There are impulses that come at unforeseen moments long after loving and losing someone. However, these impulses carry deceptive circuits that lead us to believe that memory can finally take a backseat and we can now console ourselves with the needed composure we have lost for some time. How dead wrong we are. In truth, these are much like desperate attempts to remove images in our head: we want to let loose islands and trees and mountain peaks, un-remembering dots on maps, and even ancestors’ names if one could just do so with absolute liberty. Yes, forgetting is caprice, because memories circuit their way from crevices and wind their synapses towards the heart, hitting even harder this time. Random flashes of remembrance appear, and the next thing that happens is farthest, of course, from disintegration of memory. What is heightened really is the recognition that each experience stubbornly connects to sadness and pain.
An impulse such as that found in the monotony of my days. It had been a very long while since I’d taken another opportunity to travel for work to a remote town somewhere in the central plains of Luzon. I checked the map to review how far it might take me to travel from Manila and thought that the journey wouldn’t be troublesome, four hours, which I had usually managed in the past. I had my share of 13-hour rides before due to my job as trainer and specialist for a project involving rice farmers. This had been something that defined me for almost two decades. At the head office, I’d usually be teased as married to my job, which I’d take no pleasure from. I thought it reasonable to stay timid when jokes such as those would be poked at me. In my mind, I knew I had made the most of the episodes in my life—meeting farmers, learning their way of life, the peculiarities of their language, how they raised their families and the helplessness at having sons and daughters leave the land to move to bigger cities, how they’d get by with meager income from the harvest, disasters and calamities that ravaged crops, how resilient they’d become and were becoming. And not just meeting farmers but people I shared the same passion with; had helped deliver services to poverty-stricken areas. Making the most meant something else, something from among the many episodes I’d acknowledged as the swiftest and most brutal: Meeting her—the girl whose episode never bolted free from my fragile memory.
Looking at the map, my finger traced the line farther up the country. Yes, at several times in that episode, I was lured towards that point in the map where she and I met frequently: the Cordilleras. She was assigned there to run a long-term research for underprivileged communities requiring social services. Whenever I had a one- or two-day break, I’d accompany her to as far as Chupac in Kadaclan, which we’d call our shangrila-on-the-edge, gorgeous with its mountains teeming with heirloom rice, the scent lush and livid; and when we made love, both our first time, there was a pleasing nausea crawling into the folds of our skin reminding us of this freedom to live in abandon.
But the years of having lost her also kept pulling me back to where I had started—this job which had defined me wholly and the fount of dreams that led me to persevere despite things I needed to conceal. It’s as if what I’d accomplish with the tasks ahead—and doing them fervently and with a great amount of success—would take her place. I was a fool to believe that she would not be in new encounters, in fresh episodes maneuvering skillfully to rip my world to scraps, like rice straws burnt and thrown.
So I kept up with it, my official travel this time was taking me to the Luzon plains generally characterized by dry season. No one at the office seemed to want to take the baseline work in the towns assigned. The weather had hit 41o, according to the latest trend. I didn’t think this should be a big deal as the tasks assigned to me could be accomplished within a brief three-day period. I was unperturbed by such things. And I assumed there’s always no running out of new things to discover, danger included.
On the day I arrived in the town, a small one named after a saint called San Felipe, known nonetheless for the acres of rice fields gleaming magnificently amid the perennial hot climate and extended the dry spell, I went out in search of a place to eat. It was a Sunday and outside the hostel where I lodged, I could feel the scorching heat above the cemented roads and the air hanging like a mirage of mirrors distorting the otherwise even harsher view of nature. I found a carinderia by the highway but noticed the windows were closed and the place quiet. I checked out other places nearby, but there was no other establishment. I took the chance to see if there was a door at the back and found one, and it was open. I peeked inside and saw a little girl, about nine or 10 years old, sitting comfortably by a wooden table, writing in her notebook, oblivious of my presence. She had curly hair, wearing a red t-shirt and slippers too big for her. She was intently focused on what it was that she was writing. But I was starving and couldn’t afford to turn back to find other places to eat, hence I just had to intrude. “Naimbag a malem…Tao po.” The child took a glance at me; for a while there, she squinted her eyes as if trying to magnify my presence with invisible lens. She asked, “Asinokayo?” pausing for a second, “… Sino po sila?” I then inquired if I could buy food even when the place was not yet open, requested if whoever was in-charge could cook any plain dish and some rice, if this would be possible, my voice in a half-pleading tone. I added I wasn’t acquainted with the area and just arrived from Manila. The child stared and listened, and I wasn’t certain if what I did was a terrible intrusion and started thinking of apologizing and saying goodbye.
Just as I was about to leave, I heard her say, “Sandali po.” She proceeded to enter a room and I heard some murmuring. When she returned, she was with apparently her mother, to whom I heard her say, “Nanang, we still have cold rice. We can reheat it. And there are vegetables which you can cook. You can prepare soup. Mabalin met. Let’s do it.” The mother came across as more amused than annoyed by her child’s insistence; she regarded me cordially and I was hoping to hear her say “wen,” absolving me from the disruption I caused on her rest day,a revoltingly hot Sunday mid-afternoon. Her child came needling again, “Nanang, cook right away. I can reheat the rice.”
I was relieved when the mother motioned me to sit down as she went to the kitchen and I heard the gas turned on, utensils and plates making puny sounds through the dividing wall. The child returned and looked at me inquisitively again. She had chubby cheeks and chinky eyes that formed slits on her face when she attempted a smile. I sat and waited and would have chosen not to say anything to avoid any further questions that her mother on the other side of the wall might be prodded to ask if she heard me conversing with her daughter. But then I knew I had to say something to this nice kid doing samaritan work. She had gone back to tinkering with her pen and her notebook as she might have supposed I wasn’t one to make small talk. I broke the silence and said, “Salamat.” She lifted her head and her eyes smiled like that of a baby when teased with a toy or anything meant to capture a smile. It was a smile that said beyond you’re welcome, perhaps her discreet way to convey that she was only happy to have a stranger pass by and cut the boredom of her Sunday. It was also a smile that invited friendship.
So I introduced myself, “Hi, my name is Fina. What’s yours?” She seemed glad I warmed up to her.
She told me her name’s Grace and asked what I was doing around the neighborhood. I mentioned to her the office I was working for, and it wasn’t much of a surprise that she knew it since she had seen its name plastered on a building across the highway.
As we were continuing the conversation, her mother arrived with a bowl of soup with vegetables and fish and rice warm enough for a good late lunch. “Here’s your food…. You’re not from here, are you?” I answered I was in town for three days, had appointments with communities and local governments. I was doing work as trainer. That’s how my job position was called.
I started with the simple dish the mother arranged before me as she listened attentively but didn’t raise more questions. She then waited for me to finish eating while also addressing her daughter, reminding her of the errands that had to do before the day ended. The child kept nodding while her eyes focused on her notebook.
I paid for the meal and informed them about the possibility of my returning to their stall within the days that I’d be around. Would that be okay? The mother said yes, and I was thankful that I’d be guaranteed with a place to eat if and when I got back to the hostel hungry from the long trips I would make the next few days.
Traveling around the towns to accomplish tasks such as meeting local officials and farmers in the communities was a gratifying part of the job. It was quick and never burdensome as I had mastered this job and its demands. As soon as the day’s tasks were completed, I took the bus back to the center of the town. Just when all the relief and satisfaction had pored over me—there was a feeble smile on my face as I gazed at myself on the bus’s glass window, a rare occasion in which I had that presumption I had been over it, the pain that had haunted me for so long—I saw by the road rice grains fly upwards forming a millisecond of rainbow in the sky before they cascaded then caught faultlessly by the implements of a mechanical harvester. We’ve done well, I heard myself say, like a whisper, to someone absent yet would have to know of such accomplishment. We’ve done quite well, haven’t we? Then the synapses, sly and conniving, refusing to snap as they burrowed their way to the heart, brought out images I had desperately chosen to forget: she and I sitting at a farmers’ table, savoring chicken broth with lemongrass and chilis, tapas smoked with the scent of pinewood, glutinous black rice wrapped in banana leaves, and our fingers and palms, like those of innocent children, diving into the colored rice, as if vehemently insisting to have a peek of God’s heaven.
“So when do you intend to introduce me to your aunts? You said the rice—what was that, arroz valenciana—could match the delicious heirloom rice we got here?” I heard again the sound of her voice—gentle, teasing. “Maybe we could do that long-standing test of forgetting one’s name when we taste food that’s heavenly good. Take me there and let’s have the competition going.” I saw her eyes, bold and dreamy at the same time, half-opened eyelids just woken up from exhausted sleep, eliciting a yes from me.
I had indeed promised her that and had vouched she’d forget her ancestors’ names once she would have a taste of the food from my island. In the Visayas was where my father and aunts had an enormous playground in the middle of countless coconut trees, bamboo thickets, rice and corn fields. I had shared with her stories of my family. One of these was about my father telling me that he’d wished to grow up quickly so he could climb those tall coconut trees, learn to prepare his own bahalina, and earn a place among the virile men in the barrio. I described to her my aunts’ kitchen which during the few Christmases I got to spend there was a grand chaos of fruits and vegetables, peas and garlic and onions and tomatoes, seasoning and eggs and poultry, chunks of firewood, coco milk, and of course the bowls of rice called pilit, cooked then stirred again and again with the other ingredients to make that delightful dish called arroz paella valenciana. But I also narrated to her stories marked by anguish, tales which couldn’t be contained within one generation; there’s one which cut the deepest: my parents’ separation. My father leaving Manila, choosing to go back to his roots while my mother preferring instead to take chances with the so-called New Society that was being parlayed as a turning point for the country’s economic progress which seemed easier to reach in the country’s capital during that perplexing period of the ’70s. My father later fell ill, and my aunts always kept that sacred narrative engraved in the memory of those who were still alive: he died from a deep sadness caused by my mother’s absence.
From these stories, I had wished for her to picture those broad leaves of coconuts bending to play with shadows, a young man spirited and strong, on top of a world that wasn’t in the least fearsome. But she would have likewise pictured this same man frail in his bed, his eyes losing the sheen that only my mother’s love could rouse. There were questions that hounded me, I confessed to her: What if my mother had chosen to be with him? What would it have taken for her to change her mind?
On the plane, fulfilling my promise that, yes, at last, we’d visit Iloilo, with this girl, whom I intended to introduce to the clan, this girl seated beside me, thrilled, unruffled by any impending terror that could possibly take place. I did not disclose how terrified I was and had actually considered retreating. But I was aware that this was my leap of faith, its significance buoyed by the hundred miles this travel entailed, thousands of feet needed to hoist us up in the air so we could see the splendor of the islands floating below us. We would triumph.
Then it had to happen. We arrived, celebrated one night partaking the paella, and the next day, in front of my aunts at the early morning breakfast, I admitted to them what she and I were to each other. Lovers. In the intermediate period between past and present, there lay the gap—a cowardly silence followed by a hum of derision and despise. “Ti ano na lang ang ikuon ni tatay mo kun buhi pa siya?” I sat stiff and had no ready weapon to guard myself from the enemy. What indeed would my father say? Lintian ka! Might he have thrown a cuss at me? He who had never shown a dent of cruelty to me? But the clan would be too dominant and unyielding, fortified by a pious tradition, outside of it would be considered taboo. I had been aware of the warning in my head, but I clambered on. I gradually realized that all I might have possessed was poor judgment.
It was a moment of paralysis. While the people at the breakfast table pressed on with their tirades, the thick accents echoed anger and scorn, I recalled her eyes, indignant as they darted at me, prompting me to say something, anything in defense of her, in defense of us. But I had capitulated to the enemy now. I had lost my balance though my feet were fixed solid on the wooden floor. Their words were whizzing through the air, the language hard, guttural, machine-like as they rattled off curses. All of a sudden, the words were deferred, as memory, like a spy camouflaged in a corner, led me back to a story I heard when I was very young, lifted from the timbre of my uncles’ and cousins’ inebriated voices, their throats roaring like bulls in an open plaza as they once huddled to share with me a commonly told family tale.
His name was Eping. Epifanio. They couldn’t even call him Lolo Eping. He was the youngest among the great-grandparents’ brood. He was “different,” the tale began; he fled from the family at age 16, and never returned. But hastily they added, “Mayad ra lang nga naghalin siya hay hura ra man daw ‘to ti pulos.” Useless. Hopeless. He was too limp and soft to do his bit of labor during harvest. It was better for him to have stowed away to god-knows-where, they thought. “Lain gid ‘to siya,” sneering at the supposed oddity of this relative. During those days, “h’na h’naa bala,” urging me to imagine, Epingwould frolic the baylehan with his shoulder-length hair, wearing one of his sisters’ trajes. My uncles roared as they reached this part of the tale, a heap of laughter falling on their intoxicated faces, as they finished guzzling their bottles of cerveza.
The past beseeching what then was my present—memory playing a diabolical game, as it lent credence to a world where I hadn’t enough control and volition to deal the cards well. This world haunting and menacing though deceitfully small as this house’s dining area.
But the worst part, the most mortifying was hearing the name of my father brought up repeatedly by my aunts who now appeared as though enunciating prayers for the dead. Si Julio, si Julio.My father whose honor was the bet on the table that fateful day. My father who did not deserve to die disgraced, humiliated.
So this was it, I chastised myself, the end of the road for us. I and she were blinded, believing things were as easy as taking each morsel of the appealing rice dish set before us. No competition on the rice was forthcoming. No more silly games. I had to accept my defeat by the same token as I was compelled to respect my father’s honor beyond his grave.
In the tiny hostel in San Felipe, I rested after the long bus ride, which was less a typical ride back to a temporary shelter but more a grueling journey to a past I thought I could easily let go of. Defeat was mocking me in the face, a grim reminder that never vanished but in fact merely waited in corners.
By my last day in the town, the third and final afternoon I had the chance to have lunch at Grace’s stall, I took the opportunity to stay longer than I should.Grace’s mother was busy managing the store, while I sat waiting for the coffee I added to my order. I was not my best self but since they had been very nice and welcoming, it was but proper to leave a good impression before leaving.
Suddenly Grace inquired, “Ate Fina, do you know how to play sungka?” I thought I could give in to spending time playing and maybe having a bit of conversation before my evening departure for Manila. When I said yes, Grace ran to her mother’s side and asked permission then took out from somewhere a small basket of tiny shells and the piece of wood with its round-shaped caverns.
“Ate, what exactly do you do?” Grace began the conversation as soon as we started dropping the shells in the “holes” as rapidly as should be expected of its players.
I answered, “Well, I ask farmers what else they might need to improve their crops. Then I report these to our office, and we find ways to help them meet those needs.” That must be the least complex way to explain this to a child, I thought to myself.
“I see. We have a rice field, too… Nanang! How big is our rice field?”
The mother who’s an earshot away replied, “Dua nga ektaria!”
“Okay, so you have 2 hectares…Do you help in the field?”
“No, I don’t. I want to, but there are people who do the work…Nanang! Right? You pay Manong Bert and Manong Aries and Manong Cocoy and Manong Andres, right? How much do you pay them?”
“Aaaaah stop pestering me with all those questions! I am busy listing down things here!”
“You see,” Grace had an impish grin as she turned to me, “she doesn’t want to talk about those things because you’re here. Sorry. It’s not right to talk about money with other people…”
“It’s okay,” I replied. “Maybe we should talk about other things then.”
Grace was about to respond but we heard a sound from a distance. It was the distinct sound coming from a police car if not an ambulance’s siren. A police car stopped in front of a house adjacent to the carinderia. I saw two policemen alight from the vehicle then immediately enter the house. It was a 2-storey dilapidated rickety structure, clearly worn out from the stress of weather and time. The front yard had what could have been a small garden; decaying leaves with rust dotting the area, casualties of neglect by their keepers, defenseless from the interminable heat. Plant stalks drooped like emaciated, undernourished arms of infants, stunted and scorned, thirsting for rain. Cheap paper lamps dangled by the doorway, the red hue dull and muted without the filament. A path leading to the entrance was a jigsaw of cracks from the parched ground. In a corner, adjoining the line of yellowing bushes separating the store from the house, I began to notice that there was a mound of trash kept beneath it, the gaping mouth of a trash bin idly hiding under the shadows to no avail. Without having to deviate Grace’s interest towards the junk and rubbish, I adjusted my neck to have a better view of what undeniably was an avalanche of garbage: meal leftovers, beer cans hole-punched and crumpled, lipstick-stained butts of cigarettes, tattered lingerie and frayed underwear, used condoms like tongues jutting out of the brim gasping for air. The stench from rancid food and the smell of sex merging, as though in a festive celebration of sorts. Maggots caroused round the rim of the battered container, submissive to the grand design of the mandatory food cycle of animals.
A glare of sunlight pierced through the window, and I was nudged from my aimless thoughts. The sun should be at its most ferocious by now. The forecast for the day was 42.2 degrees heat index, soaring temperature that could maim or kill, if one chose to be reckless or unguarded. The peril of death or the threat of paralysis: neither of these was a favorable choice. There was hardly anyone in the street, the locals prudent enough to keep themselves safe, as the highway lay stolid, an expanse of glass under the unforgiving sun.
It could already be 2 o’clock in the afternoon. With the sun reaching its zenith, the dust hovered freely over the highway, like airborne rice pollen, blown languidly by the hot and dry wind. Humidity was clinging to my skin, the discomfort comparable to the long haul of silence inside me, as I held on and waited, my eyes fixed on the house’s open door.
Soon after, a shriek. A woman dashed out of the house, mouthing curses against a man being held by the police. The man was around 60 years old in my estimate, partially bald, the remaining white hair on his head disheveled, while his beard, also white and grown with age, had marks of what could be a mix of saliva and dirt. He appeared lost with his bloodshot eyes evidently confused with what was going on: first the sudden realization that he was being arrested, and second that he had nothing on while he was being dragged to the police car since the blanket that was meant to protect him dropped from his skinny frame while he was resisting arrest. It was close to becoming a comical sight if not for the fact that a crime must have been going on amid the supposed quiet of the afternoon.
The woman, on the other hand, her hair waist-long and similarly in disarray, came nearer to where we were as she advanced to the roadside. She was moving about until she settled on a random spot, the flow of her rage unabated. She was herself almost naked, striving to position her own blanket firmly round her body. She kept at it, spewing curses as if aiming them at whoever was watching. It was a ghastly scene, until the obliging wind unveiled her face. It had the delectable lushness of youth, mouth full and pink, cheeks with nary a hint of make-up which more completely conveyed a resemblance to virginal innocence. I caught sight of her lovely hands gripping the folds of the sheet ineptly wrapping her lithe body, her bare feet and the chiseled concave of her ankles, the color of dusk on her sun-drenched skin, her neck like the curve of a clay jar smoothened by the rudiments of time. She could be eighteen, beauty on the cusp of discovery but ripened rather quickly—like grain unready for the scythe. She stood there, all the parts of her assembled like a map of many islands. She was at the center of the horde, people emerging from neighboring houses and converging to take pleasure in the spectacle. Somehow, the heat was no longer tyrannical, the highway enigmatic like the rows of terraces that stretched boundlessly across rain-soaked hills, and the graveyard-looking garden a verdant Eden at midday. For here she was, beauty unsettling and within reach.
But her unremitting rage quelled everything else that’s immaculate about her. Her invectives surged above the crowd, while her discontented patron tossed more expletives to her face. Their exchange had a jarring sound to it, each quiver revolting to the ear.
“Ti kunam, dika isuplong? Maag! Lukdit mo!!”
[Ah so you thought I was not going to tell on you? Idiot! You dickhead!]
“Awan serbim! Bangsit uki!”
[You’re useless! Sour-smelling pussy!]
Both of them were now behaving like hostile animals running amok, vigorously engrossed in a tussle of right and wrong, wins and losses, victim and culprit, vanquished and ruler, demon and saint.
The whole ordeal extended far more than what the authorities could handle.
During the last few minutes, the man was subdued, then whisked away by the police, while the young woman, apparently dissatisfied with the limited time given her to publicly humiliate the man, went on with her outbursts until she entered the house and exited from our sight.
Grace, her mother and I uneasily turned to one another, but with the unease was also a gratified expression that said, at last we got rid of that. I saw the mother move her head to and fro and noticed her snicker a bit. Grace, on the other hand, went back to dig out the shells, all set to resume the game. She did not say anything as she dropped a shell in each of those small round caverns, briskly putting the shells one by one from her clenched fist as it hung a few inches above the wooden game board. It’s as if the weight of the world was dropping onto each of these holes, free falling, only to be carried and amassed again, in a tight fist, then dropped again, ad infinitum.
I cleared my clouded head from the jumbled sound of the shells dripping from Grace’s fist. I opted to say nothing about the scene we had just witnessed. She’d be too young to understand, I cautioned myself. But then Grace was ahead of me in facts, opinion and judgment.
“Ate, we live near the whorehouse, you know. And that girl, her name is Jocelyn. Wasn’t she pretty? She’s angry because she doesn’t want to…” she hesitated, but continued, “do it with old man. This heat. Afternoon is the worst time.” It’s not so much what she said as how she said it that made an imprint on me: she poked several times the index finger of her right hand on the palm of her left hand. The heat of the afternoon sun was, just as she implied, such a menace.
Grace proceeded with the shells, resolved to win the game more than anything else, I presumed. I stayed motionless on my seat, not knowing what to say.
“Well, ate, let’s go back to what we were chatting about earlier. What again is your work?”
Today, I still do think about us, our episode. Our own story like an infant birthed from its mother no longer wails and cries, has grown and been put out there, exposed to the changing climate and seasons, monsoons and dry spell. When I think about us, I tend to also think of the child I met in that town where once for a brief period I took on a project assignment. I was there to do my duty, perform my job which I loved and protected. Meeting this child—whose curiosity and judgment overshadowed my own judgment and comprehension—had led me to ask, what was my flaw? Where had I gone wrong? The filthy image on the palm of a child rectified all my false assumptions. I had been wrong so many times, assuming innocence when the world had long tilted to its dark side. My ignorance was unmistakably exhibited on that very day I was expected to make the most crucial decision of my life. What an imbecile. A paralytic. Every bit of my sanity and strength gobbled up by my aunts’ tongues which spewed flames of wrath depicting the inferno that they said were waiting for us if we persisted with an unforgiveable sin.
My flaw was how easily I had approached life, professing that episodes could roll and unroll with clinical perfection, and there’d be ready tools or instruments to bind up scratches or wounds that got in the way. Unlike grain samples neatly kept in receptacles in a lab, safe and cold for a long period, the world wasn’t always intended to give us general truths nor laws. The universe wasn’t always precise, as my training had taught me.
Now that the final cog of the wheel is in place and my life rolls along, I persist and think of her. She who defies the universal. I shall continue to think of her until the last ligament in my body is mangled and torn. I rest in my frail bed, the lilt of her voice in my dreams. She is never distant; she is always with me. This girl, she who adored and was once mystified by the food in my island, is with me, beaming like the stars in Kadaclan; we once gaped at them as if we too were eager to ignite meteorites. She is beside me, and she is listening to my stories.
I tell her the best one from among the lot: about the 9- or 10-year-old child whom I met in a place called San Felipe, a remote town yet worth traveling to if only for the acres of beautiful rice fields that seemed endless and buoyant against the unseen wind. I tell her that this child was kind and playful and curious, unthreatened by the cunning hand of depravity and strife. I tell her about the mother who cooked for me the plainest of dishes but helped satisfy my hunger for a fleeting moment. I tell her about the heat that corrupts, never waned on that side of the world, unlike in Kadaclan where the crops were always festooned with rain. That rain, when it poured so hard and the dawn peeked, it woke us up and we felt like children reborn. I tell her, remind her of that first time, how her luminous body overpowered the rain, however mightily and relentlessly it pattered on the roof. I tell her, say the words without having to incite an inch of hurt, about the grief of having lost her. When she answers, “It didn’t matter. I didn’t love you as much,” I’ll survey her beautiful face, tell her, tenderly, that I didn’t take much offence at what she said she had to. I am careful not to exact pain as I speak. Finally, I tell her about the sadness of losing the luster of a dream I once held, something I had thought I was going to do for the rest of my life. With her. This is when she loosens her embrace and stares at me, the expression on her face somber and bewildered, for the words are unclear to her. But then she’ll beg me to tell her more, all these episodes, all the moments she’s missed. So I tell her again, playing the part of someone consummating the desires of an uninitiated child. I share with her images of the trees my father climbed, pivoting toward the sky as leaves bent to gawk at shadows below. The dry spell of the central plains and the threadlike arrows of rain that birthed seeds in Cordillera. Dewdrops on a rice sheath hungry for the blade. Tongues smoldering like flame desecrating new lovers. Women by the roadside with fire in their eyes and the savagery that poverty has brought them. Spit, dirt, and the heat that corrupts and murders. A starving traveler searching for a friend. A girl on a bus, her ear close to her lover’s lips. A whisper. Lines of love and longing said over and over but never, not even once, her name.
