. I have the urge to get out of my hiding place, to throw my arms around her but I cannot. I do not.
Memories have such kind eyes. I cannot recall the exact moment when Papang changed, but I have a suspicion when and why he did.
It is after a raging typhoon that swept the entire region, our crops never making it to the next harvest.
Father, who drinks only occasionally as a form of social drinking with his friends, begins to consume alcohol heavily almost every day to the point of stupor. His temper flares at the slightest provocation. A messy spot. Too much salt. Too little sugar. My mother’s hands develop fine tremors, that I am forced to learn to sew and to play the organ in church.
I think I have already lived through the worst.
One morning, mother is preparing lunch when I enter the kitchen. She stoops to add more sticks and coal to the growing fire. The slightly-burnt smell of fried tilapia wafts through the room.
“Mmm…smells good, Inang” I greet her with a peck on her cheek.
“Clara, you’re perspiring. Go change your clothes before we eat. You might catch cold if you do not.” My eyes meet hers and I feel a sudden surge of love for her right then.
I leave the kitchen, pass by the cramped living room, and turn right to climb the wooden staircase. The planks below creak as I go up in haste. I pass through the first door and proceed to my room without much thought. I change into a light cotton sun dress.
“Clara. Clara, come here.” A voice beckons from the other room. Father came home very late last night and went directly to their room. Mother told me not to disturb him even when it was already time for breakfast this morning.
I sigh and brace myself for another chore. When I enter, I see him supine on the bed, the lower part of his body covered with a thin, worn-out blanket. Two empty bottles of Tanduay rum lie on the floor, right beside the shirt and shorts he wore the night before. There is a pungent smell in the room, like dried urine mixed with spilt alcohol and sweat. The only window in the room is half open. The air seems thick with dust motes and I can barely breathe. “Come here, Clara.” He repeats. I slowly approach him with dread.
When we both come down for lunch, there is a different light in our eyes.
“What took you so long? I have been calling you both for lunch.”
Something died within me today. The clarity in my eyes disappears that lines become blurred, figures are now obscure, and colors no longer matter.
“Let us eat. I’m starved,” Father says eagerly. I turn to look at him almost furtively, dropping my lids as soon as I do.
“Clara, why don’t you lead the prayer?” Mother prods me. I stare at her and close my eyes.
“Let us pray. God is great and God is good. And we thank Him for this food. By His grace must all be fed. Give us, Lord, our daily bread. Amen,” I monotonously spew out the memorized words of this mealtime prayer I was taught as a child, like a monk.
Is God really great? Is God really good? I taste the bitterness of bile at the back of my throat. I can smell the putrid stench of my whole body, worse than stale fish sauce in clay jars, filled with writhing worms. I cannot remember what we just had for lunch.
After our meal, Father instructs me to clean our bathroom.
With my shaky legs, I enter the bathroom and begin to feel disoriented and vertiginous. I look around and I cannot believe my eyes. The tiles I am to clean are unstained. I rub my eyes hard. My jaw drops slightly. My pupils widen.
I look everywhere. Up and down. Left and right. This bathroom is not ours. This I am certain of. Perhaps it belongs to an affluent haciendero or a local politician. One thing is clear. Although our bathroom has always been clean, it is nothing as fancy as this. As my eyes feast on the well-polished brass handles, the shiny ivory sink, light aquamarine wall tiles, fluffy white towels folded on top of each other on a wall cabinet, my thoughts linger on an absent light from a blank wall. As the permeating scent of chlorine engulfs me, I slowly begin to understand.
Papang’s summoning voice. The creaking of the planks. The heat of that particular day. Papang’s hand on my mouth as the bed rocks. The stench of alcohol. The blood on the floor.
I imagine myself swallowing the half-empty bottle of muriatic acid on the floor. My frothy, bubbling mouth. The excruciating pain. The forceful retching. My terrifying scream no one will hear. The reprieve of death.
I realize there are stains that no scrubbing will ever remove.
My legs are wobbly as I stand. I stare at my reflection in the small mirror above the sink, and watch the mirror mist with my breath. With slow and hesitant steps, I walk back to the living room and reach for the telephone to dial Inang’s number.
The mirror clears as the scent of disinfectant dissipates into the thick, dense air.
