10 The Journal of Contemporary Likhaan Philippine Literature

The University of the Philippines Press Diliman, Quezon City LIKHAAN 10 The Journal of Contemporary Philippine Literature ©2016 by UP Institute of Creative Writing All rights reserved. No copies can be made in part or in whole without prior written permission from the author and the publisher.

ISSN: 1908-8795

ISSUE EDITOR J. Neil C. Garcia

ASSOCIATE EDITOR Charlson Ong

MANAGING EDITOR Gabriela Lee

COPY EDITORS Arvin Abejo Mangohig Grace Bengco

COVER DESIGN R. Jordan S. Santos

COVER ILLUSTRATION Bheng Densing

LAYOUT ARTIST Zenaida N. Ebalan Table of Contents

vii Revaluing Value: An Introduction J. Neil C. Garcia

SHORT STORY 3 Zoetrope Richard Calayeg Cornelio 25 Creek Israfel Fagela 34 White Ana Margarita R. Nuñez 48 Wash and Wear Jenette Ethel N. Vizcocho

POETRY 65 Manifest and Other Poems Rodrigo Dela Peña Jr. 71 Arborescence Paul Maravillas Jerusalem 77 Elemental Jose Luis Pablo

ESSAY 85 How a Brain Surgeon Learned How to Ride a Bike Ronnie E. Baticulon 98 Shoes from My Father Jan Kevin Rivera 106 Homoeroticism as the Poetry of the In-Between: The Self-Translations of Nicolas Pichay Thomas David Chaves

iii MAIKLING KUWENTO 133 Babala sa Balang-Araw Tilde Acuña 144 Kabanalan sa Panahon ng Digmâ Rogelio Braga 167 Ahas Perry C. Mangilaya 183 Ang Mga Nawawalang Mukha Chuckberry J. Pascual

TULA 209 Pitong Tula sa Filipino Buboy Aguay 213 Kinalas mo na pala ang galeon Dennis Andrew S. Aguinaldo 218 Di lang Laláng Mark Angeles 226 Estranghero at Iba Pang Mga Tula Allan Popa

SANAYSAY 233 Pugon na De-Gulong Christopher S. Rosales 249 Salvacion Jose Dennis C. Teodosio

FORUM 265 Lines of Flight: The Practice and Limits of Realism in Philippine Fiction 303 Literary Calendar Literary Bibliography 341 English 349 Filipino 353 Notes on the Contributors 359 About the Cover Artists 361 Notes on the Forum Panelists 363 About the Editors iv Likhaan 10 Dedicated to the memory of Franz Arcellana.

Revaluing Value: An Introduction

t an important public lecture in the University of the Philippines ADiliman campus last August, one of the policy recommendations made by the speaker was the continued and intensified support not only of STEM (Science, Technology, Engineering, and Mathematics) but also of the Social Sciences. The speaker did not recognize the Humanities, which occurred nowhere in his painstakingly assembled survey, that correlated the generally disappointing figures of UP Diliman’s science PhD programs with their respective research outputs. The College of Social Sciences and Philosophy was accounted for, as was the Philippine Studies program, with which he conflated it. This part of his survey was misleading, because Philippine Studies in our university, from its inception, has always drawn as much from the Humanities as from the Social Sciences, being co-administered by the CSSP with two other colleges—both of which profess avowedly humanistic orientations. Nonetheless, the oversight is a familiar one: it simply attests to the secondary and even epiphenomenal position occupied by the disciplines of the arts and humanities in a national education system that has come to see progress and development as being the privileged province and exclusive responsibility of the scientific—as opposed to the creative—persuasions. And yet progress and development, even when they are understood in strictly economic terms, cannot be equated with the promotion and growth of the sciences alone. At the first system-wide UP Knowledge Festival, held in Tagaytay last April, the participants from UP’s different constituent universities heard from two plenary speakers inventories of hard data that showed just how supporting the arts—and the creative industries that they generate—makes sound economic sense, especially in the knowledge regimes of this new century. The clarion call was sounded: there really is no reason why the University of the Philippines should not promote the growth and welfare of its humanities programs, as well as their resident artists and scholars, because

vii the creative industries—whose components are already in evidence across its campuses—may well hold the key to improving the lives of the vast majority of our people, who continue to be uneducated and poor. It’s easily apparent that the University of the Philippines hosts the country’s highest density of resident writers, visual and digital artists, musicians, performers, content providers, animators, cultural critics, curators, filmmakers, theorists, directors, designers, and architects, all of whose intellectual properties can be harnessed and cultivated to contribute even more significantly to our country’s economy, as the works of creatives already unmistakably do, in many other parts of the world. These artistic products and processes collectively constitute our national culture, which migratory technologies and populations offer the opportunity of becoming globally disseminated and consumed, especially through the agency of diasporic Filipinos located in every other corner of the planet. Among other things, the mission of artists is to promote forms of embodied, “imaginal,” and creative literacy, that serve to complement as well as provide a solid foundation for the other more abstract and propositional forms of literacy (for example, the numerate and the experimental). As such, they bridge the historical, cognitive, and ontological gaps between our enduring orality on one hand and our uneven and precarious literacy on the other, bringing into the durable media of the contemporary arts the stories, insights, and rituals of our country’s copious and immemorial cultures, whose deepest intuition recognizes the dualisms of our world, even as in the same breath it seeks to transcend them, by yearning into the radiance of the unity that underlies all forms. On the other hand, we perhaps also need to remember the truth that value—a crucial buzzword in that selfsame Knowledge Festival—cannot be reduced to the merely monetary or the monetizable. Because humans are symbol-making creatures capable of inwardness and sublime vision, for our species value can also be and is, in many important ways, intangible. Despite the convincing purchase of the “creative industries” argument, we need to ask ourselves, precisely in regard to this issue: Should the arts or the humanities be justified only because they can be said to constitute their own “economy”? What is happiness? Why do we crave “connectedness” and love? What is gratitude? Why must we strive for empathy? What constitutes fulfillment? Where do rapture and awe come from? What makes a fully human or even just a “livable” life? Given the socioeconomic pressures that higher education

viii Likhaan 10 in our country is increasingly needing to bear, we need to believe that there remains institutional room, especially in this esteemed university, for the short story, poem, or play that cannot be remotely instrumentalized, and yet insists on raising these and other similar questions— whose most likely value, in turn, is that they can be raised at all … I am reminded of a high school classmate and friend—an accomplished scientist who has been living overseas for a couple of decades now. He visited me in my tiny and unkempt office in the ill-lit (and ill-fated) Faculty Center a couple of years ago, and after I toured him around the spanking new buildings of the science and engineering complexes, he calmly told me (obviously meaning to commiserate): “It is you, in the humanities, who make life meaningful; while it is we—the scientists—who make life possible.” Even now, the second part of his sentence still gives me pause. Isn’t everything named—that dawns in our consciousness—meaning? Who gave scientists their idea of possibility, when before anything can be engineered or assembled it first has to be imagined? The “we” in his sentence: where might he have gotten it? How are intuitions of collective life acquired? And what of life itself? Surely it’s not just about protoplasm, the convergence of physical and biochemical processes, or the replication of genetic material. Finally, “making” is something artists do all the time. We who study and produce literature sometimes call it poiesis: artistic creativity is (as Aristotle once put it) the bringing into being of something new in the world. One of the simplest and truest “lessons” in that wonderful Knowledge Festival wasn’t entirely unforeseen; indeed, the abundant folklore and mythology of our peoples, and the paradoxical procedure of most artists, have always attested to it: there is a rudimentary “oneness” in Nature that defies both analytical decomposition and disciplinal boundaries. The contact zones between the arts and the sciences are multiple and fascinating and in constant flux, and they bid us to see that both “realms” of experience are important—trafficking mutually as they do in analogical modes of thinking and perceiving. Thus, they should not be made to compete with one another. We dignify our world—and ourselves—by recognizing wholeness. We parse and hierarchize knowledge to our own peril. In the words of National Artist Edith Lopez Tiempo, “Truth is the world believed: / only what the eye sees, / and the heart approves.” While UP has certainly made great and admirable strides in equalizing incentives and opportunities among its constituents, a paradigm shift is

Revaluing Value: An Introduction ix necessary, still and all, in view of recent global trends toward unbridled materialist scientism, and given the way priorities in the education system have been planned and operationalized, across the decades, in our country. For instance, it would be nice if arts high schools could be set up as a complement to the science high schools. And then, within the different campuses of the University of the Philippines—our country’s one and only national university—efforts might be undertaken to renovate and build physical infrastructure that would function as creativity hubs, with the requisite studios, workshops, ateliers, “thinking spaces,” and performance venues, in which resident and visiting creatives might get to work, in a variety of solitary and collaborative arrangements. In accounting for the University’s “suprastructure” of intellectual workers, the input of cultural practitioners and creatives might likewise be included, their productions catalogued and celebrated alongside the scholarly articles and books that have thus far enjoyed the exclusive attention of the various survey-takers, with their cumbersome diagrams and number-laden charts. The much-repeated lament over the University’s dismal research profile can perhaps be palliated when the many excellent theatrical productions, concerts, recitals, films, books of short stories, literary journals, novels, poems, memoirs, biographies, essays, plays, painting and sculpture exhibits, design projects, videos, installations, “happenings” and performances, curatorial practices, and countless other instances of creative productivity are incorporated into a more holistic picture of our University’s overall literacy agenda. There may be no local or global precedents for this kind of metric, but seeing as how ranking systems are pretty much a matter of product branding, it’s about time we consider originating our own brand of academic analytics—one that takes cognizance of the specificities of our situation as a residually oral (and unevenly literate) nation, whose painful transitions it is its artists’ ardent duty to document, direct, and inspire. These same creativity hubs could be the site where Complexity Studies might finally take root in our beloved University, bringing the various academic knowledges to converse with one another. Here the University’s many researchers and creatives may get to envision—and subsequently, fashion or construct—solutions to our country’s manifold problems, whose difficult nature requires the ethical and inspiriting consolations (and pleasures) of the imaginative disciplines, as well as the practicality, rigor, and ingenuity of the hard sciences.

x Likhaan 10 This is the tenth outing of the Likhaan Journal, the most prestigious literary journal in our country, and UP’s hard-won and incontrovertible contribution to the promotion and growth of creative—as well as, to a certain extent, critical—writing in our country. This journal is externally peer-reviewed, and offers a monetary reward that is comparable to that given by the most important national literary contests. This time around, and as an additional endorsement of its quality, there are four pieces in this current issue that were subsequently accorded top prizes in the recently concluded Palanca Awards. Sourcing the funds for this journal has been an annual source of anxiety for the UP Institute of Creative Writing precisely because, given the obtaining scientistic ethos in our country’s higher educational system in general, and the UP Diliman campus in particular, successfully arguing for the long-term and intangible value of this endeavor— along with the activities of the other arts—is proving to be no mean feat. Thanks to the lifeline thrown by the UP System—in particular, the Office of the Vice-President for Academic Affairs—the UPICW has been able to secure the financial resources for this as well as all its other regular projects (and then some), for at least the next couple of years. I decided to dispense with the usual interview piece in this issue of the Likhaan Journal, and instead to feature a panel discussion of a selection of nationally acclaimed authors whose recent fictional works were published by the UP Press. The topic of this discussion is the practice of realism in our literature—its affordances as well as its limitations. It’s a propitious but also deliberate choice, given precisely the institutional reduction of all social value to the materially instrumental, which has resulted in an unspoken but entirely virulent animus against the artistic and creative fields in the university, most clearly apparent in the aboveboard assault on the principles of the liberal arts and the dilution, diminishment, if not downright obliteration of the ideals of General Education. Needless to say, real-world issues—reality itself—are, as with the scientists and engineers, our writers’ and artists’ foremost concern, only that unlike their materialist counterparts they understand them contextually and holistically on one hand, and self-reflexively (as inalienably perspectival and a function of verbal and cognitive schemas), on the other. A cursory survey of the topics covered by the writers in the prose section of this issue should provide a quick glimpse into the mimetic concerns of our young writers, across our two official national languages. It’s immensely

Revaluing Value: An Introduction xi interesting to note, for example, that the four stories in Filipino are non- realist or speculative in their approach, unlike the four stories in English, which are resolutely mimetic in style (and worldview). The Filipino stories talk about a variety of marvelous and dissonant “realities”: an indigent and provincial couple facing a marital crisis after the wife gives birth to a (thankfully, stillborn) snake fetus; a harassed and practically enslaved bakla receptionist working for a local government unit beholding and understandably identifying with a faceless mermaid during their outing on a destitute and nondescript island; a futuristic Metro Manila (and Philippines) caught in the middle of a proverbial and protracted imperialist war between East and West, its bedraggled residents reduced to engaging in outlandish rituals in order to make sense of their situation, that daily include the sight (and the use) of certain remaindered bodies drifting on the Pasig River on their way to the watery graveyard of Manila Bay; and a long- winded, second-person stream-of-consciousness narration that is really an angry and rambling harangue against the deluded and practically ineffectual lives of contemporary and armchair academics who engage in cultural and identity politics fully aware of the fact that, in the real world, the real struggle is and has always been class-based, as can be seen in the plight of our country’s indigenous peoples whose ancestral domains are being despoiled and mined by avaricious state-supported corporations, and whose oral culture may yet survive (in the tokenist forms of transcribed and institutionally co-opted folklore), but whose actual societies and lives may not. The anglophone pieces are, by contrast, about more mundane experiences, narrated almost matter-of-factly, or at least, referentially (that is to say, realistically): a mother who must confront the impending loss of her strange and preternaturally intelligent millennial child to a particularly vicious and “old-world” illness; a period “misalliance” piece about a poor native woman in the southern Philippines who lusts after an upper-class mestizo man, and out of sheer determination and culinary cleverness (bordering on the grossly grotesque) manages to seduce him, become his mistress, bear his mostly unfortunate children, and finally approximate and deserve him, “chromatically” clothed in the pallor of death; an oscillating split-screen narrative about two kinds of present-day Filipino women, whose difference in class backgrounds barely has any effect on their similarly fated expat-involved love lives; and a ghastly childhood secret that involves being a silent accomplice to the gruesome murder of a toddler by a slightly older and palpably “different” playmate.

xii Likhaan 10 Going by this sampling of our contemporary fiction, it’s clear that our literature remains entirely committed to evoking and making sense of our present-day problems and realities. These stories all powerfully address collectively real and pressing social concerns, a persistent preoccupation that may therefore be said to unify our fictional traditions, despite linguistic differences as well as divergent narrative strategies: the moral love that binds families and communities against adversity; the continuing conflict between reason and superstition; the vexed and vexing question of gender inequality; the pressures of national and international geopolitics; our society’s enduring class and cultural inequities; and finally, the confluence between erotic desires and neo/colonial fantasies, especially as concerns our culture’s unspoken but persistent social doctrine that holds up the ideal of upward racial mobility (in Hispanic times, this doctrine was known as para mejorar la raza). This interest in social questions also resonates across the essays in this issue, whose topics are personal but also reflective and “processual” (or even information-giving): the travails of a haggard and perpetually harassed train commuter; the unconditional and selfless love of parents for their children (even or especially when they are queer); and the personal and professional rewards of patience and unstinting dedication in the learning of a skill (of the bike-riding or the neurosurgical sort). Implicit or explicit in all these dramatized prose articulations of these issues is an impassioned commentary or critique—an arguably “didactic” quality that links them up to a long and continuous tradition in our literatures, that perhaps constitutes an important part of their “Filipinoness.” On the other hand, the lone critical essay is an interesting elucidation of the inner workings of the lyrical self-translations of a Filipino gay poet. As a linguistic process self-translation invokes and yet brings into crisis the “equivalency” paradigm that still dominates translation practice in our world today—a strange thing given that this very same world is becoming increasingly multilingual and culturally hybrid, and therefore incontrovertibly self-translational. As the analysis of these specific poems shows, when it comes to self-translation, the otherwise easy and self-evident distinction between “source” and “target” gets fundamentally and productively confounded and blurred—especially where the texts in question bear some form of dissidence or other—precisely because the translator, being herself the author, has complete access to the original text’s (which is to say, her own) innermost intentions. While this makes for an inherently interesting (and potentially aporetic) hermeneutic situation, what this activity does invariably reveal is the

Revaluing Value: An Introduction xiii asymmetry of semantic transpositions—meaning, the cultural domination, mostly unprofessed, within the self-translator herself, of one medium (or language) over another. Because it’s a heresy to paraphrase poetry (whose form and content are effectively and finally indistinguishable), I will not even attempt to try to summarize the pieces in this issue’s poetry section. At this point I can only flag or “indicate” them by way of their general projects: the ekphrastic, the historical, the visionary, and the political, with the meditative and the confessional registers running more or less consistently through most of the pieces. Like the short stories, the featured poems in this issue are resolutely mimetic in their commitments, even as their representational burdens, being lyric-specific, do not—indeed, need not—always result in the kinds of inner visualization that descriptive prose passages commonly induce. In poetry, after all, tone is itself capable of generating its own “reality effects,” its own manner of referentiality—in regard not to the objective world necessarily, but rather to the question of personality: a kind of “psychic mimesis,” ordinarily evoked by idiolectical turns of phrase in the poem itself, that betoken the presence of a unique or even (if we are lucky) a singular voice. As in most of the fiction and essay pieces, the poems in this batch are culturally invested on one hand, and on the other (lyrically) bear varying measures of social commentary and critique—against (and this is just one way of reading what is really figural and therefore hypersemantic expression) social indifference, intolerance, vulgarity, as well as the shame and impunity of forgetting. To my mind the ekphrastic and “art-inspired” poems in both languages are the most memorable, not the least because in drawing from, adapting, or verbally recasting existing artistic works (usually, of painting, sculpture, or even literature itself), they redouble and clarify their endorsement of the transfigurative and world-making power of the creative arts, that indeed possess the unique ability to permeate and transform consciousness, and in the process to inspire and promote their own bright—and intertextual— continuance. It will perhaps be fitting to end this introduction with the complete text of one of them. This is “Alinsunod Kay Victor Hugo” by Allan Popa, one of our best poets writing in Filipino and English today.

xiv Likhaan 10 Sa kabila ng karahasan na nagawa natin sa isa’t isa, sa kabila ng mga kasinungalingan na pinaniniwalaan upang makapahinga, sa kabila ng mga pagdurusang pinipiling hindi makita, sa kabila ng mga nalimot na, magsusulat ako, gamit ang mga kamay na marami na ring nagawang pagkakasala, ngunit naniwalang may mababago pa, kahit munti, kahit kaunti, dito sa pahina. ibig sabihin, dito sa lupa.

J. NEIL C. GARCIA September 29, 2016 Uno Restaurant, Scout Fuentebella Quezon City

Revaluing Value: An Introduction xv

Short Story

Zoetrope RICHARD CALAYEG CORNELIO

oaquin reasoned that it had to do with the linguistic excess that kids in Jtheir formative years had to compensate for with imaginary narratives, which were, more often than not, simply outrageously outlandish and silly. And, of course, he would say that. He was the sort of person who would be sure to trot out some theory of evolution or quote Darwin after watching a herd of elephants fly like flummoxed chickens. He was an escort-cum- pornographer, but he thought with his big head—no pun intended—and had always valued a sound explanation for stuff that challenged empirical evidence. This time, though, I had to disagree, because it was coincidentally sometime after Joaquin and I had decided to separate for good that Clay began talking about his imaginary brother named Buddy. You’d think it would’ve pleased him to have a brother at long last, even an imaginary one, but apparently Buddy was a little bad hat and annoyed Clay round the clock. One morning, he said to me, in such a concertedly solemn tone I’d thought only the mailman could master: “Buddy sings like a pig about to be gutted.” His obviously discomfitingly violent flights of fancy bothered me less than the laundry list of things he later said he hated about his imaginary brother. For one thing, Buddy reeked of “grilled cheese stuffed in a two-week-old unwashed, crusty sock.” This he told me, I think, that day I bawled out Joaquin for overflowing the clothes hamper with his soiled socks and briefs and, good grief, even a quarter of a moldy grilled cheese sandwich. Buddy also hated taking a bath, unsurprisingly, and so all the dirt had rolled up and formed on his skin a thick purple fur, which resembled, I later realized, very much that of the cutesy stuffed dinosaur who ingratiatingly professed his all-encompassing love, to every biped infantile enough to believe him, on TV. The fact that my son had cooked up a friendly reptile whose species had been wiped out eons ago to be his brother was, in some twisted sense, endearing. It was amazing, Joaquin said, the way Clay constructed these run- on stories that he was processing vicariously through his imaginary brother,

3 in order to try out the words he soaked up every day from around him like a sponge. But things got suddenly weird when, the morning I told him his father would have to travel back to LA, again, Clay looked at me from under his thick fringe and asked if what Buddy had told him was true: that Joaquin and I were planning on a legal separation. And I remember thinking I must’ve had left some of the documents lying around, or that he must’ve overheard one of our conversations, and right then, in a moment of frighteningly perfect clarity, I saw happy Christmases going down the tubes, replaced by lengthy arguments over at whose place Clay would spend the holidays and unwrap ridiculously expensive gifts he’d ruin or outgrow anyway, but which I’d slave for through the coming years by donning rags and selling my kidneys, just because I’d spend the rest of my life feeling guilty of being a bad, bad mother for asking for my singlehood back. “You must have mentioned something, Fran,” Joaquin said, on the phone, when I told him. I said, after a beat, “Buddy thinks it sucks that there’s no divorce here, in the Philippines.” “Tell Buddy,” he said, “he’s damn right.” Just when I thought things couldn’t get more weird, one day Clay’s teacher called to make an appointment, and naturally I figured it was about our situation. Mrs. Gonzalo’s voice was breathless in a sexy way, the kind I’d squandered many minutes of my young life trying to imitate, though they would’ve been better spent on piano lessons or eyebrow threading. “Nothing serious, of course,” she said, “but we have Clayton’s best interests at heart and it is our job to discuss issues that might hinder him from achieving his full potential.” Was she reading this from some brochure? I told her Clay’s father couldn’t come because he’d gone back abroad, and in the silence that followed I could almost hear the cogs of her brain working, making teacherly tut-tutting sounds, could almost see my dream of bagging the Parent of the Year Award flushed down the drain. It turned out Mrs. Gonzalo was a supremely glacial woman in her sixties who seemed to have lived her entire life in tapered trousers, with a pair of tortoiseshell glasses and her silver hair pulled into the harshest bun known to mankind. We’d arranged for a meeting right around pickup time, and she sat me down on an uncomfortably tiny wooden chair from across her, in a wide, windowless office that looked impossibly immaculate and impersonal. The air-conditioning was gracefully benign, though, and after a long moment I

4 Short Story began to feel like we were equals here, just two grownups wanting the best for my son, never mind that Mrs. Gonzalo was looking at me with a wirelike smile that kept horrendously twitching at the sides, like infinitesimal isolated seizures. “Those are really wonderful art works you’ve tacked on the bulletin outside,” I said, trying to be bright and breezy and evasive. Her expression was one of both amused indifference and tight-lipped indignation, just fixing me with her steely gaze, and for a moment I was forced to study her back, in particular the way her face seemed doughy and medicated when looked at straight on. “I’m sorry to ask something so personal—” Mrs. Gonzalo began, and I was glad I had my whole we-are-going-through-some-family-crisis-but-we- are-holding-up-perfectly spiel down pat, “—but has Clayton been diagnosed with cancer?” I stared at her blankly, then blinked at her, nonplussed. “I’m sorry?” There was silence, and Mrs. Gonzalo’s face fell. “I did wonder. Clayton has a very vivid imagination, I daresay, and he’s been telling all sorts of stories to his peers, some of which are, quite frankly, far-fetched.” She smiled with relief, as though telling me my son was a total fantasist had lifted a huge load off her chest. It was all I could do to nod along and smile politely, like a lunatic. “I’ll have a word with him as soon as we get home,” I said. “Tread lightly,” she said. “It is not unusual for kids of his age to fabricate tales and fibs when they’re going through rough times, such as parents’ separation. I suppose you know about Buddy?” I winced inwardly as I realized his imaginary brother existed even outside the home. “We’ve even set aside an extra place for Buddy at the dinner table!” I chimed in with a hearty laugh. “His imaginary brother,” she said neutrally, the corners of her thin mouth almost in spasm. “Buddy is such a lovely, lovely creature,” I said, not knowing what else to say. “I’m sure he is,” she said. “But I’m concerned about what Buddy has been telling Clayton lately. For example, well, Clayton said Buddy had told him their father was an adult filmmaker.”

Richard Calayeg Cornelio 5 I was so gobsmacked I didn’t know what to say. “That’s really interesting.” My voice was a nervous squawk. I searched my mind for further acceptable adjectives. “That’s preposterous. Exceptionally flabbergasting and … unmistakably fictitious. That one surely takes the biscuit.” We’d explained to Clay that his father was a filmmaker based in California, and we were very careful not to specify what kind of films he was actually making, because it wasn’t exactly the sort of thing you’d go around boasting to other bratty four-year-olds in a Jesuit school. “Where on earth could he have gotten that absurd idea?” I said, with only the teeniest quiver in my voice. “I wouldn’t make a big deal about it,” she said. “But it wouldn’t hurt to be mindful of what we say, or do, or leave behind for them to see …” Was this woman seriously insinuating I’d been so irresponsible as to let my child get ahold of whatever it was she thought I had?—which I didn’t, of course, just for the record. She went on, “The mind of a child absorbs all manners of things.” “I couldn’t agree more,” I said rather too cheerily. She stood up as if to indicate she wanted nothing else to do with me, and retrieved from a pile in the corner of her table a sheaf of papers which she handed me. I browsed through them, beaming, proud in the way only mothers could be proud for a fleeting minute of their child’s messy finger paintings and ghastly watercolor sketches. “He’s been doing well in other respects,” she said. “In fact, he was the only one to spell ecclesiasticism correctly, although, I must say, he really didn’t have to discuss apophatism in class.” You had to hand it to Clay for turning a spelling quiz into an opportunity to share in class what his father, a devout atheist, had probably told him during one of their nightly ten-minute talks, before picture books, bath, toothbrushing, and peeing one last time. A tiny part of me was proud, and this I felt more profoundly when I walked down the hallway to the playground and saw Clay sitting on the bottom step of the rubberized stairs, his head buried intently in a book of knowledge he always carried around with him. He lifted his head and saw me, flashed me a wide smile, then trotted on his broomstick legs to meet me and launch his jelly-smudged face at my pencil skirt. “Frannie!” he yelled in delighted shock. All heads turned toward us, the mothers throwing daggers my way. One of the teachers wrenching a squalling

6 Short Story boy away from the monkey bars stopped to flick an antagonistic look at me, suddenly bristling all over, like a tormented cat. “Hey, sweetheart,” I said, ruffling his thick mop of ringletty hair. “How’s school?” “Stupendous!” he said, and went on in a monologue about his day’s rip- roaring adventures. I drew him away and bent down. “Clay, have you said anything about, um—having cancer?” “I think so, but not exactly,” he said. “I said I had ‘atypical teratoid/ rhabtoid tumor.’” I was poleaxed. What he just said sounded Russian and rather demonic, something you’d want to hear before killing yourself with a bludgeon to the neck. I wanted to coax more information out of him, reiterate to him the ethical boundaries of fictionalizing, but before I could he’d already toddled off toward the sandbox, pouring handfuls of sand into his unwitting classmate’s blueberry milkshake, chuckling, the golden sluggishness of the day glinting off his hair like a wispy halo. The disconcerting upshot of my meeting with Clay’s teacher was to send me down memory lane to the first time Joaquin and I were called into Clay’s teacher’s office, in the kindergarten where he’d been enrolled before transferring to the hoity-toity Jesuit school. It happened around the time Clay started to become interested in Jesus, having watched The Passion of the Christ in what was supposed to be a nonsectarian classroom. I was willing to concede that I wasn’t literate in Jesus and had my well-entrenched doubts and discomfitures as regards the subject, but Joaquin, despite privileging intellect, self-determination, and skepticism, was tolerant enough to educate Clay about the history of Jesus, his philosophy and proselytism—not his purported divinity, but rather his awing humanity. During playdates on weekend mornings, after rollicking spurts of enviable energy, Clay and his curious gang of waggish nippers gathered around Joaquin to listen to every ugly detail of Jesus’s death, how he was flogged and beaten, abased, denied by his most trusted disciple, crowned with thorns, nailed to a wooden cross alive, and suffered the death throes a good while. The crayons and rubber dinosaurs and train sets lay forgotten the entire time, tiny sticky hands gripping the edge of wing chairs as the kids waited for the awesome part, which was that Jesus was believed to have risen

Richard Calayeg Cornelio 7 from the dead and ascended to heaven—whereupon the small beasts around Joaquin would shriek their wonder and run off at the mouth about how supercool Jesus was, like Superman. Only Clay would stay seated, his forehead prematurely furrowed. Later in the night he asked in a too-earnest voice, “Why did Jesus’s mommy let those people be mean to him?” I was pretty sure she didn’t, that she elbowed her way through the milling crowd to get to her son, except that, well, I wasn’t totally sure she was around when Jesus was being flagellated. Was she perhaps in Nazareth? Maybe Mary was someplace praying for the Holy Spirit who’d impregnated her to fix this freaking clusterfuck, and fast. I couldn’t even recall if I’d seen her near the end of the movie Mel Gibson had directed, but, then again, I’d been probably distracted by Jim Caviezel’s body—if that doesn’t sound like too strange a thing to say about the guy who’d played Jesus. Anyhow, I somehow wandered off course and explained how Mary loved Jesus, so much so that she didn’t mind giving birth to him in a manger stinking of horse dung, practically away from civilization, how she wasn’t spooked out about getting knocked up by a ghost, in the first place. This I told him in theatrically upbeat tones, with funny faces to boot, and, of course, not exactly in those words. “But I thought Jesus’s daddy was God,” Clay said, baffled. “And Mary’s husband was Joseph.” I decided I had to be careful not to make Mary out to be a loose woman. I said, “Well, you see, that’s the wonderful thing about Mary. She was preserved from any stain of original sin—” “Original sin?” he practically hissed, his eyes bulging. For a second I was glad Joaquin had already covered the basics, including the whole Adam and Eve bit. “Remember when Adam and Eve ate the forbidden fruit in the Garden of Eden?” I said, floundering miserably. “Even though God specifically, emphatically asked them not to?” He said, appearing to think about it, “Like you forbid me to eat cookies before going to bed?” “Precisely!” I said. “Only, in their case, disobeying God meant carrying a sin—the original sin, a real bad, bad sin—which they have since passed down to generation after generation.”

8 Short Story That was when, to my astonishment, Clay dissolved in a flurry of tears and snot and barely managed to squeak out between sobs, “I promise I won’t eat cookies again before bedtime!” It took a good twenty minutes of rocking him back and forth, and making more funny faces to get him to quiet down. And I thought I was off the hook until Clay asked me again about Mary and how baby Jesus had gotten into her tummy, at which point I dropped the ball by mentioning immaculate conception, and then spent the next six minutes mentally berating myself all the while smattering about “magic,” without going into excruciating detail about, well, the bees and the birds. I thought I did a decent enough job then, even forcing cheeriness in my voice that enthralled and disarmed Clay. But not a week had passed when his teacher called, concerned about a “slightly disturbing incident” in which Clay, she recounted apologetically, had told a three-year-old girl in his mixed-age class, a sturdy-bodied kid named Lea, that she could be carrying Jesus in her tummy. One of the nice things about Joaquin was that he was always able to charm his way out of a tight spot, though it did help that a lot of people fell for guys who could pull off donning a jute sack and still looked like primed for the runway. He had a way, too, of speaking exclusively to the person he was conversing with, making you feel like you were the prettiest woman or the coolest guy on the face of the Earth—something he did with Clay’s teacher, a chirpy fresh grad, no doubt, who’d just stared the whole while at his cheekbones, which you could imagine yourself rappelling down. In the meantime, I found myself upping my smile volume by the beat, not that anyone had noticed. By the end of the meeting, Joaquin had successfully done major damage control on our son’s future and, meanwhile, I’d strained my facial muscles so hard I felt as if I’d just had Botox. On our way home, Clay had tired of scrunching his face up against the window to look for space aliens and soon just dozed off with his face buried in Joaquin’s lap. The sounds of homebound traffic had already died almost to a hum when I pulled in to the driveway, and inside the car I knew Joaquin would in a moment break the silence he’d maintained all through the drive home. “I think that went well,” he said, watching me from the backseat. “You know, considering …”

Richard Calayeg Cornelio 9 “People never finish their sentences anymore,” I said. He shook his head, scowling, cracked his knuckles, and looked out at the drowsy street drinking in its last fill of the sun. For the briefest second, I struggled to remember what it was about him that made me fall for him to begin with. When it was clear that silence was the order of the day, I reached over to gently prod Clay to wakefulness. Then Joaquin took Clay’s tender frame into one arm and deftly opened the car door with the other, while I stayed in the car another moment and looked in the side mirror to watch them walk up the doorsteps, a small head cradled against a giant’s chest, like something in perfect contrast with all the things I knew not a squat about, all the questions I didn’t have the answers to. In the end, it was Buddy, after long insistent messages delivered through Clay, that convinced us to phone the clinic at the children’s hospital. Somehow—without exactly telling the pharmaceutically calm woman on the other end that my son’s imaginary brother was, for some reason or other, under the impression that Clay had a malignant, diabolic-sounding tumor—I was told to head straight away to the ER to have Clay CT-scanned. The attending physician and all the importantly white-coated personnel found it curious at first that I took him there not as a referral from his pediatrician, but merely out of, as I’d mentioned to them, a cryptically gnawing mother’s intuition. The CT scan required that Clay fall asleep, which he did, without so much as a fuss. I stayed in the cafeteria, one of the most brightly lit and darkest places I’d ever been, and there listened to a girl at the next table supply the words to an unsuitably perky tune coming over the speakers, as one grim- faced parent after another got up for another coffee refill. It wasn’t long before I was called up to the ER and told by Dr. Yu, the head of the pediatric neurosurgery, that Clay’s brain was enlarged, and the first thing I thought of then was something I’d read that correlated the size of one’s brain to one’s IQ, so surely, I told myself, that must be something good, right? The next thing to do, Dr. Yu said, was to send Clay for an MRI, and that was when I knew for sure, terrifying as it was, that it wasn’t to prove his precociousness that my son would need images of his brain. It amazed me that Clay had so far held his own through this, not bursting into tears as the anesthetics were administered, but only sitting anxiously and peering up at me every now and then. The MRI took about an hour and a half, during which time I roamed the hospital hallways in something of a daze, my eyes peering into other people’s rooms as I passed their open doors,

10 Short Story as if rubbernecking a car crash, and glimpsed faces pinched with pain or with unsettling resignation. In the waiting room, there was a woman in sweatpants who looked overcaffeinated and couldn’t stop rocking a cute, bald girl in her cavernous lap. Back in medical imaging, Dr. Yu nodded gravely at me before showing me the MRI images on his computer. “What we have here is a tumor,” he said, pointing at a round something that looked to me innocuous enough, “which is very actively growing.” I had hoped until then to hear the words very actively growing used to describe my son, not a nasty tumor that had lodged itself in his head because of some unknown pathological anomaly. Those three words marched through my head like an odd, silent prayer as I watched over Clay sleeping in a small, fluorescently ablaze room, the rhythmic rise and fall of his chest lulling me almost to sleep. Each time I caught myself drifting off, though, those three words would dart into my thoughts, like a swinging bitch slap. A growing tumor was hard enough to wrap my head around, more so an actively growing tumor, and much more so a very actively growing tumor. Besides, on what earth would a doctor diagnose a child to have a tumor? Which was, as I saw it, equivalent to using Johnny Depp’s photo as an anti-drug poster: an unpardonable crime. “But he’s only four,” I’d said, when the reality of those three words finally hit me, as if I could talk the doctor out of his diagnosis. “He eats Brussels sprouts and broccoli,” I’d countered, “and even slimy okra!” I couldn’t let myself give in to the facts staring me in the face and also go on thinking things would work out, couldn’t for the life of me imagine going through the motions of interminable days here in the hospital, where I could see the white ceiling weighing oppressively and feel the imperturbably blank walls hedging me in, squeezing my being into something shapeless like oil. And so I let myself believe other things instead. Such as that if I covered his face, his crown, and his forehead with just the right number of kisses, then perhaps I could magically suck the darned tumor out of his system, or else suck it into mine, where it could very actively grow to its heart’s content— which would then be, I realized as I quietly rained upon him my tears, just as well. I could tell you that I lost my virginity an hour shy of my twenty-sixth birthday and that I went to an abortion clinic five months after, like they were the beginning and the end of a tired storyline whose interim you could confidently guess at. The former involved me and a man who I wasn’t committed to at the time, while the latter featured only me, a woman who

Richard Calayeg Cornelio 11 had until then been inoculated against hurt and wavering that came with infuriating indecision. Although both were my choices, one made me feel potent and the other left me prostrate, paralyzed with ambivalence. The first one was a product of both the fantastical belief that I had to save myself for Prince Charming, who’d come along on a white stallion and swoop me off my feet, with whom I’d ride into the sunset, and the more practical, though equally ludicrous, belief that sex was something particularly tricky for women, especially for someone like myself who couldn’t even wear a leather bustier on account of not having the chest to hold it up. The words of de Beauvoir and Friedan faltered in the face of the question of whether to Do It or not to Do It, which I believed not many men found themselves pondering heavily as much as women did, because men just Do It. Like Nike. When I finally decided that I’d Do It, it wasn’t with the man I was going with at the time, someone who I was drawn to intellectually and emotionally and physically, but who believed, to my chagrin and alarm, that the exercise of his sexual will was fundamental to any relationship he had had with a woman. You’d have thought that with a man like that, who always had his hand up my thigh unbelievably immediately when no one was watching, I’d get laid faster than you could say sex. During some tonsil hockey or tongue fencing, for example, he’d pause to brush his squishy-looking lips against my ear and whisper, while groping my boob rather distressingly, “You know you like it.” And of course I didn’t like it all that much, but somehow blood clots could form in your mildly mashed breasts and then travel to your brain and make you kind of grunt and purr, which your sexually repressed boyfriend would interpret as a throaty moan of assent and so he’d squash your knockers even more, whereupon you’d slap his hand away, thus ruining his mood. The man I did Do It with was my best friend whom I genuinely cared for and who cared for me. The sex was awkward and singular and depressingly slow, like getting your master’s degree. The morning I saw the cross on the stick, two weeks after, I called him and we spent the afternoon wandering the tree-lined avenues at the state university we’d hailed from, the sun-dappled, bowery branches providing welcome shade. Then we talked about what we were going to do. It turned out there was nothing he was going to do about it, because it couldn’t be possibly his after all. He told me a story that involved laboratory tests and spermicidal count and an abortive operation abroad, a story so remote from mine that I didn’t understand until after a vital minute of silence, into which you could’ve poured all the ironies of life, that what it

12 Short Story all meant was that he couldn’t have knocked me up, or any woman for that matter. I remember not knowing what to say, not knowing what to feel. I remember thinking absurdly that there must be hidden cameras around then, at the Sunken Garden, filming this travesty of a melodrama. I remember instinctively lifting a hand to my tummy. Afterwards, he called me the Virgin Mary twice, and the first time he said it I laughed like my life depended on it, a hysterical horselaugh that was more just air out my nose, till tears welled up and smarted my eyes, and in a minute we were laughing again, then I was both crying and laughing into his palm, and he said, matter-of-factly, “I can’t help you.” The second time he said it, I could no longer trust myself to laugh as though I’d just lost it upstairs without hearing my voice crack. “You’re the Virgin Mary,” he said, not glancing my way. “Maybe the second coming of Christ will be through your womb, and we’ll all be saved.” When I thought he had nothing more to say, he answered a question I didn’t want to ask him: “Maybe it’s the right thing to do, keeping it.” The trick was to deny the dread I felt, and the helplessness. Nearly a month in the hospital allowed for a routine: at around noon, I’d duck out of Clay’s room and walk into the restroom, where I’d shut myself in a stall, feel the door shudder as I slumped against it in a fury of tears and anguish. There was a minute or even just a fleeting second, during this cathartic flare- up, when I’d look back on the days folded away forever before the word cancer began to define our lives, trying to recall what it was—what seemingly inconsequential, inoffensive evidence—that I ought to have caught earlier. In my mind’s eye, I stayed in that stall until the moments and leap seconds extended into lifetimes, but I knew it took only a few fast breaths, pulling myself together, gathering enough wits to soldier on for the rest of the day, before going back out to resume the life I’d put on pause. A sort of shunt had had to be implanted in Clay’s head, to serve as a drainage pipe for the removal of the accumulated cerebrospinal fluid, and it was around this time, in the second week of the ordeal, that Joaquin came home and was quickly filled in on the latest developments by Dr. Yu and his neurosurgical team. He was as gripped and unmoored by sorrow as I was, but the only way he knew to set about the emotional acrobatics required of us in this situation was to wield the ungainly language of medicine. Despite thoughtful cautions from the professionals, Joaquin looked up anything even remotely related to Clay’s case on the Internet. He printed out whatever

Richard Calayeg Cornelio 13 journal articles he could find and pored over them, highlighter poised in midair, his black-rimmed glasses slipping a fraction down his nose. He had such heartbreaking faith in these impeccably robed, masked strangers and in their unflinching stoicism that he always came up to them with questions, which I sometimes suspected even the doctors didn’t have the answers to. And in time, he began to speak in polysyllables and talked the names of drugs that I couldn’t even begin to pronounce. Joaquin was the one who’d informed me that “atypical rhabtoid/teratoid tumors” (ATRTs), the kind Clay had, represented only about 3 percent of pediatric cancers of the central nervous system, and this, I thought, was the sort of probabilistic luck that I’d always dreamed of to have a shot at the sweepstakes. This was not what I’d bargained for, I told myself, not the series of scans and antibiotics and checkups and emergency surgeries that I’d only watched in movies before, and which now took on a more catastrophically nightmarish form in a reality I didn’t feel we deserved. This was also a reality no child deserved. Days and nights in giddy succession zipped past us and were marked only by the growing pile of newspapers on Clay’s night stand, each one bearing headlines already exiting into oblivion, disorientingly offset by the idle rhythm of hospital time that never had a humming machine, a blinking monitor, or a wheezing respirator ceased to remind us of. In Clay’s troubled face I saw the paradoxical march of time and its almost palpable linger. The world, as I’d last known it, still unruffledly went about its business. For a short while, two days to be exact, we were allowed to reconnect with human civilization and pretend to be the functional, unscathed, unburdened carbon life forms that we’d been before. It was a Wednesday, I remember, and after frivolously lunching on vanilla-flavored ice cream, Clay surprised Joaquin and I by requesting we go talk to Jesus, in the Catholic chapel we’d never before set foot on. The four of us, including Clay’s insurmountable imaginary brother, Buddy, walked in and sat down on one of the front pews. It somewhat pained me to think that, back in the hospital, we’d specifically told the hospital chaplain and those other Jesus people, to their openmouthed dismay, to be sure to make themselves scarce around us. Sympathetic though they were, we preferred to be comforted by the secure knowledge of science and shunned the formless solace the supernatural offered. That day, before we left, Clay said that Buddy was sad that they had to go back to the hospital that night.

14 Short Story And it was indeed true: Clay’s tumor was hemorrhaging and so we had to drive back in the bitter evening cold to the hospital to have it removed. Joaquin and I, we alternately sighed and wept and wept and sighed, the pauses between an exhaled breath and the next measured by our tears, which seemed to us inexhaustible and criminally useless. Like the only survivors of a plane crash, we clutched each other, rocked by sobs and the jitters of our overcaffeinated bodies, and it was so clearly the only time in a long, long time that I felt I wasn’t alone in my monstrous grief, that the two of us were in it together. When the oncologist walked into the room, we sprung apart like teenagers doing something particularly lewd under the gum-studded bleachers in the school gym. He informed us, not meeting our eyes, that the tumor might spread to Clay’s meninges. “You mean, the cancer could metastasize within the CNS?” I asked, in the back of my mind surprised at how foreign yet matter-of-factly these words rolled off my tongue, wondering whether I’d become that type of person who threw around acronyms as if everyone knew what they meant. By this time we’d learned to read in the faces of the people who delivered the news, in the shifting of their eyes and in the pitch of their voices, all the words they didn’t speak and the things they didn’t have to say. It was the skill I taught my students at the state university, that of reading between the lines and tearing apart and stripping to the bones a poem or an essay or a short story, until they got to the bottom of things and found answers in the face of only a smattering of words. It was the skill I hadn’t known until then would come in handy in predicting the fate of my child. Four hours later I’d polished off a chunk of pistachio halvah that Joaquin had two weeks ago bought at a Greek store in LA. Now, that seemed like a century ago. Rightfully oblivious of anything else, Joaquin typed away at his laptop and read up on even more discouraging statistics available for him to chew over. Then Dr. Yu’s laconic, ratlike assistant came in to tell us that Clay had “pulled through,” and these words, not for the first time, seemed to me wrongfully descriptive of a child’s condition, like a big cosmic joke, so convinced was I that a four-year-old’s only purpose in life was to play and be a babbling beast. In the ICU where he’d been taken, post-op, Clay was nestled in an intricate tangle of tubes, wires, and IVs, peacefully drugged. Occasionally, he clutched at the air as if for an invisible hand reaching out. It was the universe’s miserable excuse for a prank, I’d come to believe, to watch your child gingerly slip into nothingness when, by natural design, he was supposed to outlast you by decades; when it was you whose every dip of heart

Richard Calayeg Cornelio 15 rate, every change in blood pressure, every ragged breath he was supposed to register, to weep over. I didn’t know I’d fallen asleep until I awoke to a sort of commotion in the room. A gang of masked strangers surrounded Clay’s bed and moved in their annoyingly brisk, censorious manner. Through angry tears, Joaquin told me Clay’s blood pressure had plummeted and he’d had to beep the nurse. Clay was whisked out of the room, and just like that we were again left balanced on the fulcrum between helplessness and terror. My eyes flitted to the giant, dumb clock on the far wall. It was four-ten in the morning. Joaquin took my hand and led me to the cafeteria, where we both ate a slice of a bricklike peach pie in companionable silence. There was a familiar-looking girl at the next table, humming along to an upbeat tune coming over the speakers, and under her eyes were deep purple hollows, like kohl. Then I almost saw myself—my pudgy face, my messy hair, my slovenly clothing—through her eyes and gave an involuntary simper. We practically leapt as though jolted awake when, after a long while, we heard our names being called over the intercom. He was sleeping. While the oncologists and Joaquin talked about the schedule of his chemo, I sat by Clay’s bed and kissed the fingers of his tiny, limp hand over and over, not caring in the least that he always pulled it away. I reached through the tubes to feel every assuring thump of his chest. The decision to keep it, after that day of walking around the university campus, was one I initially felt so sure about. The prospect of single motherhood became an exciting, challenging thing overnight, one I was willing to take on, like a solo-flight science project. Two months after nary a conversation with me, though, the man I did Do It with decided, in a fit of unexplained dementedness, to move in with me. At the drop of a hat, he left his job in LA and stuffed my apartment to the gills with books and a roomful of filming equipment he never really got around to use anyway. In the afternoons, we both reclined on matching ratty divans lining the opposite walls, for hours on end, reading silently to ourselves and sometimes aloud to each other. Often, we didn’t bother with breakfast. We went weeks without washing dishes and doing laundry. At night, after he made love to me, I’d lie still and weep because I knew he loved me and I him, but it was the kind of love that I wasn’t ready for and couldn’t take as I knew that either it somehow wasn’t enough or it was so bigger than myself, I feared it had a looming expiry date that would leave me all high and dry.

16 Short Story To my colleagues and friends from college, who had begun sending me wedding invitations, I often referred to him as what I’d had for the past several months instead of a serious relationship. He turned down all the invitations, tortured as he was by the politics of marriage, the central role this archaic act played in sustaining patriarchy, and all sorts of heteronormative things that smart people like him steered clear of. His staunch allegiance to his principles was no small reason why I fell for him, but now, somehow, I found myself passing up a few wedding invitations myself, in case he thought my attending such a ceremony would be the height of antifeminism. Our LGBTQ friends lauded our decision, and even I had to admit that I enjoyed talking about our progressive politics, with the airs of self-abnegation you typically hear from owners of rescue dogs, more than I actually liked living it. It sickened me to realize how much of a big self-interested fraud I was. Being with him felt like walking on a bed of hot coals with one leg tied up behind my back. It became apparent to me, in spite of myself, that wearing a fluffy white dress and sharing a sinfully sweet multitiered cake with a gentleman in a tuxedo was the stuff of my dreams. I knew it sounded silly and certainly paled in comparison to the earnest political and social stances where he stood, but I liked to think that this was where my feminism proved to be not as shatterproof as I’d thought. That we were never going to be married, however, was a fact so apparent it seemed to me beside the point to convince him otherwise. The two of us were held only by a tenuous thread stirring in the pit of my stomach, reminding me of its reality with a constricting rhythm in my throat, like one pulsing fist. But it was an intimation of life, I realized one night, that I didn’t think I really wanted. All of a sudden, all of my original misgivings about motherhood came rushing back and my once unswerving determination to become a mother turned into an amorphous ball of ambivalence. The reservations I harbored ran the gamut from Don’t want to turn into a cow after pregnancy to Don’t want to be compelled to make decisions for someone else’s interest. I didn’t consider myself vain or proud, but was it evidence to the contrary to say that I feared having a child would curtail my freedom to travel, my fondness for mortifyingly expensive cocktail, my sex life? To say that I was afraid to transform into the archetypal woman in the doorway, who called out to a small departing figure, “Take care!” in that hasty peck-at-the-door spirit before turning away and confronting the screaming silence of the house? And I thought I didn’t have the makings of a mother, that wherever this type of women were

Richard Calayeg Cornelio 17 manufactured was surely not where I’d come from. Once, I had read a story submitted to the college journal, of which I was one of the content editors, was about a guilt-ridden mother who’d stuffed her baby in a dumpster, and, to my horror, I’d identified with her and her fear, her deranged motive for offing her daughter: that she’d bungle motherhood irredeemably. Meanwhile, much to my plain surprise, he’d gone on such full daddy mode that one morning he surprised me even more by buying a glamorous, overpriced house in the suburbs. Jobless though he was, the inheritance left by his late father could tide him over for well more than forty years. The thought of being a suburban couple with a baby on the way was, however, a cliché I’d thought he’d never cotton onto. He became so exponentially excited that he bought playthings and sippy cups. A couple of times he visited me in my office and brought with him books on pregnancy that he’d checked out from the college library. He enrolled both of us in a Lamaze class that wouldn’t start until after seven months and asked me what I felt about the name Nikolai Vasilievich, his favorite author’s. “Revulsion,” I wanted to say. Instead, I just went, “I like Sojourner Truth if it’s a girl.” I had no delusions about making a stand for women everywhere, like one of my female friends accused me of upon hearing my story, when I decided to get an abortion. The clinic, if it could be called that, was in a nondescript concrete building from the sixties. The room was well air-conditioned, and tacked on a wall the color of excellent margarine, seeming so out of context, was a poster of a provocative teenage Britney Spears. A friend of mine who referred me to this place had said that the abortionist was someone you could trust with your life, and I’d found this description funny, if not ironic. The receptionist was unflatteringly dressed in a blue shirtwaist. I’d put on a coatdress and matched it with a pair of biggish, bumblebee-esque black shades, the kind celebrities wore to avoid the paparazzi. I comforted myself by thinking this child would turn out an axe murderer or a terrorist or a psycho, and relief laced with perpetual doubt rippled through me. The feeling was physical, though, for right then and there, on a couch tattered in all the right places, I threw up. The receptionist gasped, and I sprinted to the door with bile spilled right down the front of my dress. I hailed a taxi and spent the ride staring at a plastic rosary hanging from the rearview mirror. Bushed but almost mechanically activated, Joaquin and I talked with the doctors and signed off on papers and divided our calendar into weeks that corresponded with cycles of chemotherapy that Clay had to undergo.

18 Short Story The oncologists advised against radiation therapy, although Clay was already four and the risks of long-term complications due to brain irradiation were lower, and decided instead on an intensified induction chemotherapy at first, which involved a regimen of vincristine, etoposide, and cisplatin. Each cycle, we were told, used chemo at doses toxic enough to completely deplete the bone marrow, which would have to be regrown through stem cell rescue. In between cycles, we arranged visits from relatives and friends who crammed the hospital room with every imaginable stuffed and balloon animal on the planet and many chocolates that Joaquin and I were forced to eat, since the nurses had hung up a bag of intravenous liquid food for Clay. All sorts of drugs were dispensed at regular intervals. Fairly soon, visits to the ER had become commonplace. Most days, Clay awoke as if in a mild psychic fever, his movements uncoordinated and feeble. Often visibly afraid, he mumbled strange half- words that sounded nothing you could find in the dictionary. On days he was awake, if groggy, we filled the room with our laughter and songs, and people passing in the corridor saw us and smiled. Clay, more than several times, insisted we listen to Buddy sing and for five minutes Joaquin and I stared into space, quiet, smiles plastered on our faces. He regaled us with stories about his travels with Buddy, to places chillingly resembling gold-paved, cloud- covered heavens in drawings I knew all too well from pamphlets handed out by proselytizers. His long, jagged squawks of delight at jokes only he could understand tapered off into wheezes, or roaring coughs, or dry heaves. We were careful not to hug him too hard or hold his hand for too long, afraid that he might crumble like a dry cracker even at our slightest touch. “That’s normal,” one of the sweatpanted mothers on the oncology ward told me over a lunch of congealed soup. “Some days I can’t even bear to look at my baby like that, all undone, ailing.” The rustling of magazine pages, the occasional blare of a ringing phone, and the snivels and sobs punctuated the sotto voce dialogue among parents whose children were also beset by cancer. Here, we were all enlisted in a battle that we would’ve bowed out of, if only we’d had our druthers. Joaquin and I, we listened to one unbearable story after another which we took as we would a fistful of change, perfunctorily and emotionlessly, and after a while one sad story didn’t seem an especially sad one as the whole place was so suffused with sadness anyway that a shared portion of someone else’s grief didn’t really add anything additional. Both of us understood, too, without saying so, that we

Richard Calayeg Cornelio 19 were to insulate these strangers from our misery and the loneliness we now wore like a mourning coat hanging off of us in big, drooping folds. We were too insular in this regard, not letting anyone in on what we felt was ours, though one thrust upon us against our best defenses. It seemed like another lifetime when Joaquin and I had decided to separate. I remember the night we were lying awake on the same bed, with a third party, a ghoulish, unmistakable presence, bridging our two bodies. I remember shifting a little, in the tentative way one would stir beside a bedfast patient, and Joaquin, after a beat, pressing himself against my back and spooning me closer into his robust frame, his lips on the nape of my neck and his eyes wetting the tendrils of my hair. “I’m sorry,” he said, in a voice as thick as chocolate fudge. “Please, Fran, say you still love me.” Here I turned over and faced him, held his head close against my chest until he stopped shaking, crying. I could feel his shuddery breath hot on my skin and I held him closer. I said, “I’m sorry.” And it was at that very moment that I understood finally how two people could say the same thing and mean differently, or not really differently at all. I knew the urgency of a shared confession, how you could simply feel the truth singing out of your bones, sometimes in the most unlikely place and the most unlikely time, and how clarity could still lend itself to you, marvelous and momentary. I knew, despite my emotional protestations, that the end of something good could be the beginning of something worse than you’d bargained for, or of something better that could come only of losing things you’d once held dear and sworn you couldn’t live without, along the way. It was a feeling that splintered your thoughts in its first onrush and twisted you as if rung like a wet towel in the next. And, indeed, I felt as if I were about to give birth to not just one, but a whole generation of babies, plus the rest of my intestines and bladder. Through it all, he held my hand as I was being wheeled to the ER, rubbing the web of skin between my forefinger and thumb as if that was where the baby would come out. He cooed, mumbled, patted my eyebrow with a washrag. I could say that was the beginning of it, the rather infantile rage I felt toward him, who kept telling me that everything would be all right, as if he had a way of knowing. It was the kind of certainty that approximated impartiality and thus sounded believable. But lying in that bed, then, with

20 Short Story strangers unlaughably peeking their heads in between my canted knees, I only knew that every time I screamed his name I was cursing him in my head and ready to jump out of my skin in contempt. The worst part was perhaps to see him smile so excitedly, like a puppy, with that everlastingly encouraging expression on his face; to know that he thought I was screaming his name because we were all in this together and all that sickeningly happy preggers stuff I’d been told by well-meaning friends to think about during labor, but which, alas, melted away in the face of pain. And it was true, because pain, unlike what the Lamaze teacher had spieled a gazillion times, was not good. Pain was having to push a creature the size of a pumpkin through an orifice that had only previously admitted nothing larger than an eggplant, which had once upon a time convinced me that if I could let something that large in, then delivering a human being would be easy as rolling off a log. It was easy, of course, for him to say those anodyne words and make those pesky, little coaxing sounds when he wasn’t the one made to feel guilty for having a coochie as small and inelastic and ornamental and only occasionally utilitarian as a peephole; when he wasn’t the one spread open like one sorry gobbet of meat, with huge helpless haunches and tears exposed; when he hadn’t been the one in some kind of discomfort pretty much the entire nine months, and who would now be ripped to ribbons as a crazy, unholy storm shivered through her entire being; when he wasn’t the one who had to wonder why no squalling pinch-faced spawn was being shoved to his chest. To be told by some stranger that the baby had “expired,” like a canned good gone sour. He had no right to tell me it would all be okay, the storm had passed, we’d get through this. For there wasn’t an end to it, really, only a prelude to days rolling away forever—the fluid passage of time I could only mark by the mounting mess of balled and bloodied panties and thick tampons in the wicker trash in the bathroom, by the increasing rock-hard heaviness of my breasts, which every day I’d had to pump of their souring milk that sprayed like blood from a nicked artery, and by the laconic messages accumulated on the answering machine from him, the vanished lover, who’d turned tail, quick on the draw, “to figure things out.” One morning, the courier had to bring a scowling barangay tanod with him and knocked on my door, worried something had happened to me when he’d realized the mail could no longer fit through the slot. Something had happened to me, all right, but explaining it, I feared,

Richard Calayeg Cornelio 21 might wind up in tears and awkward consoling that went beyond a thoughtful messenger’s job description. And before I knew it, my baby would’ve turned a week old. I went to the vanished lover’s room and sat on the foot of the bed, watching the sun spill through and lick at all the stuff I’d spent a sleepless month’s wage on, and which I’d weeks later start giving away, all the pretty little things awaiting the pretty little child that never came. “Could you buy Buddy and me a new toy?” Clay asked, in an uncharacteristically small voice. “What kind of toy do you want?” I saw a little puzzled look of worry spread over his face. He said, after a long moment. “Buddy said you should buy something to remember me by.” He appeared to me too bright at that moment, lighting up from within, though still visibly pale, withered with fatigue and welted with bruises. But the longer I gazed at Clay’s ashen face the more he resembled a leftover afterimage from staring at a recently screwed-on, bare bulb for too long, fugacious and fading away right before my eyes. When I kissed him goodbye, the last sunlight had already painted the streets in the warmth and thickness of honey, needlepoint glimmers winking through the windswept trees and the sky unfurling itself dark and wide open. How unremarkable that day was, how my leave-taking felt to me so very temporary that, though I tried to be stern with myself, I couldn’t help a sigh of relief from hissing out of me at the thought of leaving the hospital, to come up for air, knowing that I would so soon be returning to that place and see my child again. Thoughts fly at me like so many trapped sparrows in my head. I’d rolled through not one but three red lights and still I found myself now ensnared in a space-time continuum that I’d operated within, once in another lifetime. Somehow I’d forgotten how this world worked, with everyone oblivious of everyone else, bumper-to-bumper traffic being the pinnacle of such anthropologic indifference. When at last the road congestion had slackened, I flew through the throughways with my heart clenched in my throat. Then I entertained a filmic imagination of the moment of my own death, filled with the graphic and sound effects of a Hollywood action movie, with a stunning glare of headlights, a screeching of tires, a panicky loss of control of the car, an explosion of the windshield, and an enormous crash of metal against metal that would leave my body bloody and mangled and crushed beyond recognition. It reassured me, even for a minute, this compulsively morbid

22 Short Story imagination of my mortality, which was in itself a bargain I’d be more than willing to make. A block away from the hospital, my breath caught in my throat like a darned seed, I stopped to cry. Aware of the every tick of the clock, I ran through the semi-darkened hallways with my blue shopping bag in hand. The few people I passed in the corridor, some of whom were nurses who’d come in hourly to check on Clay, regarded me with a terrified look. A morose pack of the ICU staff had crowded the door to Clay’s room, and I barged through them with all the muscular strength I’d somehow miraculously mustered. I heard only the relentless buzzing machines, or maybe the buzzing came from some monster inside me, I didn’t know, a sound that flicked in me like bees in a hive. I felt half-scared of the doctors and nurses standing around Clay’s bed, talking urgently yet monotonously, but also half-connected with them in our prayers to keep my son alive, his life literally in their hands. Then finally I saw Clay, bloated and beautifully misshapen, needles stabbed into his little hands like an acupuncturist’s nightmare. And in one corner, Joaquin was alone in his preemptive grief, crying like I’d never seen an adult cry before. I let the shopping bag in my hand fall to the floor with a dull thud. From behind his horn-rimmed glasses the oncologist looked to me helplessly and all of a sudden a loud beeping pierced the rubbery silence. I told them to stop. It was at this point that my memory failed me. Part of me still believed I was the mother just three hours before, who’d been asked by her son to buy a new toy for his imaginary brother, who’d promised she would, and walked out the door in utter naiveté, secure in the knowledge she’d come back to this room in no time. Now, head throbbing, my tongue sickly furred, I was staring at Clay, who’d not moved, and realized I’d do anything just so I could tell that woman that she was making the worst decision in her life, which was saying a lot for someone who’d time and again stumbled through the most unfortunate choices. I recalled wandering the mall and lighting upon just the right toy: a cylindrical something with slits in its circumference through which to view stars passing through a series of their natural motions, twinkling and blinking. It was something I’d like Clay to hold on to, for him to revel in its steady merry-go-round movement and its comforting familiarity, but which now felt in my hands like a wet bag of cement, like a cumbersome, purposeless thing. A semblance of bemused calm belied how I feel emptied right then and at the same time stuffed as if with lead shot, my body too weighty for me to move, my breathing stilled, for I started to feel that every exhale I made was

Richard Calayeg Cornelio 23 one breath more than the room that contained our grief could handle. Then I felt an even thumping anguish rolling off Joaquin in waves, and prayed, at that moment, to whatever god Clay had believed in but which I couldn’t find or identify, for the welling in my eyes to stay at the corners and not become actual tears, because then I’d have to face that this was real and that somehow I was one to blame, that, as though by comeuppance, my initial uneasiness about motherhood had set his death off. In the end, I faltered and heard a wail roaring through my ears. There was another lifetime, of course, in which these tears were shed, though the notion of our child’s death seemed as faraway and far-fetched as the idea of dead stars twinkling down at us forever. It was the night, four years ago, when for the second time in my life I was peeled open to the pulp. I had been wheeled down the hall to a parchment-white room, where I lay on a cot with white rubberized sheets, staring at harsh fluorescent panels that gawked at me overhead. Joaquin, after vanishing and tearing up the town, had returned like a wave you could always trust to surge back ashore but which you also knew would ebb away, yet again, sometime. He held my hand as my body rattled so hard like keys jingling in your pocket, let me hold his hand as strangers’ faces pressed in and talked in hushed tones. I remember it was almost Valentine’s, and somewhere, in a nice, cozy hotel room, I knew the man who I’d had a brief dalliance with couldn’t care less that his son was being delivered to the world. I remember being pulled down into abysmal darkness, an insidious sense of free fall, then being pulled back up into a blaze of something like new life, like something that would last. I felt the weight of it on my chest, its unsullied perfect possibilities, and tenderly I kissed its tiny fists reaching up into the air and promised to hold on to it, forever.

24 Short Story Creek ISRAFEL FAGELA

here was something in the news a while back about a boy from the slums Twho had drowned in the Pasig River. It had been raining hard the day before and the boy was playing with his friends when he slipped and fell into the water. His body was found hours later in a garbage pile along the riverbank, quite a distance from where he must have drowned. I remember thinking how everyone must be blaming the boy’s parents. The reporter interviewed the mother. She says she was asleep when it happened, exhausted from a ten-hour shift at the nearby brassiere factory. I guess I could see how everyone watching the news might think it was her fault, that she did not do enough to keep her child safe. I felt bad for the mother. She was crying and wailing while being interviewed, clutching a framed photo of her son, beaming in his brown preschool uniform. I would have cried too, if it had happened to me. If you don’t cry, if you don’t show how distraught you are, people will think there is something wrong with you. When I was a little girl growing up in the province, children were less coddled, allowed (more or less) to play without adult supervision. We lived in Laguna, in a sprawling subdivision intended as a housing project for government employees during the Marcos years. My father, an engineer at the provincial public works department, knew all the homeowners, not only as neighbors but as coworkers since all of them worked at the Provincial Capitol. It started out as a closely-knit community, at least until the developer pulled out in the middle of the project because of some legal dispute, leaving almost half of the project unfinished. The undeveloped area was still largely forested and a creek ran through it. There was no cable TV back then, or Internet, or other things that kept children at home, so we were mostly outdoors climbing trees, playing in the streets, riding our bicycles.

25 It was the creek that drew most of the children, especially on those long summers. The water ran clear and cool from the adjoining property—also a large, vacant tract of forest land—and branched out into riffles where you could stand on the creek bed and watch the water part around your feet then meander downstream to a natural pool where you could sometimes go swimming. Although I was tall for my age, the water in the pool went up as high as my chest and I had to hold on to the large, sharp stones to make sure I did not lose my footing. During the rainy season, water overflowed along the banks and made it impossible to swim. Some of the kids, perhaps out of boredom more than adventurousness, would still go anyway even in the middle of a typhoon, which would worry their parents to no end. Neighbors would organize themselves haphazardly into search parties and look for their kids along the creek then spank them all the way home. As with many other things back then, you were allowed a broader leeway for mischief but go too far and the consequences were often severe. I was eleven when the province decided to build the new government center which would end up displacing many families living in the center of the capital city. To convince these families and households—hundreds of people, including children—to consent to the development, they were promised relocation in our subdivision. Photographs of our erstwhile paradise, a row of tiny, low-cost houses with proudly well-kept lawns, were passed around during public consultations, next to a consent and waiver form awaiting their signatures. I still remember clearly the day they all moved into the subdivision. They had to be bused in by shifts since there were so many of them. Several families, including some from our street, decided to move out of the subdivision weeks before. We all felt betrayed that our idyllic community was about to turn into a “squatter relocation site.” When the first wave of families moved into our street—with their pots and pans and straw sleeping mats—and occupied the once-loved houses of our former neighbors, my father could not help but shake his head in disgust. His deep disappointment was later on exacerbated when we found that the government had let many more families into the subdivision even after all the houses had been filled. They were assigned undeveloped plots of land, given nipa and other light materials, and told to build their own makeshift homes. My father had three daughters, and it

26 Short Story seemed more and more like a good idea to establish a home somewhere else. However, he felt that a move on our part would reflect poorly on the new government center project and embarrass the governor so we stayed on. It was the same year that I met Celso and Manny. Manny was twelve years old, the son of a woodcarver and the middle child of a brood of five. Celso was two years older. I knew very little of Celso’s family, other than that his family occupied the house left by Engr. Manaloto, my father’s former colleague. Celso had an intense, brooding demeanor and looked unusually strong and tall for his age. A scar ran down his right cheekbone, which Celso said he got from a street fight, but Manny confided was from a smack on the face with a bottle during one of his father’s drunken episodes. Manny had known Celso even before they moved into the subdivision. They used to live on the same plot of government land from which they were evicted to give way to the provincial hospital. Manny was often bullied because of his height so he stuck close to Celso for protection. In return, Manny would give Celso cigarettes which he pilfered from his mother’s sari- sari store. We spent a whole summer together hanging out at their storefront, sitting under the eaves to get away from the sun. Sometimes Manny’s mother would see me—“Engr. Fernando’s pretty little girl”—and offer me a cold Coca-Cola. She was a nice lady, always smiling at me and asking about my parents, but the look in her eyes would turn into a mix of concern and disappointment every time she saw Celso. “Manny used to be such a good son until he started running with that boy,” she told me one time when Celso was not around. She warned me to stay away from Celso or she would tell my father the kind of company I had been keeping. “You are just a baby, and Celso is almost a grown man,” she said. “It would be a pity if something happened to you.” I indignantly told her to shut up and mind her own business. I was sitting on the small wooden bench she kept for customers, and she was standing in right front of me. She put her hand on her chest and wore a pained and surprised look—like she had been shot by someone she cared about. “My father would never believe you,” I shouted at her. “He has a lot of important friends. If you keep meddling in my life I’ll make sure that they throw your whole family out on the street!” I would always hear my parents complaining about our refugee neighbors—how unclean they were, how they let their garbage pile up in front of their houses, how the subdivision had no security

Israfel Fagela 27 guards and lampposts because they would not pay the monthly dues. I knew how the original homeowners hated them, all the bad names they were called behind their backs: thieves, deadbeats, squatters. At the same time, I knew, even then, that there was something inherently immoral in the words that just came out of my mouth, the same way I knew that stealing and cruelty were wrong, but I only had a child’s meager understanding of the dynamics of class and of the devastating power of words. What felt clear at the time was that I could not allow Manny’s mother to dictate upon my life more than I could our housemaid. Her face turned red and she opened her mouth as if wanting to speak but, instead, she slunk back inside the store, defeated. Needless to say, she stopped offering me free Cokes, but she also stopped pestering me about Celso. Manny never knew about my encounter with his mother although I doubted that things would have changed between us if he did. After all, I was the daughter of a government official. My family owned a house and the piece of land on which it stood. They were mere “guests” of our community, subject to expulsion at a moment’s notice. So Celso and Manny continued to be my cheery playmates and bodyguards who, in turn, treated me like their spoiled little sister. We started going back to the creek at the end of May when the first rains came. Just a few weeks before, the creek bed was almost dried up; the spots where water used to pool now looked more like muddy puddles. After a few days of continuous rain, however, the creek started to flow again. Nothing attracts children like water: the shimmering relief of it, dark and languid beneath the surface, boisterous and frantic above. I liked to walk around the shallow portions and feel the cool water and the small, smooth pebbles under my bare feet while the boys raced paper boats or went swimming. Many times at the creek there would be other children, dark-skinned and gaunt, most of whom I had never seen before. They were the children of transients or new settlers who had come to live at the “tent community” on the undeveloped portions of the subdivision and who used the creek for bathing or for washing their clothes. It was drizzling the morning the incident happened, the tail end of a typhoon that battered the entire island of Luzon for almost a week. The wind had knocked down the power lines so there was no electricity in the neighborhood. My father forbade us from playing outside. The night before,

28 Short Story I just stayed at home playing with my sisters amid the steady hiss of our Coleman gas lantern while we rode out the worst of the storm. I awoke that morning and saw Celso waving at me excitedly from outside our wrought iron gate. I slipped out of my sleep clothes and put on a shirt and a pair of shorts and sneaked out of my room, careful not to wake my sisters, then out the back door. Celso held his umbrella for me and he began walking quickly in the direction of the creek, as I tried to keep pace with him. “Listen,” Celso said. “Manny and I … there’s something we found in the creek that we want you to see.” “What do you mean?” I asked. “Is Manny there right now?” Celso explained how he and Manny had been up very early picking up mangoes that had fallen from the trees during the storm the night before. “Manny had the idea of washing the mangoes in the creek since it was nearby,” Celso said as he helped me down the muddy, slippery trail that led down to the creek. “When we got down we saw something that looked like a bundle of rags washed up along the side. We walked up closer to see what it was.” By this time, Celso and I were already walking along the creek. In the distance, I could see Manny squatting over something. As we drew closer, I saw what it was and I screamed. It was the body of a small child, around three, four years old: a girl. She was probably playing in the creek the day before when she got caught in the current and drowned. Celso shushed me. “It’s alright, Luisa,” Celso said. “I just want to show it to you. So we can decide what to do with it together.” The body was face down in the mud. Manny stood and backed off so I could get a better view. Manny’s face looked very pale. I looked to the side, and I saw that he had already lost his breakfast. I trembled as I approached the body, and I started crying. “What are we going to do with it?” I asked Celso. “Celso said we should bury it,” Manny answered. “I already told Celso how crazy that was. Somebody’s going to be looking for this kid. If they find out …” “Shut up, Manny!” Celso shouted as he grabbed Manny by his shirt and shook him with his big, strong arms. Manny lost his balance and fell into the mud. “Celso,” I said through my tears. “I want to go home.”

Israfel Fagela 29 “You will, Luisa,” Celso said. “I just need you and Manny to help me with this one thing. Look, nobody’s died here at the creek before. Once people get wind of this our parents will never let us back here.” I was looking at Manny. He was sitting where he had fallen, hugging his knees and crying. Neither of us was convinced by Celso’s explanation but we went along with it anyway. Celso approached the dead body and knelt beside it. He turned it over and washed the mud and grit off its face. Then he started praying while swaying from side to side. It was a weird prayer that sounded foreign and vaguely Arabic, but I had the feeling it was all just gibberish, some kind of glossolalic chant he must have picked up from one of those spirit-possession movies. My heart jumped when he snapped out of it and looked right at me with his intense, deep-set eyes. Celso had been growing a mustache and, in his sleeveless shirt that showed his muscular arms as he sat in the light rain, he seemed like a full-grown man. “Will you help me, Luisa?” he asked. I nodded my head nervously. Celso turned his head to Manny and ordered him to get a fallen tree branch and dig a hole up at the embankment, behind the bushes. Manny, now dazed and emotionless, did as he was told. It took only a few minutes for Manny to dig out the loose, wet earth. Celso carried the body and gently lowered it into the hole. All three of us shoveled dirt over the body with our hands, our clothes drenched with rain and sweat. I was exhausted. We all sat around the grave we had made, silent and motionless. Celso made us promise not to tell anyone as he worked to conceal the grave by placing rocks and leaves over it and erasing our footprints. If somebody were to find out about it, he said he would know it was us. My parents and sisters were about to take their lunch when I got home. My mother was fuming mad to see me in my soiled, wet clothes especially after my father had specifically told me not to play outside. They had been looking for me all morning. I went to my room to change and while I was changing I could hear her and my father fighting about what to do with me. I decided I was not in the mood to eat and spent the day in bed. A week later, I was back in school. I kept myself busy with schoolwork, even taking up special classes in the afternoon to make the time pass faster. It was an exclusive private school and after that strange incident with Celso and Manny, I was glad to be hanging out with girls again, especially those my age. Months passed without me seeing Celso or Manny. I never returned

30 Short Story to the creek. The fact that the squatter problem in our subdivision worsened exponentially had something to do with it. Some of the new settlers had begun putting up their shanties near the creek. Not only were they using it to wash clothes and dishes—they had turned it into an all-purpose sewage system. For the most part I could not return because of what we had left there. But I discovered that I had a talent for keeping secrets, and the longer I held this particular secret the more distance I could create between it and me. The day after we buried the girl, a search party went around the creek and the wooded area of the subdivision to look for her. I peeked at them from our window, deathly afraid that they would make a sudden turn to our house bearing proof that I was somehow involved in her disappearance. But nothing happened. We had gotten away with it cleanly. Months later, my father had had enough of the squatter problem and we moved out of the subdivision. We held out for as long as we could, but all our old neighbors had already left so my father simply gave up and found a house for us in a private, gated community. The day we left I did not even bother saying goodbye to Celso and Manny. It was after we had settled into our new home that I first encountered the sense of reality “branching out” from that morning at the creek into two distinct versions. As certain as I was that the search party came up empty, that the disappearance was just chalked up to the usual suspects (such as the legend of the criminal syndicate in the area that kidnapped children, deformed them, and brought them to Manila to beg in the streets), I was experiencing, simultaneously and as a passive observer, an alternate life where the search party did find the body. Maybe the hole Manny dug was too shallow. Maybe the police used a scent-tracking dog which led them to the spot, I don’t know. What I do remember clearly is an image in my mind of a newspaper report about the police finding the dead girl and how it was suspected that other children living in the subdivision were responsible. In that other reality the trail of evidence would eventually lead to Manny (an article of clothing he had left in the hole he dug, I imagined) and he would have given up Celso and me. I remember, mostly, only vague details. I saw myself in a hospital somewhere or locked up in an old house, my hands and arms strapped to the bed. But that is not this reality. Here, I grew up like any normal teenager. I was sent to Manila to study. I took up accountancy in college and worked at a large accounting firm for

Israfel Fagela 31 a year before transferring to a shipping company. I met Greg there. He was the manager of our finance department. We got married, had three children. Greg asked me to quit my job and stay home to take care of our boys so I did. Sometimes I look back on the twenty plus years we have been married and I can honestly say that many of them had been happy and fulfilling. I admit that I was not always easy to deal with (especially with my “episodes”) and I’m lucky that Greg had always been very patient with me. So when the boys grew up, had their own lives, I let Greg alone to do whatever he wanted. He could play golf all day, keep a mistress, have children with another woman if he wanted to start his life over. I suppose he deserved as much. The “episodes” stopped when I was thirty-nine years old. Before that, I would have visions, on a more or less regular basis, of myself under some kind of hospice care, tended by strangers in white uniforms. The visions worsened and turned violent after I had children. I would sometimes be watching my sons sleep then see, in another world, myself pressing a pillow over a child’s face, smothering it, long enough until the writhing and the kicking stops. The horror of it was so much that I resorted to self-medicating with sedatives, just to fight off the anxiety that the violence and suffering I knew I was responsible for—that I knew I was capable of—would spill over into this life. Sometimes the visions would be of me, surrounded by doctors and other patients. I could smell the bleach on the white linen sheets, sense the bitter aftertaste of medicine in the back of my throat. It was another life, another world overlapping with the one I was occupying. I could only imagine the humiliation that Greg had to endure all these years, bringing me in and out of the hospital to see all sorts of specialists, all while we were trying to raise our sons. Then one day I awoke and knew for certain that my troubles were over. I lay down in bed night after night trying to bring it back, to conjure that other, terrifying world I had grown so accustomed to but I drew a blank. I realized that, in that other branch of that morning by the creek, I was dead at the age of thirty-nine. My youngest, Darren, had been a sickly baby and he almost died of pneumonia when he was three months old. By the doctors’ account, Darren’s heart stopped for a full minute before they were able to revive him. I felt Darren was special, that although he would never remember how it felt like to leave this world for another, he had been touched, like his mother. And so, of all my boys, I loved him the most.

32 Short Story I thought I could someday talk to Darren about the things I had seen, about what happened there at the creek, that he and I would come to some special understanding, but Darren grew up closer to Greg than to me. He loved sports and adored his older brothers. He goes to college now, and I only see him on Wednesdays when he comes home to have his laundry done. Then yesterday I see this thing on the news, about a man named Rodney Gulanan arrested for the murder of three people—two teenage boys and a woman in her twenties. The victims were found wrapped in plastic and buried in his backyard in Santa Fe, Nueva Vizcaya, where Gulanan was an incumbent municipal councilor. The only reason it made the news in Manila was that the killer happened to be a local politician. When they showed a photo of the man, the first thing I noticed was the scar on the right side of his face, faded but still quite prominent. His face was onscreen only for a few seconds but it was enough for me to get a clear sense of his face, his eyes. I knew it was Celso. So I change into my jeans, leave the house, and get on a bus to Vizcaya. I don’t know what I’m going to do exactly. The evening news said the police are expecting many more bodies to surface since Gulanan had admitted to killing at least fifteen more. The headlines today screamed “First Filipino Serial Killer Detained in NV Jail!” My initial plan had been to go there and pretend to be his lawyer just to gain access to him. I knew I would not be able to hold the charade for very long but I just wanted to be close to him for a few moments, just enough for me to look him in the eye and see that glint of recognition. Something happened that day in the creek, some mystery of time and space, some great horror unlocked. I need Celso to acknowledge his part in this. The bus stops at a canteen in Santa Fe where all the passengers get off the bus to have instant coffee and goto. I go down as well to stretch and use the toilet. The air is cold. I had slept most of the way, and it is only now that I notice we are on top of a mountain. I open my shoulder bag, fish out my shawl, and put it around my shoulders. The canteen is poorly lit. I see a little boy, around three years old (you get good at guessing children’s ages after you have three of your own) walking around, looking for his mother. I see that he is straying perilously close to the highway, oblivious to the trucks and buses making their way through the light fog. As I approach the boy, I realize I am a complete stranger here, that I have all the freedom to do anything I want. But that is another person in another world, and she is gone.

Israfel Fagela 33 White ANA MARGARITA R. NUÑEZ

hen the neighborhood children—brown, grubby, and insatiably Wcurious—peered into the casket, they gaped. Inside it was the most beautiful woman they had ever seen. According to popular rumor she was more than a hundred years old, and she was white, all marvelously white: Her lashes and her brows, her hair beneath a coronet of plastic pearls shining dully in contrast to the dead, paper-like skin, her handkerchief and rosary beads in hands clasped over the concave breast of a stiff lace terno. Years had pared away the flesh and fat, leaving her features reposing in the cleanest and sparest of lines. In contrast to her whiteness, and that of the freshly-painted and satin-lined casket, the whitewashed walls of the barangay chapel looked dingier than usual in the daytime. At night the lighted candles softened the tableau; the white casket and the woman inside were eerie but gorgeous. Then, the children cowered behind their mothers’ skirts as the grownups repeated time-worn prayers, peppered with Latin and half-sung by the neighborhood manalabtan. At around eight o’clock the manalabtan got off her knees and collected her wages for the day. The mourners dropped their long faces. Gas lanterns were lit for the benefit of the living, and the big wooden cross on the wall receded into the shadows. The women tucked their prayer books away and turned to one another to gossip; the old men gathered to pour the tuba, and the younger ones twisted the caps off Tanduay bottles. The first drops were tossed on the earth to appease the spirits. The children wandered out into the moonlight to play. It was the first time many of them, young or old, had seen Remedios Caliso up close. She was the stuff of nightmares and of fable, living in a wooden hut in the middle of a small lot overgrown with weeds. Dead center in that square-shaped plot, the dwelling was situated to be as far as possible from the borders that marked where other people’s lives began. There was no fence except a half-hearted length of chicken wire attached to worm-eaten

34 planks, but the grass grew so high on the old woman’s land that it discouraged even the most adventurous of the young ones. Mothers hushed crying babies and exacted obedience from wayward brats with the threat: “If you don’t do as I say, the old woman will get you! The old woman with the white hair will take you to her house and tie you up like she tied up her own children!” If the mother in question was particularly inventive, she might add, “She will cook you and feed you to her dog,” or “She will make soup out of your bones.” All the powers of witchcraft were ascribed to the crone, and there was some truth—very little, but some—to them: She did have children, and she did keep them tied up. A boy who had ventured close to the hut in search of a lost ball claimed that he had come face to face with a sad, gaunt creature fastened by a chain to a house post, but that he had been chased away by a dog before he could investigate further. He had been discredited by his playmates because he could not tell them if it had been a male or a female, even as he protested that he had been so scared he never noticed. Level-headed grownups could attest that a sour-faced man who looked to be in his seventies and called himself her son did venture out of the house on a regular basis to do the marketing. Now and then, he was spotted making repairs or making a bonfire out of trash and fallen leaves. The woman herself never went out to speak to the neighbors, accompany her son, or even go to church. She was so ancient that it was a wonder any one knew her name, that anyone remembered it so as to write it down on a mass card or tomb-stone. And even then it could have taken many forms—Remidios, Remedyos, Kaliso, Kaleso, Calisu—for she had been born in the faraway days before the war, when memory was more powerful than writing, in that idyllic period called Peace Time. For those who live in our less optimistically named era, there is no remembering, or record of remembering beyond that time, which exists in the consciousness like a drawn-out pastoral. Remedios had been born in a Golden Age, when the wealthy were beautiful and kind, when men were brave and strong and the women tender and lovely. Children grew up in the fear of the Lord, and all the land was governed by wise white men and, closer to home, the most gifted of the feudal elite. During Peace Time, the farmers worked hard and the earth was bountiful. The Maranaos lived beside the Lake and fought among themselves, brandishing their picturesque krises. Down in the plains, the young men sang serenades and the girls were chaste; they loved and courted beneath the soft light of the moon. In this era Remedios grew up strong and vigorous and healthy. An orphan, she lived in the house of a prosperous widowed aunt with a daughter

Ana Margarita R. Nuñez 35 the same age as Remedios. There was nothing exceptional about her. She was, to all appearances, a perfect specimen of a girl who navigated her position as a poor relation with relative ease. Upon leaving school at the age of twelve, she could read and write, but she could also sew a straight seam and boil a perfect pot of fluffy white rice. Clean and wholesome, she had a gift for keeping everything about her person—including any rooms, closets, or linens under her care—neat and tidy. Her slim, strong hands were forever patting, pushing, or pulling things into place: a stray lock of hair, a book on a shelf, the window curtains. At eighteen years old, burdened with the responsibilities of a glorified yet unpaid housemaid, she earned a small income of her own peddling snacks in a discreet fashion to the neighbors. She made the native cakes called biko to sell every afternoon, molding the sweet, sticky rice into neat little disks with the help of a metal jar lid, arranging them on their little banana-leaf wrappings and placing them in faultless, concentric rows in her basket. Her inner landscape was equally tidy, or so it seemed. There was a self-sufficiency about her, an air of having all that she needed. Even in those fabled days, the rain did not fall but it poured. One afternoon Remedios was walking home without an umbrella, with nothing but a basket on her arm when the sky quickly grew dark; lightning crackled and thunder rolled, sonorous across the heavens. Rain fell in large, fat, warm drops, threatening to soak her as she ran for the shelter of a large mango tree. It was a monster of a tree, with a thick trunk that a man could just barely encompass. It wore its crown low. Remedios felt safe beneath the dense foliage. With her back close to the trunk, she could almost stay dry, as long as the thunderstorm did not last. The air was warm, heavy with moisture; she edged around the circumference of the tree, her feet feeling their way across the large roots. She made a misstep, and nearly fell to her knees. Clawing at the bark for support, Remedios found herself halfway on the other side of the tree and discovered that she was not alone. Behind the tree stood Carlos De Asis, who also had sought shelter from the rain. Carlos was handsome, and he was rich. At twenty-three, he had the face of an angel. Remedios thought she had never seen anyone, male or female, so utterly beautiful. He looked like the statue of the patron, Senor San Miguel, in the Cathedral: He had curly brown hair worn long, rosy cheeks, an effeminate mouth with Cupid’s-bow lips, a short, high-bridged nose. He wore a light summer suit of linen, which at the moment was marked in damp spots by the rain. He only looked at her in surprise. At precisely this moment,

36 Short Story Remedios’s lifelong calm deserted her. She gave him a curt, almost uncivil nod, and hurried out of the shelter of the tree and into the rain. She tramped home, the merciless mud sucking at each step and threatening to pull the slippers off her feet each time she tried to put one in front of the other. The effort made her calves ache. The road seemed long, and it was all the more annoying because she felt she absolutely had to be alone. She had to be alone at once. At the doorstep of her aunt’s house, she left the slippers behind and entered barefoot, hurrying to the small, curtained space beside the kitchen that served as her room. There was a mirror there. Remedios picked it up and peered into it. What did she see? A face dull, and damp, and broad by comparison—the cheekbones were square, and the nose was unremarkable. The mouth was full of white, healthy teeth, but the eyes were native eyes, bright and black and lacking the honeyed light of a mestiza’s. A melancholy mood fell upon her, and she thought, “This is what it means to be in love.” And the worst part of this melancholy was that it did not allow her to be still. She lay awake that night, and for several nights thereafter, thinking of angels with porcelain skin and marble bodies. At intervals she did consciously allow the angels to become Carlos De Asis, but not for very long because she felt that she might go mad. And as all this happened very long ago, it was Remedios’s misfortune that there were as yet thousands rather than tens of thousands of people in her town. The number of well-born, eligible young men, for instance, could be counted on a girl’s fingers and toes. The number of unmarried society belles was correspondingly low, and her cousin Deling was one of them. Deling was only a year older than Remedios—barely twenty—and she was extremely pretty. She was dainty, her skin was light, and her eyebrows were shaped like the wings of a bird in flight. Taking the odds into account, it was only a matter of time before young Mr. De Asis came visiting. In American fashion Deling and Carlos were allowed to be alone together in the living room, although Remedios’s aunt was always within earshot in the adjacent room. It was Remedios who swept the floor, plumped the sofa cushions, and set out the ashtrays and the cups of coffee for the guest’s arrival. She came to the sala even before Deling did, and she was the last to leave “the lovebirds” when the visit began. She left with the opening lines of flirtation ringing in her ears. She knew their pet names: Carlos’s resemblance to St.

Ana Margarita R. Nuñez 37 Michael was not lost on Deling, and she called him Patron. He called her the Princess of Light, which was actually a play on Lucifer, who before his Fall and subsequent defeat by the heavenly hosts was so glorious that he was called the “Prince of Light.” Deling rather delighted in her impish role. Clearly, the question was not if, but when, the Patron would complete his conquest and make all the heavens rejoice. On the nights Carlos came to visit, Remedios sat in the kitchen preparing wrapping for the next day’s biko. She passed the broad, dark green banana leaves over a candle flame until they toughened and acquired the requisite sheen, then cut them into little squares with a pair of scissors. The repetitive work used to be a soothing end to a busy day, but there seemed to be no soothing her now. She thought of the lovers with their hands intertwined, Carlos’s rosy lips on Deling’s graceful neck. It was not fair, she thought, that for her there would be only this. Sturdy and serviceable, broad and neat, there would be no handsome archangel for her. Only a lifetime of peddling biko, keeping house, or, God forbid, playing nursemaid to their children. Little golden cherubs, boys and girls. How many would there be? Ah! Remedios was not a stranger to the ways of life. She had seen cattle and horses in the fields, field hands and their sweethearts behind bushes, and oh, as a child, her own parents loving each other on the mat adjacent to hers. If Carlos were mine, she thought, I would make with him six, no, eight, ten children, and I would not be satisfied. She was in such agony that one night she deliberately walked into the sala while Carlos was visiting. The pair guiltily sprang apart, leaving the required space between them “for the Holy Spirit to pass through” that decorum demanded. Deling was surprised, but not unduly concerned. “Oh Remedios!” she exclaimed, “I did not call for you yet.” “I’m sorry; I thought I heard you calling,” Remedios said. Deling turned to her suitor. “Remedios here is a distant cousin of mine.” Carlos nodded, but did not rise or extend his hand. “She makes the most delicious biko,” Deling continued. “Someday she must allow us to taste some,” he murmured politely. Of course, he did not even glance at her. It was not remarkable that he should not have met her eyes, though Remedios felt betrayed. But what did she expect? Should he have said, I saw her once, under a mango tree, one afternoon when it rained? There was a chance he did not even remember.

38 Short Story Remedios vowed then that he should remember her. Among the neighbors who bought her wares was an old wise woman, the local hilot who dispensed herbal medicine to those who were sick. She brewed teas for women who missed their monthlies, and taught distraught mothers which leaves to plaster on the backs and chests of children with chronic coughs. Remedios liked her; her home was small and impeccably clean. It was a two-storey wooden house with jar-lined shelves and an altar that was always fragrant with flowers and burning incense and candles. For a fee, one could buy from her dry grass and a pinch of incense to burn in a coconut shell to purify a haunted house, or to dispel bad vapors brought about by the occasional buyag that one incurred from displeased elementals. The next time Remedios came with her basket, the hilot inquired after her health. “You do not look well,” the old woman said. “You are always so healthy. But now you look like you do not sleep. Fever? Bad dreams?” “No, Manang. Not bad ones.” “There is only one other kind of dream that makes a girl look like you do.” Remedios sat on the floor, Indian-fashion, her basket in her lap. “Can you help me?” “You girls know all the charms I know, and probably some I do not know. Write his name on a piece of paper and stick it on a white candle, and burn it while you think of him. Light pink candles in church. Take a basin and fill it with water and pink rose petals, and keep it under your bed while you sleep. Then you will dream of him.” “I do not need more dreams! I don’t want dreams. I want him for real.” “In your bed, for real?” the hilot asked, a naughty glint in her eyes. “You girls know how to do that too.” “But I do not know, Manang.” “Yes you do! Paint your face, brush against him, touch his arm, walk with him in the dark.” “I can’t.” “If you can’t manage that, girl, then you don’t deserve him.” “The man is Carlos De Asis, and he is engaged to my cousin Deling. I need a charm to make him love me—a real one.”

Ana Margarita R. Nuñez 39 “Oh, you aim high. Do you really want him badly? Because, as I keep telling you young people, there is no power on Earth or even heaven to make someone love you.” “But there are charms to bring a man to you, and charms to keep him.” “To bring him and keep him, yes.” “Then give me one of them.” “I have a very simple one. Just take a little of your, you know, womanly juices,” said the hilot, gesturing toward the part of her body that Remedios had covered with the basket of cakes. “Then find a way for him to swallow them. Mix them in his food, in his cerveza or his Coca-Cola.” Remedios blushed. “But how do I get them?” The old woman laughed. “Now, if you can’t do that, you have no business having a man in your bed at all. And,” she added, “if you do this, do not tell anyone about it.”

That night Remedios came to know for the first time the difficulty of being truly a woman. That is, of mingling sex with clinical, even scientific intent—a woman must frequently plan and count and measure even as she goes through the bodily rituals of love. She tried to sort the problem out. How was she to collect the juices of her desire, enough of them to fill a small container and even add, like an ingredient, to food? How did they taste and smell? Would the food or drink have to mask their presence—or was their savor the magic of the charm? Could she collect them all at once, or make several tries? Did they need to be fresh, or would they keep? Was the power in the idea and intent of the thing, or in its actual, physical composition? Was she to add them before or after cooking the food? Sugar, for instance, and caramel, were quite different. Raw sugar was sweet, but it was the toasted nature of caramel that made it heavenly. Would the juices then be transfigured by heat, or destroyed? In the end, practicality determined the method as it so often does. To cook an entire batch of biko with the extra ingredient would be wasteful, as she could not sell the rest and have the entire neighborhood lusting after her in case the charm did work. To cook a single serving was impossible. She would have to add it last, and only to Carlos’s portion. Remedios began her preparations by obtaining a receptacle. A small, clean glass jar was necessary. She had heard somewhere that implements used

40 Short Story in magic had to be cleansed in oil by the light of the moon. Coconut oil was good, preferably if an incantation had been said over it. In any case, coconut oil would not hurt because the food she planned to use was cooked in coconut cream already. She was not a witch, really, so for an incantation she only said Carlos’s name over and over as she anointed the jar inside and outside with the oil. Next she took and anointed a small silver spoon and a cloth to position under her hips. Her habit of tidiness suggested it was necessary. The next step was to create and collect the secretions. To do this, she had to slip at will into the realm of wakeful dream. There were two opportunities in a day to do so: at noon, after the midday meal when it was hot and humid. Remedios found the latter ideal, if only because the heat allowed her to be both aroused and wakeful enough to complete the experiment. She tried several ways to bring herself into the necessary state. At first, like a girl-child, she would squeeze her thighs tightly together to stimulate herself as she summoned beautiful visions: the glorious archangel with a flaming sword in his hand descending upon her, triumphant. The effort tired her out; she sweated and occasionally got cramps in her legs. Very little liquid was produced this way. Then, she tried the opposite: the angel with his limbs bound by strong ropes to the earth as his wings beating the air in futile efforts to escape. In these dreams she herself took a sword to cut him free. But it was only when, in the languorous aftermath of one such attempt, she used her hands upon herself that she met with sufficient success. This time, she found herself in mortal struggle with the angel. Her fingers dug into his white flesh; he fought her off and pinned her to the earth. Then she felt almost as if she could not breathe, and the liquid poured from her. She caught some of it in the palm of one hand, some of it trickling through her fingers, almost as though to elude her. There was nothing else for it then. She rose and went into the kitchen. With her damp hand, she took a handful of sticky brown rice and squeezed it, mingling the salt of her body with the soft grains and the sweet, syrupy oil. When she served two saucers of biko to the lovers in the sala that night, she pressed a small indentation in this portion intended for Carlos to help her tell it apart from the other. Deling giggled when she received her rice cake. “Thank you. You’re sure these are still good, Remedios? They’re not leftovers? We can’t feed the Patron something that’s been riding around in your basket all afternoon,” she said.

Ana Margarita R. Nuñez 41 “Oh no,” Remedios said. “I set these aside earlier and covered them with banana leaves. They’re fresh still.” The biko was moist and tempting, gleaming with coconut oil and brown sugar. It was very dark and very sweet. Remedios had not stinted as she made it. She watched with her heart beating fast as Carlos took a bite, and then another, nodding with approval. Would he suddenly turn to her with eyes of love? Perhaps he would turn suddenly brusque toward Deling and cut the visit short. But nothing happened. It became awkward when she stayed a few seconds too long watching the pair eat. She retreated to the kitchen. As a matter of fact, nothing happened for a very long time. Carlos and Deling were engaged, then married. A photograph was taken of them on their wedding day that survived the vicissitudes of the war and martial law eras, remaining in a place of honor on the walls of the handsome home that Carlos eventually inherited from his parents. It was a lovely, though typical image: their faces were serious as befitted the momentous occasion and the strain of staying still through the rather lengthy film exposure that the cameras of the time required. The bride was as pretty as the flowers she wore in her hair, and the groom’s patrician features and bearing were evident. During the betrothal and the festivities that followed, Remedios was only thankful that no one knew what she had done, or tried to do. She wondered whether the secrecy to which those who cast spells are enjoined is meant to ensure the efficacy of the magic, or merely to prevent them from looking like fools. But after all, there was some power to the old hilot’s charm. The couple returned from their honeymoon and took over Deling’s girlhood home; her mother was only too glad to have her son-in-law play the role of “the man of the house.” When Deling, who was a modern girl, fell pregnant, she had a medical doctor, not a hilot or a midwife, to consult. And while all the old wives knew that a healthy woman could safely continue with her conjugal relations, the doctor deemed it necessary to prescribe abstinence. So Deling fanned herself restlessly in the hot afternoons and slept fitfully at night, while Carlos was left to his own devices to look for a way to soothe his nerves. One night, he went to the kitchen where Remedios still slept in the little room behind a drawn curtain. The sound of someone stirring in the kitchen woke her; she pulled the curtain back and saw the man outside. She wore nothing but a chemise and a tapis, and Carlos went to her.

42 Short Story She was surprised at how indolent the man was once in her bed. The bamboo lantay creaked when they sat on it together, so Remedios quickly spread a blanket on the floor and pulled him down on top of her. His skin seemed to glow in the faint light from the window. She felt like a thief in the night, poised to steal the ivory head and hands of a revered idol. The thrill that rose in her blood, however, was tempered by the man’s stillness. Was he waiting, she wondered, to be worshipped? It was awkward, to be lying beneath him yet feeling as though it was she who had to act. She remained unmoving. He passed his hand tentatively over her shoulders and her breasts, then stopped. At this point, Remedios screwed up her courage, gently pushing him off and changing places so that she was on top. From above, his beauty was even more of a marvel to her. His body was pale and lovely in the shadows, and it was a miracle that it should be joined, fine as it was, to her dark and fleshy form. Her thighs were cumbersome things as they straddled him, but they were powerful, with a power that came from the heart that thudded in her breast. She was strong enough to steel herself, then to impale herself upon him. Carlos sighed, his absorption and his pleasure sealed within him. Later, when he left her aching and warm, she felt that perhaps, that was her deserved lot. Remedios’s child was born, then, half a year after Deling’s. No one had any idea who the father was, and Remedios calmly refused to divulge her secret. It was a quiet little girl with large eyes and pasty skin. It hardly ever cried. Remedios called her “Segunda” without explaining who or what it was the second to, and nursed it herself. This was no mean feat. Segunda was a stupid baby who did not know how to take her own nourishment. The mother’s breasts were painful and full, leaking milk and staining her blouses. Yet the little one would not latch properly. She either clamped down hard and drew blood or nuzzled ineffectually at the tips of her large brown nipples without relieving Remedios’s pain. There were many sleepless, lonely nights for her that she bore like a Spartan, living one day after another because there was no other alternative. At two years old Segunda still would not speak. Her body was strong enough, but she had a vacant gaze. Remedios waited in vain to hear herself called “Mama,” and be rewarded for her pains, but that day never came. Instead, one day the child threw the household into an uproar by biting Deling’s boy—a cherub as predicted, and everyone’s darling—hard enough to draw blood. Remedios’s aunt was horrified. Carlos then suggested kindly that

Ana Margarita R. Nuñez 43 mother and child could be housed in a hut on one of his father’s properties on the other side of town. There, the fierce, odd little Segunda would be kept out of the way while Remedios could play the role of caretaker and even supplement her income by keeping a garden or continuing to peddle her rice cakes as she wished. It was an equitable arrangement. In the course of five years Deling became pregnant two more times, and so did Remedios in her exile. The one- to-one correspondence might have been remarkable to anyone who bothered to count the weeks and the months. Presumably Deling and her mother did. Perhaps they even spoke about it to each other. But it was hardly a reason to lose composure, not when Deling was still so lovely, Carlos still so rich, and their children the picture of happiness and well-being. From Deling’s perspective, perhaps, the panorama of life was so wide that it could scarcely be marred by the ripples of her husband’s unproven indiscretions. It was rather different for Remedios, whose daughter Segunda did not improve with age. The girl never learned to talk. At first she was only angry and sullen, but with time it became apparent that she was an idiot. Remedios was caught in a period that unbearably lengthened the travails of early motherhood. All her children, it turned out, were idiots. Her days were spent washing and feeding for her helpless brood. Fortunately only Segunda was difficult and sullen; the other two, still girls, were more tractable. They were stupid but gentle, laughing and babbling to themselves, willing to be left on the bed or on the floor while she did her chores. For safety, she tied them up or penned them in a wooden crib while she sold vegetables and biko in the neighborhood. She took the moody Segunda with her, and the sour little child managed to arouse pity for her mother so that the neighbors kindly patronized Remedios’s wares and allowed her to make a simple living. Remedios attributed the relatively sweet temper of her two other children to the manner in which they had been conceived. Having become more accepting of Carlos’s laziness, she had learned to appease her desires by unquestioningly taking the lead when he came to her. She kissed his red lips and cheeks, his hands and his feet, submitting to the now oddly humiliating role of climbing on top of him and doing all the hard work to bring them both to fulfillment. Yet, all idylls must come to an end, even the one that their town—nay, the entire country—enjoyed with its white masters. One day in May 1942, the most ordinary of days, Carlos came to her. It was quite early in the morning, at the time when the dew on the grass was all but dry. The sun

44 Short Story had crept into the windows of her hut, and the air was warm. The sleepy vapors of the night were beginning to grow stale. Remedios led Carlos to the inner room where her children were sleeping in a row on a single mat on the floor, their legs tangled in the blankets. In this state it was almost impossible to tell that they were different from other children. Their bodies were well- formed. The two oldest had lost the plumpness of babyhood, and stretched out as they were, it was possible to see how long their limbs had become. Anyone would have thought them almost beautiful in their sleep. With the petty, unreasonable passions of the waking hours erased temporarily from their faces, it was possible to appreciate the way the shadows of their lashes fell upon their cheeks and the perfection of their small, half-open mouths, exquisite as the mouths of all children who have yet to lose their baby teeth. Carlos sat wearily down on the bed, his eyes on the sleepers. “And these ones also, even these I will have to take care of,” he sighed. “I am taking good care of them,” said Remedios, wondering at this sudden mood. Man-like, he had not bothered himself too much about her children. When they were born he was never there. When he saw them a few weeks later, he would be too afraid to pick them up lest he hurt them, and by the time they were older and less fragile he was afraid that they would make a mess on his clothes. “But did you know, Remedios, that war is coming to us? The Americans have left. We will wake up one day to find the Japanese on our doorsteps.” Remedios had heard talk of war, but it had seemed unreal to her, so preoccupied was she with getting through the days that were so full of the work she had to do. War was guns and marching men, and it had nothing to do with her tomato plants and the vines of squash and okra, with the pail full of soiled diapers soaking in soapy water that she had to scrub and rinse and hang out to dry before the midday meal. “Well, perhaps not on your doorstep,” Carlos continued, “but maybe on mine. I am afraid. I am afraid of what happens in war to men like me. There are so many who depend on me. I have a wife and children, a big house, and enough money to attract attention. Remedios, what should I do?” “Do what I do. You see how I have lived all these years. Be quiet, keep your head down, and don’t make any trouble.” “I, make trouble! I have never made any trouble for anyone. But now the trouble will come to me.”

Ana Margarita R. Nuñez 45 Remedios looked at him and saw him as he was then: in the bright daylight his face was so young and so anxious. The forearms, on which some light brown hair curled, were so slight. Her own were more muscular and sturdy. His thin-skinned hands had never wielded a weapon. Why, the strong soap she used with her laundry would probably make them scratch and bleed. Suddenly she was thankful for the distance that had always separated them. “Listen, Carlos. Years ago I fell in love with you. But you had eyes only for Deling. I watched the two of you together—all the time—and I realized if I did not want things to be done to me, I had to do something myself. I went to the hilot and asked her to for a charm, and I used it on you.” “Remedios!” he exclaimed. “Those things are not real.” “Aren’t they? But you came to me. Don’t worry though. Now that I have told you about it, it is not a secret anymore. It is broken.” “Is it really broken now?” Carlos asked sadly. “Don’t you want to try and see?” They came together again, but now it was he who was the supplicant, clinging to her flesh, moving slowly and deliberately. Remedios lay in bed obligingly enough, still generous with the offer of her body but not with her will. Her mind wandered beyond the hot room filled with the exhalations of five human beings, beyond the confines of the cottage and to the mansion where he would return: that mansion that seemed in contrast so dim and vast and cool. And beyond its walls, beyond the narrow streets of the town, there were forests and fields and the infinite sky.

For Remedios, it was the last time she would ever be with a man. Another child was born, a boy this time, but Carlos never saw it. After he left her, he had entrusted his family to relatives in the Japanese-occupied city and gone into the mountains with the guerillas. Maybe his hands had grown hard and callused there, maybe steel had finally entered his soul. Remedios did not know. She heard that he had been killed during an air raid. When the Japanese planes droned overhead, the people in the countryside left the open fields and hid themselves in makeshift underground shelters or in the forests. Carlos and three other men had found themselves in a clearing, and had hidden under a big acacia tree. A bomb had dropped squarely on the tree. When it exploded, he and his companions had been blown sky-high. Body parts had rained down on the ground. Later, the legs, arms, trunks, and severed heads had been hastily buried in a common grave.

46 Short Story The boy was the only one of Remedios’s children who turned out to be fully human. He grew up strong, like his mother, with a dogged sense of duty, yet always half-resentful that his mother never told him a true word about his father. Sometimes she told him that the man had drowned in a bowl of soup; occasionally, she said that one day he had just forgotten to breathe. There were times when the boy thought she was as crazy as her idiot daughters. It was with his help that Remedios lived out the many years of her life in the madhouse of her own making. She stayed brown and sturdy through her middle years, seeming ageless until she suddenly began to shrivel and turn arthritic in her sixtieth year. And yet she lived on, and time worked its magic: the thick flesh was pared from her cheeks, the unrelenting blackness of her eyes turned light and bluish as cataracts filmed them over. Unable to walk properly, she stayed indoors until her skin lightened from lack of the sun and collapsed into a thousand little wrinkles, and the color in her hair washed out from its roots. In the end she was purified, cleansed of the offending earth tones that colored her human clay, taking on the whiteness of a graven image fashioned of ivory, wax, and pearl.

Ana Margarita R. Nuñez 47 Wash and Wear JENETTE ETHEL N. VIZCOCHO

very morning as she rushes out of her apartment at Adriatico corner ENakpil, he is there, holding a cab door open, always a nice, new car model, from a reputable taxi franchise. When she has a lot of things with her, he helps her stow these into the back seat, shutting the door for her, but not before telling the cab driver to drop her off at Ninoy Aquino International Airport, to pass through Macapagal and not Coastal Road, the traffic buildup already horrible even without the recent repaving of Roxas Boulevard. He would mouth, ingat, Samantha, through the window and smile, gesturing for her to check the locks. She used to wonder how he knew these small details about her, but then realized her ID and blazer bore the logo of the Bureau of Customs. Now when he helps her in or out of cabs, she barely acknowledges him, settling into her seat and adjusting the volume of her headphones, or catching up on her mail and messages. For a taxi and jeepney barker, he never asked her for a tip, seemingly happy to just hang out and talk with the taxi drivers waiting in line for the next passenger. Sometimes at night, when she arrived from work, she would see him from the corner of her eye, incessantly waving as she climbed up the steps to her apartment lobby. But he is there the next day, polite and smiling, a taxi waiting for her. Every other Wednesday, Samantha would be seen lugging a huge bag of clothes. Sometimes the barker would carry the load for her. She would step into the waiting cab, instructing the driver to double back toward Remedios Circle and make for Malvar, where Wash And Wear Laundry is. She had been sending her laundry there for three years now, and the girl working the counter already knew her, knew the specifics of her laundry; gentle wash and drip dry for her blouses and dresses, no fabric softener for her gym clothes, her jeans and slacks to be washed inside out, her underwear to be placed in the lingerie laundry bag she provided. She liked their service, liked the smell of their detergent, never had any clothes mixed in with hers, never

48 had clothes come back with stains, snags, or tears. Once she phoned the laundromat when she thought they had misplaced her new skirt, and she was read a detailed list of items she had sent to be laundered, the number of clothing, the sizes and labels of each piece. She felt mortified when later that night, she found the slippery silk knee-length skirt wedged between her bed and the wall. At the counter of Wash And Wear Laundromat sits Josie, who after announcing to her mother that she had flunked out of college, was told to either go back to school or start working for a living. Josie didn’t mind her job at all. Most of the time clothes were sent for pick up and delivery, and she rarely had to stand up from her perch, only had to count out change or list down items on the receipts. She loved to watch cars pass by, wondering who was driving the black Escalade, and why so heavily tinted, musing which bar it would make a stop at, who, what gender, and how many people were going for a short ride to the nearest motel. She had her noontime soaps, the horoscope book she faithfully read, and when all else failed, her Facebook profile that she refreshed every minute, counting just how many likes she received for her newly uploaded bikini photo, or what people thought of her latest love quote, her newest post musing on who so-and-so’s baby daddy was. The delivery boys, Matt and Dave, she knew, were desperately in love with her. She barely spoke to or mingled with them, but every morning, she would douse herself in cologne, would choose among her skimpiest shorts and low cut blouses, line her lids heavily with dark blue eyeliner. She enjoyed watching them squirm whenever she would call out to them to come out from the back room where they were always busy unloading, washing, folding, and sealing warm, freshly-laundered clothes into thin plastic bags. Ma’am, they would address her, even though she couldn’t be more than four years older than either of them. She would send them out on pick-ups and deliveries, would ask them to buy her a banana cue, or a Coke litro, not even the slightest bit ashamed to get Dave, the cuter of the two, to run out for some sanitary napkins when she realized she had gotten her period once. Not batting an eyelash as she handed him her soiled jean skirt and lace underwear, having tucked her shirt into some customer’s towel she had wrapped around her waist, ordering him to include her clothing in someone else’s load of washing, who’s gonna find out, anyway? She would dismiss them with a nod of her head and turn back to whatever she busied herself with. Dave had sent her a Facebook request over six months ago, but she didn’t plan on ever accepting it.

Jenette Ethel N. Vizcocho 49 Samantha, she referred to as 14F Adriatico Heights. 14F with the mint- colored cigarette pants, wash inside out. 14F with the delicate silk blouse with pearl buttons. Please hand wash, drip dry. Real pearls, too, she knew, because she once ran a button against her teeth, felt the grittiness in texture that manufactured pearls never could duplicate. 14F with the Nike hot pink, moisture-wick sports bra and matching black, slim-fit leggings with a hot pink band running down the side. No fabric softener, please. 14F with a 25-inch waistline, the Marks and Spencer B cup bras with matching panties, wash in bag. 14F with the very same Forever 21 Aztec dress she saw Anne Curtis wearing in last month’s Preview magazine. Gentle cycle. Once, when 14F’s clothes were ready for delivery, Josie spied the dress at the top of the pile, newly pressed, neatly folded. She asked Dave to go out and buy more detergent before he made his deliveries, we’re running low on soap, do it now! She snatched the dress and stuffed it into her bag, yelling at Matt to man the counter for a while. Squeezed inside the small bathroom of the laundry mat, she removed her clothes and threw the dress over her head, smiling at herself, not caring that the XS dress pinched a little at the armpits, or that it stretched at the chest, making the breasts she was so proud of appear to have morphed into one odd lump. She had a date at Malate that night, a guy she met online who agreed to take her dancing at Coco Bananas. She decided to hold onto the dress for a while, knowing that 14F had so many clothes she would hardly miss one, knowing she could slip it back into her next batch of laundry. Samantha’s view was something to be desired. When the ad for her apartment came out, it mentioned a spacious balcony with a view of the Manila Bay. In reality, the balcony was a small space of about two-by-five feet, receiving barely enough sun for the small herb garden she was once ambitious enough to think she could sustain. She did have some view of the bay, if she moved to the right-most corner and peered around the side of her building. What she had full view of, instead, was the five-floor covered parking lot of the mall located in front of her building. The spiraling driveway was always busy with family vans and pickup trucks and sports cars wheeling in and out of the mall. On the top floor was a row of heavy-duty central air conditioners, the rusted blades constantly whirring during mall hours, a pool of water gathering at the base of each leaking unit, the cement mossy from the constant dampness. Two cylindrical water tanks propped up on steel legs were adjacent to these, some rope, bags of cement, and plastic tubes littered beneath. Pigeons were a common sight, swooping in and out, pecking at

50 Short Story the cement floor, and roosting under a couple of rotten boards during the hot midday hours. One morning, as Samantha was having coffee, her eye was drawn to smoke rising from some charred wood set at one corner of the parking lot, realizing that what she had thought was a pile of junk was actually an outdoor kitchen. She peered closer and saw among the clutter a rope hammock strung beneath one of the water tanks, a man in a sando and shorts reclined within. He would stand up and trudge toward the kitchen to lift lids and stir, pour himself a drink, and shoo some of the more stubborn birds away. Samantha ducked down when she felt eyes staring up at her, realizing that he had noticed her watching him. Josie loved it when all eyes were on her as she danced. Mike, who remained seated nursing a Red Horse, was all right, she guessed. She had met him at the I Love The Philippines Facebook group. His profile picture showed a clean-shaven blonde standing in front of a tall building. When they met up at Coco Bananas, she barely recognized him. He was one of those backpacker types who traveled ten months of the year, sunburned from going around most of Southeast Asia, his hair and beard overgrown and unkempt. He talked about his trip through Cambodia, Vietnam, and Thailand, telling her about the people he met and the places he visited, how he avoided the tourist traps because, that’s just not real traveling, man. He was a carpenter back in the States, and once he found out he could save his wages for a couple of months and afford to tour Asia, packed his belongings into his 32-liter Northface Yavapai and set off. Around his wrist he wore a thick stack of cord, beads, and shells he had gathered from locals and fellow-backpackers. He handed her a pink bracelet he had made, thinking especially of her, said the bright pink with the hints of orange and yellow somehow matched her aura, told her how he learned to weave thread and waxen fiber into souvenir necklaces, bracelets, and anklets at Vietnam, selling them once in a while when he ran out of money. She tuned out most of their conversation, never really caring about how he helped build an elementary school made entirely out of natural resources in Malaysia, or how he had a mushroom trip that lasted for three days wherein he locked himself up in his cheap motel room thinking that he was talking a remorseful Saddam Hussein into surrendering to the American troops, or how he was now here in the Philippines because he planned on volunteering at rebuilding homes in Leyte or Tacloban, I dunno, man, wherever I’m most needed.

Jenette Ethel N. Vizcocho 51 When she sat back down at their table, out of breath and sweating profusely through the polyester of her Aztec dress, he asked her if she wanted to go to this beach he had read about, he was set to go in a few days. Boracay, she asked, her voice rising in excitement. No, man, I don’t like the scene there. My friend went there last year and has stayed ever since. He met this chick who lives there and, basically, let’s just say she’s holding his money hostage now. No offense meant to you and your race, I really think you’re all lovely people! She rolled her eyes as he told her of this virgin island that you had to travel two hours via boat from Batangas Pier to get to its city proper, after which a four-hour van ride would take you to the southernmost tip of the province, where another forty-five minute ride in a boat so small it gets swallowed up by the waves finally took you to the island. How there were no hotels, just cottages, a couple of hammocks and tents for rent. How you could line fish for your meals. How the corals were rich with marine life. How sometimes you could spend a week there and hardly run into another human being. I dig that, peace and quiet. I like the idea of catching your own food, you know, realizing you have everything you need, Adam and Eve style! She agreed to go with him, thinking he was lucky he was kind of cute, that he didn’t smell too awful, that she realized she liked his facial hair, how he made Matt and Dave look like such virgins. And he kept paying for her beer, liked to watch her dance, told her she looked great. She set aside any misgivings and thoughts of how much of a snooze-fest the weekend would be, without any bars or parties or music, hoping 14F or some other customer had a bikini amongst their stash that she could borrow, something with an animal print, perhaps. The guy at 14H moved in a few months ago. Once, while riding the elevator, he turned to her and smiled, having turned away before she had the chance to smile back. She noticed that he would be waiting for the elevator at almost the same time as her every morning, an umbrella in one hand and his bag and jacket in another, things always with him regardless of the weather. He would say hi or good morning, a stilted conversation worth fourteen flights down carried out over a series of rides. What’s your name? Samantha. Ben. His hand was warm when he shook hers. You’re with the customs bureau, after he spied her ID. Yes. Any contraband shit come through your way? Mostly, no. Bagoong. Some plants. Some rare shells. Once we had to confiscate three tubs of homemade ube jam, because it was too dense for the X-ray. Cool! My workmates fought over who would bring the ube home.

52 Short Story He would usually ask the questions, and she would answer them, curious about him but never gathering the courage to ask. She noticed he wore a company lanyard and realized he worked for Unilever. His umbrella was black and beaten up, the faded letters spelling Subic Clark Bay barely visible, causing her to wonder if he lived there at one point, or if he just visited, or if it was a gift from someone from there. She noticed, once, that his right foot was bound in micropore tape when the back of his pants leg hitched up as he picked up his bag, and she wondered if he got injured while playing basketball. If he liked sports. She didn’t know why she couldn’t just ask questions, how he could do so casually when everything she wanted to say seemed to get caught in her throat. One Sunday, she ran into him waiting for the elevator as she carried a week’s worth of garbage outside. She almost turned back to her apartment with everything in her hands when he looked up and noticed her. Hey! Hi. That’s a lot of garbage! She reddened and wondered if he noticed that she did not segregate her waste, or just how much takeout food containers she had, or how the rotten mango that sat in her refrigerator for a month had all but liquefied, and now dripped steadily through a tear in the garbage bag. He helped her with the door to the garbage chute, getting back to the hallway just as the elevator doors closed. They waited for the next available car, I was actually on my way out to have dinner. Oh, okay, have a good night. Samantha walked back to her apartment, feeling foolish when she realized that maybe he was asking her to join him. Once Ben snuck up on Samantha just as she was taking a huge bite off her ice cream cone. Hi, I just watched the latest Avengers movie, have you seen it? She struggled through a mouthful of vanilla chocolate chip, trying to swallow in one gulp while wiping at the cold cream that was running down her chin. They started walking to the direction of the exit. He had his umbrella in hand, which she found funny, the front entrance of the mall directly across their apartment, that even in the holiest of storms, would leave them vulnerable to the elements perhaps no more than five or so seconds. Alone? Yes, alone, why have you never done that? Just at home. So you haven’t, then. Well, it was just a lot of muscle, anyway. What kind of movies are you into? I like foreign films. Avengers is a foreign film last I checked, hahaha. No, not like that. I like the film Lost in Translation. Oh, the one where that chick Black Widow is in her underwear the whole time, yeah I think I saw 1/8th of it. Well, yes, but also where she found communication and understanding in an older, equally lonely man, how she did not realize

Jenette Ethel N. Vizcocho 53 that she and her husband had nothing to talk about until they went to a place like Japan that made it glaringly obvious. Huh, I guess that makes sense. Do you feel that way? What way? Like no one understands you, is that why you like the movie so much? I never thought of it that way, I guess I like how you could feel just how sad she was. Yeah, she spent a lot of time looking out of windows. Well, I do that too. They entered the elevator and she smiled when he leaned over and pushed the button for the 14th floor. So what do you see outside of your window? I see the rain coming in. I see a thin layer of clean air beneath the thicker layer of smog. I see this guy. I never pegged you as a voyeur. She said nothing until she saw he was smirking, barely ever serious. Not like that, she blushed. He lives on top of the mall parking lot. Sometimes I see him in the morning and he is lying in his hammock. And when I come home from work he is still there. I like to think he does nothing unless I check on him. He smiled. They were standing in front of her door, and he leaned over. You have ice cream right here, I’ve been meaning to tell you but you seemed so intent on convincing me that that chick Black Widow’s Japan movie is good. He rubbed the left corner of her mouth, just beside the crease where her top and bottom lip met, roughly passing his thumb several times across it until he said ah in victory. You know, you don’t have to feel alone that way. You can tell me stories about the things you think of. I like it. I would never notice the things you do. Okay. I’ll see you, Samantha. Goodnight, Ben. Ben was leaning against the wall just outside her unit when Samantha walked out the next morning. Hi! She dropped her keys as she locked her door, picking them up and then fumbling with the knob, feeling his gaze on her. I’m going away for a few days. Oh, she noticed the duffel bag at his feet. Can you do me a favor? Sure! Can you check on my pets while I’m gone? Okay. He motioned for her to follow him. They stepped inside his apartment and from the entrance, she saw a large, cloudy tank with about six small, silvery fish. She didn’t notice their rows of sharp, interlocking teeth until they drew closer. He smiled apologetically at her. I know, I know, whoops, illegal! My cousin used to own them; they were about thirty in this small pond at their place in Marikina. Well, it was typhoon season, and the pond overflowed, and this is all that is left of them, my aunt begged me to take care of them. She imagined the rest of the piranha swimming in Marikina River, maybe even making their way as far as Manila Bay, or perhaps somewhere beneath them

54 Short Story in the sewers. She remembered Facebook posts that went viral, about rats and snakes swimming up toilet bowls, and wondered if it were possible piranhas could survive the same journey. What do you feed them? Sometimes chicken, most of the time, these, he picked up a Tupperware at the foot of the table where the tank was set up, the see-through container showing white mice feeding on rice grains, stepping over each other, or dozing at a corner. The top was perforated, and had a smaller panel that swung open without having to peel off the entire lid, ideal for picking out one mouse at a time. I feed the fish vegetables every now and then, I like to give them a balanced diet. They only need to eat once a day, usually in the morning. I haven’t fed them yet. You wanna watch? I guess. He opened the side panel to the plastic container and scooped up one of the more energetic mice, setting it into the tank. Initially, the piranha ignored it as it swam and bobbed around, its feet and tail thrashing in the water. One of the fish swam up to take a nip from its toes and the mouse struggled, making the fish dart away. Soon, another had a go at it, taking a bite from its tail this time. As more and more blood seeped into the water, more and more fish took notice, and soon the attacks came, one after the other, one fish dragging the mouse down and the others feeding, the mouse kicking free and making for the surface, only to be pulled down again, until there was no more struggle, only a group of fish picking at the carcass. And then calm, the piranha separating, each going to their own corner of the tank. When he turned to her, she forced a smile. You know, they’re actually not as lethal as their reputation makes them out to be. They’re pretty tame, except when there is a lack of food, when that happens, the weakest of their kind get picked off. Nature, huh? They left his apartment and stood waiting for the elevator. He asked her would she mind if they shared a ride to the airport? Outside, the barker had a cab waiting, as usual, but he was quiet this time, did not greet her nor give instructions to the driver, which she was too distracted to notice, anyway. On their way to the airport, Ben did most of the talking. Don’t worry if the tank gets cloudier than usual, I can handle that when I come back next week. Okay. Thank you so much! All the while, her hand was inside her purse, her fingers playing with the set of keys he had given her, their weight on her palm, making her both excited and nervous. Josie told Mike to fetch her at the lobby of Adriatico Heights, letting on the first time they met that she lived in an apartment with her younger siblings, and so no, he could never spend the night, they’re busy studying and

Jenette Ethel N. Vizcocho 55 cannot be distracted, but we can hang out at your hostel, instead. She was quite surprised that once they entered Friendly’s Backpacker Inn, he did not make any move to touch her. Instead, he took out the rolled up sleeping bag that was attached to his pack and set it on the floor. She had been laid out on his small cot, had arranged herself in a pose that she hoped looked enticing. When he bent over and kissed her cheek good night before turning in, she lay awake in bed, puzzled. She knew that foreigners who came to Malate expected something out of the women they met, that’s what her friend who worked at the perfume department of the mall told her, anyway. Get a new wardrobe but expect to spend the night with your clothes off. She thought the amount of food and drinks she had cost him would be at least worth a blowy. Their succeeding dates since Coco Bananas revolved around cafes tucked in small, dirty alleyways; museums with several floors dedicated to old paintings that Josie could not stand to stare at for more than ten seconds, casting dirty looks at Mike who stood their with his mouth open as he shook his head. Check out the strokes, look at the contrasts, man, this shit is heavy. I used to paint a bit, you know? Nope. He knew Philippine politics, asked her take on current events. She wanted to talk about Taylor Swift and Katy Perry. She wanted to know how many celebrities he had as friends. He would smile and play with her hair, oh, Josie! The guard glanced at her when she entered Adriatico Heights, watched her sit down, then turned back to the newspaper set in front of him. She sat on one of the sofas arranged at the lobby, nervously looking around, fixing her skirt, adjusting her position on the leather that stuck to the sweat of her thighs, looking up then away every time the elevator doors opened. In her bag, nestled between her towel and toiletries, was 14F’s tribal two- piece, something she filched off the freshly laundered pile when Matt and Dave were not looking. Topshop, hand wash, do not wring, drip dry. The suit looked new, even had the plastic barbs from the clothes tags still attached to it. She knew 14F had the habit of sending for her laundry during Mondays, confident she had plenty of time to clean the suit up before delivery. She was more worried about 1952 Mabini Street, a relatively newer customer whose schedule she was not familiar with, but whose backless leopard and zebra print maxi dress she could not resist. Mike went up to the lobby entrance, and she hastily grabbed her things and met him as he was walking in. He hugged her at the doorway, and she was surprised at how pleasant it felt. Can we take a jeep to the bus station?

56 Short Story I’ve always wanted to try them out! Dreams of cabs with the air conditioning at full blast died at his words and she shrugged, pulling away, sure. She came face to face with 14F, who was walking with a man. 14F’s eyes flickered in recognition, she nodded hello to Josie before following her companion into a waiting taxi. The man was carrying a large duffel bag, and Josie guessed they were going somewhere romantic, Boracay or Baguio or someplace that had people and restaurants and music and fancy hotels. Mike smiled at her. Are you ready? Samantha fought the urge to enter his apartment when she got home from work that day, not really knowing why, perhaps as a test on self-restraint. The first morning that she ventured in alone, she had a hard time picking up a mouse and feeding it to the fish, something she did not anticipate when he had asked the favor off her, maybe because she was too overwhelmed with being inside his house for the first time, maybe because of the piranhas themselves, or maybe a bit of both. She fretted for a few minutes, pacing around the kitchen and living room, opening doors and cupboards, before deciding on donning the rubber gloves she found underneath the kitchen sink. She grabbed at the body of the nearest mouse, felt it wriggle, the warmth and its quick heartbeat even through the thick rubber barrier, and she threw it into the tank, closing the lights and locking up without staying to watch. The next morning, she stayed a little longer, and even longer the following day, getting up earlier, crossing the hall in her pajamas, and opening the door with her key. She looked at the framed pictures in the living room, mostly mountains she mused Ben had climbed. He looked liked a climber, like someone used to nature. There was a photograph that stood out to her, one of a theme park at night, this particular one located above a boardwalk, the water below reflecting the lights coming from the Ferris wheel, the rollercoaster, and various other rides. She wondered who had taken the picture, if it were Ben, or his companion. It seemed to have been taken in another country, and she wondered if he had been abroad at one time, whom he had visited, who sat beside him at the rides. She thought theme parks were always romantic, and the fact that this photo was blown up, framed, and now hanging on his wall surely meant something. She rummaged through his pantry and refrigerator, making herself some coffee, cooking eggs, and buttering some bread before putting them into the toaster. She fed the fish and sat down to eat breakfast, choosing a seat she assumed would be opposite the one he usually occupied, smiling, liking how everyone, even the mice in the small Tupperware box, was busy eating.

Jenette Ethel N. Vizcocho 57 That night, when she could not sleep, she padded over to Ben’s apartment, locking up behind her, trying the door to his bedroom, mildly surprised to find it unlocked, wondering how if the situation were reversed and she had left her house keys to him, if she would be so careless as to do so without locking the door to her bedroom. After all, she had no business in there, she knew that. She was just supposed to feed his fish. His room was clean, the furniture sparse. He had a bed off to one corner, a small television mounted on the wall, a study table with a desktop computer opposite it. His closet was neat, the polo shirts, jackets, and pants all hung up, the rest folded by color and kind. She picked up one of his pajamas and as a joke tried it on. She walked to his bathroom, looking for a mirror, and had to laugh at her reflection. She picked up his comb and ran it through her hair, smelled his perfume, accidentally putting her nose too close to the small opening that the liquid lingering at the mouth of the bottle stuck to her flesh, making her sneeze. She washed her face, using the facial wash sitting next to the razor. She hesitated when she picked up his toothbrush, shook her head and set it down. She wiped the sink and the counter dry, rearranging everything as best as she could from memory. She walked back into his bedroom and stared at the bed, the covers neatly tucked in, the pillows fluffed. Hers, back at her own apartment, was and always is unmade. She didn’t have a systematic schedule as to when to change the sheets, most of the time only doing so when stains became too apparent. She sat at one corner and liked the spring to the mattress, checked the clock and decided it was still early, just 10 PM, and her favorite talk show was about to go on. She switched the television on, propped the pillows up, and settled in, pulling the blanket up to her chin. The next thing she knew, it was morning. But it was okay, it was almost time to feed the fish, anyway. She walked into the kitchen, remembering that she spied some cereal in one of his cupboards; smiling as the pants legs of Ben’s pajamas swished with her every step. The trip, as Josie had predicted, was a disaster. Mike seemed to get excited by just about anything, kept taking photographs, standing from his seat and crossing the aisle to shoot the trees, mountains, churches, traffic jams, even the people; the vendors carrying puppets, toy helicopters with rotors that operated by tightening and releasing a wound piece of rubber band, cheap knock-off shades, candies, nuts, iced drinks, and cigarettes; the jay walkers; the idle traffic enforcers with their uniform shirts stretched tight across their

58 Short Story protuberant stomachs. He kept saying check that out, man, his eyes wide, his face flushed. He tried everything, boiled quail eggs that sold for ten pesos, chicharon drowning in spicy vinegar, macapuno candy, hotdogs sliced to resemble telephone cords coiled around a barbecue stick, soggy with oil. He talked to everyone, the conductor, the driver, the people seated opposite them, hi, I’m Mike, it’s my first time here! Where should we eat when we get to Batangas? Is Tagaytay something we should visit or should we just skip it? I saw this video of children swimming in the flooded streets of Quiapo after a storm, wild! My flight to Tacloban is in two weeks; I plan on staying there maybe two months. She didn’t like the way people looked at her when Mike spoke to them, would force a smile, would turn up her music. She wrinkled her nose at all the food he was eating, saying she wasn’t hungry, the bag of chips the couple across them so nacho cheesy she could almost taste it. The van ride was no better, people squeezed together four to a row, with an air conditioner that barely did anything for the heat. She was feeling sticky, and every time Mike shifted in his seat, every time the van turned a sharp corner, she could feel his sweat on her skin, the hair on his arm warm and moist. Mike was laughing the whole way. This is wild, he kept shaking his head, wild! By the time they were in the small, motored boat headed to Tambaron Island, Josie had been sitting beside him for eight hours. She had stopped pretending she was having fun and ignored him when he pointed out tiny islands they passed, driftwood, and schools of fish that swam beneath them in the clear water. Mike seemed perfectly all right conversing with TonTon, their hired boatman and tour guide for the next few days. As soon as they had checked into their cottage, she changed into her bathing suit and told Mike he can go island hopping all he wanted, she was going to work on her tan. Ben had called her up twice since he had left, asking her how things were, and were his fish eating? I’ll be back on Saturday. Sitting in his living room, or answering his call as she was in his bed, she felt a little guilty. She surveyed his house, at how quickly she had nested, at how sleeping and waking and eating and moving around in it easily came to her. She wondered how she was going to clean it all up and go back to her apartment when everywhere she looked, she already saw a bit of herself in it. She slowly started straightening things out, somehow feeling sad with every plate she washed, every pillow she righted, with every crumb, lint, and

Jenette Ethel N. Vizcocho 59 piece of hair that she swept up, feeling as though she were erasing every trace of herself and her imagined week with Ben. She went to the mall to replace the groceries that she had depleted, passing a Mr. Quickie on her way back. She stood outside the store for a few minutes before walking in to have Ben’s keys duplicated. The grooves of the metal dug into her thumb as she fit the newly-made keys in among the rest of her set. Josie and Mike were in TonTon’s boat, Mike in complete diving gear, I hear they have underwater caves here, want to go diving with me? Josie waved the gossip magazines she had brought along in his face and muttered she would rather read in the boat. The hike she had to endure the day before was already enough torture to last throughout the trip, her thong plastic slippers with their three-inch wedges sinking into the mud, her feet making sucking noises with every step she took. He gently reminded her she should have brought hiking footwear when she slipped on a patch of wet grass, and it was all that she could do not to throw her slippers at him. TonTon was silent the entire trip; he guided them through the mountains, helped them catch and grill fish for dinner, slept in his boat during nights. He didn’t address her, only spoke to Mike quietly about plans and updates, always looking up at the sky and commenting on the expected weather for the day. Josie was not amused. Here she was, dressed and fully made up, huge hoop earrings swinging with each step she huffily took, and Mike was too distracted to notice, and if ever TonTon did, he was too quiet to let it on. At the top of the mountain was a pool of water that TonTon said came from a hot spring. Mike immediately jumped in, shoes and cap still on, and Josie watched as he kicked and splashed and stirred up dirt from the bottom. TonTon, she observed, was slower, his movements more calculated. He peeled his sweat-stained shirt off, and Josie could not help but notice that although Mike was just as lean, TonTon’s body appealed to her as more manly, the dents and curves more pronounced. He dove cleanly into the water, barely making the surface ripple. She removed her maxi dress, the bottom caked with drying mud, a small snag where she caught it in some thorny bushes, and gingerly stepped into the water, Mike swimming over to join her, scooping her up in his arms and guiding her to the middle of the pool. She felt TonTon’s eyes on her, even in his silence she thought she caught him watching. As soon as Mike disappeared into the ocean, Josie turned to TonTon, who was looking far off into the distance. She sidled over to him, making

60 Short Story such a show of looking left and right to make sure they were alone, before loosening her bikini top and letting it carelessly drop onto the boat floor. By then her flesh was so brown that the tiny triangles of her unexposed breasts were a glaring contrast, her dark nipples framed in pale pyramids of flesh, screaming for attention. She applied suntan oil on her skin, slathering more and more as she hummed, concentrating on her neck, her chest, shifting her weight over to each leg as she raised the other to work the slippery liquid all the way to her toes. She sighed, arching her back and thrusting her body up to the sun. Hay salamat, pagod na pagod na ako mag-English. Josie opened one eye and then another, first sneaking a look then turning her whole body toward TonTon. But he was still facing the ocean, his gaze steady. Bubbles from beneath created slight ripples on the otherwise calm surface of the water. She could already imagine the stories Mike would share of what he saw underwater. He had hinted at her coming along to Tacloban, how he held her hands in his tight grip as he mentioned the idea to her. All she could think about was how she was running out of clothes. How Dave and Matt were probably subject to hot accusations of mixing and misplacing clothes. How 14F or 1952 Mabini Street were complaining. Josie sat upright and fitted her bikini top back on, wishing she were back at Wash and Wear, anywhere else, really. She wanted to upload the photo album she was putting together, the coy captions as to who Mike and TonTon were already solid in her head. But there was no cellular signal in Tambaron Island. On Saturday, Samantha stayed in her apartment, nervously playing with Ben’s keys as she waited for his arrival. Her work had ended at seven. Throughout the day, she kept checking his flight to see if any delays or changes have been made, knowing that no matter how long she took finishing her paperwork or readying her tasks for the next day, his 9:30PM flight from Davao was still a long way away. When she alighted from her cab, she distractedly waved away the barker who repeatedly offered to help carry her things. Ben was at her door just after midnight, and she pounced at it the moment she heard him knocking. Hi! Hi, this is for you. He thrust a plant into her hands. It was squat, with several branches extending out into long, thin, leaves. Among the leaves drooped two small, perfectly-forming mangoes. Ben laughed, it’s a bonsai! I met this guy at Davao who turns everything you can imagine into a bonsai plant. He even had a tiny durian tree! You got this through Customs? I placed it in one of the empty Golden Fruits pomelo boxes I bought. They barely even checked my things. Are you mad? When

Jenette Ethel N. Vizcocho 61 she didn’t speak he continued rapidly, I’m sorry, I wouldn’t have minded one but if they told me I couldn’t bring the plant on the plane, but nobody even really cared. I guess you won’t understand, but, seeing as it affects your job, I thought maybe you would find it funny, or at least informative. He reached for the plant, but she held onto it. No, I think I understand. He smiled, it’s going to need a lot of sunlight and frequent watering. Oh, my balcony doesn’t really get enough sun. Really? Maybe I could check it out. It’s too dark out now. Oh, hahaha, I meant tomorrow morning. Thanks, she imagined the both of them standing at her balcony early the next day, maybe having some coffee, shoulder-to-shoulder as they bent low, the two of them spying on the man who lived under the water tanks at the mall parking lot. She realized his house keys were still in her palm and she shifted the plant to hand it to him, but he shook his head. It’s a duplicate. I actually had one made for you before my trip. When she reddened, he smiled, stooping down and handing her the bag of groceries she had carelessly forgotten to shelf in her worry at making certain his apartment was exactly the way he had left it, the receipt and credit card slip with her signature still stapled to the plastic.

62 Short Story Poetry

Manifest and Other Poems RODRIGO DELA PEÑA JR.

La Parisienne

Because the truth could not be stated plainly, Juan Luna paints her worn- looking and askew, as though the world had tired of her and she had nowhere else to go but be here on the canvas. Scarlet and ochre, deep color of rust, fading gold: the scene suggests no joy in the realm of la belle epoque. Instead, a woman whose disquieting gaze dares you to look at her without flinching, her downturned lips on the edge of what might be a confession. What secret is hidden beneath the folds of her dress, what story? He tells her to stay still, hold the pose, el trabajo no está terminado. Years later, he would aim a revolver and in a jealous rage, kill his wife and mother-in-law at their home in Paris. The French court would acquit him on grounds of temporary insanity. By then, his work would be finished, sold

65 to the highest bidder. And the woman in the painting stares longingly, fumbling for words, help, au secours, aidez-moi, s’il vous plait, but no one is listening.

Manifest

On May 3, 1882, José Rizal boarded the SS Salvadora and headed to Europe for the first time.

1. A pair of steamer trunks with iron locks, filled with clothes to be used for years before you would be able to go home. 2. In your pocket, a silver watch whose crown had to be wound up each day. 3. Talismans worn smooth: tarnished medallion inscribed in Latin, green quartz egg, crocodile’s tooth. 4. Names that weigh heavy on the tongue; names that would remain unspoken for time to come. 5. Sheaves of paper, a set of quills, India ink. The lengths we go to skirt around that which cannot be said. 6. Memory and its many ruses, wavering, like the flicker of shadows cast by the ship on the water. 7. A crucifix on the crook of your clavicle, pendant of what you struggle to believe in. 8. Cities not yet seen, letters that have yet to be written, already vivid and pulsing in your mind. 9. Hands clasped and eyes looking ahead, that seem to hold all the sea contains. 10. The horizon shifting as you move along, the world’s edge never to be reached.

66 Poetry Summer Ghazal

Each morning, the sun commands attention. In my country, it is always summer. This heat like a blowtorch: arrays of windows open, unfurl to the fullness of summer. Rizal felt and thought about it too, bones turning indolent in the face of summer. Bales of tobacco leaves scorched by the sun, a scent I remember from many summers. I crave for green mangoes dipped in rock salt and vinegar, a childhood taste of summer. Swish and flick of a carabao’s tail; grass left to wither in the languor of summer— details of a scene that Rizal must have missed as he cursed another winter. Where is summer? Count how many hours until evening comes. Days seem longer in the torpor of summer. Drink, says the sky to the earth as rain falls. Welcome the brief respite from summer.

Ukiyo-e as O Sei San

How quick the season turns, winter’s chill giving way to green buds of spring in the hushed gardens of Azabu. Nothing here in a path of stones

Rodrigo Dela Peña Jr. 67 conceals the secret names I have of you: little dragonfly, azure- winged magpie, dear kite unmoored in a floating world. What you see reveals what must eventually be lost, so here is my face pressed on rice paper. From my lips, a song. Who else but you will hear each lilting note? My eyes give me away. Soon, days will be lit by summer. Then comes the changing air, the leaves of fall. See how inch by inch I crane my head and look back, meet your gaze, the point where everything converges, everything vanishes.

Blood Compact

After Juan Luna’s Pacto de Sangre

In this painting, our gaze is drawn to the light- skinned figure against the ink-dark background: Miguel López de Legazpi, the Basque conquistador sent to the other side of the world in service of the empire. Half of his face is hidden in shadow,

68 Poetry deep in thought about the word of God and how it must translate, without question, into the work of faith. His breastplate gleams and behind him, a coterie awaits at the ready. A priest in his cassocks stands ponderous beside soldiers in full battle regalia, halberds sharpened, red pennants raised, foreshadowing skirmishes that will be sparked, the knifepoint of bondage. And what of the local chieftain Sikatuna, rendered at the edge of the frame, almost like an afterthought? He sits opposite his equal, his back turned to us, frozen in a gesture he will endure for the rest of his life. His tattooed right arm clutches a dagger, which must have punctured flesh, extracting blood to mix with wine for the pact they now toast to. How the drink must be bitter down his throat, with an aftertaste of iron. How faceless he has become to us, like so many natives who will die fighting to reclaim their share of light.

Photograph of Teodora Alonso Holding the Skull of Her Son

Consider this tableau of mother and child, or what remains of her son years after his death. Unassumed and unassuming

Rodrigo Dela Peña Jr. 69 facts of a life, recorded as evidence through an aperture of light. Here is the skull laid bare for everyone to see, osseus profile cradled in her palms, given and received. Bones that emerged from her flesh, the nomad who has come at last to his resting place. What answers are to be found in this thread of story? This is all she can bestow: composure of grief in stippled gray, her face a palimpsest of years she had to bear. To be so diminished as the camera clicks. To be done, to be finished, to be over.

70 Poetry Arborescence PAUL MARAVILLAS JERUSALEM

Fake Accent

… I remember my tongue shedding its skin like a snake, my voice in the classroom sounding just like the rest. Do I only think I lost a river, culture, speech, sense of first space and the right place? — Carol Ann Duffy, “Originally”

At times I have to rehearse my assimilation, checking that my voice is placed not too far front at my teeth— the way I’ve been raised to convey my thoughts is only constructive in singing someone else’s songs. Otherwise, to be too nasal is evidence of bumpkin. To twirl your arse and elles is proof of roots that have betrayed themselves, writhing— the soil, its poetry of erosion: first by rewriting one’s name from Baybayin to Latin; a month later choosing surnames that mean something only in another land. I’ve done well,

71 well to the point that the only time my singing voice is liberated from the guttural drain is when I’m drunk, witnessing my tongue, a serpent shedding Singapore seasoned skin.

Discreet Looking for Same

I can only offer: saccharine thoughts dashed by pepper and salt so no one can know what we really taste like; an arm’s length apart, as if on a tactical mission but in broad daylight at the mall, two discreet people camouflaged, happening to be walking in formation, the same way to the same place for the same. It’s fine: you must be such a fan of Oscar Wilde you want a love that dares not speak its name; I’ll make do with cinema touches, popcorn spilling, knee bumps prolonged in my mind; my left hand, sweating claws open upwards on my knee to test your discretion; me, not making space for your arms that overflow into my seat.

72 Poetry I now understand: a movie with you is but an attempt to catch up, live my own fantasies on the wrong side of the screen, a decade too late for teenage dreams; why Filipinos call closet cases paminta— the person who coined that euphemism must have accidentally bitten into a stray peppercorn betraying its desire to be mild and unseen. Is this discreet enough for you?

Not in Baybayin i to find my to force me to tolerate. in exchange, i’ll get want land, occupy to adapt your all my vowels wrong. it’s hard, you: me, invent made-up tongue. you use the same writing for the idea of never mind that i languages that have nothing territory, and already have my in common, but the need to claim it for own script. force be used, on a nightstand that yours; it into oblivion. holds up the tethers of your amend the ways colony. i won’t retaliate. i shall i have always call you master (even after you stitched every have long gone), meticulously thread—tangling, pronouncing every letter or tending toward down to each last consonant. no return—in my all shortcuts and unspoken head; rules do not exist when one overcompensates, longing for your skin, even centuries later.

Paul Maravillas Jerusalem 73 Arborescence noun

1. finding out that the tree that shits every morning in the parade square its seeds, the objects of your undivided attention at first parade when yousedia and senang diri, is an angsana tree. 2. noting the futility of unleashing one’s seeds onto gravel, trying to poeticize your daily duty with their nightly emissions, as you sweep away its crinkling pods, thinking of yourself as superior to prosaic platoon mates. 3. realizing that angsana is just another name for narra, the philippine national tree, finding actual poetry in nomenclature, storing it away to get you further. 4. learning that there’s only so far its seeds can reach, so much that you can milk out of it, comforting yourself with it when you fail to reach; only money can buy some things. 5. at least in the process you learnt the exciting fact that your identity can be romanticized into a tree, airborne seeds to reach unknown territory, itinerant, or 6. imported to singapore to be manicured into a garden city. perhaps the original narra tree had hoped too that it would witness 7. the bildungsroman of its offspring. perhaps it too knew that some people are only stepping stones. some 8. people will meet the fate of trees standing on future condominium space. but some will be there through 9. the pruning, the finding of branches in places they shouldn’t be, 10. if you stick long enough.

74 Poetry Ghazal of Deracination

The way Hokkien always sounds whiny is nothing to write home about; be less self-conscious of that tongue of yours. All your country is good for, they say, is the miraculous conversion of diplomas and degrees into domestic worker permits. They, whose beaches are adorned by litter and a reliance on migrant flotsam, will learn how beautiful those once yours are. When you’re twenty, someone will say “You look not bad, for a Pinoy.” Reply “Thanks, wish I had your flat nose, slant eyes.” You spent twenty years washing yourself, until rocks crumble into sand. With sand you’ll try to reclaim land no longer yours. When you’re six, you try to sing the National Anthem, dubbing the words of “Majulah Singapura” over the tune of “Lupang Hinirang.” If you could turn back time, realize that “Lupang Hinirang” means chosen land, Paul. Unlearn neither the lyrics nor the language.

Let the Healing Begin

But, as always, like flapping battle scars, scabs ajar on a hinge, hanging on a single nerve: campaign posters, after all, attract tourists too inadvertently, layers that end on a blank slate. Somewhere dementia is a child painting on the wrong wall the figure of its birthmark in the bedroom

Paul Maravillas Jerusalem 75 of history. Somewhere a housewife prays, telling herself that Christ will wrest power from the Devil and not into dirty dictators. Yet somewhere far away, someone writes poems that rhyme Erap and corrupt, instead of his Southeast Asian Studies paper. His grandmother traces—her fingers embalming amnesia— forehead, diaphragm, right shoulder, left, forgetting to touch her lips before she leaves.

76 Poetry Elemental JOSE LUIS PABLO

Flames in the Highway

It is true that the Red Dust has its joys, but they are evanescent and illusory.

—Cao Xueqin, Dream of the Red Chamber

i. A break of color signals for the years of waiting to march on inexorably, a crowd of crimson banners. ii. The shrub of a late summer bloom is a blinding fire, the twilight flowers drop a vision on bobbing heads: Petals in a downstream pilgrimage get home sooner. iii. Under breath, words of passion folded like kisses to keep prying eyes sober, distracted from the friction of two bodies using up all the kindling possible.

77 iv. Headlights can seem like sirens in the yawn of this grey desert. We know what they are wailing for as they fall into a familiar pattern; red lanterns stranded, from a storm roaring uninvited at this festival. v. Like a naked grain of wheat, each layer stripped from me as raw meat blinking untouched in the gashing whiteness of a stinking sanitation. vi. Sea of flame, sea of wine ballads to the color ought to be remembered. Lest you forget, think of the blood of life.

Suspension

Take the memory as a fin would brace the salt when the dawn begins to hurry. I commit it to the ocean in my mind swelling as large as the milky rib of a whale protruding, the muted bay we test gently with our feet. A home cannot be built on sand. It is a teaching older than the birth of this beach, when what was washed on shore hewed the remains of understanding, mollusc shells,

78 Poetry the knowledge of things that end. An image hails the monotony of ripples, frees the final form lingering— a palm letting go of a breath of dark sand, the promise is swaying, limp in the stale water.

Spirit of the Season

I pray that these hollow caverns would keep the quiet absent from steady echoes of voices and faces, buried in a boneyard of decades that have flown around like geese migrating or escaping the turning of the harshest season— a coat of second skin from the humidity, lightning splits the sky into three, the taste of a swarm of bees, all slivers past the threshold presenting selves as a suggestion into this room yet to be filled. How a disappearance must fall flat before a dousing sound. A drop of rain splatters across a car window and calls me to the breaking of small things—

Jose Luis Pablo 79 anger, a word said or otherwise, the worry of the past or future, me. How severely does the body lie floating.

Gardening Alone

We were born as thorns when we lived together in marshes concealed in darkened bark where you left a seed in a plot of clay, shallow as the bed you dug. I lay my roots down in loam you’ve long sifted through with the edge of your spade. I hear the crunch beneath your boots, of stones we arranged, slipping by each water’s reach, slipping like the rosary beads you held up uttering all my first names in novena. When space encroached on our landfills, I thought you would lift the latch on the gate but I watched the evening clouds take the tails of your shirt; you had drowned in that chalice-colored sea as you wanted. Look for me sometimes, no plant of guilt has ever dared sprout in your place. After all, the pages lining the book you read every night are children of the home you surrendered the keys to me.

80 Poetry Petrichor

Your hand curls around what isn’t there— perhaps it is the air you’ve been saving to exhale on a day you wanted to close your eyes to, or was it the space that carved its way inside your belly, the salt-and-rice that could not sate the hunger you did not know you had— a taste for the pictures beyond your worn out school book or a visceral itch that could only be scratched with the promise that your children (merely seeds in your mind) would not know your pangs; but your thirst was not ignored and your open but unspeaking mouth was a cup for the rainwater that had not spared even an inch of your untouched skin, brown as the dirt you used to till with your father. You will sleep now and your dreams will leave the weight of your body, carried by the sighing wind, with the petrichor from the ruptured veins of your land. The mud baptizes you in its own Name, and if long ago you burst from the soil crying your first tears, then tonight the tears have been shed for you so you can recline to coalesce into the puddles shattering the flatness of the earth.

Jose Luis Pablo 81

Essay

How a Brain Surgeon Learned to Ride a Bike RONNIE E. BATICULON

any years from now, I will remember today as the day I learned to ride Ma bike. At the age of thirty, after working for five years in Philippine General Hospital (PGH), I have performed close to 500 operations on the human brain and spinal cord. And yet, despite having taken out brain tumors, clipped ruptured blood vessels, repaired inborn malformations, and saved motorists from life-threatening head injuries day in and day out, I have not been able to acquire the elementary skill of balancing oneself and moving forward on a two-wheeled vehicle. When revealed to my colleagues, this seemingly trivial ineptitude is always a source of both amusement and bewilderment. To their incredulous stares, I would respond with a matter-of-fact but sheepish grin, “Eh hindi ako marunong, eh” (I just don’t know how to). If cycling were a prerequisite for graduation, I would not have been able to finish my training as a neurosurgeon. Melbourne weather is being its usual temperamental self this afternoon. When I left my flat in Brunswick West just forty-five minutes ago, the sun was up, its dry summer heat searing to skin accustomed to tropical humidity. Getting off at my tram stop at Saint Kilda Road, I noticed that the warmth had given way to intermittent gusts of cold winds with dark clouds overhead. Eleven months earlier, on my final year as a resident physician in PGH, I received news that I had been accepted for fellowship training in one of Australia’s leading pediatric hospitals. The hospital being in Melbourne, I decided at the outset that I would not allow myself to spend a year in the city without learning to ride a bicycle. Melbourne has a strong cycling culture, with designated bike lanes on the city’s thoroughfares and bike trails that run along its parks and gardens.

85 All it took was a quick Google search the other night (“adult learn to ride a bike Melbourne”) and I had found myself a teacher. Immediately I booked two sessions. Thus, here I am, a two-week-old Overseas Filipino Worker, helplessly shivering in my knee-length shorts and short-sleeved, single layer t-shirt. “Get used to four seasons in one day,” I was told several times by kababayans I have met so far. While I already have a template answer to their question, “Ano, Dok, dito ka na ba titira?” (Are you staying here for good, Doc?), I have yet to acquire their habit of checking the day’s weather forecast and hourly temperature. I hear a ding from my mobile phone. It is an apologetic message from my would-be instructor Michelle, advising that she will be a few minutes late. I type “No worries, take your time!” and press send, but only after convincing myself that this is how a polite local would reply. Standing at the corner of Kings Way and St. Kilda Road, I am at one of Melbourne’s bike share stations. There is a glass-covered map of the city that shows bike routes (“Share from Here to There”) and an automated self- service kiosk where one can pay for bike rental using a credit card. Beside these is a row of the city’s trademark royal blue bicycles docked next to one another. To me, it is a barricade of soldiers waiting for the enemy to attack, every single one refusing to be conquered. I stare intently at the army of bicycles and reiterate as I have told myself with utmost conviction all day: I will not be intimidated. I continue to wait, blowing warm air into my palms every five minutes or so, lest they become too numb to hold the handlebars later. I should get warmer once I start riding.

Growing up, I spent most of my bike-less childhood indoors. While the rest of my peers played games on the street or basketball in the village court after class, I would go straight home to work on my assignments and school projects. I was a typical diligent honor student—a geek even. I preferred to spend my free time lying on our living room couch to read fiction or science books. In first year high school, I amazed our librarian by consuming four library cards in a period of ten months. I read every single issue of Reader’s Digest and every book in the Hardy Boys series that was in the shelves. I would save my allowance so that I could buy secondhand John Grisham novels. Reading was cheap and exciting, and it also took me places. There was no need to learn to ride a bike.

86 Essay Besides, my parents would not have been able to afford a bicycle then. I am the eldest of five children. My engineer father’s income was just enough for our family’s living expenses. The sole reason I could enroll in a private high school was that I obtained an academic scholarship, which required maintaining my First Honor status year after year. Books and school supplies were on top of the priority list, toys way below. The only way I would have gotten a bike, which fell under the category of toys, was if a godparent miraculously decided to give me one for Christmas. I suppose I could have befriended other kids in the neighborhood. One or two of them might have a bike that I could borrow. That would have worked, except I did not make friends easily and my same-age cousins were either abroad or living in the province. Peer pressure was virtually nonexistent. The yearning began in college, after meeting like-minded individuals from all walks of life, from all over the country: valedictorians, athletes, musicians, writers, and activists—my class of forty students had them all. I realized that my inability put me in a very small minority, but then again, I was studying at the national university. Everyone’s background and individuality had to be respected; nobody cared about what one could or could not do outside of academic work. The medical student’s desire to become an excellent physician was more pressing than the inner child’s wish to pedal without training wheels or a sidecar. I had exams I needed to pass, patients who needed to be examined, hospital paperwork that needed to be completed, and a home tutorial job that I needed to find time for, so that I would have extra money for medical school expenses. It was quite easy to justify things from my perspective.

A middle-aged, caucasian woman on a bicycle is waving her arm from across the intersection. This must be Michelle. She whizzes past me and stops just beyond the bike share station. She gets off and walks to where I am. She introduces herself with a smile and a handshake. Once more, she offers her profuse apologies; her son is getting a motor vehicle license and needed to log driving hours with parental supervision. I tell her not to worry about it. I have already waited over two decades for this bike lesson. Fifteen minutes more hardly mattered. We walk back to the kiosk, and she explains how the city’s bike share system works. She undocks one of the blue bikes and inspects its gears and wheels. Her lithe physique allows for elegant, deliberate movements. Her

Ronnie E. Baticulon 87 brown-blonde hair has been pulled back in a ponytail. She demonstrates how the bike is docked properly to avoid paying penalty charges, before finally handing the bike to me, with such force I almost topple to the ground, just now realizing how heavy these blue bikes are. To get a bruise even before starting, that would have been embarrassing. Michelle unstraps a helmet from her bike’s rear rack and attempts to fit it securely onto my head. Its blue color matches the city bicycles’, and Melbourne is printed on either side. “Helmets are required in the city. You can get these ones for just five dollars from any 7-Eleven store. Just remember that you are a large, darling.” She tightens the straps. I feel no different from a grade one pupil being readied by his mother for first day of school. “How’s your balance?” she asks. “To be quite honest, I think it’s not good at all. That’s probably why I never learned in the first place.” “I see. Have you tried riding a bike before?” As a matter of fact, I have. On my final year as a resident physician, I purchased a mountain bike intending to learn during my free time. Twice, I practiced with a friend in a parking lot, but the frequent falls and the difficulty of dodging cars entering and leaving made me abandon the sessions. For a year, my bike remained stationary inside my apartment unit, never to be used on an actual road. After my graduation from the hospital, I had to bring it home where it is now stored, accumulating dust and rust, waiting for my return to the Philippines. “In that case we might have a problem. It’s important that from the beginning, we set expectations on what you can learn from me in two sessions. In cycling, balance is key.” Did she just doubt my ability to learn at my age? I want to interrupt her and say that I do not believe in the word impossible, but I remind myself that I am not a surgeon inside his operating room anymore. This afternoon, I am the student. I do not want to antagonize my teacher early on, so instead I continue to nod and listen. “This is how you walk a bike. Put one hand on the handlebar and hold the seat with the other. Yes, that’s it. If you could just follow me, darling, we will do your lessons in Fawkner Park. It’s just across the road two blocks from

88 Essay here. Remember that in Melbourne, if it’s called a garden, you are not allowed to ride your bike inside. But if it’s called a park, then you may practice there.” While walking, Michelle explains what she plans to do for the next sixty minutes. She also starts to give advice on riding a bicycle safely in the city. “Always ride one car door away from traffic. And I don’t understand why anyone would wear black when cycling.” My chest is pounding, making it difficult to listen to every detail. After a while, elm and oak trees come into view straight ahead. “Here we go,” I mutter to no one in particular.

Since elementary, I had always known that I wanted to become a doctor. Being the eldest child in a lower middle class family, however, I was not certain if this lifelong dream was remotely possible. During my final year in high school, relatives repeatedly tried to convince me to take up any course related to engineering or computer science. This was year 2000 and information technology was the popular and pragmatic choice. After graduation, getting a high-paying job abroad was almost guaranteed; it would allow me to help my parents financially in the soonest possible time. It was not illogical either; I had always excelled in mathematics, qualifying for interschool competitions at the regional and national levels. It was a good thing my parents gave me the freehand when I was filling out my college application forms. I remained adamant about my decision to pursue medicine. Armed only with an indomitable spirit, I got admitted into the Integrated Liberal Arts Medicine (INTARMED) program of the University of the Philippines (UP). The accelerated program would allow me to become a doctor in just seven years after high school. Fortuitously, I was also awarded the Oblation scholarship for exceptional performance in UP’s entrance exam. Over 64,000 took the test, and I belonged to the top 50. In 2008, I graduated from the College of Medicine with honors. Experience has taught me that if you work hard enough, the only thing left to do is to believe in the impossible. That was what I wanted to tell my bike teacher.

Forty-five minutes have passed since Michelle and I started our bicycle drills. I am exasperated and nothing seems to be working.

Ronnie E. Baticulon 89 We have tried all permutations possible: level ground or slightly downhill, soft grass or pebbled surface, start in motion and then stop, or begin stationary and then move. I just could not go beyond one revolution of the wheels. Inevitably, I would fall sideways and Michelle would have to run to catch me. At one point, an elderly gentleman who had been observing us from a park bench said, “Even kids can do that easily.” “Well, everybody learns at a different pace,” Michelle retorted, her maternal instincts kicking in. I am otherwise oblivious to the stares of the people passing through the park to jog or walk their dogs. I am a stranger in a free country, and I could not care less about what they think. I just want to prove to myself that I can do this. Whenever Michelle lets go of my bicycle, I sense from her a trepidation that amplifies with every inch that separates us. Toward the end of the hour, she says, “I’m wondering what is making it difficult for you. Let me try to think about it later.” “That’s okay, I really appreciate your patience with me, Michelle.” I ask when she would be available for our next session, but she cannot commit to a schedule. I want to pay in advance to guarantee that there will be a second opportunity for me to learn, but she refuses to take the money. Walking back to the tram stop in defeat, I listen to her advice on what I can do at home to attain balance. Her parting words are practice, practice, practice. The winds remain cold and indifferent. I hop on my tram dejected. I have never thought an hour of bicycle lessons could feel more arduous than a whole day of operating. I try to recall my arm and leg movements earlier, and visualize the resulting motion of the bicycle. It is no different from the introspection that invariably follows a failed surgical procedure, when a surgeon scrutinizes every stage of the operation to identify the misstep that led to the unfavorable outcome. I could not find an answer. As soon as I get home, I turn on my computer and look for another teacher on Google.

Many years from now, I will remember today as the day I learned to ride a bike, I tell myself a second time.

90 Essay I am seated on a bench at the edge of Albert Park Lake, not far from where I took my first cycling lesson. It’s quarter to nine in the morning. Almost time. The sun is up on clear skies and a gentle steady breeze cools the surroundings. Out on the lake, there is a group of primary school kids learning how to sail. Their male teacher has just signaled to everyone that the day’s lesson has come to an end. Boys and girls in their neon lifejackets start docking their sailboats. In groups of two or three, they take down their red, blue, and yellow sails, and carry their respective boats to the shed behind me. Perhaps after learning to cycle, I can learn to swim next. My prospective teacher Rick was quick to reply to my messages when I was finalizing the schedule yesterday. He asked for my height and weight because he wanted to bring the optimal bicycle. “I really would like to learn how to ride a bike, but I’m afraid I might be a difficult student. Is that all right?” “Trust me, mate, I’ve plenty of experience with adults like you. I think you will be riding in no time.” Thinking things over, I realize that I am actually not afraid of falling off my bike. As a neurosurgeon, I have had to deal with fears more real than superficial scuffmarks or broken bones. I have always had to confront life and death head on. So no, it is not falling. It is failing that I dread more.

“I am sorry, sir. I think I am going to lose this patient.” I had long feared having to say these words in the operating room, long wished I would never have to say them. When the inevitable mistake did happen, I spoke in a voice that was flat and unhurried, devoid of any emotion, almost inappropriately calm in an attempt to shove panic to the side. I could have been reading the classifieds to my consultant at the other end of the line. My patient’s brain was mushrooming out of her skull, and it was bleeding from all corners. I stood frozen, overcome by the realization that she was on the verge of dying on the operating table. In my head, I ran through all the options I had left as I gave my consultant a quick narrative of my surgery over the phone. There was simply no room to feel anything. “My patient’s blood pressure is dropping, sir. I might just have to close this and talk to her family. Sorry po.”

Ronnie E. Baticulon 91 A pause. From the corner of my eye, I could see the anesthesiologist injecting medications and hooking intravenous fluid for resuscitation. Then, after a few seconds that seemed to linger for an eternity, instructions: “Try to control the bleeding first. Open the neck and clamp the carotid. Take out the swollen brain, more frontal than temporal. Wait for me.” “Okay po, sir. Thank you po.” I gestured to the nurse holding the mobile phone next to my ear that our conversation had ended, and I proceeded with the surgery as I was told. Just fifteen minutes earlier, I gave myself a pat on the back for an elegant bone opening in record time. I sat at ease on the cushioned chair, with both eyes fixed on the operating microscope as I navigated through the webs inside my patient’s brain and identified her blood vessels, suction tip on the left hand and dissecting instrument on the other. My patient had an aneurysm, a condition in which a vessel that delivers blood and oxygen to the brain develops a sac-like outpouching, in her case likely due to smoking and uncontrolled high blood pressure. This focal point of weakness in the vessel wall had already ruptured once, and the goal of the surgery was to apply a clip on the aneurysm’s neck to keep it from re-bleeding. It was my fourth operation of this kind. Though my hand movements still wavered between tentative and definitive, I had already acquired some dexterity during my first month as senior resident physician. At the start, I was leisurely pointing anatomic structures to my junior resident, alongside casual conversation with the anesthesiologist and nurses about my plans after finishing residency training in December and my recent trip to attend a pediatric course in Singapore. Alternative music resonated within the operating room from my iPad. It was the perfect morning to save a life. Until, with a single flick of my right hand probing aimlessly where it shouldn’t, a rookie mistake, my operating field filled with blood. Since I had not yet completely dissected the source of bleeding, one of the largest vessels of the brain, I knew outright my patient was in danger. I turned to the anesthesiologist and said, “I ruptured the aneurysm,” and to the nurse, “Pakitawag si James, please” (Kindly call James). He was my fellow senior resident, assisting a tumor case at that time in another operating room. There was no shouting. No clanging of surgical instruments being propelled in the air and falling to the floor. Only the cardiac monitor was

92 Essay bold enough to beep with arrogance, announcing the passing of time as one life slowly slipped past my trembling, stubby fingers. That life belonged to Ofelia Reyes,* a 38-year-old beautician and single mother from Cavite. When I first talked to her in the intensive care unit (ICU), she was proud to say that she could do everything in the salon where she worked: hair cut, hair style, manicure, pedicure, and all else that would make her clients feel pampered and fabulous. Her hair was dyed auburn, and both eyebrows, trimmed to a gentle curve, complementing the sharp angulation of her cheekbones. Her salary from the beauty parlor was barely enough to raise three kids. I never asked about her husband and neither did she volunteer any information about him. Two weeks earlier, as she was about to finish applying hair color on a client, she suddenly felt lightheaded. She excused herself to go to the restroom, only to be found unconscious on the floor a few minutes later by her coworkers. She awoke with severe headache and was taken to PGH, admitted as a charity patient under the neurosurgery service. Imaging of her brain and its blood vessels confirmed the presence of an aneurysm that had just bled. She was still fortunate; as many as 15 percent of patients with a ruptured aneurysm die even before they reach the hospital. As a charity patient, Ofelia would not have to pay for doctors’ fees or the daily rate for ward admission. Treatment would not be entirely subsidized, however. Her family would still need to shoulder the cost of laboratory tests, medications, brain scans, and the clip to be used for surgery. In a private hospital, a total treatment cost of half a million pesos would not be unheard of. Charity operations are decked among residents. James and I took turns clipping aneurysms, and Ofelia’s was my turn. On the day before her surgery, I explained to Ofelia that there was a risk of developing complications such as bleeding, infection, or difficulty speaking. Foremost of all, because I would be working on the right side of her brain, she could develop weakness of her left arm and leg. At worst, there was a small possibility of complete, permanent paralysis of the left side of her body. “Kahit saan po kayong ospital magpunta, wala pong doktor na magsasabi sa inyo na 100 percent sure, walang magiging problema sa operasyon.” (No matter

*Not her real name

Ronnie E. Baticulon 93 which hospital you go to, no doctor will give you a 100 percent assurance that no complications will arise during the operation.) Because the risk of her aneurysm bleeding again and potentially causing instantaneous death without treatment was much greater than the possible risks of surgery, Ofelia gave informed consent, but only after expressing her greatest concern: she was left-handed. “Itong kaliwang kamay lang ang ipinanghahanapbuhay ko, Dok.” (This left hand is my only means of earning a living, Doc.) I put my right palm over the back of her left hand and promised that I would do my best, knowing that I needed to, and that in truth, she did not have much of a choice. She was stuck with me because she would not be able to afford the cost of treatment elsewhere. “Kayo na po ang bahala, Dok. Maliliit pa po ang mga anak ko.” (I leave everything up to you, Doc. My children are still very young.) And so, as I tried to apply and reapply clips on Ofelia’s blood vessels in a continued attempt to close off the point where I inadvertently ruptured her aneurysm, I kept thinking about the three kids. And the brown, slender fingers that worked six days a week to be able to give them a decent life. Still, the bleeding in Ofelia’s brain would not stop. I was not ready to lose her. Not this day. Not this single mother of three children. What an immense relief it was to see my consultant walk into the operating room. I had been expecting either criticism or sarcasm, perhaps both, but instead we proceeded directly to the task at hand. My consultant deftly continued to dissect where I left off, pointing out the idiosyncrasies that made the case difficult. After several tries, he applied the final clip that would secure the aneurysm. All bleeding came to a halt. Ofelia’s blood pressure and heart rate began to normalize. “Never give up,” said my boss, before handing back to me the surgical instruments.

“Never Give Up,” I say under my breath as soon as I see Rick’s utility vehicle pull up on the lakeside driveway. My new teacher is a cheerful bearded fellow, your typical Aussie bloke, someone who would join you for a beer at the end of a busy workday. He gets off his truck and brings down two bikes from the rear, one for each of us.

94 Essay “I am that confident we will both be riding around the lake before the hour is up.” I have to say, his optimism is contagious. My new bike is still blue, but with a frame that is noticeably lighter than the city bike. I climb onto it and try the seat at the lowest possible position. My toes cannot reach the ground. Rick is not pleased. He goes to his truck and returns with a handy saw. He pulls out the seat post and cuts off two inches from the distal end, right in front of me. A bike has just been irreversibly mutilated just so I could learn. I surmise the theatrics was my teacher’s way of implying, There is no turning back, Doctor. He asks me to try again. “That’s better.” We walk to a nearby track and field practice court. He removes my bike’s pedals and tells me to roam around, momentarily lifting both feet off the ground every few seconds or so, for progressively longer periods each time. “If you feel that you are going to fall sideways, just turn the handlebars to that side. Most beginners end up tracing figures of eight, but you will soon be able to go straight once you get the hang of it.” I do as I was instructed, and he watches from afar.

Right after ofelia’s surgery, I spoke to her father in the waiting room. It was he who took care of the menial tasks of bringing blood and urine to the laboratory, scheduling procedures in radiology, and buying medications from the pharmacy day after day. He smelled of old clothes on a rainy afternoon, and his gentle manner belied the strength of his age. I was physically and mentally exhausted but I owed him an explanation: where I failed, why I had to call my consultant, and what to expect from hereon. I told him that most likely, Ofelia would wake up in the ICU unable to speak and with significant weakness on the left side of her body. I apologized. Throughout our conversation, he remained calm and understanding. “Salamat pa rin po, Dok,” (Thank you still, Doc) he said at the end. He was somber, but that did not inundate the sincerity of his gratitude, and I wondered how he did that. The harrowing surgery would cripple me for days, Ofelia’s lifeless left arm and leg being a daily reminder of my near-fatal mistake. Inasmuch as I

Ronnie E. Baticulon 95 wanted to cry from anger and remorse, there was hardly any time for that. A pause button did not exist. Charity patients who needed brain surgery kept coming to PGH, and I was duty-bound to serve them in all earnestness. The last time I would see Ofelia and her father was several weeks after her discharge from the hospital. The two turned up at the neurosurgical ward, requesting for her skin staples to be removed. After missing their scheduled follow-up appointment, her father had to borrow money for jeepney fare to PGH on this day, only because Ofelia’s wound had already begun to itch. My patient wore a rosary conspicuously around her neck. Her behavior regressed to that of a child’s. She was unable to comprehend commands, but she could utter simple phrases. The weakness on the left side of her body was decreasing steadily; she was now able to grasp objects and walk on her own. Her father told me that they had recently started selling handmade rugs to earn a living. Seeing Ofelia again, I was just thankful she did not die on my operating table.

Twenty minutes have elapsed and I am cruising with ease. Rick is satisfied with what he is seeing. “What do you think about putting the pedals back on?” He does not wait for my reply. He pulls me over and attaches the pedals to my bike. “Don’t think about it. Just keep doing what you were doing a while ago.” To my astonishment, pedaling has become instinctive. I am moving forward. Wobbly still, but moving nonetheless. Rick brings out his mobile phone and takes a video of me cycling for the first time. “I bet you didn’t think you’d be riding this quickly!” My heart is racing, ecstatic at the prospect of biking along the Yarra River and exploring a city that will be my home for a year. I look up and feel the congratulatory warmth of the sun against the onrushing wind. I have the grin of a hundred children combined. This is how it feels to achieve the impossible.

The joy of neurosurgery comes from lives saved and lives improved, be it from the simplest or most complicated of operations. At the other end of the spectrum, when a brain surgeon fails, one is eternally burdened by self-

96 Essay hatred, frustration, and regret, knowing that the slightest of errors may lead to prolonged suffering, permanent disability, or worse, even death. Trying to find the balance may seem futile; the only way to move forward is to learn from one’s mistakes, and to bear in mind that as a doctor, one only acts with the best of intentions. I am a Filipino neurosurgeon, and today, I learned to ride a bike.

Ronnie E. Baticulon 97 Shoes from My Father JAN KEVIN RIVERA

he first shoes my father ever bought for me were a pair of blue Patrick TEwings—high-cut, heavy-duty rubber shoes with Velcro straps. They were from Seoul, where he worked odd jobs during the cusp of a technological boom. The Ewings were meant to be worn on my first birthday. Family pictures told a different story. My one-year-old version was about to blow a candle, wearing shoddy pambahay and barefoot. Mom told me that I had refused to wear decent clothing during my birthday. I had stomped and shrieked my way out of a crisp polo, little khakis, and the shoes. Dad never failed to remind me, whenever the photo albums were pulled out, that he had shelled out hard-earned won for the complete set. He would emphasize that the shoes were the most expensive. Along with my birthday pictures were of my father, then a twenty-four- year-old overseas worker. One picture stood out. He was standing in the middle of a snow-covered neighborhood street. The whiteness of everything matched his complexion. He was smiling, his long floppy hair whipped by the winter wind. His distinguishing features—bushy eyebrows, protruding lips, lanky frame—would remind me of my own in my twenties. Our close resemblance was uncanny, relatives would say. The subtext was always clear: For someone who looked alike, we fought too much about our differences. His return to Manila spelled out these differences through the years. Our relationship was tenuous and uncomfortable, like trying to walk with two left pairs of shoes. My father’s presence was at its most palpable in shoe shopping, a middle- class rite of passage in personal responsibility. I am giving you something of value, he seemed to say. Look after it. Dad would take me to the department store, testing pairs of Tretorns that could serve many purposes. Occasionally thrown in to the mix were durable buckled sandals as substitutes. We went through the same ritual for school shoes. He was more decisive with those—time-tested black Walk-Overs. Other brands were subpar. After every

98 purchase, he would make me sit beside him, shoe-shining kit in hand. He would pick up one shoe, smear wax all over it with a sock over his hand, then shine it vigorously with a brush. He would go through the process carefully, stating the instructions for me. The shoes should last at least two school years, he would throw as a parting shot. Our garage was proof of this kind of maintenance. On long wooden shelves, plastic cases and carton shoe boxes were stacked on top of each other. Labels were scribbled on boxes: name of the owner, brand, color. If shoes were not placed in boxes, they were lined side by side on the floor, being aired out before keeping them in storage. I had been the bane of my father’s well-kept ritual. My rarely-shined leather shoes in grade school lasted only a year; six months in fourth grade when I used them to play patintero after school. They were strewn on the doormat whenever I arrived home. My other shoes, though well-worn for a couple of years, were so unusable that they had to be thrown out. Dad used to shout at me over those misuses. The frat man’s large voice boomed as he barraged me with questions: Bakit nakakalat? Why do you use them to run on pavement? Bakit ba kasi ginagamit sa patintero? I would shake my head, not daring to say out loud what I had thought: They were just shoes; what was the big deal? While I tried to shine and arrange them whenever he ordered me to, I never picked up his habits. No amount of shouting made me. Being Dad’s antithesis in shoe maintenance stuck as I grew up. But I did develop his appreciation for footwear and how they tied up a look. I was in high school when leather flip-flops inched their way into the market. Dad kept his imported black-and-brown pair in their original plastic case. At the time we were the same height. Our shoe sizes were not far from each other. I made the mistake of borrowing his leather flip-flops for a summer org meeting, determined to impress a group mate with my grown-up style. I made the bigger mistake of dropping by his office in the university out of habit. What followed were pointed reminders on personal belongings and an order to go home. “I can’t,” I stammered, defiant but scared at fifteen. He made me clarify why I could not. My reason involved Burger King and a boy. Something must have clicked in his head that day. He took it all in: dressy pants, well-pressed white polo, overpowering cologne. My toes curled in his borrowed sandals, aware of the scrutiny. “Go home,” he ordered for a second time. I did not.

Jan Kevin Rivera 99 I got home that day much later than Dad did. He was working on his computer, but I knew he heard me walking toward our apartment. Before entering, I grabbed the sandals, briskly rubbed their soles together, and clapped them many times to shake off the dirt. I made sure that he heard what I was doing. “Tama na!” he bellowed over my ruckus. He looked at me: silent appraisal with a hint of anger. He would give me that look in more instances—in a house that would become too small for us, circling around our landmine of an issue. Our old unit was at the end of a long apartment block. My steps had become lithe when I started arriving past my curfew during senior year. The shoes helped: black loafers bought by my maternal grandfather. They were my favorite pair, made of light Italian leather with breathable soles. All the others my father bought before had been relegated to their dusty, well- arranged boxes. They made too much noise to walk in, too much effort to put on before my classmate’s house help could suspect anything. Most times, I would open the door into the dark living room, mindful of the creak. Some unlucky nights, the fluorescent light spilled out into the small patio. I would try to enter unnoticed, never forgetting to wipe my shoes on the door mat. Dad would comment on how late it was, slurring his words. Alcohol always fueled whatever we were set to fight about. That night, it was about breaking curfew. The week before, it was about my broken laptop. Months ago, it was about a missing software installer. I would keep my words in check—at the start. I came from a meeting for the school paper that night. He scoffed at that. No high school meeting would last that long, he spewed out. Dad would give me that look: thick eyebrows bunched in the middle, lips set in a straight line, eyes squinted and bloodshot. It was unnerving, but I had learned how to tamp down any feeling of intimidation. The moment would not last long. We would trade arguments but always sidestepping around our issue. Months ago, the fight was not about the installer; it was about the boy who accompanied me to borrow it from his office. The week before, our argument had little to do about the broken laptop, more about what I used it for late at night, with no eyes to check what kind of websites I had been visiting. That night, we both knew that we were not talking about a broken curfew, but about what I did after school. And with whom.

100 Essay I had heard then of parents wanting to talk it out with their kids, about “being different.” I had been asked by high school teachers what my parents—“your dad,” they would specify—thought about me. I would shrug, which summarized our progress in that conversation. My father made his points across in the most combative of expressions. He had gotten involved in college frat rumbles, confronting boys with knuckles about petty slights. He complained to Mom about her salty, oily adobo. He shouted at me for sleeping too late, slipping from the honor roll, destroying my shoes. But Dad continued to sidestep with me until we were tired, until we just ignored each other. Like all the shoes that he bought for me, we kept our issue on the dusty shelf throughout my teenage years. I chose the state university for college, away from the Catholic one where my father’s footsteps echoed. The transfer meant more well-meaning relatives gave in to my requests for new shoes. I used the excuse of not having to wear a uniform on campus. Chuck Taylors came my way and became a staple when I was in college. They were easy to match, easy to wear in a new, sprawling school. My Chucks became a silent witness to the things college kids were wont to do. My black no-lace disintegrated from overuse, wearing them from class straight to a late night of driving around Manila. My gray double-tongue had smudges of vomit—mine or someone else’s—during a house party that got out of hand. The blue ones had been frayed on the side from too much walking, with male classmates who were as nervous as I was. The silence between my father and me grew larger. He had become busy in his new supervisory job, while I had become preoccupied with a newfound freedom. The few times that we shared a breakfast table, our dearth of topics became more glaring. I would ask him about work. He would respond with a one-sentence rant about sloppy work and missed deadlines. On my end, I would assure him that I was working to graduate with honors despite staying out late. We knew our roles. I had to do well in school, eager for academic performance not to become another issue. He learned not to ask questions about what kept me late. Shrugs and excuses protected everything that I was not willing to reveal. My curfew progressed from late to later to nonexistent. After midnight, I would leave my Chucks scattered by the door. Every morning I would find them arranged on the side of the mat. Running late for class, I would shoot

Jan Kevin Rivera 101 a quick apology to my mom before jetting out of the gate. She told me once that it was Dad who had been placing my shoes aside every morning. Later when I was a junior in college, Dad flew to Australia to visit my uncle for a month. The day he returned home, Mom greeted him at the door with a tight hug. My brother followed suit, taking my father’s hand to his forehead. I stood behind, saying a weak “Hello.” He glanced at my direction and said he had something for me. Things, actually: shirts, pants, and a pair of white lace-up Chucks. I found out later that he scrimped on his own pocket money so he could afford all of those. I noticed that I had more stuff than my brother. The Chucks were two inches too big, but nothing thick socks could not solve. Once, I offered to lend them to Dad. He reminded me that we no longer had the same shoe size. I had to wonder if pride kept us from sitting down and talking about it. There had been times when I knew that he knew. It was easy to overhear a man’s voice during my long phone conversations. There had been times when he would take me back to square one, like asking if the girl he kept hearing from me was my girlfriend. Sometimes the tone would be different: irritated comments about a shirt one size too small or the point of folded shorts. But we kept to ourselves most of the time. Maybe we had made our relationship work. Maybe our problem solved itself on the overhead shelf. I decided to risk proving myself on Christmas Eve. I planned to introduce my then boyfriend. He had met my parents during one dinner, but I knew that taking him to noche buena was a statement. As I stood by the door, my feet were sweating in my brown boat shoes. I forgot to put on socks in haste. My father took one look at him. After a quick scrutiny, Dad extended a hand to him—a firm handshake from the look of it. What happened next was a pleasant blur. He and Dad were exchanging stories over beer and sisig. He grew up in the same neighborhood Dad was brought up in. My father asked him about school, impressed that he was majoring in the hard sciences. The stories came fast and easy between them. He appeared bright and unassuming as my father regarded him. I was putting on my shoes at the door when Dad called out to say that he was welcome to drop by any time. Walking away from our house, he told me that I had scared him for nothing.

102 Essay “Your dad is nice,” he said, his breath giving off the strong scent of Pale Pilsen. I chose not to reply. In our dark, deserted street, I took his hand, my steps echoing in the quiet hours before Christmas. The years with my first boyfriend were easy, too comfortable even. Dad would see him—“your best friend,” as he referred to the boyfriend—in and out of the house. Dad had seen him drunk, sprawled on my bed as I tried to nurse him back to sobriety. He had seen gifts from him, including pressed flowers on frame. He commented how artistic he was. Dad had seen two pairs of slippers in front of my locked door. He knew he had to knock. When we had finally broken up, Dad started seeing him less in the house. Drinking by himself, he asked me where my best friend was, his old kainuman. “We’re not friends anymore,” I replied. I made sure to look at him in the eye. Dad was appraising me again, that time without the anger. He nodded and continued to sip his beer for the rest of the night. In our quiet world of sidestepping, I was unsure of what he felt about his son breaking up with another man. There was that one time, after I graduated from college, when I was sure of what he felt about me. I had just received an offer from a top-ranked advertising firm. I welcomed him home with the news. The reaction was something that I had not seen before: a hearty smile and a hug. He asked me to sit down with him that night, without the shoe-shining kit. He talked to me about the campaigns that he created in a small-time agency during the nineties. He enjoyed the work, though the pay was too dismal for our family. In time, he had to move to a higher paying industry as our needs grew bigger. After another late-night slog at a campaign for canned goods, I came home to find a pair of running shoes from him. He was worried about the overtime work that I was logging in. He wanted me to take up jogging in between writing scripts and television commercials. The shoes were a limited edition, top-of-the-line Adidas pair with reinforced mesh. They were gray, with streaks of pink. “That’s pink,” I had pointed out, letting the implication speak for itself. “Suits you,” he had replied, his voice laced with mirth. His statement was acceptance wrapped in slight judgment. I felt good enjoying small victories.

Jan Kevin Rivera 103 The victory did not last long. I was found underperforming after six months, citing a lack of passion for the job fresh graduates would kill for. Dad and I never talked about it, other than his short text message saying that I should beg the creative director for my job back, then a second text saying that I did not know what I wanted in a job. I stopped using the shoes after being let go. I dusted my leather shoes off and transitioned to another job, another industry. A month after I got fired again, I found myself in a start-up non- profit. I was tasked to find government funding at a time when a woman stole billions of taxpayers’ money through nongovernment organizations. Dad saw me shining my heavy, black brogues four months into the job. He asked me what the occasion was. I told him about the next day’s meeting with a government official, a potential funder. In my best clothes and shiny shoes, I said goodbye to him the next morning. I did not miss the “Good luck!” and the pat on the back. In a few months, Dad realized why I chose to work in an unstable company that had given itself a tall order. He heard the way that I talked on the phone to senior technocrats, projecting a much deeper voice so my youth would not betray me. He felt my absence on weekends when I had to do more work in the office. He saw the leather shoes that I shined for meetings. But the stress and commute took a toll. After arranging to rent a place with friends, I told my parents that I was moving out to the business district. There were questions, but they agreed. Dad was more reluctant than Mom. Dad watched me zoom around the house, stuffing things into my bag, ticking off tasks on my list. He had little help to offer. I knew which clothes to bring, what boxes contained which shoes, how to pack them in the suitcase. On the day that I was set to move out, I recalled out loud all the shoes that I needed to bring. “Your running shoes,” Dad piped in. I told him that my running shoes were the first ones that I had moved in to the condo. I had started jogging again. He offered to help me move in. “Paul will drive me,” I said, expecting a reaction from him. He just looked at me and nodded. Paul was the third name that he has heard from me. In passing, I described Paul as a young financial analyst who attended the same high school he did

104 Essay and the same university he has been working in. Like the man before Paul, I would introduce him to Dad. Maybe during dinner at home, maybe in another country where they allow a different kind of union. Maybe, if I dared to hope, even here in Manila, when we no longer have to fight for our place. One day, maybe society would hand the right to us in a shiny box, just like how Dad gave me my first running shoes. My phone beeped. The message was from Paul, letting me know that his car was parked outside. I started slinging on bags. Dad grabbed the ones filled with shoeboxes. None of those shoes inside were from him anymore. Two were from well- meaning relatives, the rest I had bought myself. He saw me wear them on occasion: leather sneakers for casual Fridays, vulcanized high-cuts for the rainy season, sturdy tri-colored rubber shoes for field work. He approved of them.

Jan Kevin Rivera 105 Homoeroticism as the Poetry of the In-Between: The Self-Translations of Nicolas Pichay Thomas David Chaves

hat drives certain poets to translate themselves? In moving between two Wdifferent sign systems and audiences to create a text in two languages, what are “lost and found” to and from the original and the translated texts? Because such texts defeat standard literary critical and translation theory, analysis can be quite tricky. Jan Walsh Hokenson and Marcella Munson ask in their landmark 2007/2014 The Bilingual Text: History and Theory of Literary Self-Translation, “Beyond the literary functions of the bilingual text, why have theorists in translation studies and linguistics paid so little attention to this age-old practice of self-translators recreating their own word?” (2014, 3). Hokenson and Munson propose two reasons. The first is that the keepers of the canon have historically insisted on “the linguistic purity” of the foundational figures (such as Chaucer and Dante) in building up a national canon, although both writers regularly translated their own works for various audiences and purposes. The second is that the future gatekeepers routinely ignored the translation as an awkward appendage of some sort. This, in turn, then influenced the thinking on self-translation as a marginal or esoteric task historically, starting from around the Renaissance onwards and up until very recently. Indeed, one can think of the long legacy of self-translation among such writers as, chronologically, Francis Bacon, Rabindranath Tagore, Stephen Benet, Samuel Beckett, Vladimir Nabokov, and Joseph Brodsky whose works have been analyzed predominantly as monolingual texts. The deliberate self- translation of the latter two writers, however, eventually changed the thinking on this remarkable aspect of literary practice. The second reason for the neglect or indifference in studying literary self-translation is the conceptual complexity of the task itself. In the words of Hokenson and Munson, “Since the bilingual text exists in two language

106 systems, how do the monolingual categories of author and original apply?” (2014, 2). They then posit corollary questions: “Are the two texts both original creations? Is either text complete? Is self-translation a separate genre? Can either version belong within a single language or literary tradition? How can two linguistic versions of a text be commensurable?” On the other hand, contemporary translation scholar Susan Bassnett questions whether self-translation practices are, in fact, a form of translation at all. When she says that, “The problems of defining what is or is not a translation are further complicated when we consider self-translation and texts that claim to be translated from a non-existent source” (1998, 38), Bassnett virtually relegates self-translation as one of those problematic types. Then, too, when Christopher Whyte insists that self-translation is “an activity without content, voided of all the rich echoes and interchanges … attributed to the practice of translation” (2002, 70), he is virtually saying that self-translation is not translation at all in the ordinary or accepted sense of the word. Poets who self-translate do so for various reasons, although such reasons may ultimately be idiosyncratic. Even though self-translation is generally considered as “something marginal, a sort of cultural or literary oddity” (Wilson 2009, 186), there appears to be a strong impulse among bilingual (and for some, multilingual) writers to explore the potentials of meaning and resonance in the process of recreating their own words in another language. Because self-translation is closely associated with bilingualism per se, the process problematizes certain aspects of literary and translation theory with regard to identity, equivalence, authorship and readership, and of textuality itself. Ghenadie Râbacov, who sees self-translation as cross-cultural mediation (2013, 66), traces two factors that encourage self-translation. The first involves the writer or author, a perfect or near-perfect bilingual, taking it upon himself to weigh the issues between two cultural systems by bringing them together in the self-translated text. In George Steiner’s famous 1998 work After Babel: Aspects of Language and Translation, he implies that as the perfect translator, the bilingual is one who does not “see the difficulties, the frontier between the two languages is not sharp enough in his mind” (1998, 125). The second factor, Râbacov advances, is society itself, what he calls “the translated society,” by which he means the sociolinguistic factors that come into play in places where bi- or multilingualism is a fact of life. “Living is a translated society, (self)-translation brings into play some social issues” (2013, 68), whereby the cultural dominance of one language may assert itself in the process. This is similar to what Rainier Grutman labels as “finding symmetry

Thomas David Chaves 107 in an asymmetrical world” (1998, 196). Grutman, who wrote the entry on “Autotranslation” (another word for self-translation) for the 1998/2009 Routledge Encyclopedia of Translation Studies edited by Mona Baker, remarks on the prestige of one language over another when it comes to where the self- translated text is published and read. Here we might borrow Pierre Bourdieu’s idea of “symbolic capital” as a way of explaining why, for example, Samuel Beckett, relocating in France in 1937, consciously became bilingual in his writing. At that time, Grutman notes, literary English had not yet taken off as the linguistic currency du jour, “whose shares on linguistic world markets,” as Grutman puts it would increase only after the Second World War. Thus, there is an unspoken power differential between the languages of self- translators, an asymmetry, which some poets may challenge today, writing in two languages precisely because self-translation may provide a voice to the other, less dominant language. Which brings us to the 1993 poetry collection Ang Lunes na Mahirap Bunuin/The Intransigence of Mondays by Nicolas Pichay, which is also his first book of poetry. While Ang Lunes/The Intransigence (abbreviated henceforth) is not wholly self-translated, the four poems that Pichay elects to self-translate also happen to explore homoerotic themes, with some explicit ones at that. Three professional translators, Rosemarie King, Joey Baquiran, and Jerry Torres, tackle the rest of the various poems in the volume. This observation leads us to examine certain aspects of poetic self-translation as they impinge upon (1) commensurability, (2) authorship/readership, and (3) textuality/ intertextuality itself, the three elements explored in this paper. Because the four poems we review here deal frankly with the homoerotic, a few questions immediately pique our interest, the first of which is, why did Nicolas Pichay choose for himself these poems to self-translate, and then leave the others to professional translators? Taking the first stanza of “Maselang Bagay ang Sumuso ng Burat/This is a Delicate Matter, Sucking Cock,”

This is a delicate matter, sucking cock Maselang bagay ang sumuso ng burat You might not like it right away. Baka hindi mo magugustuhan kaagad, Remember not to pounce indiscriminately in the dark Huwag kang basta mandadakma sa dilim Lest you gag with foot in your mouth. Kung ayaw mong masubo sa alanganin. Nevertheless, do not deprive yourself blind Huwag rin naman sanang magsisinungaling To the call of truth in thyself Sa sariling nakakaalam ng hilig Nor accept as gospel truth society’s O gumamit ng sukatang panlipunan Definition of what it is to be a man. Nang hindi iniisip ang pinagmulan. This is a delicate matter, sucking cock Maselang bagay ang sumuso ng burat You might not like it right away. Hindi parang kaning madaling iluwat

108 Essay we immediately sense a close and thoughtful rendition of the original. Having said that, we note that the English translation appears on the left page and the original Filipino on the right (113). We assume this to be the original. This is quite unusual. In standard bilingual or translated poetic texts, the original normally assumes a position of importance by being positioned verso, while the translation following, on the right, the recto. This brings to mind the case of Samuel Beckett as the primary exemplum of literary self-translation, whose works, since his immigrating to France at age thirty-one, became decidedly diptych. Grutman then says that after this, “Beckett ended up blurring the boundaries between original and replica, creation and copy” (2013, 196). It might be that Ang Lunes/The Intransigence, being a first publication, was produced bilingually as a career strategy on Pichay’s part, or as a stepping- stone, so to speak, to mark him off as a distinct new voice. The Zamboanga- born lawyer, while known today primarily for his dramatic productions and his translations and adaptations of canonical plays, grew up in Quiapo, Manila’s rambunctious commercial district, and the impetus for writing the city in many of his poems in Ang Lunes/The Intransigence maybe sourced from there. Pichay attended the prestigious University of the Philippines (where he studied theater and law) Writers Workshop in 1982 and has become since then, a multi-awarded dramatist, scriptwriter, and translator of various works. When Pichay remarks to “think like a Houdini; a box is something to escape from. You can do anything you want” (Guerrero 2013), he may have grafted a trope for his own self-translational poetics, the blurring of boundaries between original and copy or the cipher, unraveling the myth of poetry’s untranslatability. In order to study the merits of a diptych literary publication, both from literary critical and translation theory perspectives, a typology of bilingual texts has been proposed by Eva Gentes (2013, 275) so that “further empirical research and theory development” may be advanced. She says there are four types:

a. En face editions • Corresponding facing editions • Non-corresponding facing pages b. Split-page editions • Divided vertically • Divided horizontally

Thomas David Chaves 109 c. Successive versions d. Reversible editions (tête-bêche)

Most en face editions are published with corresponding facing pages, allowing the reader to compare and switch between both versions conveniently. This, of course, presumes bilingual fluency, or at least reading proficiency in both languages. A result of this arrangement is the creation of a double reading or a combined meaning which is greater than each of the meanings contained in the text, if examined individually (Danby 2003, 84). The reader is then encouraged for “double reading” (Gentes 2013, 276). In reviewing Pichay’s first stanza above, we might ponder on the incommensurability (while apparently retaining equivalence) of the third and fourth lines,

Remember not to pounce indiscriminately in the dark Huwag kang basta mandadakma sa dilim Lest you gag with foot in your mouth. Kung ayaw mong masubo sa alanganin. where dakma is rendered as “to pounce indiscriminately” and the idiomatic expression masubo sa alanganin as “gag with foot in your mouth,” in both cases employing what I call rough-and-ready correspondences, but whose independent meanings are totally separate in the cultural worlds of the imagined English reader from that of the independent Filipino reader. We might make a case for the untranslatability of specific culture-bound words such as the often-anthropologically-remarked-upon vocabulary of “carry” with the use of one’s hands or other body parts: kipkip (in or under the arms), pasan (on the shoulders), pangko (with the arms bent at the elbows to carry whole), sakbibi (with both arms), bitbit (with the fingers of one arm), baba (on the back), sunong (on the head), tangay (between one’s set of teeth), pingga (using a pole over the shoulder), balagwit (with a lever or pole), and so forth. The seeming untranslatability of dakma, subo, and alanganin as culture-specific terms are given some kind of equivalence that makes us experience, as proficient bilinguals, Gentes’s double reading with the added dimension of meaning in Danby’s indefinable space of the in-between when the poems are read together.

The Concept of Commensurability In translation theory, the concept of commensurability is ultimately allied with the idea of linguistic equivalence, that venerable translation standard which compares the Source Text (ST) with that of the Target Text (TT) by way of semantic, syntactic, and structural correspondence. Equivalence

110 Essay becomes nowhere as dramatic as when it comes to studying bilingual texts precisely because the authors themselves are the translators. If fidelity is the rule against which equivalence is measured, then we cannot really question any degree of faithfulness (or lack thereof) in the self-translated text any more than we can question the asymmetry behind Pichay’s lines 5 to 8,

Nevertheless, do not deprive yourself blind Huwag rin naman sanang magsisinungaling To the call of truth in thyself Sa sariling nakakaalam ng hilig Nor accept as gospel truth society’s O gumamit ng sukatang panlipunan Definition of what it is to be a man. Nang hindi iniisip ang pinagmulan, where fidelity now plays second fiddle to fluency and resonance in the English translation. Pichay has noticeably taken liberties in the non-translation of sana, magsinungaling, hilig, sukatang panlipunan, iniisip, and pinagmulan and added what was not there in the original, expressions like deprive, blind, call of truth, gospel truth, definition, and man. In other words, the system of significations has fundamentally been altered from source to target. The idea of equivalence, however, is much contested in translation studies today. While many theorists continue to uphold it for discursive and academic purposes, other theorists like Lawrence Venuti have effectively challenged its basic assumptions, calling it outworn, and had never been an ethical ideal, properly measured only by ingesting the foreign into the domestic so completely that the original is effaced. In Venuti’s view, some degree of “foreignization” is purposeful in that the TT is precisely that, a translation. Still others like Peter Fawcett, tired and fed up by the interminable search for equivalence in what are clearly two different texts, would like to set aside the notion altogether or put it to rest, and yet Fawcett himself recognizes equivalence’s indelible part in discursive analysis and heuristics for translation theory (1997, 52–63). If commensurability in and for itself remains a benchmark even in self- translation, then it is difficult to see how we can tease out any analytical framework for poetic projects such as Pichay’s. In the second stanza of the poem, the translational asymmetry becomes even more apparent than the first

The mouth must be perfectly shaped Dapat tama ang pagkakahugis ng bibig Incisors are not permitted to claw. At walang tulis ng ngiping sumasabit The larynx must also be open Bukas din dapat ang daang-lalamunan So that everything may be taken all the way. Para kung sumagad ay di mabubulunan. If by these, he still does not groan in pleasure Pag hindi pa siya mapaungol sa sarap Look again, your bedmate may be a fish. Baka naman ang pinapaltos mo’y sapsap. Go look for someone else Maghanap ka na lang ng ibang maturingan

Thomas David Chaves 111 Our community is full of mermaids. Hitik ng sirena ang ating lipunan. This is a delicate matter, sucking cock. Maselang bagay ang sumuso ng burat You might not like it right away. Hindi dapat inaalok sa lahat. Linguistic non-equivalence may be seen in such cases as dapat tama and “perfectly shaped,” “incisors” and ngiping sumasabit, “larynx” and daang- lalamunan, and so forth. More so, as we move several lines down, “your bedmate” becomes ang pinapaltos mo and in that line “a fish” is proposed as the equivalence of sapsap, a particular variety of fish (the pony fish,Leiognathus equulus), where hypernomy is the translation strategy proposed. Notice that the rhyme scheme in Filipino for such pairs as lalamunan/mabubulunan, sarap/sapsap, and maturingan/lipunan cannot be rendered in English, a case where symmetry or correspondence is decided on the basis of the particular language’s literary sensibilities. In other words, because much of traditional Filipino poetics enshrines a regular rhyme scheme while current English poetic standards do not, Pichay’s self-translation fully recognizes that source and target have different traditions and imaginably different audiences as well. The point here again is what Venuti has famously proposed, that translation theory must cultivate a praxis that goes beyond equivalence, since such parameters denigrate the social value of the source and target texts, privileges one over the other and perpetuates the questionable concept of the translated text as degraded, corrupt, or of less value than the original. This is especially true of literary translation where, because equivalence remains the gold standard against which a translation is assessed, a translated text will always be seen, in Hokenson and Munson’s reckoning, “a diminution and a loss, a falling away” (2011, 2). For Pichay to force himself to translate his own work against purely semantic and structural likeness without respecting the sensibility and history of the languages in which he works may be sheer folly, and truncates the genre of poetry as simply something mechanical, or worse, a mere academic exercise such as found in a second language learning class. This brings us back to Walter Benjamin’s 1923 essay “The Task of the Translator” where he remarks, “No translation would be possible if in its ultimate essence it strove for likeness to the original” (1923, 73). In Self-Translation: Brokering Originality in Hybrid Culture, Anthony Cordingley and others underscore the significance of self-translation as a project to explore multilingualism and hybridity, especially as it relates to the processes and effects of globalization as we know it today. Cordingley says in the Introduction that literary self-translation occurs in a world “where every

112 Essay day, millions of individuals, out of choice or necessity, translate themselves into different cultures and languages” (2013, 6). As such, self-translation in our times can be understood as a means through which writers embrace and give voice to identities that span more than one place, space, culture, and context. The contemporary Australian cultural critic and poet Paul Venzo, speaking of his own practice, writes, “The truly bilingual writer-translator cannot necessarily be said to be more or less original or authentic in one language or another. Rather, his or his skill lies in the ability to move back and forth between languages and cultural identities. In effect the bilingual writer- translator produces two different but interrelated texts-in-translation, rather than separate source and target texts” (2013, 5). In effect, Venzo repeats what Cordingley, Hokenson, and Munson have proposed all along in their studies. Because many of these bilingual writers come mostly from backgrounds with a colonial history or have otherwise been raised bilingually/ biculturally in immigrant family settings, it does not come as a total surprise that they challenge the traditional concepts of originality and authorship of their own literary texts. By extension, we might state as well that, in their freedom to experiment with hybridity and expression, or to cross cultural bridges, or otherwise to establish new literary spaces for their works, self-translating writers offer a new template for looking at translational equivalence that goes beyond mere correspondence or commensurability. Moreover, these writers extend the idea of translation as a form of negotiation, a concept artfully advanced by Umberto Eco in Mouse or Rat? Translation as Negotiation: “It is the decision to believe that translation is possible, it is our engagement in isolating what is for us a deep sense of the text, and it is the goodwill that prods us to negotiate the best solution for every line” (2003, 192). In Eco’s reckoning, a text contains a “deep story,” that which is to be discovered and respected in translation because it contains a reasonably fixed and believable shared meaning, “even though knowing that one never says the same thing, one may say almost the same thing.” In reading Pichay’s fourth and final stanza of the poem, the self-translation becomes even more dissimilar, this again, if linguistic equivalence were the sole measure of translational worth.

But my leave I give you word Mag-iiiwan sana ng munting habilin A simple advice, do not take offence Payo lang naman, huwag sanang dibdibin The severe and mindless trade Ang marubdob at itim na paninira Of pontificating men “holier than thou.” Gawa ng santo-santong paniniwala. Because the true mettle of a man Sapagkat ang sukatang ng pagkatao In not found in his color, intellect, orientation or looks Wala sa kulay, dunong or astang pabo.

Thomas David Chaves 113 It is in the purity and sincerity Nasa pagkabusilak, pagkadakila Of his dealings with other men. Ng tunay na pagmamahal sa kapuwa. This is a delicate matter sucking cock Maselang bagay ang sumuso ng burat A fact that everyone must be made aware of, Iyan ang kailangang malaman ng lahat, No reason to hide in shame Walang dahilang itago’t pandirihan Emerge from the dark, my friends! Bumangon sa dilim, aking kaibigan! Without tracing further some of the semantic losses and gains in translation, it should become apparent by now that Pichay’s self-translation project deliberately opens up a new space the independent but related texts provide, a space that is at once liminal and revelatory. Liminal because both texts mirror each other not in the optically correct reflection of the other’s image, but because of the vague, fuzzy way of looking back or putting it metaphorically, a funhouse mirror of one another. The liminality arises because one cannot really state categorically which one is the original, which the copy. One does not hasten readily to conclude that some distortion in the reflection has happened precisely because there is still some measure of commensurability, no matter how hard-pressed we are to point out what, where and why. This especially arises when one reads the texts line by line, the English first and then the Filipino equivalent (or vice versa), rather than reading the poem monolingually all the way through and then reading the other text. This in-between space is also revelatory because a recognition of simultaneous similarity and difference emerges in the reader’s mind. I take this to be what Venzo means when he says “self-translation may result in a new kind of textual territory, a labyrinthe but interconnected space in which the hybridity of texts-in-translation reflects the hybrid, inter- and transcultural identities of those who produce them” (2013, 6). This revelation may be also be related to Rita Wilson’s concept of “the double” in self-translation. In analyzing the self-translated fiction of contemporary Italian novelist Francesca Duranti’s works, Wilson proposes that the self “is not pre-existent, but is constituted in the act of translation. There is a double articulation: knowing and not knowing ‘the other’. To translate is to install oneself in the space of divergence and to accept the divergence of the two subjects” (2009, 196). In effect, the doubling of the self in translation illuminates or reveals self-knowledge more than if the text were left alone in the hands of a bilingual writer. If such a double operates psychically in Duranti’s fiction, it stands to reason that Pichay may also likewise generate such revelation, if not for himself, then at least for his interacting texts, and maybe as such even extend the revealed liminal spaces of the self and of the text to the readers themselves.

114 Essay Authorship and Readership As we have seen, self-translation lays down a paradigm that allows for dissimilarities within orders of correspondence. It challenges the binary theoretical models of “gaps” (Hokenson and Munson 2014, 4) from one of opposition to another of textual continuity where two cultures are placed side by side to produce a mid-zone of overlaps and intersections. This notion recalls Anthony Pym’s idea of translation as a practice of sociolinguistic “interculture” (1998, 181). Pym explains that translators live and work in a hypothetical gap between languages and cultures but that in the process of translation, they reorder such a gap and allow active engagement between two texts. This then allows for a “stereoscopic reading” of translated texts, a phrase proposed by Mary Ann Gaddis in her book Translation and Literary Criticism: Translation as Analysis. Gaddis says that “stereoscopic reading makes it possible to intuit and reason out the interliminal” (1997, 90) and “it is this ‘interliminality’ which is a gift translation gives to readers of literature” (1997, 7). While neither Pym nor Gaddis is dealing with self-translation per se, their thinking brings to the fore the fascinating role authors and readers play in the writing and reading of bilingual literary texts. This observation is especially pertinent to en face or side-by-side editions of poetic translations such as in the case of Filipino readers reading Ang Lunes/The Intransigence. Assuming full bilingual competence on the readers’ part, why read both texts in the first place when either original or translation would have sufficed? What psychic, cultural, and social needs are addressed, needs that are hypothetically different than those that reside in a monolingual text? As savvy readers to these texts, how do they deal with or respond to the double reading, one that is marked by opposition in some places and congruence in others? What insights are offered them in the liminal space between the texts? These are difficult questions to answer, in part because these are underexplored in the literature on translation theory, in part because such readers and reading depart from mainstream practice in largely monolingual cultures of dominance such as English, Spanish or French, and in part because they defy facile literary classifications of originality, form (or genre) and the valuation of literature as translated text. At the root of these questions is the audience, and as Hokenson and Munson unerringly ask, “How does one delimit, define, and not the least, interrelate the social groups being addressed by the bilingual text?” (2014, 12). When Pichay or his poetic persona describes a religious procession of the famed Black Nazarene in “Biyernes Santo sa Quiapo/Good Friday in

Thomas David Chaves 115 Quiapo,” he mixes politico-religious commentary with a “sadomasochistic” and homoerotic reading of himself.

Behind them Sa kanilang likod, are barking guards kumakahol ng mga orden pretend soldiers ng mga bantay. from an old testament movie Sunda-sundalo sprocketted in my mind. sa lumang pelikula The armed centurions are ng aking isipan. brandishing whips, wearing sandal laces Mga senturyong nakakutamaya, wound into X’s, de-haplit, nakasandalyas and matching short skirts na itinaling paekis, that reach the crotch, never a hair beyond it. at ternong paldang, gayong maigsi, ay di masilip-silipan, that ends one long stanza later with

My candle is lit May kandila ako, ngunit hindi ako sasama diyan. but not for joining. Walang nakakabuo ng prusisyon. No one finishes this procession Maliban sa pinapasan. other than the Ones being borne. The poetic persona comes to the procession not as a penitent or devotee, or at least a member of the faithful, but for another reason: he comes to gaze at the male actors (only males join the procession) playing Roman centurions in their provocative costumes and actions. When, in the last stanza, the persona finally reveals himself as one of another inclination (religious persuasion? sexual orientation?), the inferred reader is torn between reading the English (“My candle is lit”) and the Filipino (May kandila ako) which translates simply as “I have a candle” to decide for him- or herself what meaning must occupy the liminal or in-between space of the texts. The English may read as one of religious persuasion, or the lack of it, and the Filipino as one of gender or sexuality, since the candle easily hints at phallic symbolism in the poem’s context. In other words, this is what Pichay is saying all along and is truly reflected in several other poems in the collection: I am gay, I am different, and you must respect me for it. This, in turn, brings us to the concept of inferred or implied readership. In the literature, there is a minor debate regarding the “correct” use of the term to represent the author’s imagined reader: implied, inferred, ideal, imagined, assumed. However, we will not get into that little war since all of these arguments speak in general terms of readers (of literature), not specific to bilingual readers who read bilingual poetic texts. If bilingual authors, consciously or otherwise, address bilingual readers, would the concept of originality matter if in the first place, they gathered a shifting hermeneutic

116 Essay or a variable reading each text provided? That each text stood on its own, separate but related, within its own merits? I have a feeling that this is what exactly happens in the reader’s mind, judging, for example, from the middle lines of the long stanza we skipped altogether above.

Fast prayer is mechanized Mabilis ang dasal, magmamadaling kabalbalan tulad ng: like a McDonald’s greeting “Welkam to McDonald’s, of hello and thank you for buying, Tenk yu por kaming!” in a tone as shrill Sa tonong kasingtinis as the swigs of a cat-o-nine. Ng haplit-bubog ng mga nagpapasan. Here the reader no longer minds the skewed parallel between the texts, with the Filipino version poking fun at the putative manner in which Philippine English is spoken, and with the English remaining uncommitted except at the level of social critique of piety or religious practice. What does the bilingual reader profit from this? The answer, I speculate, ispleasure . Pleasure because the way Pichay has brought the two texts together produces a cunning or craftiness in the poetic observation. This not only applies to language as social observation or translation as technique, but also to the very theme he projects in his poetry: that in the undefined social space that he occupies as a gay man, he asks whether in the heteronormative world the members or citizens (such as the devotees of the Black Nazarene) there suffer from no doubts of identity. He’s not quite sure; he thinks not. Pichay implies that we (ng mga nagpapasan) all carry the same burdens, identity-wise, gay or straight or bisexual. Such a reading brings us to advance whom Pichay would possibly have imagined for target readership. We propose a very specific and select audience: a group of Filipino readers proficient in both languages, keen in the nuances of translation or translated texts, find pleasure in or appreciate the wit that both texts have wrought alongside the other, find fascinating the divergences and congruencies of the translation, respect the importance of the liminal space that projects as a result of the bilateral placements, and finally the most important of all, that translation itself is a creative form of rewriting that merits its own sense and aura of “originality.” We might posit further that beyond the pragmatic goal of reaching a wider audience (a putative foreign readership, for example), the readers identify with the theme or themes of Pichay’s poetry in a way where a marginalized or long-silenced voice is given its turn to speak. It does not matter here what group of or from society the voice represents—a minority, the oppressed, women in general, the LGBT community, migrant workers, the poor, etc. And this, not only speaking

Thomas David Chaves 117 it once, but amplifying it double-fold: in the “translation” and in the in- between space that arises between them. Finally, as we see in “One Villanelle for the Road/Isang Tagay Ng Villanelle,” written in strict poetic form, while ostensibly about gay lovemaking and how potentially dangerous or transgressive it can turn out, this poem proposes a postcolonial reading of translation; that bilingual writers who come from a postcolonial background symbolically invest in the minority or colonized language a form of equality with the “master” language.

The tug of preliminary echoes Namalayan ko ang tunog ng kasluskos Nantatabig, nagpapalilis ng kumot, Like a tikbalang’s silence before the kill. Tulad ng tikbalang kung nanghihilakbot.

I thought the sea had sedated us all Akala ko’y napahimbing ang lahat In the dark, my embraces yearn for a port, Sa dilim, nangangampit ang aking yapos Namalayan ko ang tunog ng kasluskos.

Contemplating the tarot on my friend’s face, Binaybay ko ang alon sa kanyang mukha It prodded me to dream secret waves Nagbalak sumisid sa sikretong laot Like a tikbalang’s silence before the kill. Tulad ng tikbalang kung nanghihilakbot.

Native wine spills from two glasses Nataob ang mga baso ng lambanog Overturned by the winds from an impending storm, Pinagkiskis ng parating na unos The tug of preliminary echoes. Namalayan ko ang tunog ng kasluskos.

The grappling bears nothing but thorns Nagbubunga ng tinik ang aking panimdim Prodding, piercing at my loins Nanunusok, namimilas, nangangalmot Like a tikbalang’s silence before the kill. Tulad ng tikbalang kung nanghihilakbot.

In the hour of the ocean’s changing and secret urging Sa hatinggabi ng lihim na paghahangos Drowning in firewater and brine Sa alimpuyo ng alak at sigalot The tug of preliminary echoes Namalayan ko ang tunog ng kaluskos, Like a tikbalang’s silence before the kill. Tulad ng tikabalang kung nanghihilakbot. Appropriating the unitalicized tikbalang, a supreme motif in local folklore and left untranslated in the English text, is an act of translational triumph for itself. With the head of a horse and the body of a tall, thin man living high up in trees, the tikbalang’s raison d’etre is leading people astray. A person who is trampled upon by a tikbalang turns blind or sickens violently to the point of death (cf. Damiana Eugenio 2002). An imagined foreign reader will have to construct a meaning for himself the kind of creature that a tikbalang is and will probably appropriate some mythic monster, beast or werewolf like the Minotaur in his imagination. It is this very malleability of tikbalang that, while ironically is believed to be protean himself as he takes on varied appearances, lends a potency to the reading. The tikbalang

118 Essay is a prime example of “the Untranslated,” Emily Apter’s phrase for ideas or notions in the study of World Literature as a form of literary comparatism where, because different languages and traditions view the World differently, resist any form of translation were World Literature equated exclusively an English, German, or French project. In a globalizing world, including the academe’s tendency to homogenize the World’s plural and irreducible goals and voices, Apter takes the kindred ideas of “non-translation, mistranslation, incomparability, and untranslatability” as forms of resistance (2013, 4) not amenable to fluent or domesticated translation so required in constructing a world literature in any of these hegemonic tongues. The English text of this villanelle, while remaining “cryptohomosexual”— J. Neil Garcia’s term for the densely metaphoric character of our earlier poetry in English tackling homosexual themes because of the inimical exigencies of the time among such poets as Jose Garcia Villa, Nick Joaquin, and Rolando Tinio (192), places a specific cultural consciousness in the deployment of the poetic situation. Beyond the tikbalang, the rendition of lambanog as “native wine,” lilis as “stealthily lifts up,” kaluskos as “echoes,” binaybay as “contemplating,” among others—all “untranslatables”—and the very appropriation of ‘native’ as a signification of the local or indigenous, serve to redeploy the English for its own ends as a Filipino text, amplifying the original, rather than one meant for a foreign or international readership. Garcia adds that our Anglophone poetry is postcolonial not only because it is written in the colonizer’s tongue, but also because of its “historical reality as an ideological consequence of American colonialism on one hand, and on the other its ironic potentiality to secrete and promote forms of ‘anti-colonial signification’—its ability to move beyond, critique, or ‘post’ the colonialism that made it possible, to begin with” (2014, 12). In his analysis of Rolando Tinio’s homosexually-themed poem “A Parable,” Garcia proceeds beyond the tendency of Philippine poetry in English to universalize, to deepen it with the interpretation that because this is a marginal or marginalized voice, the act of writing in the colonizer’s tongue is what precisely enables him (the Filipino Anglophone poet) to express what would not have been possible without colonialism. The tongue that so pathologized Tinio’s homosexual condition by “sexologically naming him” (2014, 193) is equally ironic as it is postcolonial in the projection. The very act of translating oneself is a process that inheres in the postcolonial condition, where, without the history of colonialism, translation, and self-

Thomas David Chaves 119 translation would not have not been as significant. If, in Pichay’s villanelle we see an amplification of the marginalized voice—because it has taken certain freedoms to expand itself beyond mere linguistic equivalence and a reframing of the sign—then the reader is bound to explore the space of the in-between. Pichay assumes that the prospective act of two men making love is terrifying (nanghihilakbot) not only to the Self but also to the Other, equally as it is fulfilling and ecstatic, “drowning in firewater and brine” (paghangos sa alimpuyo ng alak at sigalot), Pichay is making a pitch for homoerotic desire as valid or legitimate and equal as any that transpires in society. Because the villanelle cannot be read in a traditional approach as “original” and “translation,” the double voicing that resides in the text, that in-between space, then we can speculate that Pichay’s project in deploying Filipino and English simultaneously is reflective of the postcolonial condition of the Philippines, one where many sectors are continually silenced and marginalized, including that of the gay community. In taking up the cudgels against heteronormativity and homophobia in a seemingly “hypermasculinized” nation as a result of colonialism, Pichay’s homoerotic self-translations remind us once more of Garcia’s cogent understanding of how gender is deeply imbricated in nation: “The materiality of the sexual and gender questions necessitates both an engagement with the material reality of the nation-state” (2014, 111).

Self-Translation and Intertextuality All texts fundamentally relate to other texts in order to derive meaning, value, and purpose. The relationship can be direct such as those found in allusions, references, or quotations, but more commonly, the relationship is more subtle, implied, or general. A speech act, for example, can be said to refer to a previous utterance or language use, or that a literary work can refer to other works of a similar genre to define its structural function. All these constitute and is constituted by intertextuality, the basic idea that texts are relational and inform upon another and thus, ultimately lay down a continuity of forms and practices to establish tradition, purpose, and style (see Allen 2000). Furthermore, the intertextual relationship also forms and informs writers and readers toward a tacit understanding of shared literary and cultural knowledge. This requires that readers themselves possess a critical faculty to assess the significance of an intertextual relation when it appears and locate the tradition in which the text assumes its reason for being. Because intertextuality points to the particular cultural and social conditions in which reading and writing take place, intertextuality imposes a certain

120 Essay level of competence for reception to become meaningful, or in its absence, a provision for alternative ways of reception, such as those found in explanatory footnotes, definitions, or amplification. When Venuti explains that “translation represents a unique case of intertextuality,” he presupposes that three sets of intertextual relations are involved: (1) those between the foreign text and other texts, (2) those between the foreign text and the translation, and (3) those between the translation and other texts (2009, 158). These relations are not always neat and clear- cut, and in fact are frequently complex and uneven so much so that in the plurality of losses and gains in translation, the intertextual relations bear such an imprint to produce lay discourses as “lost in translation,” “true fidelity,” or “word for word translation.” Because it is the translator’s chief mission to hew equivalence, he is tasked with the impossible goal of establishing an intertextual relation in the translation while at the same time running “the risk of increasing the disjunction between the foreign and translated texts by replacing a relation to a foreign tradition with a relation to a tradition in the translating culture” (2009, 158). Venuti’s fine observations, however, may need some qualification when it comes to self-translated texts, and in particular of Pichay’s poems, in several respects. The first refers to distinction between the foreign and translated texts. As we have already seen, the poems’ imagined readers largely address educated bilingual Filipinos rather than foreigners appreciating his work via translation. As evidence to this, Ang Lunes na Mahirap Bunuin was sold out completely within the first year of publication (personal communication with Pichay, May 2016), a remarkable feat in itself for local publishing. This, in turn, relates directly to English as a language in the Philippines, where not only is it recognized officially, but more importantly, considered not as a “foreign language” by any means in the national imaginary. While to a lesser extent Spanish and Chinese may share this cachet of “non-foreignness,” a “foreign language” refers only to such languages as German or Russian, languages that played no direct role in the Philippine historical colonial experience. It may be that because Pichay has written in Philippine English, or that which has evolved to be the local variety of English, he has realized what writer and critic Gémino Abad has famously remarked, that “we had to colonize English” (1999, 16). On the other hand, Pichay’s self-translations may also reflect “writing in Tagalog using English words” (attributed to NVM Gonzales) or “in Capampangan using English words” of Bienvenido Santos (qtd. from Patke and Holden 2010, 101). These all amount to the same thing: that the

Thomas David Chaves 121 “translation” into English of Pichay’s works is not a matter of working it along the lines of a foreign language, but into another variant Philippine language. Consider the sensibility in which the English texts we have read thus far exhibit. Traditional Philippine writing in general is occasioned by three characteristic strains: universalizing, romanticizing, and moralizing. While it is not the place here to elaborate on them, various scholars and critics have consistently remarked on our literature’s tendency to project “universal truth” or validity of the human experience, inhere values of idealism to the point of sentimentality using effusive language and/or dramatic situation and finally, to invest a form of didacticism or moral prerogative as part of its reason for being. These tendencies rest on three major themes: God, nation, and romantic love. While we have largely departed from these strains in our writing in English today (and to some extent our writing in the various vernaculars), they have surreptitious ways of encroaching upon modernity, such as in the case of Pichay’s

Nevertheless, do not deprive yourself blind Huwag rin naman sanang magsisinungaling To the call of truth in thyself Sa sariling nakakaalam ng hilig Nor accept as gospel truth society’s O gumamit ng sukatang panlipunan Definition of what it is to be a man. Nang hindi iniisip ang pinagmulan, where the moral prerogative is apparent equally as it pleads for understanding of gay love in a poetic discourse that inheres culture-bound concepts such as awa (pity) and loob (interiority) in the Filipino text while maintaining a critical “modern” stance toward unexamined piety/religiosity in the English one. While both awa and loob do not appear in the text, they are written into it and understood intuitively by Filipino readers. It is interesting to note that in critic and writer Eugene Evasco’s reading of this poem, he focuses his analysis on the Filipino text, conveniently forgetting that the opposite page is a self-translation by Pichay himself. Evasco advances the notion that in contemporary panulaang bakla (gay poetry/poetics), three tendencies can be gleaned: (1) “ang tuwirang pagpamukha sa kaakuhan ng kultura ng bakla” (2003, 333), (2) “ang pagkubli ng makata sa kasarian ng kanyang tula” (2003, 335), and (3) “ang paggiit ng makata sa mainstream na hindi gumamit ng tiyak na wika ng subkultura kundi ng sentimyento at damdaming bakla” (2003, 336). Evasco uses “Maselang Bagay ang Sumuso ng Burat” as an example of the third tendency, where we are to assume that Pichay is “mainstream” and that the language he uses doesn’t show any trace of camp (flaming or screaming), unlike in the first tendency where “hindi

122 Essay iniinda ang mga pamantayan ng ‘mabuti’ at ‘dalisay’ na pagtula” (2003, 333). What Evasco wants to show is that Pichay’s style tends to be formal, if subdued, in proclaiming gay identity in comparison with the first (which uses gay language itself) or the second (which avoids it), and which, in Evasco’s phrasing, is “may kaduwagan.” This may help explain what Virgilio Almario expresses in the Introduction to the volume that “Hindi isang sensasyonalista si Nick Pichay” (1993, xiii). Because, if he were so, the title of his collection would have been Maselang Bagay ang Sumuso ng Burat rather than Mahirap Bunuin ang Lunes. One line later, Almario adds, “Bongga ang dating nito, walang kiyeme, at tumatawag agad ng pansin” almost facetiously, naughtily, appropriating local “gayspeak.” Evasco observes that in the matter of form Pichay is experimenting, or “nag-eksperimento sa pagtutugma sa bawat dalawang taludtod, at may labindalawang pantig sa bawat taludtod” (2003, 36). “Experiment” is the appropriate word here in three respects: (1) inasmuch as there is both respect for and departure from Tagalog poetic tradition, viz., in the syllabic count, Pichay’s duodecasyllabics has a homolog in traditional octosyllabics (see, for example, Lumbera 1986); (2) the “consistent” end-rhyme scheme for couplets, is not, however, consistently employed because there are several cases of slant or near-rhyme in the first two stanzas dilim/alanganin( ; magsisinungaling/hilig; bibig/sumasabit, etc.); and (3) Pichay is, in fact appropriating the classical hexameter (double hemiepes, or twelve syllables), of the Latin and Greek elegiac couplet, but with the use of end rhyme, whereas the classical does not (Halporn et al. 1963, 71). The English translation, however, fails to conform to the original form, and may simply be characterized as vers libre. What Evasco does not expound, however, is why Pichay uses this particular form is relation to the homoerotic theme (e.g., gay coupling as “tugma”), and simply explains away how the difference in Filipino gay poetry/poetics (compared to tradition) is a form of “umuusbong” and “mapagmalaya,” whatever these may mean. The formal register of the English (as marked by such words as nevertheless, deprive, call of truth, thyself, etc.) is perhaps induced by the text’s earnestness from the Filipino as oratory, but more likely reflects the classroom domain where English is first picked up. Note that while the translation is “written in English words,” the sensibility remains local. This is true as well in the last poem we examine here, “Summer in Our Village/Tag-araw sa Aming Nayon,” a poem about circumcision.

Thomas David Chaves 123 The new arrivals Nasa lihim ng tabing ilog Stand under the shade by the river Ang mga bagong dating. They wait for the knife-lick, the moan of gongs Naghihintay ng tasa ng patalim, gangsa.

In two’s, three’s, the cell-mates approach Dalawahan, tatluhan, magkakakosang lumapit Bearing on their palms Dala-dala sa kanilang mga palad, Shrunken beaks. Mga nanguluntoy na lawit.

Perspiring, naked, groaning Pawis, hubad, umaalulong Arm manacled to arm, weaving a rough circle Nagkawing, naghabi ng magaspang bilog Around the old Fire. Sa palibot ng matandang Apoy.

A sliver of moon silently scythes Tahimik ang karit ng pingas ng buwan The scampering crabs Sa mga nagtatakbuhang alimasag Face puckered at the taste of leaf sap. Mukha nila’y kulubot sa lasa ng dagta.

Loincloth, blowgun sting. Bahag, kurot ng bagong sumpit. The troop re-groups around a plate Nagbalik ang pulutong sa isang platitong mane. And the tongue-searing dip of freshly-cut foreskin. At sa sawsawang sili na kapuputol na lambi. While we might read the poem as a critique of circumcision as a gratuitous cultural practice, one that clearly marks the site of gender as performance because boys turn expressly into men, the dramatization of the narrative and the linguistic flourish it employs make it distinctly Filipino in its approach to the subject. The poem, both in the English and Filipino texts, is clearly modern in the sense of imagery, directness, use of sensory language and symbolism, yet it betrays the very modernity it inheres because in exoticizing the alterity of circumcision as a heteronormative project, the poem waxes maudlin sentiment and oratory in the end. We can almost imagine Kurtz’s self-delusion in Conrad’s The Heart of Darkness in Pichay’s “weaving a rough circle / Around the old Fire,” or in the “scampering crabs/ face puckered” an echoic resonance of T. S. Eliot’s synecdochic crab “as a pair of rugged claws / Scuttling across the floors.” If, as nationalist critic and poet E. San Juan Jr. says that “The Filipino poet has always been the figure of the verbal magician, priest of town-fiestas and crowning of queens; himself at the center of the crowd, moved by it and moving it” (1965, 396), then Pichay is actually performing his culturally-circumscribed role of the poet as social commentator. The local sensibility of the English texts derive from what Almario calls “apat na sangkap ng tradisyonal na tula: ang tugma, sukat, talinghaga, at kariktan o kasiningan” (1984, 89). Firstly, while “tugma” is not readily apparent, there are internal rhymes like wait, shade, cell-mates, naked or Fire, silently, scythes. As a “modern” poem in English, Pichay eschews convenient rhyming that might impart a sense of artifice. Secondly, “sukat,” while

124 Essay apparently irregular, creates its own metrical rhythm by combining anapestic (for the knife-, lick the moan, and the tongue) and dactylic (bearing on, manacled, silently) feet. Thirdly, “talinghaga” (which I take to be figuration or metaphorization in general) is clearly marked in the allegorical treatment of circumcision for poetic theme and effect. Finally, the artfulness or lyricism (kariktan/kasiningan) in the whole stream of poetic utterance, while not imaginatively “appealing” because of the subject, takes on a particular kind of charm for itself as a result of combining the first three elements. In other words, “Summer in Our Village,” an apparent English text, hews its poetic character from local poetic tradition, rather than from any English school such as Romanticism or Imagism or even Postmoderntism. Because the pastoral quality of the title harkens back to the old folksong “Doon Po sa Aming Bayan ng San Roque” where the cripple danced, the deaf listened, the blind man watched, and the mute one sang, Pichay uses his poem to question the “manliness” that results from circumcision. Does circumcision make a man and his virility, or does it, like the four beggars of San Roque, disable him in the end in a comic/pathetic sort of way? What Pichay seems to be attempting here is not question circumcision per se, but that as a practice that repeats itself summer after summer, the performance of manhood is reified, an idea that Judith Butler so incisively develops in Gender Trouble: Feminism and the Subversion of Identity (1990). The Filipino summer rituals that perform manhood in tuli (circumcision) and liga (organized basketball competitions among village teams) and womanhood in Santacruzan and Flores de Mayo, leave no place for gay men except as the parodic and spectral exercise of their own gay beauty pageants and volleyball competitions. Pichay’s ethnological interest in the approach to his poetry (and competently carried over in the ‘translation’) brings us to the conceptualization of “translation as thick description,” Theo Hermans’s rephrasing of Clifford Geertz’s 1973 anthropological proposal (Hermans 2003, 386). Geertz countered structural anthropology’s reductiveness in formulating complex lifeworlds of a given culture as universal schemas and binary oppositions (Geertz 1973, 5–6). He emphasized the interpretive and constructivist nature of the ethnologist’s project, and therefore allowing us to appreciate both similarity and difference, instead of not being self-conscious about how we employ modes of representation in writing down a culture. The point here is that ethnology is an interpretive task, a translation, one among potentially numerous interpretations of the microhistories of particular cultural

Thomas David Chaves 125 situations. This, in turn, counters (then) anthropological theory’s urge to universalize and essentialize, thick description being a task that prides itself in “the delicacy of its distinctions, not the sweep of its abstractions” (1973, 25). While “Summer in Our Village/Tag-araw sa Aming Nayon” estranges or exoticizes the familiar to give circumcision fresh meaning, it nevertheless employs particular details, thick description if you will, of the ritual’s iconic aspects: the knife, the queueing, the groans of pain, the leaf (presumably of the guava as antiseptic), and the rite itself performed as a collective. The relationship between the Filipino and English texts is one, to borrow Venuti’s term, of interrogation (1995, 159), where the intertextual relation is built up to negotiate the linguistic and cultural correspondence in “the significance that derives from therecognition of a connection between the foreign text and another text” (emphasis mine). This recognition is collaboratively worked out not only between the original and translation, but also between the author and the reader precisely because no fixed or essential meaning can be made in the translational act. Because translation is largely provisional, that is, dependent on the context and purpose in which it is carried out, any form of literary translation must account for the in- between, the third space generated between the texts that results not from language alone, but, to use Spivak’s memorable phrase, also “beside language, around language” (2004, 389). She alludes to translation as an activity “where meaning hops into the spacey emptiness between two named historical languages” (2004, 389). In Gender and Translation (1996), on the other hand, Sherry Simon speaks of “the blurred edge where original and copy, first and second languages come to meet. The space ‘between’ becomes a powerful and difficult place for the writer to occupy” (1996, 162). Furthermore, Doris Bachmann-Medick argues that “the notion of culture needs to be pushed towards more openness and dynamism, for the ‘third space’ is by no means simply a place or condition between cultures, but is also a strategy of proliferating non-homogenous layers within a particular culture” (2009, 34). While not anyone among these observers situate their analysis in the context of self-translation, their thoughts furnish proof that translation itself is an encounter of alterity, and that in the case of self-translation, the space and position the bilingual writer occupies is a self-reflexive questioning of the vexed conditions of the postcolonial self in dialogue with the other. When Bachmann-Medick argues about the in-between space as a strategy of addressing the non-homogenous layers within, she may be speaking about

126 Essay how, in the case of Nicolas Pichay’s homoerotic poetry, the marginalized position of gay men in Filipino culture is not only given voice, but amplifying it to question the heteronormativity that arbitrarily sets the standard against which all discourses of gender are measured. Pichay’s strategies in self- translation—the decided commensurability/incommensurability between texts, the implied address to bilingual Filipino readers (rather than “English speakers”), the intertextuality of original and copy that pushes the edge of translation as cross-cultural mediation—make his project a worthwhile effort in creatively expanding the ways in which contemporary Philippine literature is written. Because the vast majority of Filipino writers today are bilingual or trilingual anyway (even if most prefer to write only monolingually), there is potential and actual value in self-translation, difficult it may seem initially. After all, our long (if intermittent) tradition in it, the ladino catechisms and poetry of the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries; the works of Jose Rizal, Graciano Lopez Jaena, Isabelo de los Reyes of the late nineteenth; and the more recent works of Genoveva Matute, Federico Licsi Espino Jr., or Marne Kilates; to name a few, place us all in good hands.

Works Cited Abad, Gémino. 1999. A Habit of Shores: Filipino Poetry and Verse from English, 60’s to the 90’s. Quezon City: University of the Philippines Press. Allen, Graham. 2000. Intertextuality. London: Routledge. Almario, Virgilio. 1993. “Introduction” to Mahirap Bunuin ang Lunes. Quezon City: Publikasyong Sipat. ———. 1984. Balagtisismo versus Modernismo. Quezon City: Ateneo de Manila University Press. Apter, Emily. 2010. “Philosophical Translation and Untranslatability: Translation as Critical Pedagogy.” Profession, 50–63. ———. 2013. Against World Literature: On the Politics of Untranslatability. London: Verso. Bachmann-Medick, Doris. 2009. “1+1=3? Intercultural Cultural Relations as Third Space.” In Critical Concepts: Translation Studies, vol. II. Trans. Kate Surge, ed. Mona Baker. London: Routledge. Bassnett, Susan, and André Lefevere. 1998. Constructing Cultures: Essays on Literary Translation. Clevedon: Multilingual Matters.

Thomas David Chaves 127 Benjamin, Walter. 2004. “The Task of the Translator: An Introduction to the Translation of Baudelaire’s Tableaux Parisiens (Trans. Harry Zohn).” In The Translation Studies Reader, 2nd ed., ed. Lawrence Venuti, 15–416. New York: Routledge. Butler, Judith. 1990. Gender Trouble: Feminism and the Subversion of Identity. New York: Routledge. Cordingley, Anthony. 2013. Self-Translation: Brokering Originality in Hybrid Culture. London: Routledge. Danby, Nicola Doone. 2003. “The Space Between: Self-Translators Nancy Huston and Samuel Beckett.” MA thesis, York University. Eco, Umberto. 2003. Mouse or Rat? Translation as Negotiation. London: Weidenfeld & Nicolson. Eugenio, Damiana, comp. and ed. 2002. Philippine Folk Literature Series Vol. III: The Legends. Quezon City: University of the Philippines Press. Evasco, Eugene Y. 2003. “Ang Umuusbong na Panulaan, ang Kilusang Mapagpalaya, at ang Pagpapaunlad ng Wikang Pambansa.” In Tabi- Tabi sa Pagsasantabi: Kritikal na Tala ng Mga Lesbiana at Bakla sa Sining, Kultura, at Wika, eds. Eugene Evasco, Roselle Pineda, and Rommel Rodriguez. Quezon City: University of the Philippines Press. Fawcett, Peter. 1997. Translation and Language. Manchester: St. Jerome. Gaddis, Mary Rose. 1997. Translation and Literary Criticism: Translation as Analysis. Manchester: St. Jerome. Garcia, J. Neil C. 2014. The Postcolonial Perverse: Critiques of Contemporary Philippines Culture, vol. I. Quezon City: University of the Philippines Press. Geertz, Clifford. 1973. The Interpretation of Cultures: Selected Essays. New York: Basic Books. Gentes, Eva. 2013. “Potentials and Pitfalls of Publishing Self-Translations as Bilingual Editions.” Orbis Literarum 68, no. 3: 266–81. Guerrero, Amadis Ma. 2013. “Nicholas Pichay: ‘Don’t Believe People Who Do Not Believe in the Power of Theater’.” Philippine Daily Inquirer, September 21. Grutman, Rainier. 1998. “Auto-translation.” In Routledge Encyclopedia of Translation Studies, ed. Mona Baker. London: Routledge.

128 Essay Grutman, Rainier. 2013. “Beckett and Beyond: Putting Self-Translation in Perspective.” Orbis Literarum 68, no. 3: 188–206. Halporn, James, Martin Oswald, and Thomas Rosenmeyer. 1963. The Meters of Greek and Latin Poetry. Indianapolis: Bobbs-Merrill. Hermans, Theo. 2003. “Cross-Cultural Translation Studies as Thick Translation.” Bulletin of the School of Oriental and African Studies, University of London 66, no. 3: 380–89. Hokenson, Jan Walsh, and Marcella Munson. 2014. The Bilingual Text: History and Theory of Literary Self-Translation. London and New York: Routledge. Krause, Corinna. 2007. “Eadar Dà Chànan: Self-Translation, the Bilingual Edition and Modern Scottish Gaelic Poetry.” Phd diss. U of Edinburgh, 2007. April 21, 2016. https://www.era.lib.ed.ac.uk/bitstream/ handle/1842/3453/Krause2007.pdf?sequence=1&isAllowed=y. Lumbera, Bienvenido. 1986. Tagalog Poetry 1570–1898: Tradition and Influences in its Development. Quezon City: Ateneo de Manila University Press. Patke, Rajeev, and Philip Holden. 2010. The Routledge Concise History of Southeast Asian Writing in English. London: Routledge. Pichay, Nicolas. 1993. Ang Lunes na Mahirap Bunuin. Quezon City: Publikasyong Sipat. Pym, Anthony. 1998. Method in Translation History. Manchester: St. Jerome. Râbacov, Ghenadie. 2013. “Self-Translation as Mediation between Cultures.” Cultural and Linguistic Communication 3, no. 1: 66–69. San Juan, E. Jr. 1965. “Social Consciousness and Revolt in Modern Philippine Poetry.” Books Abroad 39, no. 4: 394–99. Simon, Sherry. 1996. Gender in Translation. London: Routledge. Spivak, Gayatri Chakravorty. 2004. “The Politics of Translation.” In The Translation Studies Reader, ed. Lawrence Venuti, 397–416. 2nd ed. New York. Steiner, George. 1998. After Babel: Aspects of Language and Translation. Oxford: Oxford University Press. Venuti, Lawrence. 2009. “Translation, Intertextuality, Interpretation.” Romance Studies 27, no. 3: 157–73.

Thomas David Chaves 129 Venuti, Lawrence. 1995. The Translator’s Invisibility: A History of Translation. New York: Routledge. Venzo, Paul. 2016. “(Self)-Translation and the Poetry of the In-Between.” Cordite Poetry Review 54, no. 5. Accessed April 26, 2016. http://cordite. org.au/scholarly/selftranslation-in-between/ Whyte, Christopher. 2002. “Against Self-Translation.” Translation and Literature 11:64–70. Wilson, Rita. 2009. “The Writer’s Double: Translation, Writing and Autobiography.” Romance Studies 27, no. 3: 186–98.

130 Essay Maikling Kuwento

Babala ng Balang-Araw TILDE ACUÑA

awal tumigil sa pagkakatutok dito sa iniisip mo, o binabasa mo, o iniisip Bmo at binabasa mo, kung ayaw mong malagutan ng hininga, hahabulin mo lang nga ang iyong hininga kung haharapin mo ang suliranin at ihahakbang ang sunod na mga hakbang at tugon na mga hakbang upang makapagpatuloy ang existence mo sa tekstong ito, alam mo namang titigil ang pag-iral mo kung hihinto ka sa pagbabasa at pag-iisip, kaya tutok lang sa internal, pokus lang at sasabay ang external ayon sa dikta ng iyong isip sa kagyat na dapat gawin sa sitwasyong ito, kung saan naririto ka sa teksto at kaharap mo ang matalik na kaibigang pinagmamasdan mong nakatalikod subalit napansin mong nadukot na nito ang kanyang kuwarenta y singko at nasa gatilyo na ng baril ang hintuturo niya, samantala, dinikta ng kutob at reflexes mo ang sunod mong ginawa, nadakot mo na ang lupa sa harapan mo at mahigpit na ang kapit sa tangan mong sibat, nakaposisyon na ang sandata mo nang pahiga pero hindi nagpapahinga itong sibat mo, pahalang, alalay lang, naka-parallel sa horizon, o panginorin o guhit-tagpuan tulad sa naaalala mong dagat sa dapithapon, kalmado ito tulad ng inaakala mo pero may bigwas ng mga alon mamaya, kumindat ang palubog na araw, nakarinig ka ng ingay ng static, parang white noise sa sirang telebisyon, pero nawala rin ang ugong at muli kang bumalik sa layon mo at pakay, ang makabigwas nang malakas, at para magawa ito, dapat ayusin ang pahalang na latag ng sibat, matikas ang tindig, ang dulo nito, matalim, sintalim ng titig mo, sibat at sipat mong nakaumang sa kaaway-kaibigan, naalala mo pa nang ipakilala ka ng mahusay na si pinagpipitaganang Tata Rico, Bunsong Baoy, pamangkin ko, sabay abot ng bata ng kamay, Buboy na lang, boss, maangas na siya noon, pero mukha namang mabait, pero nakakubli madalas sa likod ang kamay, tulad kanina, pero napansin mong may inapuhap siya, baril, kaya ikaw, nakahanda ang sibat, ang talim, nasa likod mo ang bisig, nakabuwelo, nakaasinta ang panudla na parang maaaring iitsa anumang oras, parang tirador, o katapulto, pero siyempre hindi bato ang bala nitong ang nais lamang ay makagalos o makatama nang hindi nakapagpapatumba o nakapagpaparalisa sa kalaban

133 upang maantala ang balak nito at makabili ka ng sapat na oras para kumaripas, handa nang kumawala ang projectile, pero kailangan pa ng mahabang pagpaplano ng opensiba sa nanosegundong ito kahit kailangan ng kagyat na pagpapasiya, naisip mo, Handa na akong sampolan ang kaibigan ko ng Dumalapdap moves, si Duma ang paborito mong anak nina Alunsina at Paubari mula sa epikong Hinilawod na narinig mong inawit mismo ni Lola Sinag, narinig mo sa alaala kung saan nagmamalaki si Buboy, Lola ko, chanter, ayos ano, mula sila sa angkan ng mga Kawal, ito ang apelyido nila, sana lang ginagamit nila sa pagtatanggol sa kapuwa, hindi mo mawari kung paanong bumilis ang pag-iisip mo at nagkaroon ka pa talaga ng ganito kahabang panahon para makaalala ng kuwento ng mga bayani, ng epiko ng inyong lahi na inakala mong nabaon na sa limot, panahon na kasi ng pagbabago, pag- angkop, pakikibagay, tatlong bagay na bukambibig ni Buboy, at, madalas niyang dinaragdag na hindi na bagay sa pag-usad ng kasaysayan, kasaysayan ng kapital, itong luma ninyong kuwentong pagkahabahabahaba at kailangan kabisaduhin, at ngayon ipinalimot dahil sa radikal nitong potensiyal, magulo si Buboy dahil kapag aayon sa nanaisin niya ang pamana ng Lola niya, pinagmamalaki niya ito, pero minamaliit niya ito sa ilang panahon, itong mga epikong hindi naman daw orihinal, at kung may bersiyon mang nakararating sa patag, na sa inyo dumaraan dahil kayo ang kabataang Tumanduk, ito ’yong epikong nahaluan na, Wala namang masama rito, naisip mo, dahil hindi naman kayang makipagsabayan at makipagtagisan ng lakas sa mga hayok na makapangyarihang mga imperyalismong siyang may hawak sa pinakamalalakas na makinang pampolitika at pangkultura, nakuha mo ang gayong pananalita mo sa kolehiyo, dagdag pa, alam mong hindi lakas ang pangunahing sandata ni Duma, kundi ang pagiging tuso nito lalo at dehado siya palagi pagdating sa pisikal na pakikihamok, iyon bang purong lakas ang gamit, tuso kayo dahil kayo ang api, nauunawaan ito noon ni Buboy noong kabataan ninyo, may narinig kang abalang white noise, static, nawala na naman, balik sa flashback, ito ang masasayang panahong magkapatid ang turing ninyo sa isa’t isa dahil, sa patag, sino pa ba ang tutulong at sasalo sa isa’t isa kundi ang kapuwa Tumanduk, lalo at kayo lamang mula sa inyong lahi ang nabigyang-pagkakataon para tumawid ng pitong bundok at ilog makalipas ang pitong dekada, mas mahaba pa ang biyahe ninyo kaysa inilagi ninyo sa sanlibutan ano, bakit ganoon, marami kang tanong, at, matapos ang nakahahapong pakikipagsapalaran sa kalikasan, susuko lang ba kayo sa bullying ng mga daratnang kaklase ninyong kung tutuusi’y mga lampa dahil hinahatid ng kotse, dagdag pa, ang palagay nitong mga konyong ito sa

134 Maikling Kuwento pagpasok sa public school ay field trip sa pagharap sa “reality” gayong pawang kaginhawaan lamang ang realidad na kahahantungan ng yayamaning mga batang itong anak ng mga tagapamahala at mga kakutsaba ng mga dumadayong korporasyong nagmimina at nagtatayo ng kung ano-anong estrukturang pangnegosyo na kung tutuusi’y laong magpapaginhawa ng maginhawa na ngang buhay nitong pamilya ng mga batang ito, pero ang press release ng mga komprador na ito, serbisyo raw sa publiko ang hangad nila, kaginhawahan daw ng lahat, pawang kaginhawahan nilang nakatindig sa kahirapan ng iba o “other,” isa sa alam mong other ay ang kinasisindakang kaluluwang dumadayo ayon sa tradisyong maaram ninyo, pero walang kaluluwa at kung mayroon ma’y halang ang kaluluwa nitong mga may-ari at komprador ng kapital, tulad ng “imperyalista” at “komprador” natutuhan din ninyo itong “other” sa kolehiyo, ang problema nga lang, nalulong sa pagkapit sa imperyalista, sa pagiging komprador, at pang-a-other itong si Buboy at nauwi sa identity politics, na noong una’y nadadaan sa debate at healthy kuno na paintelektuwal na diskusyon, pero nagbunga ng sitwasyong kinalalagyan ninyo ngayon, nasa magkabilang panig kayo ng digmaan ng uri, sa moment na itong nakasukbit ang hintuturo niya sa gatilyo at nakabalot ang palad mong ngayo’y kamao nang tangan ang sibat na handang ihagis anumang oras, nagdadalawang-isip ka pa at maaari din namang puwingin mo lang siya gamit ang dakot na lupa, maalalaman lang niya na rito sa lupang sumaboy sa mata niya, dito galing ang lahat at hindi ito maaari lamang ng iilan, paano mo mao-own ang mag-a-outlive sa iyo, wika ni Macliing Dulag, Ingles na version na lang ang naalala mo, hanggang, heto na naman ang static, white noise, balik sa stream of consciousness mong nagkasiya sa pitong segundo pero ilang kilometro ang haba kapag naka-transcribe, narito ka na, sa sitwasyong sinimulan kaninang hapon sa maboteng usapan at sinundan ng panunuhol para tanggapin mo ang ibinebenta niyang identity politics na hindi walang muwang, hindi inosente, hindi dalisay lang na paghahanap ng sarili o pagkatao o pagkalahi, kaya bagama’t natutuhan din niya ang isinasabuhay mong Dumalapdap moves—o paglaban sa mas nakapangyayari gamit ang utak, at, marahil, gamit ang bilang, dami ng kakampi, at siyempre hindi maaaring walang taktika, gerilyang taktika, alangan namang tiradorin mo ang tangke nila, puwingin at saka itumba, Dumalapdap moves, isinasantabi na ni Buboy ang tunay na diwa ni Dumalapdap dahil maaari namang maging ang kalaban nito, ang bampirang si Uyutang, o ang halimaw na si Balanakon, sampu ang ulo ng kumag na higanteng ito, kapuwa ito tinalo ni Dumalapdap sa epiko, at sa pakiwari ni Buboy, bagong era na, maaari na ngayong

Tilde Acuña 135 mapangibabawan nitong mga kontrabida si Dumalapdap dahil postmodern, puwedeng ang bida ang kontrabida ang bida o walang bida, puwedeng unawain ang mga halimaw, baka may humanity pa rin kay Hitler, sa dulo, wala nang grand narrative, wala na ang epiko ng bayan dahil maaari tayong magkaroon ng sarili nating pagbasa ng epiko dahil malaya na tayo sa gapos nito at bago na ang panahon at puwede na ang kahit ano dahil nakapag-aral na tayo, sabi niya sa iyo o sabi mo sa sarili mo, hindi mo matiyak dahil minsan ka na ring nagduda sa tinahak mong landas na maghangad sa utopia kung saan malayang nakakapamuhay ang mga Tumanduk, pero matapos nito, nagsusuri ka at nakababalik sa huwisyo at nakapagsusuri batay sa materyal na kondisyon, obhetibong kalagayan, imbestigasyong panlipunan, tulad ng natutuhan mo sa pamantasan dahil bagama’t nasasalo ninyo ni Buboy ang isa’t isa noong hay iskul, iba na ang pinasukan niyang kolehiyo pagkatapos maghay iskul at tiyak na hindi niya natutunan at wala rin naman yata siyang interes sa mga natutuhan mo, baka natutunan niya at ipinagkibit- balikat, walang gaanong alingasngas sa inyong mga paniniwala mula noong sanggol pa kayo hanggang hay iskul, o kung may alingasngas man, hindi buhay at kamatayan ang kapalit nito, dahil naniniwala pa kayo noon na lahat ng bagay ay madadaan sa mabuti at maboteng usapan, at magkakaunawaan din nang walang nasasaktan, usap lang, malulutas, hanggang nagkahiwalay kayo nang tuluyan ng landas sa kolehiyo, hindi naman gaanong malayo ang distansiyang literal kasi isang kalsada lang ang pagitan, isang tawid lang, walking distance lang, o isang jeep mo lang at isang taxi niya o grabcar o di magtatagal isang drayb niya lang dahil binilhan na siya ng kotse ni Amang Baoy, tatay niyang hepe na ng Sandatahan, pinanindigan ang apelyido nilang Kawal, iba rin ang paninindigan, malapit lang talaga kayo sa aktuwal, ganoon lang kayo kalapit sa isa’t isa, nasa magkabilang tipak ng lupa lang kayo ng Katipunan, kahanay na nga ng eskuwela niya ang Town Center na pinauupahan nang mura ng unibersidad ninyo, mura lang sa mga Ayala, mga tinatawag ninyong burgesya komprador o aristokrata, mahal sa maninindang may makeshift stall o aristocart, siyempre, bagama’t alam mong dapat murahin ang uring tulad ng sa mga Ayala at dapat mahalin ang tulad ng sa mga manininda, static na naman, nabalutan ng angal ng mga sasakyan ang ingay, natahimik, nakalanghap ka ng usok habang tumatakbo nang mabilis ang utak, at naroroon na ang kamalayan mo sa Katipunan, ayun, tuloy, bagama’t magkalapit ang kinalalagyang lugar, nagkakalayo ang mga damdamin, nakakubli ito sa hiritan, halimbawa, biro ni Buboy, na hindi naman nakakatawa pero kailangan mong pakisamahan, Mas malapit ako sa ating

136 Maikling Kuwento kultura dahil banog ang simbolo ng pamantasan ko, na sinagot mo naman ng maikling pakli, Ulul, at kapuwa kayong hahalakhak sa gasgas nang hiritang palagiang ganoon, na parang ito ang shake hands o high five o fist bump ninyo tuwing nagkikita o ewan, kung anuman, pero biruan lang ang mga itong nakaugalian nang sambitin kasabay ng kaugaliang pag-inom ng pangasi, o rice wine, na dinala ninyong gawi hanggang sa siyudad, itong pangasi rin ang tagay ninyo sa bawat sasalusalong dinaluhan, bawat tagumpay at kabiguang kailangang ibahagi sa isa’t isa, kabilang dito ang pagtatatag ng paaralan at pagbubuo ng kurikulum tulad ng yumayabong noong Duyan Turun-an, isang mobile na eskuwelahang dinadala sa kung saan-saang lupalop ng mga bundok ng Panay, nagkakampo pansamantala at maaari nang mag- aral depende sa antas ng kamulatan at kahandaan ang mga nais lumahok hanggang, di nagtagal, nagkaroon ito ng sentruhan sa Antemasque, dating nasasakupan ng Hamtic, lahat ng papeles tulad ng mga rekord at iba pang mahahalagang dokumento ay dito tinitipon kaya madali ring nabura, naupos, naabo ang pamana ng Duyan Turun-an, dahil nang salakayin ito ng mga militar, sa tulong na rin ng ama ni Buboy, natunton ang di-gaanong tagong lokasyon nito, dahil bakit nga ba magtatago, dapat nga lantad at madaling mapuntahan kung nais maging accessible ang education sa lahat ng nagnanais, matapos itong panununog, nagkaroon ng ilang pagsasampa ng kaso, na sinabayan ng ilang kilos protesta dahil sa bagal ng daloy ng kaso, hanggang nakialam ang tiyuhing nakatatanda ni Buboy, ang Tata Rico na diumano’y lumapit sa munisipalidad, maging sa ilang matataas na opisyal ng pambansang pamahalaan upang humingi ng pondo para tulungan siyang magtatag ng paaralang magtuturo ng kulturang inaayawan na raw ng mga kababayan niyang hindi edukado, iyak pa nito, Paano na kung ganito ang ating mga kabataan, halimbawa nga, ang epiko ng kanyang inang si Lola Sinag, kaya pagpasensiyahan na raw, sabi sa iyo ni Buboy, at kailangan daw ang ganito at iba pang paninikluhod na kailanma’y hindi naman ninyo mapagpapasensiyahan dahil ang pagiging tuso ay ginagamit sa mas malalakas na kaaway hindi sa mas mahihinang kapuwa mo Tumanduk, kapuwa kayo Tumanduk, pero iba na ang katapatan ng angkan ni Buboy, tila nasa kultura, hindi ba dapat tao muna ang pahalagahan bago kalikasan o kultura o kapital, anong klaseng adbokasiya ang para sa kultura pero kontra sa tao, itong si Buboy na, bilang matalik mong kaibigan, naalala mong agad itong lumapit sa iyo noon, at madalas itong mauulit, noong pagkakataong iyon, na iyong naaalala ngayon mismo dahil kanina lang naulit itong mga eksenang ito, humingi ng dispensa sa ngalan ng kanyang pamilya, pero agad mo itong tinabla, agad mo ring

Tilde Acuña 137 tinabla kanina, kaya nga humantong sa ambahan, hindi ’yong sinaunang pormang pampanitikan ng mga Mangyan, kundi ambahang bantaan sa buhay ng isa’t isa, na hindi masama, kailangan talaga ng opensiba at depensa sa sarili sa ganitong mga panahon, kinailangan mo ring tanungin nang retorikal si Buboy, Ang magkapatid bang nakatatandang Kawal ay mga huklubang nagtatago sa ngalan ng kultura para ipagbunyi ang pasismo ng neoliberalismo, ang mga Tata mo ba, sila ba ay mga mersenaryong bayaran, ang isa’y tuta ng gobyernong naggawad dito ng parangal at ang isa’y tuta at deputado pa ng militar, ipinagpatuloy mo ang nakaka-offend na nakapagpatahimik kay Buboy na ngumingisi-ngisi at iniisip na puro kahardkoran katibakan kakomonestahan na naman ang pinagsasabi mo, pinanindigan mo ito at hinambalos siya nang hardcore, Nasa dugo ba ninyo ang pagtataksil sa kapuwa Tumanduk, sumimangot ang kaninang ngiti, at hindi tumugon ang kausap, nagsalubong ang kilay nito, nagdilim ang paningin, tumalikod, hinablot ang envelope at iba pang gamit, nagpasiyang umuwi na lamang, nagpasiya ka ring umuwi pero hindi mo napanindigan nang nagpasiya kang sabayan ang lakad niya upang, sa huli nang pagkakataon tulad ng maraming huling pagkakataon, muli mong maipaliwanag sa kababata na higit sa pagkakaibigan, mahalaga ang buong lahi ng mga Tumanduk, higit sa pagpreserba ng kultura at pangangarap na romantiko at sentimental para sa sining, mga tao ang nagbibigay-saysay sa kultura at sining, tinanong mo sa kanya, Hindi ba malinaw na taumbayan ang nagpapasiya sa kulturang nakasandig sa ekonomikong kalagayan ng lahi, ano ba ang hindi mo maintindihan, mawawalang-saysay ang lahat kung mawawalan ng panirahan ang mga Tumanduk, kapag nalason na tayo ng mga basura ng minahan, kapag nalunod tayo ng baha at lupang rumagasa dahil sa raket na dam at iba pang kunwaring kaunlaran, agad niyang pinutol ang pananalita mo, sumagot ito, Kayo ang hindi makaintindi dahil ginagawa ng ama at tiyuhin ko ang lahat para mapadali ang lahat para sa atin dahil para sa ikabubuti nating lahat itong pakikipaglarong mala-dunganon at mala- Dumalapdap, agad mong binasag, Hindi ganyan ang pamamaraan ng mga bayani nating minsan mo nang sinabing wala nang katuturan sa postmodernong panahon, paano mo maipapaintindi kung bakit humantong sa panununog ng sentrong Duyan Turun-an ang kampanya ninyong kontra-insurhensiya, dahil ba nawawalan ng estudyante ang pribadong mga pamantasan ng mga kasosyo ninyong mataas kung sumingil sa edukasyong mga multinasyonal na korporasyon naman ang makikinabang, at hindi niya sinagot ang tanong mong retorikal, at kung mapapansin mo, mas mahaba palagi ang linya mo rito sa palitan ninyo ng diyalogo, Tagalog pa, o Filipino, nakuha mo ang kasanayan sa wika

138 Maikling Kuwento sa kolehiyo, mas mahaba talaga ang mga linya mo, malamang, ikaw kasi ang bida pero nahihirapan kang tanggaping kontrabida ang kaibigan mo, tunggalian ito ng uri, naroon siya sa kabila, istatik na naman, tunog ng dial- up Internet na hindi makakonekta, tumahimik, saglit lang at nagka-static, at natural na ang tunog ng paligid, parang lumang panahon, ’yong silver screen na nakikita mong parang abuhing sanga, biglang naging sepia o kulay ng tuyong dahon, bakal na nagkulay-kalawang, nakita mo ang sarili mo nang nabalitaan mo na makalipas ang isa, dalawa, tatlong taon, biglang kinilala na ng Sentrong Pangkultura ng Pilipinas ang pagsasarili ng mga Tumanduk sa pagtuturo sa sarili, lahat ng ito salamat sa Balay Turun-an ni Tata Rico, nasa telebisyon siya, pinapanood ng pamilya mo, nasa kompyuter ka at siya rin, si Tata Rico, ang nasa balita sa newsfeed, malalaman mo na lang, na makalipas ang apat, lima, anim, pitong buwan ay ginawaran na bilang Manlilikha at Kulturati ng Sulod—ang tawag sa inyo ng mga tagapatag—at nagkaroon pa ng kasunduan sa isang palimbagan ng pambansang pamantasan, ang oral ninyong panitikan, maitatala na, magiging nasusulat na tulad ng Bibliya, may book deal, ilan ba, sampu, siyam na libro sa tulong ng isang iskolar sa Visayas branch ng pamantasan, pero ang mga manlilinlang na nang-uuto ng kapuwa Tumanduk ang co-awtor, may kontak kasi sa militar itong mga Kawal, tinatakot nila ang nabanggit na iskolar, hindi ang buhay niya ang direktang pinagbabantaan, tinatakot, dinedemonyo, wika nila sa mga tulad ng iskolar na napapadpad kung saan deployed silang mga sundalo, NPA ka ba, hindi, mabuti, aswang ang mga NPA kung mandahas, ilan na ang nadukot ng mga iyan dito, kung hindi ka NPA, dito ka sa mga Kawal mag-riserts, safe ka rito, sagot ka namin, kami bahala sa iyo, itong NPA, o Bagong Hukbong Bayan, sinisiraan ng mga militar, paramilitar at mga kakutsabang Tumanduk sa pangunguna ng mga Kawal na kontra-karahasan daw ng Kaliwa, pero kaibigan ng Kanan, tapos may book deal pang tumulay sa iskolar na nais lang namang manaliksik, Iba na ito, sabi mo sa sarili, nakakita ka na ng mga NPA, ito ’yong umaatake sa mga minahan at dam, sinisira ang mga makina para hindi na makapaminsala, sumasamsam ng mga armas ng sandatahang interes ng mga korporasyon ang ipinagtatanggol, mga minahan at dam na madalas tinututulan ninyong mga Tumanduk dahil nanghihimasok na nga sa ancestral domain ninyo, nandurukot pa, sa tulong ng mga militar, hindi lang tao ang dinurukot nitong mga korporasyon kundi mineral resources, nambubulabog na ng bahay ng may bahay, nagpapahirap at nananapos na ng buhay, nandarambong pa ng mga pinakaiingatang yaman, kapag nagalit ka, sila pa ang galit, sila pa ang tagapagligtas sila pa ang provider ng trabaho sila pa ang

Tilde Acuña 139 anak ng diyos sila pa ang mabuting mamamayan sila pa ang nagkakawanggawa, pero sino ba ang nagkakatrabaho at magkano ang pasuweldo at gaano ang damage sa kalikasan, itong mga Kawal, ito ang maraming trabaho at tiba-tiba tubo, kumakamal ng pera, akala mo iba si Buboy, wala naman talaga sa angkan o dugo iyan, depende lang talaga sa kamalayang madedevelop sa iyo, pero dahil may pinagsamahan kayo, wala munang basagan ng trip, ito ang akala mo, kaya magpupursigi ka na lamang sa pinili mong landas, at magsisipag at magtitiyaga siya sa kanila at sa pamilya niya, at abangan na lang ang susunod na kabanata, may mga pag-uusap pa naman, talakayan, hamigan, sa kakaabang mo ng susunod na kabanata, may patalastas ng white noise, static, may kulay na ulit ang lahat, hindi na kulay yero o kalawang, ano ba itong paningin o pangitain mo o deliryo mo sa pitong segundong time frame ng kuwentong ito, at ito na nga ang kasunod na kabanata, anupaman at magtatagpo rin at inasahan mo rin naman itong pagtututukan ninyo, tagisan hindi na lang ng titig o yabang o alaskahan o payamanan, kundi tagisang armado ng pagtingin sa lipunan at pagtangan sa aktuwal na armas—itong huling tagisan ang hindi mo lubos maisip, dahil kapuwa kayong nasanay na sa ututang dila, hiwaang dila, ratratang dila, bla bla bla balitaktakan sa pamantasang nag-a-agree diumano ang mga tao to disagree at wala pa ring lamat ang pagsasamahan ng isa’t isa, walang samaan ng loob, diskurso lang, hindi mo inakalang darating itong panahong kailangan ninyong pagpasiyahan kung sasampolan ninyo ang isa’t isa para lang mapatunayan kung sino ang tama, ano nga ba ang tama, sinuhulan ka na, inoferan ka na ng mataas na posisyon, sinuhulan na rin ang iba ninyong kaibigang nakikibaka, hindi ka pa bumigay, wala pa sa inyong tumiklop, walang natinag, walang nasuhulan, para ano, para ano ba, para payagan ang dam at makipagtulungan sa mga korporasyon at kumbinsihin ang mayorya na tanggapin na ang offer ng kompanya dahil sa ganito lang sila makakaganansiya dahil kung tatanggihan pa nila ito, tingga na at hindi na pera ang ihahain sa kanila, tangkang pangongonsiyensiya ni Buboy, Alam mo bang dadanak ang dugo kapag hindi tayo nakipag-usap nang maayos sa mga tinatawag ninyong imperyalista, ilang Tumanduk ang gusto mong mamatay at magdusa, humantong sa pagiging bangkay imbes na barya, barya man, pera pa rin, akala mo, lulubayan ka na niya pero alam mo ring hindi basta-basta susuko ang kaibigan mo, kailangan ka nila sa kanilang panig, pati ang pamilya mo, mabuti na lang normal sa kanayunan ang may bitbit na sandata, malamang, dalawa ang gobyerno sa kanayunan, hindi lang alam ng mga nasa lungsod, o hindi nila pinaniniwalaan, kaya may mga militar at rebolusyonaryong umiikot dito, rumoronda pareho,

140 Maikling Kuwento pero sino sa palagay natin ang nauubos kapag may engkuwentro, ’yong walang suporta ng masa at ng Tumanduk, naririto ang magkabilang armadong puwersa kaya walang magagawa ang mga Tumanduk kundi pumili kung sino ang tutulungan at kung paano pakikisamahan ang nagtatagisang puwersa, at hindi nahirapang pumili ang mamamayan sa hanay ninyo dahil mas magalang ang mga gerilya kompara sa mga sundalo, nakikisama ang mga NPA, para saan pa at kasama ang tawagan nila, nagdadala ng makakain minsan, sumasama sa pagsasaka nang madalas, tumutulong sa pagresponde sa mga pangangailangan ng mga Tumanduk, minsan, matindi ang pangangailangan ng mga katutubong ito, ninyo, ng kalakhan sa inyong natuto na ring makibaka sa anumang paraang maiaambag, minsan umaabot ang pangangailangan sa puntong dapat mapatigil na ang mga proyektong pangkaunlaran ng gobyernong ibang bayan ang pinauunlad, pauunlarin ng pamahalaan ang ibang bayan dahil makakakubra ang matataas na opisyal, ang kubrang itong dinambong sa kalikasan at sa katutubo ay may trickle-down effect sa mga Filipinong nasa kapangyarihan, nasa posisyon sa estado, na nagiging ganap lang naman ang kapangyarihan dahil may sandatahang lakas sila ng Pilipinas, sandatahang lakas ng Pilipinas sa pangalan pero sandatahan ng puhunang dayuhan sa katotohanan, sandata lang ang maipanlalaban sa sandata, walang magagawa ang awit ng epiko, ang mga bayani nito, at ang sining ni Tata Rico para mapaginhawa ang mga Tumanduk na pinahihirapan ng mga militar, ang katauhan o pagiging tao ng mga gerilya tulad ng ilang tiyuhin at ng mismong nanay mo kontra sa kahayupan o pagiging halimaw ng mga sundalo tulad ng ama ni Buboy, si Amang Baoy na hindi pa nakontento sa pagiging military informant, humantong pa ito sa pagiging paramilitar, hanggang opisyal na sumanib sa sandatahan at naging mataas na opisyal sa Army na siyang pinagkukunan ng pamilya Kawal ng pagkain, bahay, bala at baril na hawak ngayon nitong kaibigan mong matapos sumablay sa pagkumbinsi sa iyo tungo sa kanilang panig, panunuhol para makipagtulungan ka na lang, ay nagpasiyang tutuluyan o uutasin ka na lang, dahil ano na nga ba naman ang silbi mo, ni hindi ka mapakinabangan para sa kaayusang hinahangad ng angkang Kawal na ang nais lang naman ay ma-preserve ang heritage, okey nang ma-preserve ang heritage, kahit huwag na ang mga tao, cultural heritage ang mahalaga, umiiral ito sa vacuum, maayos ang lahat basta sila ang may hawak ng prehistory, oral history ng mga Tumanduk kaya sila ang magpapasiya ng makabubuti para sa lahi, tunay ngang mga kawal, kawal ng kaunlarang nagsusulong ng ekonomiya dahil pabor sa Jalaur River Multipurpose Project Phase II (JRMP2), noong una, nakumbinsi ka nang kaunti ng kaibigan mo,

Tilde Acuña 141 kahit pa sinabihan ka na noon ni Cynthia na layuan si Buboy, dahil sa halang ang kaluluwa nito at ilang ulit nang nawalan ng dungan pero nakatatayo pa rin, ayon rin sa grupong Dagsaw, mga kaalyado ninyong gumawa ng masinsing pag-aaral, malapit sa aktibong fault line ang site ng JRMP2, prone sa landslide ang erya kapag bumuhos ang ulan at sakaling pakawalan ang tubig dahil hindi kakayanin ng wall ng dam ang dami ng tubig, magdudulot ito ng pagbaha at pagkawasak sa mga karatig-pook na tahanan ng mga Tumanduk, matapos mapagsabihan ng kasama, agad kang pumunta sa kaibigan, kalmado pero tensiyonado, tinanong mo, Dahil ba hindi kabilang ang pamilya Kawal na may miyembrong National Living Treasure, the Tata Rico, the Great, the Author, published Author, co-author sa premyadong pamantasan, dahil konektado sa henyo ang mga Kawal, kaya maraming perks tulad ng pagkakaroon ng tahanang ligtas at maaliwalas at malayo sa JRMP2, kaya lolokohin na ng pamilya mo ang ibang pamilyang Tumanduk, tugon ni Buboy, Kaunting sakripisyo lang naman, dagdag pa, nakikita namin ang potensiyal mo at ng pamilya Karit sa pagiging matulungin sa adhikaing ito, dagdag ng kausap mo, Alam naming mga Kawal na maaasahan kayong alyado, agad kang pumalag at nagtanong, Sino’ng may sabi, kailan pa, sinalo agad ang banat ng kaibigan sabay abot ng naka-envelope na kung ano, Para naman tayong walang pinagsamahan, mukhang makapal ang nasa loob, umiling ka at naalala mo ang pag-iling mo nang lapitan ka ni Buboy para tumakbo sa partidong kakulay ng banog ng kanyang eskuwela sa kabila ng Katipunan, bughaw, mga dugong bughaw na posturang aktibista rin at progresibo, ganito rin ang galawan, inoferan ka ng kung magkano, malakas daw ang tambalan ninyo kung sakali, tiyak na mananalo dahil maalam ang mga buwitre, este, banog, este batang ito na lumaro sa totoong politika, bahagi ba ng totoong politika ang bribery, umiling ka at nag-walkout, binawi ni Buboy ang offer at sinabing biro lang ito, lingguhan kayong nagkita nang hindi nag-uusap hinggil sa politika, hanggang tumutok na kayo sa kani-kaniyang pinagkakaabalahan, umaasa na mahihila, hamig, hatak, kaladkad ang kabila sa inyong panig, hanggang naririto na sa hantungan, kapag nagkasibatan at nagkabarilan, handa na ang propaganda ng sandatahan, tribal war ito, hindi class war, pero hindi naman nila kailanman babanggitin ang tunggalian ng uri, ang gawain lang nila ay mapalabo nang mapalabo ang isyu, iiwas sa usaping pandarambong ng mga proyektong pangkaunlaran ng Emperyo, static na naman, masakit sa tainga, pero nawawala rin, bawal tumigil sa pag-iisip, bawal tumigil sa pagbabasa, bawal tumigil sa pagsusulat ng mga naiisip at nababasa, bawal tumigil sa pag-alala, kapag tumigil ka, mawawala ka sa rito sa kinabukasan,

142 Maikling Kuwento babalik ka sa nakaraan, ano na ang gagawin mo sa moment na ito, maglalaho ka kapag natapos itong naratibo, may white noise na naman, naririnig mo, hindi, bakit, bakit ka natigilan, tuluyan lang dapat sa talaan, sisibatin ba o sisipatin lang, bakit ka titigil, bawal tumigil, ano ang gagawin mo, isipin lang huwag gawin, ito ang dapat, may nangangamoy kasi, naputol ang kable ng koryente ng kapitbahay o natutupok na paaralan o sumisingaw na pulbura, may pumutok pero hindi galing sa kuwarenta y singko ni Buboy, may bumulagta pero hindi mo tiyak dahil ngayon, nakaupo ka na sa upuan mo, ibinalik ka na sa nakaraan, burado ka na sa kasalukuyan, bawal tumigil doon sa kakaalala at kakaproseso, hindi ka na makababalik dito, sinabihan ka namang bawal tumigil, pero hindi mo sinunod ang batas, magigising ka na sa malayong nakaraan ngayon

Tilde Acuña 143 Kabanalan sa Panahon ng Digmâ ROGELIO BRAGA

itang-kita ni Imo ang pagsungkit sa mga lumulutang na bangkay Kgamit ang mahahabang kawayan. May mga bangkay na naman kasing lumulutang sa Ilog Pasig na sinusungkit ng mga taga-Kuta. Mula sa baybayin ng ilog hinihila nila ang mga lumulutang na bangkay. Sa araw na iyon, dahil nagkaroon na naman ng labanan sa bahagi ng distrito ng Li na nakasasakop sa mga lugar sa palibot ng Laguna de Bay, laksang bangkay ang nakitang inaanod sa ilog. Nakakubli pa sila ni Wanda sa isang tolda na pag-aari ng isa sa kanilang mga kapitbahay sa Kuta habang pinanonood ang pagsungkit sa mga basyo ng buhay. “Imo, siguradong dadalhin na naman ’yang mga bangkay sa Sanctuario, ano?” “Sigurado! Kagabi may nakita na naman akong inaahon na mga bangkay mula ilog. Napansin mo ba na ang pinipili lang nilang mga bangkay para dalhin sa Sanctuario ay iyong hindi pa malalaki ang tiyan dahil sa dami ng tubig na pumasok sa katawan o inuuod na. Ang kinukuha lang nila ay iyong mga bangkay na may dugo-dugo pa ang mga sugat.” Mas matanda nang dalawang taon si Imo kay Wanda; halos hanggang balikat lang ni Imo ang taas ni Wanda. Hindi sila magkapatid pero palagi silang nakikita ng mga taga-Kuta na magkasama at palaging naglalaro. Mula raw sa distrito ng Li ang pamilya ni Wanda. At si Imo at ang kanyang pamilya, mula naman sa distrito ng Xiamen, sa bunganga ng ilog na nakaharap sa Manila Bay. Tulad ng mga naninirahan sa Kuta, sina Wanda at Imo ay salta rin sa loob ng kampo. Nakatayo ang Kuta sa dating Fort Santiago, na bago ang digmaan ay parke ng distrito ng Xiamen dahil sa malalabay na puno at mga lumang gusali na naitayo ilang daang taon bago maging probinsiya ng Beijing government ng arkipelago, noong “Panahon ng Isang Siglong Pananakop” ng imperyo ng Estados Unidos. At sa loob ng tatlong taon, sa limang taon nang digmaan na nagaganap, dito na sa Kuta naglalagi si Imo at ang kanyang pamilya. Ulila naman at pagala-gala lang sa loob ng Kuta si Wanda.

144 “Hindi ko napansin ’yon a!” ang bulalas ni Wanda sa paghanga sa kaibigan. “Ang galing mo naman. Nagkukuwento rin ba sa iyo ang mama at papa mo kung ano ang nangyayari sa mga bangkay sa loob ng Sanctuario?” Aktibo kasi ang mga magulang ni Imo sa mga gawain sa loob ng Sanctuario. Sila ang nagpapasok sa mga bangkay pagkatapos mahango ang mga katawan sa ilog. “Sa tuwing may bombahan o labanan, o may lulubog na sasakyang pandigma ang imperyo ng Estados Unidos o ang Beijing government, sigurado, abangan mo may hahanguin na namang mga bangkay ang mga taga-Sanctuario sa Ilog Pasig.” Limang taon na kasing nagtatagal ang digmaan sa pagitan ng imperyo ng Estados Unidos at ng Beijing government. Walong dekada nang nasa ilalim ng Beijing government ang Pilipinas at lipas na ang kondisyon sa pananatili nila sa arkipelago. Bago dumating ang Beijing government, isang siglo naman sa ilalim ng imperyo ng Estados Unidos ang Pilipinas. Nang matalo sa digmaan ang imperyo ng Estados Unidos walong dekada na ang nakararaan, nagkaroon ng tratado noon ang dalawang makapangyarihang bansa na ibabalik ng Beijing government sa imperyo ng Estados Unidos ang arkipelago—kapalit ng walong dekadang kapayapaan sa Pilipinas at upang hindi masira ng digmaan ang mga likas-yaman ng mga isla. Limang taon na ang nakararaan nang tumanggi ang Beijing government na ibalik ang arkipelago sa imperyo ng Estados Unidos. At sa loob ng limang taon, pilit na pinaaalis ng sandatahan ng imperyo ng Estados Unidos ang Beijing government sa isa sa mga kolonya nito sa Timog Silangang Asya, ang Pilipinas. At sa loob ng limang taon na ito, walang katapusang digmaan sa kapuluan at ang mga mamamayan, nailipat, naitapon sa ibang mga lugar upang makaligtas, upang maipagpatuloy ang kanilang mga buhay. Ang Kuta ang isa mga lugar na ito kung saan nagsama-sama ang mga mamamayan na tumatakas sa gulo. Nagugulat si Wanda sa mga nalalaman ni Imo sa mga inaahon na bangkay mula sa ilog at dinadala sa Sanctuario pagkatapos. Ang Sanctuario kasi ang pinakamalaking tolda sa loob ng Kuta. Nagtataka si Wanda sa mga nalalaman ni Imo dahil paano siya nagkaroon ng mas maraming nalalaman kaysa sa akin e palagi naman kaming magkasama—namumulot ng mga lumang gulong sa Pasay sa distrito ng Xiamen, pinapasok ang mga abandonadong gusali sa Makati sa paghahanap ng makakain, sa paglalakad sa baybayin ng Pasig, sa pagsakay sa motorsiklo ni Merdeka para mamasyal sa Maynila, manood ng labanan kung may encounter ang mga sundalo ng magkabilang panig. Iniisip

Rogelio Braga 145 na lamang ni Wanda na maaaring nakukuha ni Imo ang mga nalalaman niya sa mga magulang niya. Mahigpit ang batas ng Sanctuario—ang nagaganap sa loob ay marapat lamang na nananatili sa loob ng malaking tolda. Ang mga magulang kasi ni Imo ang madalas na nakikita ng mga taga-Kuta na pumapasok at lumalabas ng Sanctuario at ang nanay palagi ni Imo ang may dala-dalang bungkos ng telang puti; minsan kahit bandilang puti ay dinadala ng ina niya sa loob ng malaking tolda. “Imo, hindi mo naitatanong sa nanay at tatay mo kung ano ang ginagawa sa mga bangkay sa loob ng Sanctuario? Kung sino ang nandoon at kung bakit bawal ang mga bata at iilang tao lang sa Kuta ang puwedeng pumasok?” “Ay! Sinubukan ko ngang tanungin si Tatay, kinagalitan lang ako. Huwag daw akong makikialam sa gawain ng mga matatanda. Sabi pa nga niya, ‘Huwag mo akong subukan, Imo, isang pindutan lang sa buton ibabalik kita sa central government!’” Si Imo kasi ay ibinigay ng central government sa mga magulang niya labintatlong taon na ang nakalilipas. Ang mga anak naman na bunga na pagsasama ng kanyang mga magulang ay kinuha naman ng central government para ibigay sa ibang pamilya sa iba’t ibang bahagi ng kapuluan na kasama sa Comprehensive Family Planning Program ng Beijing government sa kanyang mga probinsiya. “E di ba wala nang gobyerno dahil digmaan?” ang sangga naman ni Wanda. Hindi pa mahanapan ng mga bagong magulang si Wanda dahil suspendido ang lahat ng ahensiya ng Beijing government at mga serbisyo ng gobyerno dahil nga sa digmaan. “Oo! Wala muna tayong gobyerno dahil hindi pa nalalaman kung sino ang nagwagi.” “E, luko-luko pala ’yang tatay mo pati ikaw niloloko!” “Ingatan mo ’yang bunganga mo, Wanda, tatay ko pa rin ’yon ayon sa batas. Palibhasa wala pang ibinibigay na pamilya sa iyo ang gobyerno,” matabil na sangga ni Imo. “At isa pa, para rin naman sa atin—sa mga kabataan—ang mga bangkay na ipinapasok sa Sanctuario sabi ni Nanay!” Palaging nasasapul ng lungkot si Wanda sa tuwing kakantiin ni Imo ang kaibigan tungkol sa kawalan niya ng mga magulang. Nang magkaroon kasi ng encounter noon sa kanilang distrito, nagkagulo ang buong complex, nasunog ang mga kabahayan, at nagkataon noon na nasa paaralan si Wanda. Nang bumalik siya sa kanila abo na ang kanilang tahanan at wala na rin doon

146 Maikling Kuwento ang kanyang mga magulang; ang mga magulang niya noon ay ibinigay din sa kanya ng Beijing government. Simula noon sumasama na si Wanda kung kani-kanino, pagala-gala sa iba’t ibang Kuta sa iba’t ibang distrito hanggang sa may nakapulot sa kanyang isang matandang babae at dinala siya sa Kuta na malapit sa Ilog Pasig. Sa gitna ng digmaan, ang matandang babae ang nag-alaga kay Wanda hanggang sa tuluyan silang kupkupin ng Kuta na bukás naman sa lahat ng mga nagsilikas mula sa iba’t ibang bahagi ng arkipelago. Mag-isa lang na nabubuhay si Wanda at palakad-lakad sa Kuta at gilid ng Ilog Pasig kung hindi kasama si Imo. Dito niya sa Kuta nakilala si Imo, minsang napadaan si Wanda sa Jones Bridge at patawid sa Escolta. Nakaupo si Imo sa barandilya ng tulay at nakatunghay sa ilog at pinagmamasdan ang mga bagay na inaanod sa daluyong—mga gulong, bubong, mga sirang sasakyan na tila nabagsakan ng bomba dahil kung hindi butas ang gitnang bahagi ay nahati sa dalawa, at mga bangkay ng mga napatay sa iba’t ibang encounter sa iba’t ibang bahagi ng dalawang distrito. Dahan-dahang lumapit si Wanda sa likuran ni Imo at balak niyang itulak ang lalaki. Nais niyang pagtripan si Imo at ihulog sa Ilog Pasig. Nang itutulak na niya si Imo ay nagkataon namang may bombang bumagsak sa isang giba nang gusali sa Escolta. Sumabog ang gusali, gumuho, at nagtalsikan ang mga tipak ng bato sa harapan nilang dalawa. Biglang napalingon si Imo sa likuran niya. Nahuli niya sa akto si Wanda na naka- amba nang itutulak siya sa ilog. At dahil nauuso noon sa mga kabataan ang pagtutulak ng kapuwa nila bata sa ilog, nahinuha kaagad ni Imo ang balak ni Wanda. Sinuntok niya nang sinuntok sa mukha si Wanda hanggang sa sumirit ang dugo nito sa ilong. Matapos iyon, palagi na silang nakikita sa Jones Bridge o tumatakbo sa kung saan at pinapasok ang mga abandonadong gusali sa Escolta hanggang sa makarating sila sa Ongpin para maghanap ng anumang maiuuwi sa Kuta. Mas lalong lumalim ang pagkakaibigan ng dalawa nang pumanaw ang matandang babae na nag-aalaga kay Wanda. Sa Kuta na rin kasi pumanaw ang matanda. Ayon sa mga bulung-bulungan sa Kuta, nakikita raw kasing umiinom ng tubig mula sa ilog ang matanda kahit lumulutang na rito ang mga bangkay na basyo ng nagaganap na digmaan. Kolera ang ikinamatay ng matanda. Tandang-tanda pa ni Wanda kung ano ang kinahinatnan ng matandang nag-alaga sa kanya: ipinasok din sa Sanctuario ang bangkay ng matanda. Umiiyak siya noon at nasa tabi pa niya si Imo habang inaangat ang bangkay ng matanda mula sa higaan nila na gawa sa mga pinagpatong-patong na sako at karton. Naririnig pa niya ang paulit-ulit na paalala ng ina ni Imo

Rogelio Braga 147 na siyang kasama ng mga nagbubuhat sa bangkay, “Bilisan niyo habang hindi pa matigas ang katawan!” Habang humihikbi noon si Wanda may lumapit pa sa kanya na isang matandang babae mula sa Sanctuario at niyakap siya, nakikisimpatya sa pagdadalamhati niya. “Hay, Wanda, tahan na … huwag kang mag-alala, para sa iyo rin ang kamatayan ng iyong matanda. Balang-araw, maiintindihan mo rin ang lahat … hindi nila makukuha sa atin ang ating mga kasaysayan dahil ang kamatayan ng isa … ay ang pananatili ng ating mga alaala.” Bagaman hindi niya naiintindihan ang mga salitang binitiwan ng matandang babae, nararamdaman niyang mahigpit ang pagkakayakap nito sa kanya, at mainit ang mga braso nitong nakapulupot sa kanyang katawan. Nais na kumawala ni Wanda sa mga braso ng matanda, magkaroon ng isang espasyo ang kanyang katawan. Simula noon, palagi nang pinangangalagaan ni Wanda ang espasyo sa pagitan ng katawan niya at sa katawan ng ibang mga tao, kahit na ang kay Imo. “E, iyon din ang sinabi sa akin ng matandang babae nang kunin nila ang katawan ng matanda ko.” “Hindi na ’yon katawan, bangkay na iyon. Ewan ko. Basta ang palaging sinasabi lang sa amin ni nanay ‘para rin daw ’yon sa amin’—ang mga bangkay—para sa aming magkakapatid, sa aming mga bata …” At niyaya na ni Imo si Wanda na umalis at sumakay na muli sa motorsiklo. Nahiram na naman kasi ni Imo ang motorsiklo kay Merdeka. Ipinagbabawal na ang paggamit muna ng mga motorsiklo sa arkipelago o kahit ang pagsakay ng anumang sasakyang panghimpapawid dahil na rin sa marami nang insidente na napagkakamalang sasakyang pandigma ang mga sasakyang panghimpapawid at gayon din ang ingay na gawa ng mga makina ng motorsiklo na tila imbitasyon ng paninibasib ng mga tagalabas, ng kaaway. Marami nang napapatay dahil sa pag-aakala na ang motorsiklo ay mula sa kabilang panig at pinasasabog ito kaagad at napapatay ang lahat ng sakay na pasahero. Isang linggo lang ang nakararaan nang paulanan ng bala ng mga sundalo ng Beijing government ang isang motorsiklo na minamaneho ng dalawang binatilyong taga-Kuta. Parehong patay ang dalawang binatilyo. Laking panlulumo ng mga taga-Kuta dahil dalawang buhay na naman ang nalagas sa kanila. Mas lalong nanlumo ang mga tao nang malaman nilang halos maprito ang mga bangkay dahil sumabog din ang tangke ng gasolina ng motorsiklo at nagliyab ang sasakyan. Hindi na raw nila mapakikinabangan ang mga bangkay at madadala sa loob ng Sanctuario.

148 Maikling Kuwento “Aba! High end kaya itong motorsiklo ko!” pagyayabang ni Imo kay Wanda. Nakasakay na silang dalawa sa motorsiklo at mabilis na pinatatakbo ni Imo; patungo ang dalawa sa Makati. May naghulog daw ng relief goods sa rooftop ng mga mga lumang gusali sa Makati at kukuha ang dalawa ng kung anuman ang nalalabi pa sa relief goods. Tiyak ang dalawa na marami na ang nagtungo sa mga rooftop upang makakuha ng relief. Galing sa Red Cross ang mga pagkain, mga kagamitan sa bahay at emergency kit, mga nakabotelyang inumin, at mga kumot. Ang kumot na puti ang talagang habol nina Imo at Wanda. “E, hindi naman sa iyo ito. Ang yabang mo naman …” sangga ni Wanda. Kay Merdeka ang motorsiklo. Nakatatandang pinsan ni Imo si Merdeka. Ang totoo, hindi nagpaalam kay Merdeka si Imo na gagamitin niya ang motorsiklo ng pinsan. “Hindi a. Pamana na raw ito sa akin ni Merdeka sabi niya sa akin. Kaya sa akin na ito!” Ang pagyayabang ni Imo habang mabilis na pinatatakbo ang motorsiklo. Hinihipan ng amoy pulburang hangin at nasusunog na mga kahoy, laman ng tao, at sangsang ng mga naagnas na mga bangkay ang dalawa na sakay ng humaharurot na sasakyan. Nasa huling taon na marahil ang digmaan, o akala ng marami na nalalapit na ang pagtatapos nito dahil nagkaroon na ng kasunduan ang Beijing government at imperyo ng Estados Unidos na hahatiin na lamang ang arkipelago para sa ikatatahimik ng dalawang bansa at maibalik ang inaasam na kapayapaan. Nagkakaroon lang ng pagkabalam ang tuluyang pagtatapos ng digmaan dahil hindi matapos-tapos ang pagbibilang ng mga isla sa Bisayas at kung kanino mapupunta ang mga isla ayon sa napagkasunduan. Naririnig pa rin nina Imo at Wanda ang mga pagsabog, pagputok ng mga baril mula sa malayo. Madilim naman ang langit dahil naiipon sa himpapawid ang mga usok na mula sa mga nasusunog na gusali dahil sa mga labanan. Malapit na ang dalawa sa Makati at binabaybay na nila ang EDSA. “Sabi ni Merdeka may bago raw baterya ang motorsiklo na ito. Totoo ba?” tanong ni Wanda. “Ayos talaga ’yang si Merdeka; mabubuhay ’yan sa digmaan kasi magaling dumiskarte mag-isa. Marunong mag-isa, Imo.” At narinig na naman ni Imo ang paborito ni Wandang “Marunong mag- isa.” Ang mga baterya kasi ng mga sasakyan ay nirarasyon na lamang ng Beijing government dahil sa digmaan. May mga black market sa mga distrito ng Li at Xiamen kung saan naman nabibili ang mga baterya ng mga sasakyan o naipagpapalit ito sa pagkain, damit, o tolda.

Rogelio Braga 149 “Oo, bagong-bago. Tatagal daw ito nang dalawampung taon.” “Ikaw ha, saan mo naman nakuha ang bagong baterya? Nagnakaw kayo ni Merdeka ano?” “Sa digmaan,” mabilis na tugon ni Imo. “Sabi ni Tatay sa digmaan wala namang nagmamay-ari ng kahit na ano. Lahat pag-aari mo sa digmaan.” “Hindi totoo ’yan,” sangga ni Wanda. “Siyempre mayroon din nagma- may-ari ng digmaan.” “Ha? E, sino?” “Iyong marunong mag-isa—iyong mas malakas!” at humalakhak si Wanda dahil alam niyang hindi ito naunawaan ng kaibigan. “Tarantado ka, Wanda, akala mo kung sino kang matalino. Narinig mo lang ’yan kay Merdeka!” Ninakaw nina Imo at Merdeka ang bagong baterya ng kanilang motorsiklo. Tatlong araw na ang nakararaan nang pasukin nila ang isang abandonadong bahay sa isang purok sa hilaga ng distrito ng Xiamen. Malaking bahay. At nahinuha nina Imo at Merdeka na marahil bahay ito ng isang opisyal ng pamahalaan. Bagaman tuklap na ang bubong ng mansiyon at giba na ang gate naroroon pa rin sa loob ng bakuran ng bahay ang mga sasakyan, maraming sasakyang panlupa at panghimpapawid. At naisip ng dalawa na baka sakali at may mga baterya pang laman ang mga sasakyan. At tulad ng inaasahan, wala nang mga baterya ang mga sasakyan. Ngunit pinasok ng dalawa ang bahay. Wala na ang mga gamit sa loob. Marahil tumakas na patungo sa Mainland ang pamilya ng may-ari ng bahay. Pero alam ni Merdeka na ang mga bahay ng mayayaman ng Beijing government ay karaniwang mayroong basement at doon sa basement nakatago ang mga motorsiklo, computer, at maging mga armas. Malimit na kubli ang mga basement na ito. Si Merdeka ang nakahanap ng kubling lagusan patungo sa basement. At doon nga nila nakita sa basement, kasama ng mga armas at mga computer, ang motorsiklo ng pamilya at naroroon pa rin ang baterya. Dalawang baterya ang nakuha nina Imo at Merdeka. Aariin ni Merdeka ang motorsiklo at ibibigay niya naman ang luma niyang motorsiklo kay Imo. Hindi lang maibigay ni Merdeka kaagad ang motorsiklo dahil ipinatatanggal pa niya ang nakakabit na monitoring device sa motorsiklo; ang device na ito kasi ay nakakabit pa sa Central Computer ng Beijing government. Isang linggo pa bago matanggal sa isang junk shop sa Makati ang device.

150 Maikling Kuwento Nang marating ng dalawa ang Makati humimpil muna sila sa tapat ng isang gusali. Napakarami nang tao at alam nilang ubos na ang mga relief na ipinamimigay. Naghintay sila nang isa pang oras bago unti-unting mawala ang mga tao. Matapos ang isang oras, mag-isang nagtungo si Wanda sa rooftop ng gusali. Walang nang tao. Wala na rin ang mga relief. Ngunit naroroon at iniwanan ng balana ang kinakailangan nila ni Imo. Isa lang ang paalala ni Imo bago niya pinaakyat si Wanda sa itaas: “Ang pinakamahalaga, at kailangan nating maiuwi sa Kuta, ay ang mga puting kumot.” Naroroon nga’t iniwanan ang daan-daang puting kumot na gawa sa katsa na iuuwi nila ni Imo.

Nang magbalik ang dalawa sa Kuta bitbit nila ang halos isandaang puting kumot. Sinalubong sila ni Merdeka sa bukana ang komunidad. Si Merdeka ay anak ng nakatatandang kapatid ng ina ni Imo. Tatlong taon na ang nakararaan nang pumanaw ang lahat ng kasapi ng pamilya ni Merdeka. Kasama ang pamilya niya na nalunod sa South China Sea nang sumakay ang mga ito ng maliit na bapor upang tumakas patungo sa Vietnam, na isang probinsiya ng Beijing government. Napagkamalan na isang bangkang pandigma ang bapor kaya’t pinaulanan ito ng missiles ng mga drone ng imperyo ng Estados Unidos na noo’y nasa Subic. Nakaligtas lamang si Merdeka dahil hindi na ito nakalabas ng dormitoryo sa unibersidad at nasama sa conscription ng Beijing government; naging mabait sa kanya ang kapalaran at hindi na siya nakasama sa kanyang pamilya para makatakas. Nag-aaral noon ng computer engineering si Merdeka sa unibersidad. “Ang kukulit niyong dalawa. Sa’n ba kayo nanggaling?” ang salubong sa kanila ni Merdeka. Galit ito dahil napansin ni Imo na magkasalubong na ang dalawang makakapal na kilay ng pinsan. Matangkad si Merdeka, hanggang balikat lang niya si Imo. Hindi kumibo sina Imo at Wanda ngunit tila nabasa na ni Merdeka sa mga mukha at ayos ng dalawa na ginamit nito ang kanyang motorsiklo at lumabas sa Kuta. “Hindi ba’t pinagbawalan ka ng mga magulang mo, Imo, na huwag kang sasakay ng motorsiklo at lalabas ng Kuta? Paano kung tamaan ka ng ligaw na bala? Ng bomba?” “E, di patay kaming dalawa!” ang pabalang na sagot ni Imo. Napahiya kasi siya sa harap ng kaibigan. Isang sampal ang isinagot ni Merdeka sa pinsan. “Makasarili ka talaga, Imo. Paano kung mapatay ka, sino ang mag-aalaga sa mga kapatid mo pagkatapos

Rogelio Braga 151 ng digmaan at matatanda na ang mga magulang mo?” Nakatiim-bagang si Merdeka at mahigpit na nakatiklop ang kanyang mga palad. “Buti sana kung mamamatay ka lang. E, kung nasunog ang katawan mo, ano na lamang ang mapakikinabangan ng Kuta sa bangkay mo? Wala kayong maitutulong ni Wanda! Wala!” At sunod-sunod ang paghagupit ng mga palad ni Merdeka sa mukha ni Imo. Hindi naman makalaban si Imo o maipagtanggol ni Wanda ang kaibigan dahil matangkad sa kanilang dalawa si Merdeka. Natigilan lamang si Merdeka sa karahasan nang sumirit na ang dugo sa mga labi ni Imo. Ang dugo na mula sa sugat sa bibig ni Imo ay kumalat sa palad, kamay, hanggang sa mga braso ni Merdeka. Natigilan si Merdeka at nagulantang sa karahasan na tumambad sa kanyang harapan; bumagsak na sa lupa si Imo at tila tuod na nakatayo naman si Wanda habang gulat na pinagmamasdan ang dalawa. Mabilis na hinubad ni Merdeka ang kanyang damit at pinunasan ang bibig ni Imo. Mabilis, natataranta, at marahas ang pagpupunas niya na para bang ang dugo ay mauubos sa katawan ni Imo dahil sa maliit na sugat. Matapos mapunasan sinabihan niya ang dalawa na umuwi na sa kani- kanilang tolda at huwag lalabas hanggang hindi siya nakababalik. Dali-daling tumakbo ang dalawa at tumalima sa utos ni Merdeka. Nagtungo sa baybayin ng Ilog Pasig si Merdeka nang mawala ang dalawa. Pinagmasdan niya ang tubig na dumadaloy sa ilog, ang mga bagay na lumulutang at dinadala ng daluyong—mga bangkay ng sundalo at sibilyan, mga patay na alagang hayop tulad ng mga aso at pusa. Itinapon ni Merdeka sa ilog ang damit na ginamit niya para linisin ang dugo sa mukha ni Imo. Tinanaw niya ang damit na dinala ng daluyong papalayo sa pampang. Kinawkaw niya ang kanyang mga kamay sa tubig upang tanggalin ang bahid ng dugo ni Imo na unti-unti nang natutuyo sa kanyang mga palad. Naroroon pa rin ang gulat at pagkagitla sa kanyang mga mata. “Tarantado ka talaga, Imo … Tarantado …” Matapos ang insidente na iyon kay Merdeka, napansin na nina Imo at Wanda ang pagbabago sa binata. Napansin ni Imo na palagi nang tahimik ang pinsan at nag-iisa. Hindi na rin ito nagpapasama sa kanila ni Wanda sa pag-iigib ng tubig na maiinom para sa Kuta. Kung mag-iigib kasi ang tatlo ginagamit nila ang pinakamabilis na motorsiklo sa Kuta, sa madaling-araw sila umaalis, at si Merdeka ay kilala sa buong Kuta na mabilis ngunit maingat na magpatakbo ng motorsiklo, na kaya niyang iwasan ang mga bala, ang pagsabog, at takasan ang mga hagaran at tulisan sa naglipana sa EDSA. Sa pag-iigib din sa ilang tolda sa Kuta kumikita si Merdeka. At sa pagsama-sama

152 Maikling Kuwento sa pag-iigib para sa mga parokyano ni Merdeka sa Kuta kumikita rin sina Imo at Wanda. Ngunit sa mga nagdaang araw naging bugnutin na si Merdeka at hindi na nito isinasama ang dalawa. “Baka gusto na lang na mag-isa ni Merdeka,” ang nasabi minsan ni Wanda kay Imo. “Akala niya siguro malakas na siya.” Dumating ang balita sa Kuta na may lumubog na namang limang barkong pandigma ang imperyo ng Estados Unidos at ang kanyang mga kaalyansa. Ito na rin ang senyales ng nalalapit nang pagwawagi ng Beijing government. Hindi sila aalis sa arkipelago at mananatili. At tulad ng inaasahan ng lahat ng mga taga-Kuta, pati nina Imo at Wanda, sa mahahalagang pangyayari kagaya nito sa nagaganap na digmaan, may mga bangkay na namang kinuha sa Ilog Pasig at nagpatulong pa kay Imo ang kanyang ina na maghanap ng mga puting tela. Nang matapos ang isang araw na paghahanap, hindi naging matagumpay si Imo sa pangangalap ng puting tela. Nakiusap na ang kanyang ina na kahit na anong tela, kahit ang kulay ay kupas na asul, berde, dilaw— huwag lamang itim at lalo na ang pula. Ganoon din na naging aligaga ang ina ni Imo sa paghahanap ng mga tela; bungkos ng mga tela ang bilin pa nito, nang magkaroon ng labanan sa pagitan ng mga F-22 Raptor ng imperyo ng Estados Unidos at ng Beijing government sa himpapawid ng Manila Bay. Isang umaga nagising na lamang ang mga taga-Kuta sa ingay ng mga makina na mga naghahabulang eroplanong pandigma sa himpapawid ng Maynila. Tatlong F-22 Raptor ng imperyo ng Estados Unidos ang humahabol sa isang F-22 Raptor ng Beijing government; nasa himpapawid din ang kani-kaniyang drones ng dalawang panig. Papatakas sa Manila Bay ang hinahabol na F-22 Raptor. Lumabas ang lahat sa kani-kanilang mga tolda sa Kuta upang saksihan ang paglalaban ng mga eroplanong pandigma sa himpapawid. Sa bandang huli, sa harap ng lahat ng mga nakasaksi, napabagsak ng F-22 Raptor ng Beijing government ang dalawag eroplano ng imperyo ng Estados Unidos. Ngunit nasapol naman ito ng isang missile mula sa isang paparating na F-22 Raptor ng imperyo. Nakita ng lahat sa Kuta kung paano nagliyab ang eroplano sa himpapawid at papadausdos na bumagsak sa dagat. Makalipas ang isang oras dumating sa Kuta ang balita na ang isang taga-Maynila pala ang nagpapatakbo sa eroplano ng Beijing government. Hindi Intsik na mula sa mainland o sa Hong Kong. Ipinagbunyi ng mga taga-Kuta ang kabayanihan ng piloto dahil napabagsak nito ang dalawang eroplanong pandigma ng imperyo, ito ang balita sa radyo, telebisyon, mga pahayagan sa Internet. Pero sa Kuta, ang pagbubunyi

Rogelio Braga 153 ay inalay sa piloto. Noong gabi ding iyon, natuklasan nina Imo at Wanda, habang nakakubli ang dalawa sa isang nabuwal na pader sa gilid ng Ilog Pasig, ang pagsungkit ng mga taga-Sanctuario sa mga lumulutang na bangkay sa ilog. At dahil para nga sa piloto ang pagbubunyi, napansin ng dalawa na halos dalawang dosenang bangkay ang nakuha ng mga taga-Sanctuario at maayos na isinalansan ang mga ito sa dalampasigan ng ilog. “Hindi kaya dahil sa katapangan ng piloto kaya dalawang dosenang bangkay ang inihanda sa hapag ng halimaw sa loob ng Sanctuario?” takot na tanong ni Wanda kay Imo. Ang alam ni Wanda isang dambuhalang halimaw daw na may tatlong ulo ang nasa loob ng Sanctuario. Pinakakain ng mga bangkay ang halimaw na ito. “Siguro. Pero narinig ko sa kuwentuhan ng ibang mga bata sa Kuta na hindi naman daw halimaw ang nasa loob ng Sanctuario,” sangga ni Imo. Hindi rin kasi nakakapasok si Imo sa loob ng malaking tolda kahit ang mga magulang niya ang nagdadala ng bungkos ng tela sa loob ng Sanctuario. “E, puro matatanda lang sa Kuta ang nakakapasok sa Sanctuario!” “Iyon na nga,” inilapit ni Imo ang bibig niya sa tainga ni Wanda at bumulong, “sila ang kumakain ng bangkay sa loob ng Kuta?” Nanlaki ang mga mata ni Wanda sa takot. “Kinain nila ang matanda …” At naalala ni Wanda ang matandang babae na nag-alaga sa kanya. “Pero, Imo, bakit sinasabi nila palagi sa atin na para sa ating mga bata ang ginagawa nila sa loob ng Sanctuario?” Natahimik si Imo at pinaglimian ang mga salita ni Wanda. Naisip niya ang pinsan, na sa edad nito marahil ay nakapapasok na sa Sanctuario. “Si Merdeka! Si Merdeka! May nalalaman si Merdeka!” At nagdesisyon ang dalawa na puntahan si Merdeka sa kanyang tolda. Hindi kaagad nagpakita ang dalawa nang marating nila ang tolda ni Merdeka. Nagkubli sila sa likod ng tolda ng pinsan ni Imo. “Imo, ano ginagawa ng pinsan mo?” bulong ni Wanda. Nasa labas ng tolda niya si Merdeka at nakaluhod sa lupa. “Hindi ko alam. Parang naghuhukay si Merdeka?” Nakaluhod si Merdeka at may hawak itong sanga na paniklot. Nakayukod si Merdeka sa lupa at tila hirap na hirap sa kanyang ginagawa. Nakikita nina Imo at Wanda ang paghihirap na dinaranas ni Merdeka sa marahas na paggalaw ng kanyang likod at mga balikat. Isang malaking katanungan sa

154 Maikling Kuwento dalawa kung ano itong ginagawa ng pinsan ni Imo. At naisip naman ni Imo, na ito marahil ang dahilan kaya sa mga nagdaang araw ay parang inilalayo na ni Merdeka ang sarili niya sa mga tao, sa mga taga-Kuta, palaging balisa. Halos yumakap na sa lupa ang katawan ni Merdeka. Gamit ang paniklot sinusubok niyang gumuhit sa lupa. Hindi niya maigalaw ang kanyang mga kamay ayon sa kanyang nais. Ang kamay na palagi niyang ginagamit sa pagpindot ng kompyuter, pagmamaniobra ng manibela ng kanyang motorsiklo. Hawak ang paniklot na ang isang dulo ay nakasayad sa lupa, pinipilit ni Merdeka na pasunurin ang paniklot ayon sa ninanais ng kanyang mga kamay, ng kanyang mga daliri. “Ano ang ginagawa ng pinsan mo, Imo? Hindi kaya na-rabis ’yan? Bulung-bulungan na nakagat daw siya ng askal kahapon sa Binondo.” “Hindi ko alam. Baka iyan ang dahilan kung bakit siya palaging galit nitong mga nagdaang araw. Napansin mo ba?” Lubos ang pagpupumilit ni Merdeka na pasunurin ang kanyang mga daliri, ang kanyang mga kamay. At bigla siyang napatigil sa kanyang ginagawa, huminga ng malalim. Naiyak siya na simula ay impit hanggang sa tuluyang humagulgol. Palibhasa’y alam niyang siya lamang ang nasa lugar kaya pinakawalan niya sa dibdib ang malalakas na pagsigaw. Siphayo ang gumupo sa kanyang pagkatao. Doon lang nakita ni Imo ang kanyang pinsan na parang batang umiiyak. Iyon ang una na nakamalas si Wanda ng isang panaghoy bukod sa mga iyak at panaghoy ng mga batang kalaro niya, at sa sarili niyang iyak noong pumanaw ang matandang nag-alaga sa kanya, at noong dalhin sa malaking tolda ang bangkay nito pagkatapos. Nang hindi na makatiis si Imo na makita ang pagtaghoy ng kanyang pinsan ay mabilis siyang tumayo sa pinagkukublihang pumpon ng mga tela at tinawag si Merdeka. “Ano’ng ginagawa niyo rito?” Mababakas na sa mukha ni Merdeka ang hiya at pagkagulat. “Ano ang ginagawa mo kanina?” ang tugon ni Imo, nakatudla ang mga mata sa mga kamay ni Merdeka. Hindi tumugon si Merdeka. Nais niya sanang ipaliwanag sa pinsan na ayaw niyang ipadala siya sa digmaan kaya sinusubok niya ang isang gawain na nakikita niya lamang sa loob ng Sanctuario—pero paano ito mauunawaan ni Imo? Nais niyang matulad sa isang nilalang na nasa loob ng malaking tolda—itinatago, binabantayan, at pinagsisilbihan dahil sa isang kakayahan.

Rogelio Braga 155 May kakayahan ang nilalang na ito sa kanyang mga kamay na siya lamang ang nakagagawa. Sinusubakan ni Merdeka na makuha niya rin sa kanyang mga kamay ang kasanayan ng nilalang na nasa loob ng Sanctuario nang madatnan siya nina Imo at Wanda. Kay Merdeka, alam niya sa sarili na kaya niyang makuha ang kasanayan basta mapaamo niya lamang ang kanyang mga kamay at makasanayan ang paggamit ng paniklot. Nais niya sanang sabihin ito o itugon kay Imo ngunit ito ay paglabag sa batas ng Kuta: ang anumang nangyayari sa loob ng Sanctuario ay para lamang sa mga nakapapasok sa loob nito. Kamatayan ang parusa na ipinapataw sa sinuman ang lumabag sa batas na ito ng Kuta. Ang paglabas kasi ng mga nangyayari sa loob ng Sanctuario ay maglalagay daw sa panganib sa mga taga-Kuta. Ang mismong pagkukubli kasi ng Kuta sa nilalaman ng Sanctuario ay tahasang paglabag sa batas ng central government. Nagkataon lang na nasa isang malaking digmaan ang Beijing government kaya hindi masyadong maayos ang pagpapatakbo ng mga sangay ng gobyerno, maging ang pagmomonitor ng mga gawain ng mga nasa kolonya. Ang pag-asang para sa mga kabataan o sa susunod na henerasyon ang kung anumang nagaganap sa loob ng Sanctuario kaya tumatalima ang lahat ng mga taga-Kuta sa batas na nagbibigay-proteksiyon sa malaking tolda. “Ano ang ginagawa mo kanina, Merdeka?” Inulit muli ni Imo ang tanong. Tumindig si Merdeka at marahan na binali ang paniklot. Mababakas sa kanyang mukha ang pagsuko. “Ayaw kong lumaban sa digmaan. Ayaw kong lumaban sa kanilang digmaan.” Mahigit na nakatiklop ang kanyang mga kamay. Marahang pumasok sa kanyang tolda si Merdeka nang hindi man lang lumilingon sa kanila.

Kumalat kaagad ang balita sa buong Kuta sa pag-alis ni Merdeka upang lumaban sa digmaan. Tuwang-tuwa ang matatanda, pati ang mga magulang ni Imo na tumatayong tagapag-alaga ni Merdeka simula nang ito’y maulila. “Imo! Imo!” Humahangos na dumating si Wanda kay Imo na noo’y tahimik na nakatayo sa gilid ng Ilog Pasig. Naglilibang si Imo sa mga oras na iyon sa pagbibilang ng mga bangkay na lumulutang sa ilog—mga sundalo, may babae, may mga bata. Paminsan-minsa’y may mga hayop tulad ng aso, kalabaw, kabayo. Lahat ng mga lumulutang sa Pasig ay dumederetso sa Manila Bay. Nakagawian nang libangan ni Imo ang tumanaw sa mga lumulutang na bangkay sa ilog simula nang mawala si Merdeka at sumama sa digmaan at si Wanda naman ay abala sa pakikipaglaro sa mga kaibigan niyang babae.

156 Maikling Kuwento “Bakit? Ano ang balita mo? Nanalo na ba ang Beijing government? “Hindi, Imo. May iniahon na namang bangkay sa ilog. Siguradong para sa pag-alis ni Merdeka ang bangkay!” “E, palagi namang nangyayari iyan. Akala ko naman may bago kang ibabalita’t nagmamadali ka pa.” “Mayroon!” Pagyayabang ni Wanda. “Talaga?” “Kanina habang naglalaro kami sa baybayin may narinig akong dalawang matandang nag-uusap. Nakaupo sila sa ibabaw ng sirang kotse at nagbibilang din siguro ng mga bangkay na lumulutang. Narinig ko na nabanggit ng isa ang ‘Sanctuario’ kaya nagkubli ako sa likuran ng dalawa dahil alam kong tungkol sa halimaw sa malaking tolda ang pinag-uusapan nila. “Narinig ko ang usapan nila. Mayroon daw matanda sa loob ng Sanctuario at hindi isang halimaw. Mayroon daw itong kapangyarihan, Imo! Gumagamit daw ito ng paniklot na may mga buhok ng tao ang isang dulo. Makapangyarihan daw ang matandang nasa Sanctuario at higit sa lahat,” luminga-linga si Wanda sa paligid sa paniniguro na walang nakaririnig sa kanila at inilapit nito kay Imo ang kanyang bibig at bumulong. “Hindi raw siya encoded sa central government na mamamayan ng Beijing government.” Nandilat si Imo sa takot at sa kanyang natuklasan mula sa kaibigan. “Isang makapangyarihang rebelde ang nakatago sa loob ng Sanctuario,” pagpapatuloy ni Wanda. “Oo, maniwala ka, Imo. Kaya ganoon na lang daw ang pag-iingat ng mga matatanda ng Kuta sa rebelde. Ayaw nilang sabihin sa mga bata; baka kasi sabihin natin sa mga hindi taga-Kuta!” “Ano itong kapangyarihan ng rebelde? Sinabi mo na may kapangyarihan ang kanyang mga kamay at may paniklot siya?” “Naaalala mo ba iyong ginagawa ni Merdeka? Imo, iyon ’yon! Ginagaya ni Merdeka ang kapangyarihan ng matandang rebelde.” Unti-unti nang nabubuo kay Imo ang lahat. May rebeldeng ikinukubli ang matatanda sa loob ng Sanctuario, at ang rebeldeng ito ay makapangyarihan dahil hindi siya encoded sa General Citizen’s Database ng central government. “Imo, gusto mo mamayang gabi kapag inilabas na ang bangkay na para sa pag-alis ni Merdeka pasukin natin ang Sanctuario?” suhestiyon ni Wanda. Habang nagsasalita si Wanda napansin ni Imo na may tumutulong dugo sa ilong ng kaibigan. “Bakit, Imo?”

Rogelio Braga 157 “May dugo ang ilong mo.” Pinahid ni Wanda ang dugo at nagpatuloy. “Ano, pasukin na natin mamaya?” Hindi makatugon si Imo kay Wanda dahil nabahala siya sa dugong tumulo sa ilong ng kaibigan. Inisip niya na lamang na baka nakipag-away si Wanda kanina at nakipagbuntalan. “Ano, pasukin natin mamaya?” “Sige. Mamaya paglubog ng araw.”

Para sa pag-alis ni Merdeka ang bangkay na iniahon sa Pasig kaninang umaga. Pumasok ang ina ni Imo sa Sanctuario dala ang ilang bungkos ng tela. Nakaabang sina Imo at Wanda sa mga magkakapatong na kahon sa tabi ng isang maliit na tolda sa tabi ng Sanctuario. Hinintay nila na magrelyebo ang mga bantay sa lagusan ng malaking tolda. Nang lumalalim na ang gabi at oras na upang magpalit ng bantay ay inihanda ng dalawa ang kanilang mga sarili. Nang umalis ang dalawang bantay upang sunduin ang rerelyebo sa kanila, mabilis na tumakbo ang dalawa papasok ng Sanctuario. Maliwanag sa loob ng malaking tolda dahil maraming gasera ang nakasindi. Dahil walang bintana ang Sanctuario, nakulob ang init at makapal ang hangin sa loob. Masangsang din sa loob dahil sa patong-patong na mga bangkay sa isang gilid; mga bangkay na pinigaan ng sariwang dugo. Nagkubli sina Wanda at Imo sa likod ng isang malaking banga. At nakita ng dalawa na naroroon nga ang nanay at tatay ni Imo at nakatalungko sa harap ng matanda. Pinagmasdang maigi nina Imo at Wanda ang kamay ng matanda: ang mga paggalaw ng mga ito na tila nagsasayaw sa ibabaw ng isang puting tela. At nakita nga nila na hawak ng matanda ang paniklot. Nagsasalita ang nanay ni Imo sa harap ng matanda at patuloy ang paggalaw ng mga kamay ng matanda. Sinipat ni Imo ang sarili niyang mga kamay; alam niyang aabutin ng maraming taon para matutunan niya rin ang paggalaw ng mga kamay ng matanda na may hawak pang paniklot. Kung ano ang pagkamangha nina Wanda at Imo sa mga kamay ng matanda ay ganoon din ang pagkamangha nila kung paano niya pagalawin ang paniklot sa ibabaw ng tela; napansin ng dalawa na ang dulo ng paniklot ay may kumpol ng mga buhok ng tao. Nakalatag ang puting tela sa harap ng nakatalungkong matanda at marahan niyang isinasawsaw ang dulo ng paniklot sa isang palanggana na puno ng dugo. Naroroon ang ina ni Imo na habang nagsasalita ay patuloy naman ang paggalaw ng kamay na hawak ang paniklot. Walang imik ang dalawa habang

158 Maikling Kuwento pinanonood ang ginagawa ng matanda. Paulit-ulit niyang ginagawa ang kanyang mahika at hindi naman nagsasawa sina Imo at Wanda sa kanilang nakikita sa tila nakahuhumaling na palabas. Unti-unti nang tumataas ang mga telang halos magkulay-pula na sa mga dugo habang unti-unti na ring lumalalim ang naipong dugo sa malaking palanggana. “Naku tiyak na matutuwa nito si Merdeka pagbalik niya!” May galak na bulalas ng ina ni Imo sa harap ng matanda. “Iyon ay kung makababalik pa siya nang buhay,” biro ng tatay. “Kung hindi naman siya makabalik tiyak na bayani iyang pamangkin mo. Ipapása natin ang lahat ng ito kay Imo para makilala ng kanyang mga anak si Merdeka. Malapit na rin matapos ang digmaan na ito.” “Halos limang taon na rin tayong ganito,” sagot ng nanay ni Imo. “Ang balita ay pumayag na ang Beijing government na hati-hatiin ang mga isla sa arkipelago at ibigay sa gobyerno ng Estados Unidos ang iba. Nararamdaman ko rin na malapit nang matapos ang digmaan na ito. Sana magkasundo na silang dalawa nang magkaroon na tayo ng normal na buhay, ng mapayapang buhay tulad noon.” Hindi tumutugon sa kuwentuhan ang matanda bagkus patuloy lang siya sa kanyang ginagawa. Ngumingiti siya paminsan-minsan ngunit mababakas pa rin sa kanyang mukha na dinidibdib niya ang kanyang ginagawa. Magpapahinga lamang ang matanda kung magkukuwento ang ina ni Imo o kaya’y marahan niyang hihimasin ang mahaba niyang balbas. Minsan naman ay minamasahe ng tatay ni Imo ang mga kamay ng matanda. Umaga na nang lisanin nina Imo at Wanda ang Sanctuario. Nang inilabas ang mga bangkay na pinigaan ng dugo ay sabay na ring lumabas ang mga magulang ni Imo. Tulog na at pagod ang matanda at relyebo na naman ng mga tagabantay. “Imo, uuwi muna ako sa amin; sumasakit ang ulo ko saka tiyan ko,” paalam ni Wanda. Bago pa man sila maghiwalay ay tinawag ni Imo ang kaibigan. Pinunasan niya ang ilalim ng ilong ng kaibigan dahil may tumakas na namang dugo. Pinahid niya ito ng kanyang kamay at napansin niyang buo-buo ang dugong tumatagas sa ilong ni Wanda.

Tigilan mo na ang pagsama-sama riyan kay Wanda,” paalala ng kanyang ina habang sinasalansan ang mga puting tela. Alam na ni Imo kung para sa ano talaga ang mga tela na ito na iniipon ng kanyang ina at dinadala sa Sanctuario. Nagtataka si Imo kung bakit pinagbabawalan na siya ng kanyang

Rogelio Braga 159 ina na makipaglaro kay Wanda. Hindi nagbigay ng anumang tugon si Imo at yumukod na lamang at diretsong lumakad palabas ng kanilang tolda. Nang malapit na siya sa pintuan ay nagpatuloy ang kanyang ina; nahalata marahil ng kanyang ina ang di pag-sang-ayon ni Imo sa bilin dahil sa kanyang pananahimik. “Huwag ka nang masyadong matigas ang ulo, Imo. Marami nang nakakita na umiinom ng tubig mula sa Pasig iyang si Wanda. Mahirap nang tamaan ng epidemya o mahawa … panahon pa man din ngayon ng digmaan.” Natigilan si Imo sa gulat ngunit hindi rin siya nagtapon ng lingon-likod sa ina. “Hay Imo! Ikaw may pamilya ka … iyang si Wanda wala! Sanay siyang mag-isa!” Hindi nga nagkamali ang kanyang ina. Isang tanghali habang nakasakay si Imo sa kanyang motorsiklo na minana niya mula kay Merdeka, natanaw niya si Wanda sa ilalim ng Jones Bridge. Naglalakad ang kaibigan niya at may hawak na timba. Nag-iisa na naman si Wanda. Bagaman palagi silang magkasama ni Wanda, napapansin din ni Imo na may mga oras na gusto ni Wanda ang mag-isa sa kanyang sarili, walang kalaro o kasama. Patungo si Wanda sa baybayin ng Pasig. Alam ni Wanda na hindi maaaring inumin ang tubig mula sa Pasig at pinaghihinalaan pa nga na sa tubig na ito nanggagaling ang epidemyang sumasalanta sa Kuta. Nagkubli si Imo sa gilid ng isang gibang gusali at inabangan ang susunod na hakbang ni Wanda. Hindi nagsalok ng tubig si Wanda bagkus namulot ito ng mga nagkalat na shrapnels sa baybayin, mga lata, at mga kagamitan na mailalagay niya sa kanyang timba. Nahiya siya sa kanyang sarili dahil sa paghihinala sa kaibigan at naisip niya ang kanyang ina, na sa palagay niya ay naglulubid lamang ng kuwento. Tangkang lalapitan na sana niya si Wanda nang makita niya itong dagling yumukod na tila hahalik sa itim na tubig ng Ilog. At sa pamamagitan ng kanyang kamay sumalok ng tubig si Wanda at diretso sa kanyang bibig. Humarurot ang motorsiklo ni Imo papalapit kay Wanda. Nagulat si Wanda sa biglang pagdating ng kaibigan. Binigyan ni Imo si Wanda ng malalakas na sampal. Umiyak nang umiyak si Wanda hanggang sa magdugo ang kanyang bibig dahil sa mga mararahas na sampal ni Imo. Binitiwan ni Wanda ang balde na dala niya at kumaripas ng takbo papalayo sa kaibigan. Ni hindi ito lumingon pabalik kay Imo. Lumipas ang ilang araw at palagi nang balisa si Imo at hindi na lumalabas ng kanilang tolda. Dumadalaw sa panaginip niya ang kamatayan ni Wanda. Tinatanong siya palagi ng kanyang ina kung ano ang kanyang nararamdaman o kung mayroon ba siyang ipinagdaramdam. Hindi tumutugon si Imo. Tulad ni Merdeka noon, naging bugnutin na rin siya at hindi palakibo.

160 Maikling Kuwento Isang gabi habang natutulog siya sa loob ng kanilang tolda at ang kanyang mga magulang ay nasa Sanctuario, naalimpungatan si Imo sa mga pagtawag ni Wanda mula sa labas. Impit na ang mga pagtawag ni Wanda at hindi tumutugon si Imo. Patuloy pa rin sa mga pagtawag ni Wanda sa kanyang pangalan at naririnig ni Imo ang pag-ubo ng kaibigan paminsan-minsan. Hindi mabuo ni Imo sa sarili ang kanyang nararamdaman: nais niyang makita si Wanda at makipagbati ngunit pumupunit sa kanyang pananabik ang pangitaing nalalapit na ang kamatayan ng kanyang kaibigan. Hindi niya alam kung ang kinatatakutan niya ba ay ang kamatayan o ang pagkawalay sa kaibigan pagkatapos ng pagpanaw. “Imo, gising ka na maglaro tayo! Imo, nandiyan ka ba?” Paulit-ulit na pagtawag ni Wanda kay Imo. Upang hindi magambala ni Wanda ang kanyang pananarili, tinakpan na lamang ni Imo ang kanyang mga tainga ng mga tela na iniipon ng kanyang ina. Ginawa niya ang pagtakip sa kanyang mga tainga hanggang sa dalawin siya ng antok at tuluyang makatulog. Habang unti- unting namamatay ang putukan sa labanan na nagaganap sa malayo, sa labas ng kanilang distrito marahil, sa labanan ng dalawang makapangyarihang puwersa, unti-unti na ring numinipis ang boses ni Wanda sa mga pagtawag niya sa kaibigan. Inisip na lamang in Imo na kaya naman ni Wanda ang mag-isa. Di tulad niya na natatakot maiwanan, mawalan ng kaibigan. Makasarili talaga si Wanda, naisip niya, at tuluyan na siyang nakatulog. Kinaumagahan nakita ang bangkay ni Wanda sa gilid ng isang tolda na malapit kina Imo. Nang magising sina Imo at ang kanyang mga magulang sa aringasa ng mga taong nakakita sa bangkay ni Wanda ay dali-daling tumayo ang kanyang ina na para bang handa nang makipag-agawan sa bangkay ng batang babae. Nakabuntot sa kanyang ina ang ama ni Imo na may dala nang palanggana. Hindi naman makapaniwala si Imo sa kamatayan ni Wanda, kagabi lang ay tinatawag-tawag pa siya nito at niyayang maglaro. Naupo si Imo sa isang sulok at tiniklop ang mga binti at ipinatong ang ulo sa mga tuhod. Pinilit niyang pigilin ang kanyang pag-iyak at inisip na lamang ang masasayang araw nila ni Wanda. Isang oras ang nagdaan at bumalik na ang kanyang mga magulang sa kanilang tolda at tulad ng inaasahan, hindi na naman mapakali ang kanyang ina sa paghahanap ng telang puti o iyong kukupas na ang kulay. Sinarili na lamang niya ang kanyang tanong kung nasaan na ang bangkay ng kanyang kaibigan dahil sa loob niya’y alam naman niya ang tumpak na kasagutan.

Rogelio Braga 161 Tiyak na dinala ang bangkay ni Wanda sa Sanctuario, sa matandang may kakaibang mahika ang mga kamay. Pipigain ang katawan ni Wanda upang kunan ng sariwang dugo at pagkatapos itatapon ang kanyang bangkay sa Pasig at lulutang ang kanyang katawan kasama ng ibang mga bangkay, ng mga sirang bagay tulad ng mga kotse, bisikleta, patay na mga hayop na lumulutang sa ilog. Kinagabihan ng araw na rin iyon, mag-isang nagtungo si Imo sa Sanctuario. Alam niyang nasa loob pa rin ng malaking tolda ang bangkay ni Wanda dahil wala pa siyang nakikita sa buong maghapon na itinapon na mga bangkay sa Pasig na mula sa Sanctuario. Upang makapasok sa malaking tolda ginawa niyang muli ang pagkukubli sa gilid ng maliit na tolda sa tabi ng Sanctuario at hintayin ang relyebo ng mga bantay sa lagusan papaloob sa malaking tolda. Nang makapasok si Imo sa loob ay nagkataong walang ibang naroroon kundi ang matandang may kakaibang mahika ang mga kamay. Naroroon din ang bangkay ni Wanda, mag-isa, ngunit hindi na ito makilala dahil nangulubot na ang balat at halos naghalo na ang bughaw at itim na mga kulay sa katawan ng bangkay dahil pinigaan na ng dugo. Nakapatong si Wanda sa isang tabla na ang ayos ay bubuhatin na, ilalabas sa malaking tolda para itapon sa ilog. Nagkubli si Imo sa pumpon ng tela. At nasaksihan niyang muli ang kakaibang mahika ng matanda: ang pagkumpas ng kanyang mga kamay na may hawak na paniklot na may buhok sa isang dulo na isinasawsaw sa dugo at ilalapat sa tela pagkatapos—katulad ng ginagawa ni Merdeka noon nang makita nila ni Wanda ang pinsan sa gilid pampang. Sa lahat ng mga bata sa loob ng Kuta, sina Wanda at Imo lamang ang nakasaksi sa kakaibang gawain na ito sa loob ng Sanctuario. Ang pagkupkop ng taong wala sa database ng central government at ang ginagawa ng matanda ay mahigpit na ipinagbabawal ng pamahalaan. Alam ito ni Imo dahil bago ang digmaan, ipinaliliwanag sa kanila sa paaralan ang mga alituntunin ng central government. Lahat ng gawain sa arkipelago na hindi namomonitor ng Beijing government ay itinuturing na ilegal at gawain ng mga kaalyado ng mga rebelde—isa itong pagtatraydor sa gobyerno. Napansin ng matanda ang anino ni Imo at ibinaba nito ang hawak niyang paniklot. “Lumabas ka riyan kung sino ka man,” marahan niyang hamon.

162 Maikling Kuwento Kinabahan si Imo dahil alam niyang sa kanya ipinararating ang mga salita dahil silang dalawa lamang ang buháy na nasa loob ng Sanctuario. Inulit muli ng matanda ang kanyang hamon at napilitan nang tumayo at magpakita si Imo sa kanya. Nanginginig ang kanyang mga tuhod na lumapit sa matanda. Napansin niya kaagad ang makapal nitong balbas at ang maninipis na mga labi. Iniiwasan ni Imo ang mga mata ng matanda na wala namang galit ngunit nanunukat. Kumumpas ito at inutusang maupo si Imo sa kanyang harapan. “Bakit ka nandito sa Sanctuario bata ka?” “Kaibigan ko po si Wanda,” nakayukod na tugon ni Imo. “Ikaw si Imo…. Ikaw pala si Imo! Marami kayong taga-Kuta ang kilala ko … kilalang-kilala ko pero hindi ko alam ang inyong mga itsura.” Itinaas ni Imo ang kanyang mukha sa pagtataka. “Para sa iyo si Wanda,” ang nakangiting sambit ng matanda. “Para sa akin?” “Oo. Dahil wala naman siyang kamag-anak at ikaw ang malapit niyang kakilala—para siya sa iyo.” Nabasa ng matanda sa mukha ni Imo ang pagtataka at tila hindi nito naiintindihan ang kanyang ipinaliliwanag. “Ay! Kung alam mo lang halos makipag-away ang nanay mo para sa bangkay ni Wanda!” Pinalapit ng matanda si Imo at marahang kinuha ang paniklot. Isinawsaw ang isang dulo nito sa dugo, dugo na mula sa katawan ni Wanda. Gumuhit ang matanda ng mga tuwid na linya sa mukha ng tela. Sari-saring mga guhit, may pahalang, may patayo, pabilog, at may magkakadikit. Pinagmasdang maigi ni Imo ang kamay ng matanda at kung paano niya isinasagawa ang ritwal. Pagkamangha ang bumalot sa kanya nang makita niya ang kanyang pangalan sa mukha ng tela. “Pangalan ko iyan! Pangalan ko iyan!” bulalas ni Imo. “Oo, Imo, pangalan mo iyan na nasa sarili nating wika. Siguro sa buong buhay mo ngayon mo lang nakita ang pangalan mong hindi nakatipa sa monitor ng kompyuter at hindi nakasulat sa ibang mga titik—ang mga titik at teknoloniya ng mga sumakop sa atin.” “Isa kang rebelde?” Naglakas ng loob si Imo na itanong sa matanda ang kanyang pagkatao dahil alam niyang labag sa batas ang ginagawa ng matanda

Rogelio Braga 163 na isulat ang pangalan sa isang lumang wika at sa mga titik na malimit gamitin lamang ng mga rebelde. “Ang trabaho ko, Imo, ay para sa kasaysayan ng bawat tao, ng bawat mahalagang pangyayari sa buhay ng isang tao. Gamit ang aking mga kamay ay nailalagay ko ang bawat pangyayari at mahahalagang karanasan ng mga tao sa tela upang kapag dumating ang susunod na henerasyon ay may nalalaman sila sa mga taong nabuhay bago sila dumating dito sa daigdig. Kilala nila ang kanilang pinagmulan.” “Ilang taon ka na.” “Matanda na ako. Naririto pa ang imperyo ng Estados Unidos sa arkipelago buhay na ako.” Nanlaki ang mga mata ni Imo. “Naabutan mo ang panahon na iyon? Ang ‘Panahon ng Isang Siglong Pananakop’?” Natawa ang matanda. Malakas at sunod-sunod na pagtawa. “Iyan ang sinabi ng Beijing government—na ang sumakop ay ang imperyo ng Estados Unidos … iyan ang bersiyon nila ng ating kasaysayan … Marami ka pa ngang hindi alam.” “Pero totoo na sinakop nila ang arkipelago sa mahabang panahon. Dumating dito ang Beijing government para iligtas tayo sa kanila. Ngayon gusto nila tayo uling sakupin kaya may digmaan.” “Kailangan mong balikan ang iyong nakaraan, Imo. Ang kasaysayan ng arkipelago. Noong panahon ng imperyo ng Estados Unidos, malaya tayo. May kalayaan tayo na magsalita, magpahayag ng ating saloobin. Itong ginagawa ko, malaya ko itong magagawa noong panahon noon na nasa ilalim tayo ng imperyo ng Estados Unidos.” “Hindi totoo ’yan. Ang Beijing government ang nagtatanggol sa atin. Iyan ang kasaysayan.” “Mayroon talagang totoong kasaysayan, Imo. Pero sa ilalim ng Beijing government mayroong ‘opisyal na kasaysayan’. Ang imperyo ng Estados Unidos ang magpapalaya sa atin. Kailangan mo lang na buksan ang iyong mga mata sa katotohanan. Kaya mo bang gawin ang ginagawa ko?” Natahimik si Imo. Naguluhan siya na tila may dalawang uri ng kasaysayan na ipinaliliwanag ang matanda sa kanya. “Ito ang isang pamana sa atin ng imperyo ng Estados Unidos noon: ang kalayaan na itakda ang sarili nating kasaysayan, ang ating kinabukasan.”

164 Maikling Kuwento Naalala ni Imo ang mga eskuwelahan sa arkipelago na ikinukuwento ng mga magulang niya. Sa eskuwelahan gumagamit sila ng kompyuter at keypad, lahat ng mensahe at liham dapat idadaan sa email. Lahat kailangan ay nasa kompyuter at nasa Internet dahil kailangan itong mabasa at ma-rebyu ng central government. Simula nang dumating daw ang Beijing government sa arkipelago ipinagbawal na nila ang lahat ng komunikasyon na hindi dumaraan sa kompyuter. “Ang pamana na iyan … ipinagbabawal ’yan ng central government.” “Oo basta huwag ka lang pahuhuli,” ngumisi ang matanda. “Tingnan mo sa ganito Imo: namatay si Wanda ngunit hindi ang kanyang alaala. Darating ang panahon na ipanganganak ang susunod na henerasyon at malalaman nila na minsan ay nabuhay si Wanda—ang hindi ‘opisyal na Wanda’ ng Beijing government. Hindi nila kalilimutan, lalo na ng iyong mga apo, na naging magkaibigan kayo ni Wanda.” Kinuha muli ng matanda ang paniklot at aktong babalik na sa kanyang tinatrabaho, ito rin ang paraan niya para sa sabihin kay Imo na kailangan na niyang lumisan dahil mahaba na ang oras na kanyang nakuha sa pang-iistorbo sa matanda. “Hindi ito nabubura, Imo. Hindi rin ito maaaring maging pag-aari ng central government. Hindi.”

Lumipas ang ilang araw ay hindi pa rin maiwaglit sa isip ni Imo ang pakikipag- usap niya sa matanda. Wala na siyang kaibigan ngayon ngunit palaging nasa isip niya ang pangako ng mahika ng matanda: na kaya nitong higitan kahit na ang kamatayan. Naupo si Imo sa isang bato sa gilid ng Ilog Pasig. Pinagmasdan niya ang mga bangkay na lumulutang, at naririnig niya ang maninipis na putukan at pagsabog sa malayo. May labanang nagaganap marahil sa labas ng kanilang distrito. Maya-maya pa’y tuluyan nang nanahimik ang putukan, ang mga pagsabog. Nanibago ang kanyang pandinig dahil araw at gabi niyang naririnig ang mga putukan halos dalawang buwan na. Naglabasan ang mga tao mula loob ng kani-kanilang mga tolda dahil maging sila ay nagulat sa biglang pagkawala ng putukan at ng mga pagsabog, sa pagdating ng katahimikan. May gumuhit na isang sasakyang panghimpapawid sa langit; una ay isa at sinundan pa ng isa hanggang sa dagsang libo na halos tumakip sa langit. Halos magkulay dugo ang langit dahil pula ang kulay ng mga sasakyang pandigma ng Beijing government. Nagbunyi ang mga taga-Kuta dahil hudyat ito na nagwagi sa digmaan ang Beijing government; nagwagi sa pagtatanggol sa arkipelago—darating na muli sa kanila ang kapayapaan. Ang tanging hangad lamang ng mga taga-

Rogelio Braga 165 Kuta ay ang kapayaan at bumalik sa normal ang kanilang mga buhay. Halos magsisayaw sa galak ang mga tao. Nanatili si Imo sa kanyang kinauupuan, at naisip niya, tulad ng maiisip ni Wanda kung siya’y nabubuhay lamang: may bangkay na namang iaahon mula sa ilog para sa mahalagang pangyayaring ito. Marami-raming bangkay ang kakailanganin sa pagwawaging ito. Iniunat ni Imo ang kanyang mga binti at tumungo malapit sa ilog. Lumuhod siya sa pampang at sa pamamagitan ng kanyang mga kamay, sumalok siya ng tubig. Tinitigan niya muna ang tubig sa kanyang palad na parang kinikilala, kinakausap sa kanyang mga mata at pagkatapos—mabilis niya itong ininom. Nararamdaman niyang gumuguhit ang tubig sa kanyang lalamunan. Tinitigan niya ang kanyang mga kamay, alam niyang hindi niya magagawa ang mahika ng matanda—at hindi-hindi niya ito gagawin kailan man. Hindi dahil sa pagsunod sa batas ng Beijing government kundi dahil nais niyang lumaya sa isang uri ng kalungkutan na naramdaman noon ni Merdeka ngunit hindi niya nauwaan at pinipilit niyang maunawaan; na wala sa kalayaan ang kaligayahan kundi nasa paglaban, sa pagsangga—ang kalayaan ay sa kung saanman naroroon ngayon si Wanda, sa pag-iisa. Naluha si Imo sa kanyang natuklasan sa sarili. May gumuhit na ngiti sa kanyang mukha. Ngiting dala- dala niya hanggang sa bumalik siya sa Kuta at makihalubilo sa nagdiriwang na balana.

166 Maikling Kuwento Ahas PERRY C. MANGILAYA

anganak ng ahas ang asawa mo, Rodel. Ito ang balitang nakarating kay NRodel na sa una, naisip niyang nagbibiro lamang ang kanyang biyenang babae. Kalokohan, naisip pa niya. Ano ba ang nangyari sa kanyang biyenan at naisipan nitong magbiro, gayong hindi naman ito palabiro. Pero sa tono ng boses nito nang tumawag sa kanya, halatang hindi ito nagbibiro. Dahil sa balitang iyon, napauwi siya nang wala sa oras sa kanilang lalawigan sa Visayas, sa isang maunlad na bayan, at sa isang barangay na hindi pahuhuli sa pag-iral ng makabagong teknolohiya. Hindi na niya sinabi sa kanyang engineer, maging sa kanyang foreman at kapuwa kasamahan sa konstruksiyon ang tunay na dahilan nang biglaan niyang pag-uwi. Basta ang sabi lang niya, emergency. At kailangang-kailangan niyang umuwi. Pero ang ipinagtataka ni Rodel, kung nanganak ng ahas ang kanyang asawa, kung talagang nangyayari iyon, malamang nabuntis ito. At paanong nabuntis ang kanyang asawa gayong mahigit sampung buwan na siyang nakadestino sa Maynila bilang construction worker. At iyon nga, matatapos na nila ang kanilang proyekto. Plano niyang bago magsimula sa bago nilang proyekto, uuwi muna siya. Susulitin niya ang matagal na buwang wala sa piling ng kanyang asawa. Tutal naman, dahil sa madalas niyang pag-o- overtime, kahit paano, may naitabi naman siya. Bukod sa pagpapadala niya kada buwan sa kanyang asawa. Pero heto at napaaga ang kanyang pag-uwi. Ayon pa sa kanyang biyenan. Sa pag-uwi na lang niya ikukuwento ang buong detalye kung bakit nanganak ng ahas kanyang asawa. At maging siya man daw, maaaring hindi maniniwala sa sinapit nito. Pero ang albularyo, na nagpalabas ng ahas mula sa sinapupunan ng kanyang asawa, ang makapagpapatunay sa pangyayari. Bilang ebidensiya, nakunan pa ng litrato ng kanyang biyenan ang ahas na ipinanganak ng kanyang asawa. Kulay itim daw na ahas, gabraso ng bata ang laki pero patay na nang lumabas.

167 Pero bakit albularyo ang nagpaanak sa kanyang asawa? Ang isa pang katanungang gumugulo sa isipan ni Rodel. Bakit hindi ang nag-iisang kumadrona sa kanilang baryo? Mabilis na kumalat sa kanilang nayon ang pangyayaring iyon. Bagay na hindi naman ipinagtataka ni Rodel. Ganoon naman sa kanilang nayon, kapag may nangyari, kay bilis kumalat ang balita. Pasa-pasa hanggang pati sa kabilang baryo, nakakarating. Dagdag pa ang mabilis na pagkalat dahil sa social media. May hindi raw naniniwala, mayroong namang naniniwala. Sari- saring opinyon. Iba’t ibang haka-haka. Kani-kaniyang espekulasyon. Pero kay Rodel, tanging ang asawa lamang niya ang kanyang paniniwalaan. Ito lang ang makapagsasabi ng tunay na nangyari. Dahil asawa niya ito, imposibleng magsisinungaling ito sa kanya. Pababa pa lang si Rodel sa traysikel, sakbat ang napsak ay pinagtitinginan siya ng mga taong tumatambay sa kalsada. Nahiwagaan siya sa mga kilos at tingin ng mga ito. May ngumingiti. May hilaw na bumabati. Wala lang, basta lang makabati. Pero sa kanyang pagtalikod, tila bumubuntot pa sa kanyang pandinig ang hindi mawawaang bulungan ng mga iyon. Awa ang nadama ni Rodel sa kanyang asawa nang datnan niya itong matamlay, nakaupo sa mahabang bangkong kawayan sa tabi ng nakabukas na bintana. Sinulyapan lang siya nito. Walang mainit na pabati o pagsalubong, ni halik, wala. Bagay na ipinagtaka niya. Kadalasan kasi, masigla itong sumasalubong sa kanya kapag alam nitong pauwi na siya. Sa kalsada pa lang, inaabangan na ang kanyang pagdating. Pero sa kabilang banda, naunawaan niya ang kanyang asawa. Marahil, hindi pa ito nakakabawi sa pangyayari. At kung paano ang isang tao, manganganak ng isang ahas. “’Musta na ang pakiramdam mo?” bati niya. Saka lamang tumingin ito nang tuwid sa kanya. “Okey naman na.” Halata ang panghihina sa tinig ng kanyang asawa. Marahil, hindi pa rin ito nakabawi sa trauma na inabot kaya matamlay ito. Kung tutuusin, nananabik na nga rin siya sa kanyang pag-uwi. Para sa kanya, ang mahigit sampung buwan pagkawalay niya sa kanyang asawa ay katumbas ng maraming taon. Kung ang kanyang asawa ang masusunod, ayaw nitong magtrabaho siya sa malayo. Gustong-gusto na kasi nitong makabuo na sila ng anak. Siguro, dahil ito na lamang ang walang anak sa apat na magkakapatid. Ang tatlong nakakatandang kapatid ng kanyang asawa, may tigtatatlong anak na. Dagdag pa siguro ang pag-aalala ng kanyang asawa dahil

168 Maikling Kuwento sa loob ng limang taon nilang pagsasama, hindi pa kasi sila nabibiyaan ng anak. At sabi nga ng kanyang asawa, tumatanda na sila. “Kung dito ka na lang kaya maghanap ng trabaho,” naalala pa niyang pakiusap ng kanyang asawa. “Ang hirap naman kasing nag-iisa rito.” “And’yan naman si Inay, a.” Ang mga biyenan niya ang kanyang tinutukoy. Dahil ang biyenan niyang lalaki, malaon nang namatay. “Kasama mo naman s’ya.” Hindi kumibo ang kanyang asawa. “Sayang naman kasi ang pagkakataon,” patuloy niya. “Malaking proyekto ang nakuha ni engineer, tuloy-tuloy ang trabaho, makakaipon tayo at makapagpatayo ng sarili nating bahay. Hindi ’tong nakikitira lang tayo sa nanay mo. Kung dito lang, paputol-putol ng trabaho. Mas madalas pang wala.” Tahimik pa rin ang kanyang asawa. “Para pag magkaanak na tayo, me sarili na tayong bahay.” “Pa’no nga tayo magkakaanak kung nasa malayo ka lagi?” “Sayang kasi ang pagkakataon,” giit niya. “Makakabuo pa tayo n’yan. ’Yong iba nga, nasa forty na, nagkakaanak pa. At saka ayaw mo no’n, makakaipon pa tayo.” Muli, hindi kumibo ang kanyang asawa. Hanggang sa araw ng kanyang pag-alis, dama niyang masama ang loob nito. Ang isang bagay pa na bago kay Rodel sa kanyang pag-uwi, ang kanyang mga kapitbahay. Nahihiwagaan siya sa pakikitungo ng mga ito sa kanya. Kung dati, masayang binabati siya ng mga ito. Ngayon, nahalata niyang kaiba ang ikinikilos ng mga ito. Maging ang kumpare niyang si Tony, nang madaanan niya ito sa bakuran ng bahay nito, bagama’t lumapit at binati naman siya, nahalata niyang parang naging iba ang pagbati nito. Simpleng kumustahan lang, kaunting kuwentuhan, wala ang init tulad ng dati tuwing umuuwi siya. Siguro nga, dahil sa panganganak ng ahas ng kanyang asawa. Tulad niya, napapaisip din marahil ang mga ito kung paanong nabuhay sa sinapupunan ng kanyang asawa ang isang ahas. At kung paano ito nabuo roon. Kung paano niya ito natanggap. Kung sadyang kay hirap paniwalaan na nanganak ng ahas

Perry C. Mangilaya 169 ang kanyang asawa, may mahirap ding paniwalaan na sinipingan ng ahas ang kanyang asawa. Nasagot ang mga katanungang iyon ayon na rin sa kuwento ng kanyang asawa. “Naengkanto ka?” kandidilat siya. “Ano raw ang nakita ni Lolo Onyong?” Ang nag-iisang matanda at kilalang albularyo ang tinutukoy niya, na kamag- anak din ng kanyang asawa. Kilala ito, hindi lamang sa kanilang baryo, kundi maging sa buong bayan nila dahil sa husay manggamot. Sabi nga, takbuhan kapag hindi kayang gamutin ng doktor ang isang maysakit. “Ang ahas na napatay ko raw ay alaga ng isang engkanto.” “Ano ba ang nangyari?” “Nagwawalis kasi ako ng mga sukal do’n sa may lilim ng puno ng sampalok d’yan sa likuran natin, nang biglang may nalaglag na ahas, kulay itim.” “Anong ginawa mo?” “Hinampas ko nang hinampas ng kahoy hanggang sa mamatay.” “Tapos.” “Kinagabihan, namilipit ako sa sakit ng t’yan. Kaya pinatawag ko si Lolo Onyong ke Inay. Ayon, naengkanto nga raw ako.” “Tumigil naman ang sakit ng t’yan mo?” “Oo,” tango ng kanyang asawa. “Pero habang lumilipas ang mga linggo hanggang sa inabot ng buwan napansin kong me pagbabago sa ’kin. Hinala ko, buntis ako. Kasi hindi na rin ako dinatnan.” “Hindi ka nagpatingin sa doktor?” “Nagpatingin,” napasulyap pa ito sa kanya. “Inultrasound nga ako. At buntis nga daw ako. Kasi sa result ng ultrasound, me pintig.” Matagal niyang tinitigan ang kanyang asawa. Pa’no ka mabuntis, e sa Maynila ako, ibig niyang isumbat sa asawa, pero mas pinili niyang magpakahinahon. Naisip niya, hindi tamang sumbatan niya ang kanyang asawa, o ang akusahan lalo na sa ganitong sitwasyon. Pang- unawa ang higit na kailangan nito mula sa kanya at hindi kung anupaman. “S’yempre hindi ako naniwala,” putol ng kanyang asawa sa pananahimik niya. “Pati si Nanay, nagtataka rin kung pa’nong nangyari ’yon. Kaya sabi n’ya, magpatawas daw uli ako kay Lolo Onyong.”

170 Maikling Kuwento Kinikilabutan si Rodel habang pinakikinggan ang kuwento ng kanyang asawa. Na ayon nga kay Lolo Onyong, totoong buntis nga ang kanyang asawa. Pero hindi tao ang ipinagbubuntis nito, kundi ahas. At ang nakikita ng doktor sa ultrasound, pintig daw iyon ng isang ahas. Malinaw na pati ang doktor, nalinlang ng engkanto. Ganoon daw katindi ang kapangyarihang taglay ng engkanto. Kaya sa oras ding iyon, gumawa ng hakbang ang albularyo para mailabas agad ang ahas sa sinapupunan ng kanyang asawa. Hindi raw dapat hayaang lumaki pa ang ahas sa loob ng sinapupunan, dahil mauuwi raw ito sa kamatayan ng kanyang asawa. Iyon daw ang sumpa ng engkanto. Bilang kapalit sa namatay o pinatay na alagang ahas ng engkanto. Lalabas na buhay ang ahas, pero kapalit ng kamatayan ng kanyang asawa. Sa mahiwaga at makapangyarihang orasyon ng albularyo, na tanging ito lamang ang nakakaalam, at kasabay ng ritwal ng paghampas-hampas ng mga dahon-dahon, pagsusuob o pagpapausok mula sa baga na nilagyan ng kamanyang sa buong katawan ni Adela, napalayas daw ng albularyo ang engkantong lumulukob sa pagkatao sa kanyang asawa at matagumpay na nailabas ang ahas sa sinapupunan nito. Kusa na lang daw itong lumabas. At mapalad pa raw, patay ang ahas nang lumabas. Maging si Lolo Onyong, kinikilabutan sa pangyayari. Kahit hindi na rin naman ito bago rito. Hindi rin makapaniwala ang kanyang biyenan na naging saksi sa pangyayari. Pero nariyan daw ang ebidensiya, kitang-kita raw ng mga ito ang paglabas ng ahas. Saka siya naliwanagan kung bakit hindi ang kumadrona ang nagpaanak sa kanyang asawa, at kung bakit ganoon kaaga ito nanganak. Agad din daw inilibing ang ahas na iyon sa may lilim ng punong sampalok. Sa pag-asang hindi na gagantihan ng engkanto ang kanyang asawa. Kasabay pa ng mga mahiwagang orasyon at ritwal, hindi na nga ginambala ng engkanto ang kanyang asawa. Pero si Lolo Onyong ang binalingan ng engkanto. Halos inaapoy ng lagnat at nagdidiliryo si Lolo Onyong nang sumunod na gabi. Kung hindi nga lang daw magaling sa orasyon si Lolo Onyong laban sa mga engkanto, baka ito raw ang namatay. Malaki raw ang naging galit ng engkanto kay Lolo Onyong dahil sa pangingialam nito sa ipinagbubuntis ng kanyang asawa. “Nasa’n ba ang litrato?” ungkat niya. Dinukot ng kanyang asawa ang selpon nito sa bulsa ng suot na duster.

Perry C. Mangilaya 171 Nagulumihanan si Rodel habang pinagmamasdan ang itsura ng ahas. Kulay itim nga ito. Duguan pa ang ahas na nasa mismong paanan pa ng kanyang nakahigang nakabukakang asawa. Kalalabas pa lang daw iyon. Na ayon pa sa albularyo, sa sinapupunan pa lang daw ay namatay na ang ahas dahil sa bisa ng orasyon at ritwal na ginawa nito. “Hindi kaya masamang pangitain ’to?” puno ng pag-aalalang baling niya sa asawa. “Hindi kaya daranas ng kamalasan ang ating pamilya, o ang ating baryo o bayan? Naririnig ko kasi no’n sa mga matatanda kapag ganitong me kakaibang nangyayari.” “Sabi-sabi lang naman ’yon,” kibit-balikat ng kanyang asawa. Hindi siya kumibo. Muling sinipat ang itsura ng ahas. “Ahas ba talaga ’to?” baling niya uli sa asawa. “Oo,” kaswal na sabi nito. “Mukhang palos ang itsura, a.” “Gano’n nga din ang sabi ng mga nakakita. Pero sabi ni Lolo Onyong, ganyan daw kasi ang mga alagang ahas ng mga engkanto. At mabagsik na uri ng ahas daw ’yan, makamandag.” Napatango-tango siya habang nakatingin sa litrato. “’Yong sinabi mong ultrasound, nasa’n?” naitanong niya. “Naitapon ko.” “Bakit?” “Ano pang silbi no’n.” “Kakausapin ko na lang ang doktor na nag-ultrasound sa ’yo.” “H’wag na.” Nagulat pa siya sa biglang pagtaas ng boses ng kanyang asawa. “Me problema ba?” “E, kasi nga mali naman ang ultrasound n’ya.” Napansin siguro ang kanyang pagkagulat, naging mahinahon kaagad ang kanyang asawa. “Ayan, kitang-kita ang ebidens’ya. Na totoong naengkanto ako.” Muli niyang sinipat ang litrato sa selpon. Hawak-hawak na niya ang ebidensiya na nagpapatunay na naengkanto ang kanyang asawa. Isang bagay na nagpatibay sa kanyang paniniwalang totoong may engkanto. Dahil ang totoo’y matagal na siyang naniniwala sa engkanto. Kahit siya man, nakaranas

172 Maikling Kuwento na maengkanto. Naroong paglalaruan siya, lalo na sa gabi kapag umuuwi siya. Na kahit anong lakad niya, hindi niya mararating ang kanilang bahay. Paikot- ikot lamang siya, ni hindi lumalayo. Kung ano ang kanyang pinanggalingan, iyon din ang kanyang napupuntahan. Salamat sa payo ng albularyong si Lolo Onyong, na sinumang makakaranas ng ganoon, kakain lang daw ng kaunting putik at babaliktarin ang suot na damit, makakauwi ka na. Hindi lamang iyon ang kanyang naranasan, minsang natutulog siya sa bahay isang gabi, nagising na lamang siya kinaumagahan na natutulog sa lilim ng malaking puno ng sampalok sa kanilang likod-bahay. Na ayon sa albularyo, napaglaruan daw siya ng mga engkanto. Maaaring sa kahimbingan ng kanyang tulog, binuksan daw ng engkanto ang bintana at binuhat siya at inilagay sa may puno ng sampalok. Ganoon daw kasi ang mga engkanto kapag kinatuwaan ang isang tao. Pinaglalaruan, pero wala namang balak saktan. Pero noon iyon, naisaloob niya. Noong hindi pa umiiral ang makabagong teknolohiya. Pero sa panahon ngayon ng social media, nangyayari pa ba ang ganoon? Siguro nga, naisip niya. Dahil ang kanyang asawa at ang magaling na albularyo na ang nagpapatunay, dagdag pa ang kanyang biyenan. Kinahapunan, nagpasiya si Rodel na bumisita kay Lolo Onyong. Marami siyang gustong maliwanagan at masagot na mga tanong. Dahil albularyo ito, naniniwala siyang higit na makapagbigay ito ng linaw sa kanya sa nangyari sa kanyang asawa. “Sandali lang,” hinawakan pa siya sa kamay ng asawa nang akma siyang bababa ng hagdanan. “Bakit?” baling niya. “Baka me marinig ka kung ano-anong tsismis sa mga kapitbahay natin, h’wag kang maniniwala sa mga ’yon.” Napatingin siya sa kanyang asawa, matagal. “Tsismis?” Napakunot noo siya. “Anong tsismis?” “Basta.” Pumiksi pa ang kanyang asawa. “Ang paniwalaan natin ay si Lolo Onyong. S’ya ang albularyo, s’ya ang higit na nakakaalam sa mga kababalaghang nangyayari.” Tumango-tango siya. Pero habang naglalakad, hindi mapaknit sa kanyang isipan ang sinabi ng kanyang asawa. At anong tsismis? naitanong niya. Kung tutuusin, hindi na kailangang sabihin iyon ng kanyang asawa. Dahil siya ang

Perry C. Mangilaya 173 taong hindi naniniwala sa mga tsismis. Walang katotohahan ang tsismis, kaya nga tsismis. Pawang mga paninira lamang ang lahat ng mga tsismis. Sabi nga, ang taong naniniwala sa tsismis ay walang tiwala sa sarili. At malaki ang tiwala niya sa kanyang sarili. Pero bakit ganoon na lamang ang pagpapaalaala sa kanya ng asawa? Habang naglalakad siya, naroon uli ang ilan nilang kapitbahay habang nakatingin sa kanya. May kung ano siyang nababakas sa mga bukas ng mukha at titig ng mga ito. Pero bakit nga ba niya bibigyan iyon ng ibang kahulugan. Natural lamang na ganoon ang reaksiyon ng mga ito dahil siya ang asawa ng babaeng nanganak ng ahas. Marahil, marami rin sigurong katanungan ang mga ito. Kung ano ba ang nararamdaman niya sa mga oras na iyon. Kung paano niya natanggap ang pangyayari. Sa simpleng bahay-kubo, mag-isang naratnan ni Rodel si Lolo Onyong. Napatayo pa ito nang dumating siya. Na tila inaasahan ang kanyang pagdating. Sabay silang umupo pagkatapos niyang magmano. “Naik’wento na sa ’kin ang lahat ni Adela, ’Lo,” simula niya. “Pero parang hindi pa rin ako makapaniwala.” “Hindi ka naniniwala sa asawa mo?” “Naniniwala. Ang ibig kong sabihin, sa mga nangyayari.” “Sa totoo lang, hindi na bago ’yon. Marami na akong nagamot na naengkanto. Marami na akong natawas na nabuntis ng engkanto. Naalala mo ba ang nangyari no’n kay Minda, ’yong me anak na lalaking anak-araw kung tawagin?” “Oo,” tango niya. “Isipin mo, pa’nong nabuntis ’yon, e wala namang asawa ’yon. Ni manliligaw nga, wala. At tingnan mo ang anak, kakaiba. Kakaiba ang kaputian, na kapag pinisil mo, namumula. At higit sa lahat, nasisilaw kapag araw. Gano’n ang mga engkanto.” Nananatiling nakapako ang kanyang tingin kay Lolo Onyong. “At hindi nga ako nagkamali sa pagtawas ko sa kanya no’n,” patuloy ni Lolo Onyong. “Na sa pagsapit ng ikadalawampu’t isang taon ng kanyang anak, mamamatay ’yon. Kukunin na ng amang engkanto.” Tumango-tango siya. “At akala mo ba, totoong anak nga ni Minda ang nakahimlay sa kabaong no’n? Hindi. Tiniba na puno ng saging lamang ’yon. Dahil sa kapangyarihan

174 Maikling Kuwento ng engkanto, nagawa nilang linlangin ang paningin ng mga tao. Pero ang totoo, nakuha na ng amang engkanto ang anak ni Minda. Nando’n na sa kaharian ng mga engkanto. Buhay na buhay.” Naalala ni Rodel, kumalat din iyon sa kanilang baryo noon, na umabot pa sa buong bayan. Naging laman ng mga huntahan ng mga nag-uumpukan. Katulad marahil sa nangyari sa kanyang asawa ngayon. Na marahil, sa bawat sulok ng umpukan, sentro ng usapan ang kanyang asawa. Nakumpirma niya, at kumbinsido siyang naengkanto nga ang kanyang asawa. Batay sa mga naging karanasan niya, at maging sa kuwento ni Lolo Onyong. Nag-aagaw na ang dilim at liwanag nang umuwi siya. Sapagkat madadaanan ang bahay ng kumpare niyang si Tony bago ang kanilang bahay, nadaanan niya itong tila siya ang inaabangan. “Nakita kasi kita kanina,” bati nito. “’Kako, pagdaan mo na lang kita kakausapin.” “Tungkol ba sa panganganak ng asawa ko?” Tumango ang kanyang kumpare. “Galing nga ako ke Lolo Onyong,” sabi niya. “Naengkanto nga raw si Adela, kaya nanganak ng ahas.” “Naniniwala ka talagang nanganak nga ng ahas ang ’yong asawa?” “Oo,” walang alinlangang sagot niya. “Nariyan ang ebidens’ya at saksi.” “Naniniwala kang naengkanto nga si Adela kaya nabuntis at nanganak ng ahas?” “Ano ka ba, si Lolo Onyong na ang nagpatunay. Albularyo ’yon. At talaga namang nangyayari ’yon na may mga naeengkanto. Kahit ako nga, naranasan ko.” “Sa tingin mo ba mabubuhay ang ahas sa loob ng sinapupunan?” “Naengkanto nga, e. Alam mo naman ang kapangyarihan ng mga engkanto, nagagawa nilang posible ang mga imposible.” “Nakausap mo na ba ang doktor na nag-ultrasound ke Adela?” “Hindi,” iling niya. “Bakit pa, e malinaw naman sa akin ang lahat.” “Payong kumpare lang, bakit hindi mo subukang kausapin ang doktor, alamin mo ang tunay na nangyari. Makiramdam ka.” “’Yon na nga ang nangyari, naengkanto si Adela,” giit niya.

Perry C. Mangilaya 175 “Kausapin mo lang, baka mabago ang paniniwala mo.” Napatingin siya nang tuwid kay Tony. Pilit niyang inaarok ang ibig tumbukin nito. Hindi niya ipinangako kay Tony na kakausapin niya ang doktor, pero habang pauwi siya, sumisingit iyon sa kanyang isip. Bakit ba hindi makumbinsi ito na naengkanto nga si Adela. Siguro, isa na rin si Tony na binago ng pag-iral ng mga makabagong teknolohiya. Nagbago na rin ang pananaw at paniniwala nito. Ang nagagawa nga naman ng teknolohiya, naisaloob niya. “Kalat na pala sa Facebook ang nangyari sa asawa mo,” salubong sa kanya ng biyenan pagkauwi niya. “Me nag-upload ba sa nakuha ninyong litrato?” tanong niya pagkatapos magmano. “Baka ’yong kumare ko,” singit ng kanyang asawa. Natigilan siya. Kung ganoon, pinagpipiyestahan na pala ng mga netizen ang nangyari sa kanyang asawa. Malamang na inuulan ito ng mga iba’t ibang komentaryo. Nang gabing iyon, hirap siyang makatulog. Pumikit siya sa pag-asang makatulong ito para makatulog siya, pero nananatiling gising ang kanyang diwa. Parang nakikinita niya kung paanong naghirap ang kanyang asawa. Sa isang banda, nais niyang sisihin ang kanyang sarili. Marahil, hindi sana nangyari iyon sa kanyang asawa kung nakinig lamang siya rito. Kung hindi niya ito iniwan. Pero ang higit na nagpapuyat sa kanya, ang pagbabagong pakikitungo ng kanilang mga kapitbahay. Pakiramdam niya, parang may ibig itong sabihin na pilit itinatago. Pero iisa lang naman ang kanyang hinala, ang tungkol marahil sa pagsilang ng ahas ng kanyang asawa. Kahit naniniwala siyang naengkanto ang kanyang asawa, naroon pa rin, gumugulo, ang mga agam-agam. Lalo pa’t naramdaman din niya ang tila pagbabago ng kanyang asawa. At takot nga ba ang nababasa niya sa mga mata ng kanyang asawa? Ano ang ikinatakot nito? Hanggang isang araw, naistorbo ang kanilang pamamahinga nang dumating ang tserman, kasama ang miyembro ng taga-TV. “And’yan ba si Adela?” bungad ng tserman sa kanya. “Nandito kasi ang taga-TV. Gusto sana nilang mainterbyu ang ’yong asawa.” “Tungkol sa’n?” tanong niya bagama’t alam na niya ang dahilan.

176 Maikling Kuwento “Kalat na kasi ang balitang nanganak ng ahas ang ’yong asawa,” ang isang babaeng taga-TV ang sumagot. “Itatampok ho sana namin sa aming programa sa sunod na linggo.” “Hindi ako magpapainterbyu,” halos sabay silang napalingon nang lumabas ng bahay si Adela, mababakas sa mukha nito na tila hindi nagustuhan ang pagpunta ng taga-media. “Ba’t ayaw mo?” Nilapitan niya si Adela. “Basta ayoko,” iling nito. “Pagpip’yestahan lang nila ako.” “Hindi mo rin naman maitago dahil kalat na nga sa Facebook ang litrato.” “’Yon naman pala, bakit pa nila ako iinterbyuhin?” “Me human interest ho kasi ang nangyari sa inyo, Ma’m,” magalang na sabad ng babaeng taga-TV. “Para maiparating din natin sa mga manonood, na kahit sa panahon pala ng information age, me nangyayari pa palang gano’n.” “At ano naman ang mapapala ko?” “Marami ho kasing nagko-comment na gawa-gawa n’yo lang daw ho ’yon,” sabi ng babae. “Nang sa gano’n po, masabi ninyo ang inyong panig.” “Hindi!” mariing sabi ng kanyang asawa. “Kung ayaw nilang maniwala na nanganak nga ako ng ahas, hindi ko naman sila pinipilit. Hindi pa ba sapat ang litratong nakita nila. Basta hindi ako magpapainterbyu.” “P’wede naman hong hindi natin ipapakita ang ’yong mukha,” pamimilit ng taga-TV. “Para maitago natin ang ’yong pagkatao.” “Kahit na,” iling ng kanyang asawa. “Pasens’ya na,” paumanhin ni Rodel. “Albularyo na lang ho siguro ang iinterbyuhin namin,” pakli ng babaeng taga-TV. “Sa’n ho ba ang bahay ng albularyong nagpaanak sa inyo?” “Kung p’wede lang, h’wag na rin n’yong interbyuhin ang Lolo Onyong ko,” sansala ng kanyang asawa. Sa tono ng boses nito, naroon ang tinitimping galit. Bakit ba ganoon na lang ang pakikitungo ng kanyang asawa sa taga- media, ang mga tanong na gumugulo kay Rodel. “Ayaw n’ya ho ng gano’n. At gusto na rin ho namin ang katahimikan.” Nagkatingin na lamang ang mga miyembro ng taga-TV. Sinubukan pa nilang kumbinsihin ang kanyang asawa, sa tulong na rin ng tserman ngunit talagang matigas ang kanyang asawa. Pati siya, kinumbinsi ang asawa, ngunit nagalit lamang ito sa kanya.

Perry C. Mangilaya 177 Nagdagdag pa iyon sa mga katanungang gumugulo sa isipan ni Rodel nang sumunod na mga araw. Gayundin ang sinabi ni Tony. Bakit nga ba hindi niya subuking kausapin ang doktor. Araw-araw, hindi mapaknit iyon sa kanyang isipan. At kung kakausapin niya ang doktor, wala naman sigurong mawawala, naisip niya. Siyempre, aasahan na niyang magkakaiba ang ikukuwento nito kompara sa kanyang asawa at ni Lolo Onyong. Wala namang doktor at albularyo na nagkakasundo ng pananaw at paniniwala. Kadalasan, magkasalungat. Kaya isang araw, bumisita siya sa doktor na ayon sa kanyang asawa, nag-ultrasound dito. Hindi na niya ipinaalam sa kanyang asawa. Dahil alam niya, hindi rin naman siya papayagan. Sasabihin nito, guguluhin lang niyon ang kanyang isip. Pero para malaman niya ang panig ng doktor, nabuo ang kanyang pasiya. “Ako pala ang asawa ng napabalitang nanganak ng ahas, Dok,” bungad niya sa babaeng doktor, pagkatapos masuri ang huling pasyente nito. Matagal pa siyang tinitigan ng doktor bago siya pinaupo. “Ahas ba talaga ang ipinagbuntis ng asawa ko, Dok?” Iiling-iling ang doktor. “Kailanman, hindi mabubuhay o mabubuo ang ahas sa loob ng sinapupunan ng tao,” sabi nito at may ipinakuha sa babaeng sekretarya. “Hindi kaya pumasok lamang ’yon do’n, Dok?” Muling umiling-iling ang doktor. “Hindi mangyayari ’yon. At isa pa, mararamdaman n’ya na masakit ’yon.” Inabot ng doktor ang ibinigay ng sekretarya. “Eto ang kopya ng ultrasound ng asawa mo?” Ipinakita sa kanya. Tiningnan niya kahit wala naman siyang naiintindihan doon. “Nakikita mo ba ang maliit na bilog na ’yan?” Sa pamamagitan ng hawak na bolpen, itinuro iyon ng doktor. “Oo,” tango niya. “Dugo ’yan na nagpapatunay na buntis ang ’yong asawa,” sabi ng doktor. “At batay sa result ng ultrasound, 8 weeks na s’yang pregnant no’n.” Hindi siya umimik. Nananatiling nakatingin lamang sa ultrasound. “Basta sigurado ako, hindi ahas ang laman n’yan,” giit pa ng doktor. “Tulad ng kumakalat ngayon social media. Dahil unang-una, hindi marunong magsinungaling ang ultrasound.”

178 Maikling Kuwento Napatingin siya sa doktor. Magsinungaling! bumabalik-balik sa isipan iyon ni Rodel. At ano ang nais palabasin ng doktor na ito, natainong niya sa sarili. Bakit binigyan diin pa nito ang salitang magsinungaling, na parang may ibig sabihin. Nagsisinungaling ba ang kanyang asawa, maging ang albularyo at ang kanyang biyenan? Mali naman yata iyon. Una, asawa niya ito. Kailanman, hindi siya pagsisinungalingan ng kanyang asawa, sampu ng mga kapamilya nito. At sino ba ang doktor na ito para akusahan nito ang kanyang asawa ng nagsisinungaling sa kanya? Hindi na niya sinabi sa doktor ang tungkol sa sinabi ni Lolo Onyong, na kahit ang doktor, kayang linlangin ng kapangyarihan ng engkanto. At siguro nga, nalinlang ng engkanto ang doktor na ito at kung anu-ano na ang nakikita nito. Kawawang doktor, naisip niya. Walang kamalay-malay, nalinlang na rin pala ng engkanto. Maayos naman siyang nagpaalam sa doktor. Pero nasabi niya sa sarili, hindi na siya babalik. Hindi na niya kailangan ang opinyon ng doktor na ito, kung ganoong aakusahan lang naman nitong nagsisinungaling ang kanyang asawa. Sa kanyang pagbaba sa traysikel, sapagkat ang kanilang bahay ay nakaharap sa bukid, at dahil tag-araw at tuyong-tuyo ang bukirin, napatingin siya sa tatlong binata roon na pinaglalaruan ang isa pang binata. Kumuha ang isang matabang binata ng natuyong tae ng kalabaw at saka ipinatong iyon sa ulo ng nakatalikod na payat na binata. Sa kabiglaanan, napaigtad ang payat na binata, sabay kiling ng ulo at pagpag dahil sa naiwang mga tila nagpupulbos nang tae ng kalabaw. “’Tang ina n’yo, a,” sabi pa ng payat na binata, pero hindi naman galit. Hagalpakan ang tatlong binata habang nakatingin sa kanya. Nakitawa rin siya, pero parang tawa ng isang bata na galing sa pagkakadapa. Walang buhay. “Ano, pinuntahan mo ba ang doktor?” bati sa kanya ni Tony nang maparaan siya sa tapat ng bahay nito. Huminto siya. “Oo,” tango niya. “Anong sabi?” “Base daw sa ultrasound n’ya, 8 weeks daw na buntis si Adela.” Napatingin nang tuwid sa kanya si Tony, tila tinitimbang ang kanyang reaksiyon.

Perry C. Mangilaya 179 “Naawa nga sa doktor na ’yon,” patuloy niya. “Walang kamalay-malay, nalinlang na pala ng engkanto.” “Anong ibig mong sabihin?” “’Yon nga, no’ng tawasin kasi ni Lolo Onyong si Adela, hindi naman daw tao ang ipinagbuntis ni Adela, kundi ahas. Nilinlang lang ang doktor ng engkanto. Pinaniwala ng engkanto ang doktor na tao ang ipinagbuntis ni Adela.” “Hindi kita maintindihan, Rodel.” “Ano ka ba, sa simpleng paliwanag, naengkanto nga si Adela. At totoo naman talagang nabuntis s’ya, tulad ng sinabi ng doktor, pero hindi kasi n’ya alam, ahas ang laman no’n. Hindi lang daw n’ya nakita sa ultrasound kasi nga ginamitan ng kapangyarihan ng engkanto.” “Anong sagot n’ya?” “Hindi ko na sinabi na nilinlang s’ya ng engkanto, kasi hindi rin maniniwala ’yon.” Iiling-iiling si Tony. “Pare, ayaw kong magsalita, pero ang sa akin lang, makiramdam ka, magmatyag,” tila naiinis na paalala ng kanyang kumpare. “Doktor na ang nagsabi sa ’yo na nabuntis na ’yong asawa. Anong ibig mong sabihin, mas marunong magsinungaling ang ultrasound kaysa tao? Mag-isip ka nga.” Napatingin siya nang tuwid kay Tony. Pati ba naman ikaw, ibig niyang sumbatan ang kanyang kumpare, aakusahang nagsisinungaling ang aking asawa at si Lolo Onyong, maging ang aking biyenan? “Pare, hindi mo ba alam, pinagtsitsismisan na ng buong baryo ang pagbubuntis ng asawa mo?” mariing sabi ni Tony. “Natural,” hilaw siyang napangiti. “Magkaanak ka ba naman ng ahas, hindi ka ba pag-uusapan no’n.” Nahalata niyang tila nainis sa kanya si Tony nang maghiwalay sila. Pero naunawaan niya si Tony, na marahil nga, isa na rin ito sa binago ng pag-iral ng makabagong teknolohiya. At hindi na naniniwala sa mga kababalaghang gawa ng mga engkanto. Pero hindi kaila kay Rodel na laging laman ng usap-usapan ang asawa niya. Patuloy na bumubuntot sa kanya ang mga tsismis na iyon araw-araw. Harap-harapan na niyang naririnig, mula sa ilang kaibigan, lalo na kapag nag-iinuman sila.

180 Maikling Kuwento “Ikaw na ’ata ang pinakatangang taong nakilala ko,” napipikang sabi ng isa niyang kaibigan, nang mag-inuman sila, kasama ang kumpare niyang Tony. “At ang ikinaiinis ko, kaibigan ko pa.” “Lasing ka na ’ata, P’re,” sabi niya. “Kung ano-ano na ang pinagsasabi mo.” “Alam mo bang awang-awa na kami ni Pareng Tony sa ’yo,” giit pa nito. “At sa isang banda, naiinis din dahil ang tanga-tanga mo.” “Hindi n’yo ba naiintindihan, naengkanto nga ang asawa ko. At nariyan ang ebidens’ya at witness pa ang albularyo, kasama ang biyenan ko.” Gusto na ring mapika ni Rodel sa dalawa. “Ewan ko sa ’yo,” tuluyan nang napika ang kanyang kababata at kaibigan. Sa inis marahil, bigla nitong tinungga ang baso ng alak, at pabagsak na inilapag ang baso. “Kung ayaw mong maniwala sa ’min, bahala ka.” Hindi naging maayos ang pagtatapos ng kanilang inuman. Ang sumunod pang mga araw ay lalong ginugulo si Rodel ng mga tsismis tungkol sa kanyang asawa. Naroong tahasang pinariringgan siya, hindi lamang sa inuman kundi maging sa kanyang paglalakad. Kung naging mahina-hina lamang ang kanyang pagtitiwala sa kanyang asawa, marahil, marami na siyang nakaaway. Pero dahil malaki ang kanyang tiwala, inuunawa na lamang niya ang mga kumakalat na tsismis. Na marahil, wala lang sigurong magawa sa buhay ang mga ito. O, baka naman may lihim na naiinggit sa pagsasama nila at pilit silang sinisiraan. Gayumpaman, may mga gabing hindi siya pinatutulog ng mga bagay na iyon. Higit siyang naaawa sa kanyang asawa. Na walang kamalay-malay, naging sentro ng mga makakating dila sa kanilang lugar. “Hindi ko na matiis ang tsismis na kumakalat dito tungkol sa ’yo, ang pagbuntis mo at pagsilang ng ahas,” sabi niya habang magkatabing nakahiga sila isang gabi. Kapuwa nakatutok ang kanilang mga tingin sa bubungan. “Sabi ko naman sa ’yo, h’wag mong pansinin ang mga tsismis,” bakas ang pagkainis sa boses ng kanyang asawa. “Wala lang siguro magawa ang mga ’yon, gusto lang manira ng kapuwa.” “’Yon na nga,” untag niya. “Pero hindi naman p’wedeng mamuhay tayo nang walang katahimikan.” “Ano’ng plano mo?” “Balak kung lumayo tayo.”

Perry C. Mangilaya 181 Napatingin ito sa kanya. “Balak kong isama ka sa Maynila,” patuloy niya habang nakapako pa rin ang tingin sa bubungan. “Mas okey ro’n, malayo tayo sa mga tsismis. Walang manggugulo sa ’tin.” “Sa’n tayo titira?” “Pansamantala, sa baraks ka muna. Hangga’t hindi pa ako nakakahanap ng k’wartong mauupahan natin.” Katahimikan. Maya-maya, tumagilid ang kanyang asawa, paharap sa kanya. Matagal na nakapako ang tingin nito sa kanya. Tinatantiya marahil ang kanyang naging desisyon. At nang matiyak marahil nito na buong-buo na nga ang kanyang pasiya, yumakap ito sa kanya, mahigpit, isinubsob ang mukha nito sa kanyang dibdib, at sinundan ng sunod-sunod na pagyugyog ng balikat nito.

182 Maikling Kuwento Ang Mga Nawawalang Mukha CHUCKBERRY J. PASCUAL

maalingasaw ang antisipasyon sa loob ng barangay hall. Walang nag- Uuusap sa mga empleado, pero hindi sila mapakaling lahat: walang puknat ang tipa sa keyboard ni Kagawad Tu (kung ano ang tina-type, walang nakakaalam), panay ang testing sa webcam ng barangay secretary at siyang in- charge sa pagbibigay ng barangay clearance, nagwawalis at nagbubunot ang isang tanod, at nag-aagawan ang dalawang staff sa pag-aayos ng mga papeles na hinugot sa mga kinakalawang na filing cabinet. At lahat ng ito, habang wala rin silang tigil sa panakaw na pagbabatuhan ng mga tingin na buntis sa pananabik. Hindi malaman ni Bree kung paano ipapakita sa ibang tao na nagtatrabaho siya bilang receptionist, kaya ginawa na lang niya ang laging ginagawa: nagsuklay siya ng buhok habang nakaupo sa likuran ng mesa sa bukana ng barangay hall. Para makasabay kahit paano, naglabas na rin siya ng compact mirror, ipinatong ito sa mesa, at hinaluan ng kagat-labing gigil ang pagsusuklay sa buhok na hanggang balikat. Hindi rin niya maitatanggi na para siyang biglang kinargahan ng koryente dulot ng bombang pinasabog ni Mang Noel, mas kilala bilang Kagawad Wan. “Ang sabi sa akin ng isang kontak ko,” panimula ni Kagawad Wan kanina, “pinagkapuri-puri ni Mayor ang feeding program ni Kapitan.” Hindi na binanggit ng kagawad na sabit lang si Kapitan sa naturang feeding program, dahil ang nagpasimula talaga nito ay isang konsehal. Hindi na rin binanggit ng kagawad na ang tinutukoy niyang kontak ay ang balo ng nasirang guro sa PE ng Mababang Paaralan ng Talong Punay. Dumalo ang balo sa Recognition Day ng Mababang Paaralan dahil inaanak niya ang gagawaran ng Ikatlong Karangalang Banggit. Si Mayor ang susing tagapagsalita sa naturang okasyon. Nandoon din si Kapitan dahil malapit naman sila ng prinsipal. Sa sobrang tuwa ni Kapitan na pinuri ni Mayor sa entablado ang feeding program, may ibinulong ito sa prinsipal ng Mababang Paaralan. Narinig ng janitor ang ibinulong ni Kapitan, at ibinalita naman ito sa balo. Kapitbahay

183 ng balo si Kagawad Wan, at nakahuntahan niya ito noong isang araw sa paresan. Doon nabanggit ng balo ang mabuting balita. Walang reaksiyon ang mga nakarinig noong simula. Si Kagawad Tu ang bumasag sa katahimikan, “Oewenonamansamin?” Halatang inasahan talaga ni Kagawad Wan ang tanong mula kay Kagawad Tu. Ang Tu ay galing sa Turing, pero madalas magbiro ang mga staff ng barangay na Kagawad Tu ang tawag dito dahil “tumabit” lang sa listahan ng mga nahalal na kagawad. Alam ng lahat ang lihim na iringan nilang dalawa, lalo na at walang tigil si Kagawad Wan sa pagmamalaki na siya ang kagawad na nakakuha ng pinakamaraming boto noong nakaraang eleksiyon. Hindi nagmimintis si Kagawad Wan na ipaalala ito sa lahat ng kausap sa barangay hall. Ito rin ang ginagamit niyang dahilan kaya siya malapit kay Kapitan, kaya siya ang dapat tanungin tungkol sa mga balita tungkol sa barangay, kaya hindi siya dapat nagtatrabaho, at kaya ang tanging gawain niya ay maging reserbang puno ng barangay. (At dahil nandiyan naman si Kapitan, kaya wala siyang silbi.) Hindi naman kinokontra ni Kapitan ang mga pahayag ni Kagawad Wan, na lalo lang nagpapalakas ng loob nitong huli. (“Ibigay kay Wan ang kay Wan, at kay Tu, ang kay Tu,” biro pa minsan ni Kapitan nang may manguwestiyon sa awtoridad ni Kagawad Wan na nakabatay lang sa bilang ng boto, at hindi sa aktuwal na trabaho.) Kaya pinalaki muna ni Kagawad Wan ang dibdib, parang tandang na nagyayabang, bago sumagot. “Nakarating na kay Kapitan ang balita, siyempre pa. At guess what? Sa tuwa ni Kapitan na nakilala ni Mayor ang lahat ng paghihirap niya—” “Natin,” sabad ni Kagawad Tu. “Ang lagay, siya lang ang nagtatrabaho? Kundi pa laging absent—” “—at ng buong barangay! Hindi pa kasi ako tapos!” bulyaw ni Kagawad Wan. “Kanina ka pang lintek ka! Gusto mo bang makarating yan kay ser?” “Sorry. Sige, tuloy.” “Dahil nga napakalakas na natin kay Mayor, papasok si Kapitan ngayon, para sabihing mag-a-outing tayo! At heto pa, sagot niya lahat!”

Muntik nang tumili si Bree nang makita si Kapitan. Para maitago ang bumukang bibig, tinakpan niya ng buhok ang kalahati ng mukha pagpasok ng opisyal sa barangay hall. “Good morning po, ser,” bati ng receptionist. Umungot lang si Kapitan bilang sagot. Hindi pa nakakalampas sa mesa ni Bree ang opisyal nang hangos na sumalubong si Kagawad Wan. “Ser, Kapitan, Ser! Magandang umaga po! Nabanggit ko na po sa kanila ang balita—”

184 Maikling Kuwento Itinaas ni Kapitan ang kanang kamay sa ere, hinarang ang susunod na mga salita ng kausap. “Hep, hep. Anong balita?” Nakakunot ang mga kilay nito nang magtanong, Walang lumilingon sa mga nakikinig, patuloy lang sila sa pagkukunwaring abala, pero alam ni Bree na sabay-sabay nagkislutan ang tainga ng mga kawani ng barangay. Halata sa boses ni Kagawad Wan ang pag-aalinlangan nang muling magsalita. “A, Kapitan, ’yong sa ano po? ’Yong ano ho, ’yong kahapon—” Hindi sumagot si Kapitan. Tumitig lang ito kay Kagawad Wan. Umubo nang malakas si Kagawad Tu, kasabay ng malakas na pagtipa sa keyboard. Narinig sa buong barangay hall ang tahimik na paglagapak sa sahig ng amor propio ng numero unong kagawad. Napatikhim naman si Bree, at tumigil sa pagsusuklay. Ibinalik na niya sa bag ang hair brush. Nainis siya sa mayabang na kagawad, at lalo sa sarili. Bakit nga ba maniniwala siyang darating ang araw na bibigyan sila ng pakonsuwelo ni Kapitan? “Ano nga ulit ’yon, Kagawad?” tanong ni Kapitan. “Hindi mo sinagot ang tanong ko.” Kinuha ni Bree ang cellphone niya sa bag. Bago ang cellphone na ito, dahil natuluyan na ang lumang cellphone niya nang maibagsak ito sa karinderya ni Aling Blesilda. Ipinagmamalaki niya ang cellphone, hindi lang dahil ito ang pinakamahal na pundar niyang gamit—salamat sa kaibigan niyang Indiano na si Deepak, pumayag ito na dalawang buwan hulugan ang dalawang libong piso—kundi dahil ang pakiramdam ni Bree, walang maliliiit na butas ang kanyang balat sa tuwing nagse-selfie gamit ang cellphone. Parang kalsadang pinalitada ang mukha niya, higit pa ang epekto kaysa anumang kapal ng foundation na inilalagay sa mukha. Para hindi na marinig ang kumpirmasyon ng kabiguan sa mga pangakong hindi naman binitiwan ni Kapitan, naghanap na lang siya ng magandang anggulo para sa selfie. “May nagsabi po sa akin, Kapitan—” sabi ni Kagawad Wan. “Ano raw po, sinabi n’yo raw po—” “Na?” “Na mag-a-outing raw ho tayo.” “Talaga? Sinabi ko ’yon?” Tumawa nang malakas si Kagawad Tu.

Chuckberry J. Pascual 185 “Anong nakakatawa, Tu?” tanong ni Kapitan. “Naku, wala lang ho, Kapitan,” sagot ng kagawad. “May naalala lang ho ako.” “Ano?” “Nakalimutan ko na ho.” “Pilitin mo.” “A, ’yong nagpa-clearance ho kahapon, nakakatawa ho ’yong apelyido.” “Ano?” “Binayagan ho.” “Pinsan ko ’yon. Binayagan ang lolo ko sa nanay ko.” Halos sumubsob ang mukha ni Kagawad Tu sa keyboard. Nagpatuloy na lang siya sa pagtipa, at hindi na muling nagsalita. Naglakad si Kapitan papunta sa kanyang opisina. Naiwan sa kinatatayuan si Kagawad Wan. Nakatungo ito, parang batang iniwan ng sorbeterong ubos na ang paninda. Nang makarating si Kapitan sa pintuan, lumingon ito. “Wan?” “Ser?” tanong ni Kagawad Wan. “Oo.” “Ano hong—?” “Mag-a-outing tayo.” Magsasalita sana si Kagawad Wan at ang iba pang mga kawani, pero wala nang ibang narinig sa barangay hall kundi ang tili ni Bree. Tumigil lang si Bree nang bulyawan siya nang mas malakas ni Kapitan, “Brigido! Sasapatusin ko ’yang mukha mo!”

“Meron ba kayong mga request sa outing natin? Pagkain, ganyan?” tanong ni Kapitan habang nakatuon ang atensiyon sa hawak na cellphone. Kumikinang ang nguso ng opisyal sa mantika ng lechon. Hindi man nakikita ni Bree ang cellphone ni Kapitan, pamilyar sa kanya ang musikang galing sa cellphone ng opisyal. Naglalaro ito ng Clash of Clans. Nasa pinakamalaking mesa sila ng barangay hall. Bukas na espasyo ito, pero tinatawag nilang conference room. Sagrado ang conference room dahil dito pinaghaharap at pinag-aayos ang mga nag-aaway na kapitbahay. Hindi maaaring gamitin sa ibang paraan ang espasyong ito. Pero dahil mahalaga ang pagpaplano sa kanilang outing, nagpatawag ng lunch meeting si Kapitan sa

186 Maikling Kuwento conference room. Si Kagawad Wan muli ang nagbalita sa lahat, at pinakadiin- diinan niyang KKB ang tanghalian. “Ibubuhos lahat ni Kapitan sa outing,” sabi ng kagawad. Kaya habang pinapanood kanina kung paanong lantakan ni Kapitan ang isang plato ng lechon, pinilit ni Bree ang sarili na makontento sa kanyang ginisang munggo. “Ser, puwede ho ba tayong mag-pizza?” tanong ng barangay secretary. Napansin ni Bree ang mabilis na paggalaw ng lalagukan nito pagkatapos magsalita. Hindi masiguro ng receptionist kung natakot ito sa maaaring isagot ng pinuno o natakam lang sa sariling tanong. “Puwede naman,” sagot ni Kapitan. Nakatutok pa rin ito sa hawak na cellphone. “Salamat po, ser,” wika ng barangay secretary, saka sumubo ng kanin at dinurog na tinapa. Bumukas ang gripo ng pantasya sa isip ng mga kawani ng barangay, at nasundan ang hiling ng barangay secretary ng iba’t ibang pakiusap na putahe. May humiling ng lechon manok, ng lechong Cebu, ng lechong baka, kare- kare, afritada, pecadillo, hamburger, spaghetti, siopao, bacon, at kung ano- anong pancit, mula luglog hanggang habhab. Sa lahat ng ito, puro “puwede naman” ang isinagot ni Kapitan, pero hindi rin nawawala ang mga mata nito sa hawak na cellphone. Nang banggitin naman ni Kapitan na kinakailangan nilang magbaon ng tent, dahil mag-o-overnight sila sa pupuntahang isla, lalong umapaw ang galak sa dibdib ng mga tauhan ng barangay hall. “Ngayon lang ako makakapunta sa Boracay,” bulong ni Kagawad Tu kay Bree. Nanginginig pa ang boses nito, parang batang hindi makapaghintay sa tatanggaping regalo. Sa TV lang naririnig ni Bree ang salitang Boracay, at alam niyang maraming artistang nagpupunta sa lugar na ito. “Homaygad! Nasa Boracay din ho ba si Jerry Anderson? Nakupo, ser, solid Jerrynatics ako,” bulalas niya. Umangat ang ulo ni Kapitan sa cellphone. “Anong Boracay ang pinagsasabi mo diyan? Sa Sitio Tagolilong tayo magpupunta.” Nalaglag ang panga ni Bree. At kahit hindi na siya lumingon, sigurado siyang nagsingangahan rin ang lahat ng nasa loob ng conference room. Maliban kay Kagawad Wan. “Suwerte! Napakaganda ng Sitio Tagolilong!” sabi ng kagawad.

Chuckberry J. Pascual 187 Tiningnan ito ni Bree para tahimik na kondenahin sa pagsisinungaling, pero nakapako sa dingding ang mga mata ni Kagawad Wan. “Sa katunayan ho, Kapitan, ser, may plano na po ako sa outing natin.” “O, makinig kayong lahat kay Wan,” sabi ni Kapitan, saka bumalik sa paglalaro sa kanyang cellphone. “Sige lang, Wan.” Idinetalye ni Kagawad Wan ang mga nais niyang mangyari sa outing— kung anong oras silang magkikita-kita, kung saan, kung sino ang taga-Sitio Tagolilong na puwede niyang kausapin sa lalong madaling panahon—pero wala nang narinig si Bree. Pinapantasya na niya ang pagwasak sa base ni Kapitan sa Clash of Clans.

Humigit-kumulang tatlumpung ektarya ang laki ng Sitio Tagolilong. Dinarayo lang ito noon ng mga taga-Talong Punay na desperadong makalibre ng pagsu-swimming at pagbi-beach. Nagagagad din naman ng mabuhangin at mabatong isla ang pakiramdam ng pagpunta sa mga mamahalin at malalayong beach. Ginagawa rin itong pansamantalang himpilan ng mga namamalakaya. Isang araw, may mangingisdang naisipang magtayo ng barumbarong, at doon na nanirahan. Gumaya sa kanya ang ilang mangingisda. Doon na nag-asawa ang ilan, nagkaanak, at muling nag-asawa, hanggang umabot na sa mahigit isandaan ang pamilyang naninirahan sa buong isla. Dumalang na ang pagpunta ng mga gustong makapalibre ng beach, at halos naging eksklusibo na ang mga dalampasigan sa mga mamamayan ng Sitio Tagolilong. Dahil masyadong matagal ang paghihintay kung tatawid nang nakabangka, gumawa ang mga residente ng tulay na gawa sa kawayan para mapadali ang paglalakbay. Walong daang metro ang haba ng tulay na nagdudugtong mula sa pangunahing lupain ng Malabon at sa isla. Alas singko ng umaga sila nagkita-kita sa palengkeng bayan ng Malabon, iyong malapit sa consignacion. Mula roon, sumakay sila ng traysikel papunta sa tulay ng Sitio Tagolilong. Huli ng tatlong oras si Kapitan, kaya nakadungaw na ang araw nang simulan nila ang pagtawid sa aalog-alog na tulay na kawayan. Ilang metro pa lang ang nilalakad nila, namimitig na ang mga braso ni Bree. Bahagya rin siyang nahihilo dahil sa pag-alog ng mabuway na tulay. Sampung tarpaulin ang kipkip ng receptionist sa isang braso at isang bungkos ng mga putol-putol na kawayan sa kabila. Hindi na nga siya magkandaugaga sa pag-ipit ng mga ito sa pagitan ng braso at katawan, dagdag pa ang bigat

188 Maikling Kuwento ng dala niyang knapsack na may damit, tuwalya, at iba pang mga kailangan niya sa paliligo at pagpapaganda. Si Kagawad Wan ang nag-utos na magdala sila ng mga tarpaulin mula sa barangay hall—isang may larawan ni Kapitan at siyam na may larawan ng mga kagawad—dahil gagamitin ang mga ito sa paggawa ng mga improbisadong tent para sa kanilang lahat. Ito rin daw ang gagamitin niyang halimbawa para sa napipintong paghahanda ng proposal na magkaroon ng tarpaulin drive sa buong barangay. May mga tumutol sa mungkahi ni Kagawad Wan noong nagpulong sila, pero nagpilit ang kagawad. Bahagi raw ng plataporma niya ang pag-aalaga sa kalikasan, kaya kinakailangang mag-recycle hangga’t maaari. At ang mga tarpaulin ng mga politiko ang kayamanan ng Talong Punay. Walang nakumbinsi sa naturang argumento. Nasunod lang ang gusto ni Kagawad Wan nang sabihin niya na ang anumang matitipid ni Kapitan sa paggawa ng mga improbisadong tent ay maaaring ilaan sa budget sa pagkain at pamasahe. Pero tulad ng mga pangako ni Kapitan noong kampanya, hindi natupad ang mga ipinangako ni Kagawad Wan. Ang mga staff rin ang nagbayad ng traysikel na sinakyan. Wala silang baon na masasarap na putahe. Sa halip, para silang mga refugee na tumanggap ng donasyon: apat na malalaking plastic na puno ng de-latang sardinas, tuna, biskuwit, kornik, at monay ang dala nila. May hila-hilang case ng beer at ice box sina Kagawad Tu at ang barangay secretary. May bitbit na malaking picnic box si Kagawad Wan. Si Kapitan ang may pinakamagaang na dala, isang malaking tupperware lang ang kipkip nito. Pero siya rin ang bukod tanging sumakay sa bangka papunta sa Sitio Tagolilong. Ingat na ingat si Kapitan sa pagsakay, halos ipagsaksakan sa sariling dibdib ang tupperware. Mukhang takot na takot itong malaglag sa tubig ang hawak at pinagsususpetsahan nito ang umaasisteng bangkero na magnanakaw ng tupperware. “Malayo pa ba tayo?” tanong ni Bree. Halos mahilam na siya sa sariling pawis. Walang pumansin sa receptionist, maliban sa isang babaeng kawaning umirap. Sa ibang okasyon, tatarayan ito ni Bree, pero alam niyang kapuwa lang sila naaagnas na ang makeup sa mukha dahil sa init at bigat ng mga dalang gamit, kaya hindi na lang siya kumibo. Inisip na lang niya ang lahat ng selfie na puwede niyang i-upload sa Facebook mamaya, pagdating nila sa isla.

Chuckberry J. Pascual 189 Pangingisda ang pangunahing kabuhayan ng mga taga-Sitio Tagolilong. Halos lahat ng kalalakihan ay regular na namamalakaya. Ibinabagsak nila ang mga huling alimasag, alimango, alupihang dagat, tahong, at tilapia sa consignacion. Ang mga matanda, bata, at kababaihan naman ay tumutulong sa pamamagitan ng paggawa ng lambat at pag-uuling. Karaniwang tanawin na ang mga hindi pa tapos na lambat na nakasabit sa bintana at dingding ng mga barumbarong sa isla. Dahil walang nagmamay-ari sa isla, walang binabayarang buwis ang mga nakatira doon. At dahil walang direktang pakinabang, halos hindi alam ng lokal na gobyerno ang gagawin sa kanila. Walang koryente sa isla. Wala ring mga paaralan. Sa Mababang Paaralan ng Talong Punay pumapasok ang ilang batang nag-aaral. Kumpol ng mga barumbarong lamang ang matatagpuan sa isla, at depende sa oras ng pagpunta, mga bangkang nakadaong sa dalampasigan. May isang sari-sari store, pero iilang shampoo, sabong panlaba, kendi, at uling lang ang ibinebenta. Tulad ng mga batang tumatawid sa daan- daang metrong tulay para lang makapasok sa paaralan, dumadayo pa ang mga residente sa palengkeng bayan para sa iba pang pangangailangan. May opisyal na pangalan ang isla ng Sitio Tagolilong, pero walang opisyal na pag-iral. Hindi malinaw kung aling barangay at distrito ang may sakop sa kanila, at wala ring nagtatangkang makialam. Bagaman may iilang pagkakataon na kinikilala sila ng lokal na gobyerno: halimbawa, dinaraanan sila ng mga kandidato sa panahon ng pangangampanya—ito ang dahilan kung bakit may mangilan-ngilang nakarehistrong taga-Sitio Tagolilong na bumoboto sa mga presinto sa Barangay Talong Punay—o kaya naman ay paimbabaw na dadalawin at kukumustahin ng mga lokal na opisyal kapag nasusumpungang pansinin ng media (dalawang beses nang itinampok sa panggabing balita ang isla)—pero maliban pa roon, umiiral ito nang bukod. Maaga pa, pero tirik na ang araw nang makarating ang mga taga-Barangay Talong Punay sa Sitio Tagolilong. Wala ring kahangin-hangin noong araw na iyon, kaya ang pakiramdam ni Bree, bumubula na pati ang leeg at kilikili ng kaluluwa niya. Pagbaba sa tulay, ibinaba kaagad ng receptionist ang mga tarpaulin at hinubad ang kanyang knapsack. Kumuha siya ng bimpo mula sa knapsack, at ipinahid ito sa mukha. Kombinasyon ng putik at makeup ang nabakas sa bimpo pagkatapos. Lumingon siya, at napagtantong hindi lang siya ang nagpuputik. Halos mabura na ang mga mukha ng mga kasamahan sa pagpupunas ng pawis.

190 Maikling Kuwento “Hoy, Bree. Etong limandaan. Pumunta ka doon,” inginuso ni Kagawad Wan ang isang kalayuang grupo ng barumbarong. “Sabihin mo, tayo ’yong aarkila ng generator, bentilador, saka mga bombilya. Bumili ka na rin ng uling.” Wala ring tigil ang pagpapahid niya ng bimpo sa buong mukha. “Saan ho ako bibili?” tanong ni Bree. “Doon din. O kahit saan mo gusto,” sagot ng kagawad. “Halos lahat dito, nagbebenta ng uling. Kumatok ka lang sa mga bahay.” “Para saan ho ba ang uling?” “Para sa mukha mo,” sagot ni Kapitan na walang kapawis-pawis sa mukha. Pinapayungan siya ng barangay secretary, at pinapaypayan ni Kagawad Tu. Pareho silang naglalapot. Mukhang isinawsaw na naman sa isang mangkok ng mantika ang mga labi ni Kapitan. Binuksan na nito ang tupperware na lechon pala ang laman, at nagsimula nang mamapak. Sandaling nasulimpat ang tingin ni Bree nang tamaan ng sikat ng araw ang nguso ni Kapitan. Nakatitig lang itong huli sa kanya, walang tigil ang pagnguya, halatang naghihintay ng reaksiyon sa kanyang pambubuska. Ngumiti na lang si Bree, tumawa nang mahina, saka itinuon ang atensiyon sa itim na buhangin ng isla. Kaylayo nga ng Sitio Tagolilong sa Boracay, isip niya. Puti raw ang buhangin doon, sabi ni Kagawad Tu. Nagkuwentuhan silang lahat pagkatapos ng pagpupulong. Naglabasan ang mga sama ng loob sa pagkawasak ng mga pangarap nilang makapunta sa beach na madalas puntahan ng crush niyang si Jerry Anderson. “May baon akong barbecue.” Itinuro ni Kagawad Wan ang picnic box na bitbit kanina. Totoong ngiti na ang sumilay sa mga labi ni Bree. Kahit paano, may pag- unlad sa karaniwan niyang pagkain ang barbecue. Kinuha niya ang pera, at naglakad papunta sa barumbarong. Hindi pa siya nakakalayo nang marinig si Kagawad Wan na sumigaw, “Picture-picture na!” Pinigilan ni Bree ang sarili na bumalik at sumama sa mga nagkukuhanan ng larawan. Pinigil din niya ang sariling magtampo. Ipinaalala niya sa sarili ang posisyon sa barangay hall: utusan ng mga utusan. Inilabas na lang niya ang cellphone sa bulsa, at naghanap ng magandang anggulo para sa isang selfie. Isinama niya sa kuha ang mga kawani sa barangay, para silang mga nagkakagulong ekstra sa likod, at siya ang bidang sinasamba ng kamera.

Chuckberry J. Pascual 191 Nasa bungad ng kumpol ng barumbarong ang isang ito. Mataas ang mga tukod ng barumbarong, kaya nakaangat ito ng ilang piye mula sa lupa at malaki ang silong. May nakasabit na lambat mula sa bintana ng bahay. Hindi pa tapos ang pagkakayari sa lambat, at sumasayad ito hanggang lupa, parang buhok ng isang higanteng babae na hindi nagsusuklay. Isang babae ang pangunahing naghahayuma. Nakaupo siya sa isang mataas na bangkito. Tinutulungan siya ng isang binatilyo. Inaabot ng binatilyo ang mga piraso ng nylon na pagtatagniin ng babae. Pagkakita sa mga ito, agad ibinulsa ng receptionist ang kanyang bagong cellphone. “Excuse me po, ako po si Bree. Ako po ’yong pinapunta ni Kagawad Wan. Kami ho ’yong taga-Talong Punay,” bungad ni Bree. “Ay, magandang umaga ho. Welcome po sa dito sa Tagolilong,” nakangiting sagot ng babae. “Magandang umaga po, Aling—? “Lolit.” “Kami ho ’yong aarkila ng generator, Aling Lolit.” Kinapa niya ang cellphone sa bulsa. Nangungupahan lang siya sa isang bodega sa Barangay Talong Punay, pero may suspetsa siyang mas komportable ang kanyang pamumuhay kaysa buong pamilya. Tumayo ang babae at tinapik ang binatilyo. Iniwan ng binatilyo ang lambat, at sumuot sa ilalim ng bahay. Naiwan si Aling Lolit, nakatayo at nakatitig lang kay Bree. Gusto niyang alukin ito na sumama na lang sa pagkakasiyahan ng mga taga-Talong Punay, pero alam niyang hindi matutuwa sina Kapitan at Kagawad Wan. Ibinaling na lang niya ang atensiyon sa lambat. Paglabas ng binatilyo, may hila na itong lubid na nakapaikot sa isang lumang generator. Sa kabilang kamay, may bitbit na lumang desk fan, at may nakasukbit na lumang gym bag sa isang balikat. Inilagak ng binatilyo sa paanan ni Bree ang mga gamit. “Salamat. Eto pala ang bayad,” inabot ni Bree ang limandaan sa batang lalaki. Tinanggap ng binatilyo ang pera at parang napaso sa salapi, agad itong ibinigay sa babae. “Naku, ang laki ho nito. Wala ho kaming panukli,” bulong ni Aling Lolit. “Kunin n’yo na lahat,” sagot ni Bree. “Hanggang bukas naman ho kami dito.”

192 Maikling Kuwento “Kahit na ho, limang piso lang ho ang upa sa generator kada isang oras. Pero huwag ho kayong mag-alala, kahapon lang ho nakargahan yan sa Bayan.” “Ah, e, kasama na rin ho ’yong upa diyan sa ibang gamit? Ito hong mga nandito,” dinampot ni Bree ang lumang gym bag. Nagulat siya sa bigat, pero pinanindigan ang pagbuhat. Binuksan niya ang zipper: mga cord extension, bombilya, fluorescent, plais, liyabe, mga pako, turnilyo, at kung ano-ano pang kagamitan na hindi na niya alam ang pangalan. “Sobra ho yata ito,” pilit ng babae. “Wala ho kaming panukli—” “Uling! Kukuha rin ho ako ng uling! Meron ba kayo non?” bulalas ni Bree. Maingat niyang inilapag sa lupa ang gym bag, takot na mabasag ang mga bombilya at flourescent kapag umumpog sa matitigas na kagamitan. Ngumiti si Aling Lolit, saka tinapik ulit ang binatilyo. Sumuot ulit ito sa silong ng bahay. Paglabas, dalawang sako ng uling na ang hila. “Pagdamutan n’yo na ho,” sabi ng binatilyo kay Bree. Pagkuwa’y bumaling kay Aling Lolit, “Samahan ko na po siya, ’Nay?” “Sige, anak,” sagot ng babae.

“Wala nang sukli?” singhal ni Kagawad Wan. Mistulang namumulang puwit na pinalo nang paulit-ulit ang mukha ng kagawad. Hindi mawari ni Bree kung dahil ba ito sa matinding sikat ng araw o sa biglang sulak ng dugo. Lumingon muna siya sa binatilyo para humingi ng paumanhin sa kabastusan ng pagsalubong sa kanila, bago sumagot. “Ang dami ko ho kasing kinuha, pasensiya na, Kagawad. Tinulungan na nga ho ako nitong si—” “Teddy ho,” sagot ng binatilyo. “Ano to, bakit ang daming uling? Hindi naman tayo mag-iihaw ng baka!” Ni hindi nilingon ng kagawad ang binatilyo. “’Yong sobra ho, iuuwi ko na lang,” katwiran ni Bree. “Siya, siya,” bruskong sagot ng kagawad. “Set up n’yo na ’yang generator, kanina pa init na init si Kapitan.” Nagtulong sina Bree at Teddy sa paghahanda ng mga gamit at pagpapatakbo ng generator. Hindi na siya umimik nang wala man lang magtangkang tumulong sa kanilang dalawa. Hindi na rin siya nagtaka nang matapos ang paandarin ang generator, ikabit dito ang mga bombilya at itutok ang bentilador kay Kapitan, siya pa rin ang inutusan ni Kagawad Wan na

Chuckberry J. Pascual 193 magpasimuno sa paghahanda ng pagkain. Wala na siyang aasahan, at nahihiya rin siya sa kabaitan ng binata, kaya si Bree na ang nag-abot ng sampung piso sa binatilyo pagkatapos nitong tumulong. “Salamat po,” sabi ni Teddy. “Gutom na kami,” ungot ni Kapitan habang nakatapat ang mukha sa bentilador. Bahagyang nakakahinga na sina Kagawad Tu at ang barangay secretary dahil tumatama rin sa kanila ang hangin mula sa bentilador. Dinampot ni Bree ang mga plastik na puno ng baon nilang pagkain. Malayo-layo rin ang nilakad niya papunta sa likuran ng isang malaking bato. May kaunting lilim doon, at posibleng lumamig nang kaunti mamayang gabi dahil malapit-lapit sa dalampasigan. Nailatag na niya ang kumot at nailapag sa ibabaw nito ang ilang piraso ng monay at lata ng sardinas nang marinig niyang pumuswit si Kagawad Wan. “Psst! Bree!” “Ho?” “Nasaan ang mga tarpaulin?” “Nandiyan lang ho,” sagot ni Bree. Bumalik siya sa pag-aayos ng mga pagkain sa ibabaw ng kumot. Pinagsama-sama niya sa iisang tumpok ang tinapay, sardinas, biskuwit, at kornik. Itinabi niya ang mga gamit na plastik, para magsilbing sisidlan ng basura. Nakakahiyang mag-iwan ng kalat sa Sitio Tagolilong. Wala silang kasabay na bumisita, walang ibang puwedeng pagbintangan kundi sila. “Saan dito? Halika nga!” tawag ni Kagawad Wan. Itinigil niya ang ginagawa at naglakad pabalik sa puwesto ni Kagawad Wan at ng iba pang kasamahan. “Kagawad, ser, iniwan ko lang po diyan kanina,” sabi ni Bree. Kanina pa siya nagkikilos, kaya tumatagaktak ang pawis niya sa buong katawan. “Saan nga dito?” Bumuntong-hininga muna ang receptionist bago muling nagsalita. Kailangan niyang manatiling kalmado. Mahaba pa ang araw. “Diyan nga ho, sa tabi ng knapsack ko.” Itinuro niya ang knapsack, saka nilapitan. “Kita ninyo, nandito ang gamit ko, ’yong mga kawayan, at itong mga tarpaulin … Teka, nasaan na nga ba ang mga iyon? Nandito lang ’yon kanina.” “Kanina pa rin kami naghahanap.”

194 Maikling Kuwento “Si Teddy ho? ’Yong batang lalaki? Baka nakita niya.” “Malay ko.” Wala na palang ibang tao sa paligid nila ni Kagawad Wan. Nag-uunahan na ang mga ito papunta sa likuran ng bato, iyong malapit-lapit sa dalampasigan, kung nasaan ang pagkaing inihanda ni Bree kanina lang. “Puwede ho bang kumain muna? Gutom na rin ako, ser,” pakiusap ni Bree. “Hanapin mo na muna ’yong mga tarpaulin. Unahin mo muna ang mga kasamahan natin, bago ’yang sikmura mo,” sagot ng kagawad.

Nagsi-siesta na si Kapitan nang makabalik si Bree sa kanilang kampo. Inilipat ng mga kawani at kagawad ang puwesto ng kumot na may mga pagkain, ipinalit dito ang kumot na hinihigaan ng pinuno ng barangay. Inilipat na rin ang generator at bentilador. Nakatutok na ang bentilador sa naghihilik na Kapitan. Dalawang oras naglibot si Bree sa buong isla sa paghahanap sa mga tarpaulin. Natagpuan niya ang mga ito sa kabilang bahagi, iyong batuhan na nasa dulo ng isla. Malayo na ito sa kumpol ng mga barumbarong. Halatang hindi ito masyadong dinarayo maging ng mga mangingisda, dahil walang nakadaong na mga bangka. Puro basura ang paligid. Karamihan iyong mga iniwan na lamang doon ng hangin, mayroon ding isinuka ng tubig sa dalampasigan. Doon sa bungkos ng mga basurang iyon natagpuan ni Bree ang mga tarpaulin. Nakabulatlat ang mga ito sa buhangin, parang mga gusot na kumot. Madali silang makikita dahil namumukod ang mga puting likuran, hindi pa masyadong nilalamon ng putik. Dinampot ni Bree ang mga tarpaulin, isa- isang ibinalumbon at dinala pabalik sa kampo ng mga taga-Barangay Talong Punay. “Anong nangyari sa mga ito?” tanong ni Kagawad Wan pagkatapos ilatag sa buhangin ang dalawa sa sampung tarpaulin. Butas-butas ang mga ito. Ginupit ang mukha ng mga taong nasa larawan. Kakatwa ang pagkakagupit dahil sinundan ang hugis ng panga, tainga, at buhok. Parang gagamiting maskara ang mga mukhang tinanggal. “Ewan ko ho,” matamlay na sagot ni Bree. Nagtaka rin siya at bahagyang nahintakutan sa nangyari—anong klaseng tao ang magnanakaw ng tarpaulin

Chuckberry J. Pascual 195 at magnanakaw ng mga mukhang kaypapangit naman?—pero dinadaig na siya ng gutom at pagod. “Ganito rin ba ang nangyari sa iba?” “Ito lang hong isa ang hindi.” “Alin?” “Ito ho.” Kinuha ni Bree ang tarpaulin na bukod-tanging hindi tinanggalan ng mukha, inalis ito sa pagkakabalumbon, inilatag sa buhangin. Pagkakita sa naturang tarpaulin, napamura nang malakas si Kagawad Wan, saka tinakpan ng palad ang sariling bibig. Sinaway siya ng sutsot ni Kagawad Tu. Pero huli na, naalimpungatan na si Kapitan. “Anong nangyayari?” tanong ng pinuno, pupungas-pungas pa. Walang umiimik. Naramdaman ni Bree na nakatingin sa kanya ang lahat, kaya siya na ang unang nagsalita. “Ser, ito ho kasing mga tarpaulin natin—” “Anong nangyari sa mga tarpaulin natin?” “Nawawala ho ang mga mukha, ser. Lahat po, maliban sa isa.” Itinuro ni Bree ang nakalatag na tarpaulin, iyong may solong larawan ni Kapitan. Mukha lamang ng pinuno ng barangay ang hindi tinanggal. Sa halip, nilaslas ito: mula kanang sentido papunta sa ilalim ng kaliwang panga, wakwak ang mukha ni Kapitan. Napaupo si Kapitan at tinutop ang matabang dibdib. “Anong ibig sabihin nito?” “Ewan ho,” sagot ni Bree. “Paano na ang ibang tarpaulin?” “Pupuntahan ko na lang ho ’yong mga gumagawa ng lambat. Puwede nilang tahiin ang mga ’yan.” “Panginoon, pagkatapos ng lahat ng kabutihang ginawa ko?” bulong ni Kapitan. “Puwede ho ba, kumain muna ako?” tanong ni Bree. “Ano ba ang meron sa mukha ko, Brigido?” “Gutom na ho ako, kailangan ko ho munang pag-isipan—” “Asikasuhin mo na muna ’yang mga tarpaulin. Mainit na, kailangan nila ng silong,” sabad ni Kagawad Wan. “Penge lang nga ho muna n’yang monay.”

196 Maikling Kuwento “Huwag kang makasarili, uy. Unahin mo muna ang mga kasamahan natin. Hindi lang ikaw ang nagugutom.” Sasagot pa sana si Bree, pero nawalan na siya ng kausap. Nagtakip kasi ng mukha si Kapitan. Nag-unahan ang lahat na kalamayin ang loob ng pinuno. Napuno ang hangin ng sunod-sunod na pag-alo sa pinuno. Naku Kapitan, huwag ho kayong mag-alala. Wala lang ho ’yan, Kapitan. Kayo ho ang pinaka-cute na barangay captain. Huwag ho kayong maniniwalang pangit kayo, huwag. Hindi po kayo mukhang baboy, mukha ho kayong magbababoy. Magkaiba ho ’yon. Heto ho, kumain kayo ng lechon. Ayan na, ayan na. Ambait talaga ni Kap, o. Tatahan na ’yan. Matapang ’yan. Aruuuu. Habang abala ang lahat, pumunta si Bree sa tumpok ng mga baon nilang pagkain, at dumampot ng dalawang monay. Kinain niya ang isa habang naglalakad papunta sa kumpol ng mga barumbarong. Malayo na siya, at nagsisimula na sa ikalawang monay nang marinig ang pahabol na palahaw ni Kapitan, “Bakit hindi nila gusto ang mukha ko?” Sa loob-loob ng receptionist, wala naman talagang matutuwa sa kachakahan mo. Kahit maligno mabobokot sa pes mo.

Madaling kausap ang mga taga-Sitio Tagolilong. Hindi nagdalawang salita si Bree nang sabihin niyang kailangan ng mga magpapatse sa mga nabutas na tarpaulin. Kay Aling Lolit siya lumapit, ang nanay ni Teddy. Inabutan niya ang mag-ina na naghahayuma pa rin sa labas ng barumbarong. Itinigil agad ni Aling Lolit ang ginagawa, at pinuntahan ang ibang mag-iinang gumagawa rin ng lambat sa harapan ng kani-kanilang tirahan. Hindi pa man sinasabi ni Aling Lolit kung magkano ang pabuya, kinuyog na si Bree ng walong bata. Pinagsabihan muna niya ang mga ito na huwag papayag na mababa kaysa isandaang piso ang singilin bawat isa bago tumulong, saka itinuro ang pinagkakampuhan ng mga taga-Barangay Talong Punay. Nag-unahan ang mga itong kumuha ng mga ekstrang balumbon ng nylon, karayom, at aspile, sa harap ng kani-kanilang bahay, saka kumaripas palayo. Pagkaalis ng mga bata, napansin ni Bree si Teddy. Hindi ito umalis sa kinatatayuan, patuloy lang sa tahimik na paghahayuma. Nilapitan ni Bree ang binatilyo. “Bakit hindi ka sumama sa kanila?” tanong ng receptionist. “Binigyan n’yo na po ako kanina,” sagot ni Teddy, hindi nag-aangat ng mata. “Pero mas malaki ang bayad doon—”

Chuckberry J. Pascual 197 “Oo nga naman, anak. Sumunod ka na. Iwan mo na sa akin ’yan,” sabi ni Aling Lolit, galing sa pakikipaghuntahan sa tapat ng katabing barumbarong. Kasama niya ang isa sa mga kausap kanina. May hawak itong nakabilot na magasin. “Tatapusin ko na lang ho ito,” sagot ni Teddy. May kumalabit kay Bree. “Mawalang galang na ho,” bungad ng babaeng kasama ni Aling Lolit. “Ano po ba ang nangyari sa mga baon ninyong … ano nga ba ’yon?” “Tarkolin,” singit ni Aling Lolit. “Ay, pasensiya ka na rito kay Edna. Tsismosa lang talaga ’yan.” Pinalo ng kapitbahay si Aling Lolit sa braso ng hawak na magasing nakabilot. “Nakow, tsismosa raw. E di ba ikaw ang lumapit at nagsabing me nawawala na namang—” “Ay, nakita na ho ’yong mga tarpaulin namin, Aling Edna. Kailangan lang hong remedyuhan,” sagot ni Bree. Hindi siya tumingin kay Aling Lolit pagkatapos itama ang bigkas. “Ano ang sira?” usisa ni Aling Edna. “Nagkabutas-butas ho—ay, puta!” Nalaglag ang lambat sa kanilang apat. Nagpakawala rin ng tili ang dalawang babae. “Sorry po! Naku, sorry po!” bulalas ni Teddy. Nasa ilalim din siya ng lambat. Walang kibo si Aling Lolit habang umaalis sa pagkakalambat. Panay naman ang palatak at paanas na reklamo ni Aling Edna. Nginitian na lang ni Bree ang binatilyo para iparating na hindi siya galit, kahit sa totoo lang, mangani-ngani na siyang sampalin ito. Kumakalam na nga ang sikmura at nanghahapdi na ang mukhang humulas ang makeup sa sikat ng araw, pagmumukhain pa siyang sabukot. Nagulo ang buhok niya at lalong dumikit sa pawisang batok at mga pisngi dahil sa lambat. Pagkatapos muling ikabit ang lambat sa bintana ng barumbarong, nagpaalam ang binatilyo. Sasama na lang daw siya sa pagpapatse ng mga tarpaulin. Tumango lang si Aling Lolit, at agad bumalik sa paghahayuma. Ni hindi man lang ito nag-ayos ng buhok na nagulo dahil sa lambat. “Mauuna na ho ako,” sabi ni Bree habang sinusuklay ng mga daliri ang buhok na hanggang balikat. Nagtaka siya sa pagbabago ng isip ng binatilyo.

198 Maikling Kuwento “Teka, tingnan mo muna ito,” habol ni Aling Edna. “Edna, manong wag mo nang istorbohin si ser,” sabi ni Aling Lolit. Hindi na sumagot si Aling Edna, binulatlat na lang ang hawak na magasin sa harapan ni Bree. Ginupit din ang mukha ng babaeng artista sa pabalat.

Hindi agad pumunta sa kampo ng mga taga-Barangay Talong Punay si Bree. Kinutuban siya matapos makita ang magasin ni Aling Edna. Lalo na nang idagdag nitong hindi lang ngayon nangyari na may mga mukhang nawala sa Sitio Tagolilong. Pati raw mga diyaryo, kalendaryo, kung ano-anong poster na naiiwan sa kung saan, tinatanggalan ng mukha ang mga taong nasa larawan. Tinunton ulit ni Bree ang lugar kung saan niya natagpuan ang mga tarpaulin. Hindi pa siya nakakalayo sa kumpol ng mga barumbarong, napatunayan na niyang tumpak ang hinala: naglalakad din papunta sa malaking bato sa dulong dalampasigan si Teddy. Walang mapagtataguan kung sakaling lumingon ang binatilyo, kaya binagalan na lang ni Bree ang paglalakad. Pumunta ang binatilyo sa likod ng malaking bato, nawala na sa paningin ni Bree. Tumigil sa paglakad si Bree, at naghintay sa muling paglitaw ni Teddy. Nang umabot ang sampung minuto at hindi pa rin lumalabas mula sa likod ng bato ang anak ni Aling Lolit, kinabahan na si Bree. Humangos siya, pero binagalan ulit ang pagkilos pagdating sa malaking bato. Dahan-dahan, sumilip siya sa likuran nito. Nakita niya si Teddy, hindi naman napaano: nakatalikod ito sa kanya, nakatalungko sa dalampasigan, lubog ang mga binti. May kausap itong babaeng mahaba ang buhok. Nakasuot ang babae ng basang kamiseta, at nakadapa sa dalampasigan. Mukhang morena, batay sa nakalitaw na braso. Hindi makita ni Bree ang kalahati ng katawan ng babae, dahil natatakpan ng tubig. May inilabas si Teddy sa bulsa ng kanyang shorts—mukhang mga piraso ng tela—at ipinakita ito sa babae. Sa pagkakalahad ng mga palad ng binatilyo, parang mamahaling bagay ang inihahandog sa kausap. Kinuha ng babae ang isa sa mga papel na bilugan—aha! isa sa mga mukhang galing sa mga tarpaulin!—at tiningnan nang malapitan. Noon lang napagtanto ni Bree na hindi niya maaninag ang mukha ng babae. Mayroon naman itong mga mata, ilong, bibig, pero parang wala siyang makita. Tila binalot ng maitim na balat ang mukha nito para matakpan ang anumang naroon, pero nananatili pa rin ang bakas ng pagmumukha. Unti-unti siyang lumapit para mas masipat ang mukha ng babae.

Chuckberry J. Pascual 199 Ilang hakbang pa lang ang nagagawa ni Bree nang mapansin siya ng babae. Sumigaw ito nang ubod lakas. Nahintakutan si Bree dahil may bumuka sa blangkong mukha nito, pero wala siyang nakitang labi. Sisigaw na siya pero natigilan nang may umangat na higanteng buntot ng isda mula sa tubig. Sandali siyang napaisip kung may pating ba sa Malabon, bago naidugtong sa isip na bahagi ng katawan ng babae ang buntot. Saka lang niya natagpuan ang sariling boses: “Omaygad! Sirena! Omaygaaaaad!” Bago niya pa namalayan, nagtatakbo na siya palayo sa malaking bato sa dalampasigan, at inabutan na siya ni Teddy. Hinawakan siya nito sa braso at hindi bumitiw kahit anong pagpupumiglas ni Bree. Natumba sila sa maruming buhanginan, nagpambuno, hanggang sa makapangibabaw ang binatilyo, at tinakpan ng palad ang bibig ng receptionist. “Huwag kang maingay! Huwag kang maingay!” sabi ni Teddy. Hindi niya malaman kung dahil ba sa awa o sa matinding gutom sa maghapon, pero doon inabutan ng pagod si Bree. Napapikit na lang siya at tumigil sa paglaban. Nang maramdaman ng binatilyo na hindi na pumapasag si Bree, bumitaw na rin ito, at umupo sa isang tabi. Ilang sandali ang lumipas na nakahiga lang si Bree at nakapikit, pinoproseso ang nakita kani-kanina lang. Natigil lang siya sa pagmumuni nang marinig ang paghikbi ng binatilyo. “Teddy,” sabi ni Bree. “Wala siyang ginagawang masama, wala siyang kasalanan sa inyo,” bulong ng binata. “Sorry, nagulat lang ako. Diyos ko naman, ngayon lang ako nakakita ng totoong sirena!” Hindi sumagot ang binatilyo. “Teddy, ano ba ang nangyari? Bakit ganoon ang mukha niya? At iyong mga mukha, bakit—?” Huminga nang malalim ang binata, lumingon kay Bree. Tinitigan siya nito, saka nagsimulang magkuwento.

Mangingisda si Mang Quentin, ang tatay ni Teddy. Isang madaling araw, umuwi ito na may malaking huli. Nagtaka silang lahat dahil hindi naman karaniwang nag-uuwi ng ganoon karaming huli ang kanyang ama. Apat o limang kilo lang ang kadalasang itinitira nito, at ibinebenta na lahat sa consignacion kahit palugi. Pero noong madaling araw na iyon, pumasok si

200 Maikling Kuwento Mang Quentin ng bahay na nagmamadali, bitbit ang huli na parang higanteng sanggol na lambat ang pambalot, sa halip na lampin. Nangalingasaw sa buong bahay ang matinding lansa. Sanay na sila sa amoy ng isda at dagat, halos hindi na nga ito rumerehistro sa pang-amoy nila, pero mabagsik ang lansang iyon. Napatakip ng ilong si Teddy. Nang lingunin niya ang ina, nakakunot din ang ilong nito. Nagtanong si Aling Lolit kung ano ang huli, pero sinaway lang siya ng bana. Agad pinakuha ni Mang Quentin kay Teddy ang pinakamalaki at pinakamalalim nilang banyera, at ipinalagay ito sa silong ng barumbarong. Pagkatapos punuin ng tubig ang banyera, doon inilagay ang iniuwi. Nakapalibot silang lahat sa banyera nang tanggalin ni Mang Quentin ang lambat. Sumaboy sa hangin ang mabagsik na lansa. Tumambad ang huli ng kanyang ama. Muntik nang himatayin si Aling Lolit, mabuti na lang at nasalo ni Teddy. Isang sirena ang iniuwi ng kanyang ama. Nakatungo ang sirena nang una nilang makita, at kahit nagulat na sila sa buhok nitong mahaba at kulay lumot, sa katawang may maitim na balat pero hindi sunog (mas naalala ni Teddy ang mga hito sa consignacion), sa dibdib na walang utong (wala itong suot na pang-itaas, at kahit na hindi sinasadya ng binatilyo, dumaplis ang mga mata niya sa dibdib ng nilalang sa banyera. Labindalawang taon lang siya noon, pero hindi na inosente sa katawan ng mga babae. Karaniwang tanawin na sa Sitio Tagolilong ang kababaihang nagpapasuso ng sanggol kahit nasa labas ng bahay), at sa buntot na kulay bato (itim, pero pinilakan at makaliskis), hindi nila naihanda ang mga sarili sa mukha ng sirena. Noon lang nakakita si Teddy ng ganoong uri ng mukha. Hindi niya mailarawan kung ano ang tiyak na itsura ng mata, ilong, at bibig, pero sa kung anong dahilan, hindi mapigilang tumitig ng binatilyo. Napuno ang dibdib ni Teddy ng kung anong galak, parang gusto niyang maglupasay sa buhangin at magpasalamat dahil ang ganda ng mundo, napakabuti ng Diyos, at nasisiguro niyang walang katapusang tagumpay ang kanyang nakatakdang kapalaran—kung anumang tagumpay ang maaari niyang magagap sa murang isip. Umakyat ang luha sa kanyang mga mata. Makaraan ang ilang minuto ng paglulunoy sa emosyong dulot ng mukha ng sirena, nilingon ni Teddy ang mga magulang. Interesado rin ang mga ito sa taong isda, pero walang mababakas na galak sa mga mukha. Sa halip, parehong mukhang gutom ang mga ito, at masama ang tingin sa sirena. Madiin pa nga ang kagat sa labi ng kanyang ama, halatang nanggigigil.

Chuckberry J. Pascual 201 Hindi kumikilos ang sirena. Nakatingin lang ito sa kanila, kalmado ang pagtaas-baba ng dibdib. Inutusan ni Mang Quentin si Teddy na itali ng lubid ang mga braso ng sirena. Naaawa ang binatilyo sa taong isda, pero wala siyang nagawa kundi sundin ang ama. Binusalan din niya ito, para masigurong hindi makakuha ng atensiyon ng ibang tao sa isla. Gustong ibenta ni Mang Quentin ang sirena. Sinabi niya ito agad, pag-akyat nilang tatlo sa barumbarong. Gagamitin nila ang pera sa pagbili ng bagong bangkang de-motor, at panimulang bayad sa uupahang bahay sa pangunahing lupain ng Malabon. Sa wakas, makakaalis na sila sa isla, makakapag-aral na ulit si Teddy, makakapagsimula na ng munting negosyo si Aling Lolit—uupa sila ng espasyo sa palengkeng bayan at doon magbebenta ng alimango, alimasag, at iba pang huli ni Mang Quentin—sa halip na paghahayuma at pag-uuling lang ang inaatupag nilang mag-ina. Tahimik lang si Aling Lolit habang naglilitanya ng mga pangarap ang kanyang bana. Mukhang nalimot na nito ang anumang emosyon kanina sa harapan ng sirena, at napalitan na ng antisipasyon sa posibilidad ng pag- unlad ng kanilang buhay. Maging si Teddy ay naapektuhan. Pumarada sa isip niya ang mga bagong kaklase at kaibigan, bagong uniporme, at ang patsada ng Mababang Paaralan ng Talong Punay na huli niyang nasilayan noong nasa ikalimang baitang pa lang siya. Pinigil ang pangangarap ni Teddy ng sigawan sa labas ng kanilang barumbarong. May sirena! May sirena! Humangos sila pababa. Marami na palang tao sa harapan ng kanilang bahay, at nakapasok na ang mga ito sa silong. Hindi man nag-ingay ang sirena, ipinakilala pa rin siya ng kanyang matinding lansa sa mga taga-Sitio Tagolilong. May isang nakalabit ang ilong, nagpunta sa silong, nakita ang sirena, at tinawag ang lahat ng kayang tawaging kapitbahay. May grupo ng kalalakihang humila sa banyera mula sa silong. Pumapalag na ang sirena, panay ang kawag ng buntot nito. Napikon ang isang lalaki na tinamaan ng buntot sa mukha. Kilala ito ni Teddy. Madalas niya itong nakikitang kasabay ni Mang Quentin sa pangingisda. Tahimik lang ito at bihirang makisali sa mga inuman. Pero noong sandaling iyon, nag-ibang anyo ito dahil sa matinding galit na nakaguhit sa mukha. Nilapitan agad ni Mang Quentin ang lalaki para pigilan, pero itinulak ng lalaki ang ama ni Teddy. Pagkuwa’y binaligtad nito ang banyera. Sumadsad

202 Maikling Kuwento sa buhangin ang sirena. Lumapit ang lalaki at sinabunutan ang taong isda. Lumitaw ang mukha ng sirena na kanina ay natatakpan ng mahabang buhok nito sa pagwawala. Ilang sandaling natigilan ang lalaki. Umasa si Teddy na mabibighani rin ang lalaki at lalambot ang loob tulad niya kanina, pero lalo lang umapaw ang galit na kanina pa mababakas sa mukha. Inginudngod ng lalaki ang sirena sa buhangin. Nagtangka na rin ang kanyang ina pigilan ang lalaki, pero hinawakan siya ng ibang miron. Nasilayan rin ng mga miron ang mukha ng sirena, at tulad ng lalaki, napuno rin sila ng poot. Nag-umpisang magtungayaw ang mga tao: sige, basagin mo ang mukha niyan! Halimaw! Patayin ’yan! Malas ’yang lintik na ’yan! Peste! Lalo lang ginanahan ang lalaki sa ginagawa, at paulit-ulit pang inginudngod ang sirena. May ibang hindi pa nakontento sa pagtutungayaw. Dumampot sila ng mga bato at pinagpupukol ang taong isda. Mayroong mas mapupusok na lumapit at pinukpok nang paulit-ulit ang mukha, katawan at buntot ng kawawang nilalang. Habang pinagtutulungan ng mga taga-Sitio Tagolilong ang taong isda, lumitaw si Mang Quentin, hinahalihaw ng sagwan ang lahat ng madaanan. Isa-isang nagsilayo ang mga tinamaan. Pinuntirya ng ama ni Teddy ang lalaking nagpasimula ng lahat: pinaghahampas ito ni Mang Quentin ng sagwan, walang pakialam kahit saan tamaan. Ilang sandaling natigilan ang lahat, bago muling kumuyog. May mga umaawat, may mga umaatake na rin kay Mang Quentin. Sumali na rin ang kanyang ina. Panay ang sigaw nito habang itinutulak palayo ang ibang taong gustong saktan si Mang Quentin, kayo ang mga halimaw! Wala siyang ginagawa sa inyo! Wala kaming ginagawa sa inyo! Lumayas kayo rito! Sinamantala ni Teddy ang pagkakataon. Sa gitna ng gulo, pumuslit siya at hinila ang sirena palayo sa mga tao. Dinala niya ito sa malaking bato sa dulong dalampasigan, malayo sa kumpol ng mga barumbarong. Doon lang niya nakita, sa liwanag ng buwan, ang sinapit ng sirena sa kamay ng mga taga- Sitio Tagolilong. Puspos ang paghingi ng paumanhin, hinilamusan ni Teddy ang sirena. Nahugasan ng tubig ang dugo at dumi sa mukha ng taong isda, pero tuluyan nang nabura ang mukha nito.

“Mula noon, binibigyan ko na siya ng mga mukha. Kumukuha ako ng mga mukha kung saan-saan. Sumasama ako minsan kay Tatay sa consignacion. Naghahanap ako ng mga lumang diyaryo at magasin, ginugupit ko ang

Chuckberry J. Pascual 203 mga mukha,” sabi ni Teddy. “Kaya no’ng makita ko ang mga tarpaulin n’yo, sinamantala ko na. Nakita ko lang na parating ka na, kaya hindi ko nagupit ’yong huling mukha. Nalaslas ko tuloy.” Nakaupo pa rin sila sa buhangin, malapit sa malaking bato sa dulong dalampasigan. Nakalimutan na ng receptionist ang pagkalam ng tiyan. Hindi siya makapaniwala sa kuwento ng binatilyo, pero nakaukit pa rin sa isip ang nasaksihan. “Ano ang nangyari sa mga tao pagkatapos? Hinanap ba nila ang sirena?” tanong ni Bree. “Wala. Tumigil sila nung makalayo na kami. Wala na ring maalala kahit sila tatay sa mga nangyari. Hindi ko alam kung bakit.” “Hindi sila nagtaka na bigla na lang silang nagbugbugan?” “Pagbalik ko sa bahay, sinabihan ako nina tatay na huwag nang babanggitin kahit kailan ’yong nangyari. Gano’n din siguro ’yong iba.” “Pero ’yong mga nawawalang mukha? Wala silang suspetsa?” “Ewan ko. Limang taon na rin mula nang mangyari ’yon. Basta sigurado ako, wala na silang alam tungkol kay Maya.” “Sinong—” Tinitigan siya ni Teddy bago nagsalita, “’Yong kaibigan ko.” Natahimik si Bree. Binalikan niya sa isip ang pakikipag-usap kay Aling Lolit kanina. Tila nga wala itong kaalam-alam tungkol sa sirena. Kahit pa si Aling Edna. Nagtataka lang sila na laging may mga nawawalang mukha sa isla, pero sa pagtutuos, malamang ay wala na ring pakialam. Naisip ni Bree, siya man ang tumira sa Sitio Tagolilong, hindi naman niya ito pagkakaabalahang ukilkilin pa. Marami pang mas mahalagang bagay na dapat asikasuhin. “Teddy?” “Hmm?” “Bakit mo binibigyan ng mga mukha si ano…?” “Si Maya ho?” “Oo, si Maya.” “’Yon lang ho ang magagawa ko para mag-sorry, e. Wala namang magso- sorry sa kanya,” sagot ni Teddy. Bumuhos ang mga tanong na sumulpot sa isip ni Bree: “Pero bakit? Nakikita niya ba ’yon? Sinusuot niya ba ’yong mga mukha? Di ba mga papel

204 Maikling Kuwento lang naman ’yon? Saka wala ba siyang mga friends na sirena? O, teka, teka. Nakakalangoy pa ba siya o hindi na? Wala ba silang kaharian sa ilalim ng dagat? Saka bakit ikaw ang magso-sorry, hindi naman ikaw ang may kasalanan?” Natigilan ang receptionist nang mapansin na hindi na sumasagot ang binatilyo. Nakasubsob ito sa mga tuhod at braso, yumuyugyog ang mga balikat. Sinurot siya ng konsensiya: bakit nga ba ipinapapasan sa binatilyo ang mga detalye? Mahalaga pa ba ito? Siya lang naman itong nakikisawsaw sa buhay ng mga taga-Sitio Tagolilong. Nawala man ang mga mukha, tinahi naman ito ng mga bata. Walang nasaktan, mayroon pa ngang nakinabang. “Sorry, Teddy.” “Okay lang ho ako,” sagot ng binatilyo, nakasubsob pa rin ang mukha. “May ibibigay sana ako sa inyo ni Maya,” sabi ni Bree. Kinapa niya sa kanang bulsa ang cellphone. Binunot niya ito, at noon lang nakita na nabasa pala ito habang nagpapambuno sila ng binatilyo. Pinindot-pindot niya ang cellphone. Walang nangyari. Napabuntong-hininga na lang si Bree. “Naku, Teddy. Pasensiya ka na. Nasira na pala itong cellphone ko.” “Okay lang ho,” sagot ng binatilyo. “Kung gusto mo, ibibigay ko pa rin sa iyo. Ipagawa mo na lang? Bibigyan na lang din kita ng pampagawa, saka ’yong charger—” “Salamat na lang ho.” “Ha? Anong salamat ka diyan? Puwede n’yo itong gamiting pang-selfie! Alam mo ba ’yon? ’Yong pipiktyuran mo ang mukha mo sa cellphone? Ayaw mo non, hindi ka na magnanakaw ng mga mukha?” “Hindi naman ho kami nanlilimos,” sagot ng binata. Dahil hindi alam kung ano ang isasagot, tumayo na lang si Bree at nagpagpag ng sarili. Nag-isip na lang siya ng mga posibleng paliwanag pagbalik, kung bakit mukha siyang nagpagulong-gulong sa basura. “Halika na?” aya niya sa binatilyo. “Hindi n’yo ba gustong makilala si Maya?” Napaisip si Bree. Sayang ang pagkakataon. Wala naman siyang gagawin, titingin lang, makikipagkuwentuhan siguro nang kaunti, saka magpapaalam. Pero paano na lang kung mapuno rin ng galit ang dibdib niya? Ayaw niyang matulad sa mga halos nabaliw na mamamayan ng mga Sitio Tagolilong. Ayaw rin niyang isipin ang mga posibleng mangyari kapag siya pa mismo ang

Chuckberry J. Pascual 205 magdadala sa sirena sa mga kamay ng mga abusadong kasamahan sa barangay hall. “Huwag na lang. Baka nahihiya rin siya. Saka nakakita na naman ako ng sirena.” Namilog ang mga mata ng binatilyo. “Talaga ho? Saan?” “Sa amin, sa Talong Punay.” “Niloloko n’yo naman ako, e.” “Hindi, Teddy. May mga sirena rin sa barangay namin,” sagot ni Bree. “Hindi lahat ng sirena, may buntot.” Nagkatawanan silang dalawa. Pagkuwa’y umangil ang tiyan ni Bree. Hinila niya sa braso si Teddy, at sabay silang naglakad pabalik sa kampo ng mga taga-Barangay Talong Punay.

206 Maikling Kuwento Tula

Pitong Tula BUBOY AGUAY

Pahimakas ng Liwanag

Pumanaw na sa dulo ng mga uhay ang huling hibla ng kanluran; nakamasid ang mga maya sa pananakop, pananakot ng dilim; hinahalukay ang balahibong nais iwaksi, iwisik ang kapit ng maghapon; kumikislot ang mga dalag sa putik sa unang haplos ng pagbibihis ng ligamgam at hahampasin ng buntot ang panlalamig ng paligid. Ilang sandali pa, mamimintana na ang mga bituin sa mga lusak kung saan umugat ang binti ng maykapal ng tumana na ngayon ay nakikibaka sa mga pangitain.

Homo Erectus (Hubo sa Recto)

Wala na sina Mark, Edward at Mike. Napabalitang nasaksak sa Bangkusay ang isa sa kanila; kumakayod ng pedicab naman ang isa sa Moriones at isa sa kanila ay kargador sa Divisoria. Dahil ang kuwento’y

209 nagpalipat-lipat sa bibig ng mga bakla at matrona, di na mahalaga kung sino sa kanila ang inaagnas na o humihingal sa pasada o kayod-kalabaw sa palengke; ang mahalaga, wala na sila sa Dilson Theatre. Hindi mo na kilala ang bagitong lumapit sa iyo kanina at nag-alok ng kapirasong karne, isang kibit ng balikat at iling na di matinag ang naging ganti mo sa kalabit. Papalayo ka na sa Avenida at salat mo ang hita habang nakadukot ang iyong kamay sa butas na bulsa ng iyong pantalon, bumabaon ang kuko mo sa iyong hita; pilit na hinahanap, inaapuhap kung may natitira pang pakiramdam ang Recto.

Sando

Kapag sumisilong ako sa aking sando bilang unang tangka ng pagbibihis para akong nag-aaral lumangoy. Kumakawag ang kamay ko sa itaas, ang ulo’y natatalukbungan, sumisinghap sa pagitan ng sedang damit; naliligaw ako roon sa aking kabataan at lumilitaw doon ang mga bakas ng tren-trenan; naririnig ko roon

210 Tula ang mga putok ng baril-barilan. Madalas tila iyon ang kubling lunan kung saan naitatago ko ang aking sarili sa lente ng mundo. Sandali lamang ako roon, pagdaka’y lilitaw ang ulo ko sa ibabaw ng damit didikit sa katawan ko ang seda; para akong nakagapos, ang tanging naigagalaw ko ay ang aking kaluluwa.

Sa Banda Recto

Bago iniluwa rito ng maligoy na tren si Trina, bagong ligo, luwa ang suso bumuntong-hininga muna ang Recto.

Santo Intierro Lámang ang Tulog

Sa Avenida, magkasabay na nagkukurus ang daangbakal at kalsada; ang paroo’t paritong sasakyan ay nagmistulang libing; ang mga tao’y isang kalbaryo lamang ang tinutungo, tanaw na tanaw sila ng Itim na Nazareno.

Buboy Aguay 211 Tatlong Poste Lámang ang Sukat ng Habambuhay

Isang kulintas lamang ang naibenta ni Nene buong maghapon; dalawa na ang kulay ng kanyang balat; buong araw tatlong halimuyak siya; habambuhay apat na buwaya ang hayok na hayok sa daan.

Ngayong Gabi

Sana magkunwaring karagatan ang higaan at ang mga unan ay maging mga sagwan tutulungan tayong gumaod sa higit na malalim pang kawalan Hahayaan nating magmistulang dambuhalang mga alon ang kobre kama’t kumot at hampasin tayo ng tangrib tulad ng ganti sa mga lapastangan at taksil. Ngayong gabi sasambahin natin ang dilim ng pagtatampisaw hanggang sa malunod tayo at lisanan ng lakas at hininga habang niyayakap ang karimlan kung saan lamang nagkakasilbi ang napakakikinang na bituin. Hayaan mong tipunin ko ang mga perlas sa bubon ng iyong pusod na gantimpala ng paninisid sa kaluluwa mong humulagpos tulad ng kung paanong hinayaan kitang baklasin ang mga kaliskis kong itinadhana na ng bigong pangingisda. Oo, hubad ako sa iyo ngayong gabi at noon pang ang higaan ay nangarap ng katabi.

212 Tula Kinalas mo na pala ang galeon DENNIS ANDREW S. AGUINALDO

Sa kabila ng mga laboratoryo panay puti ang mga rosal sa dakong atin. Sa mga dipang atin kamakalawa pa ho ang ngalay na ito. Kasalanan ba nino kung pula rin ang plasenta ng kaaway, at malauhog? Depende kung tao o lawin. At kung sistema, halina’t dumahak sa sistema kung wala ni isang lagas na talulot. Halika … panay langis ang mga kamay sa gigilid at nakagigigil ang imis ng mga piyesa. Inoorasan kapuwa ang kalas at kumpuni ang ahon at lusong ng mga biyas, at may ikalawang buhay ang kobre’t kumot sa ospital: may trapo sa ilalim ng kabinet. Sa ibabaw: yari sa balát ang sagisag.

213 Sasayaw ang Reyna

Uka-uka ang batya nang huli itong nakita. Kunwa-kunwaria’y halaman doon noon, habang hawak mo ang hos. Nakatikim ng ambulansiya ang aking anak. “Kaya mo naman ang ospital na ’yon; pasalamat ka’t hindi lahat ng tumawag ay nasundo, nakaranas.” Ulanan natin ang halakhak hanggang umapaw ang asoge, at ayan, heto, malalaki na tayo, at muli’t lagi, pikon ang talo. Biyak na ang poso, salamat. Matagal nang gumuho ang batalan.

Ang nakalipas ay ibabalik natin

Samantala, daratnan tayo ng ulan sa bakawan. Inaasahan kasi natin ang mga tagak sa lumang tanggapan ng putikang kalabaw. Tanda mo pa ba kung tagasaan siya sa burol? Ipapaalala ko sa ’yo / kahit maputi Inihatid tayo ng kanyang paragos sa panteon kung saan walang gripo o saksakan ng koryente (“Hayaan mo … susulitin natin ang baterya”). Sa mga patlang sa pagitan ng mga ilang-ilang; naghihimulmol na ang mga uwak. Tuyo ang lupa sa laylayan ng kanyang pantalon noon. At musmos pa ang kuwelyo nang ginayakan mo ako ng mga amorseko.

214 Tula Inaanyayahan ang tubig lalo’t hindi pa hungkag na hungkag ang sisidlan ng shampoo. Sisimutin ng pandesal ang bawat bakas ng malasado sa plato. Maipapagpag pa ang pakete ng kape. Sa lamig kagabi, namaluktot tayo sa magkabilang piraso ng watawat. Ang hindi mapipisil. Gupitin ang puwit ng toothpaste at bulalo itong dukutin ng sepilyo. Sino man ang magtaktak ng utak sa hapag ng mga langgam ay walang ilalagda sa lupa. Pasaiyo’t humaharurot ang aking mga traysikel.

Ano itong dinadala mo sa mga taong hindi marunong magpakintab ng sahig? Nagpigil ka, at sa halip ay nagwika: Narito ako sa harap mo, hypoallergenic akong lumalapit … Nais kitang hawakan, ngunit baka hindi ko maatim ang napipintong pagbitaw. Tila sahig ng klasrum sa mababang paaralan mamula-mula ang paahon ng iyong mga pisngi sa rali noon. Ipagpatawad ang mga binitbit kong cola para sa iyo. Ano mang namagitan sa ati’y hindi ko pa naididighay. Labinlimang taon na ito, apat na ang anak mo

Dennis Andrew S. Aguinaldo 215 at mapaghahay iskul silang lahat ng real estate. Kukuha sana ako sa iyo ng lupa … kung kakayanin ko ang iyong porsiyento, kung hindi pa huli kung sapat ang patubig at matatamnan.

Kinalas mo na pala ang galeon

Kahoy na lamang ang mga kahoy. Tapos na ang kuntsabahan ng mga lumuting lubid nakaliskisan ang korte ng mga isda. Husto na ang palabas. Hindi sa hindi ka man lang humingi ng tulong; salamat, hindi ka humingi ng tulong at sa halip: ang pagsisiwalat ng hingalo ’yong walang iyak tipong bagyo ngunit walang ulan. Wais itong bata, ang gusto raw ay arko kasi nga naman may pinto. Ganito ka sasagot— “Dibuho lang iyan, ineng, lulunurin ka ng pinto”— kung mananatili ka. (Aba’y pares-pares sila kung umakyat—bakit hindi mabilang ang mga nagpaiwan sa pier?) “Lulunurin ka ng pinto sa tunay na buhay.”

216 Tula Gamot na pula

Aming iniintindi kung hindi ngayon, bakit pa mahapdi na, pinahahapdi pa ninyo mapula na, papupulahin pang lalo hindi ba’t kay laki ng kamay ninyo kung sa kamay rin lang tayo tititig at kung hindi sa parteng ito, saan sino ang sa inyo at magpapakasakit kung hindi sa inyo, kanino ho kami? Higit ang hapdi ng hapding inuunawa.

Dennis Andrew S. Aguinaldo 217 Di lang Laláng MARK ANGELES

T’nalak

Kumunday-kunday ang tapis na t’nalak—humapong rara avis— pumagaspas at umawit. Bakas sa mewel ang kathambuhay ng libon at ng buo niyang angkan. Ito ang mewet ng T’boli sa kalikasan: Hindi kailanman mapapatid. Maging sa bugtong na panaginip magpapatuloy ito sa pag-ikid. Bawat hulwaran ay namumukod-tangi dahil panagimpan ang talang nalimi sa talaytay ng pula, itim, at puti. Paghiga ng libon sa nakikiramay na kama, matiyaga siyang maghihintay na mabisita ni Fu Dalu na siyang diwata ng abaka. Handurawan ay ikikintal sa kanyang noo ng milagrosang si Fu Dalu tulad ng bathalang nanaginip ng mundo. Maaaring ang pahayag ay tigulang, mga butiki, dahong nagsasayaw, langkay ng ulap, tutubi sa parang.

218 Maaaring mabalasik na kampana, nagliliparang mga pana, kalasag ng mandirigma. Banal na ang libon mula pagkagising at hindi na maaaring abalahin, kailangang ang abaka ay konsagrahin. Ihihiwalay sa bunton ng sapal ang gagamiting mga himaymay bago harapin ang habihan. Kailangang dagta ay kumapit: pula sa katapangan at pag-ibig; itim sa paghahamok at ligalig. Sakripisyo ang paghimpil sa blaba. Kailangang hulwaran ay umalagwa sa bawat buhol at lala sa tela. Hindi pinapayagang sumiping ang libong naatangan ng tungkulin tulad ng isang alay na birhen. Aabutin ng ilang buwan ang sakripisyo kaya laman ng isip, masagrado t’nalak na tagapamagitan sa dibino. Kubong ang t’nalak ng kapuwa-lumad, lampin ng bagong panganak, kaloob sa kasal kapag nagbabasbas. Hindi maaaring tabasin o labhan at kung ikakalakal, sa tanso ilagay kung ayaw magkasakit o mamatay. Tuwing ang libon ay nananaginip nalalantad sa kanya ang daigdig. Maging mga badya ng panganib.

Mark Angeles 219 Itim. Gumapang ang itim sa t’nalak. Mariin ang babala ni Fu Dalu sa lumad: Dumating na ang mga mangwawasak! Wala nang masilungan ang mga ibon, mga ilog ay sinaluyan na ng lason. Itim. Itim ang panaginip ng mga libon. Ngunit si Fu Dalu na rin ang nagdala ng balitang tigmak ng panibagong pag-asa: sa t’nalak dadanak ang tingkad ng pula.

Vakul

Ikalawang buhok ngunit hindi lumago mula sa anit. Insignia ng fenix sa yugto ng lagablab bilang taga sa gunita ng awanggan at muling pagkabuhay. Lalang mulang vuyavuy, saksi sa pangitain ng pagbabagong -bihis ng munting arkipelago sa dakong hilaga— Wala nang natira sa mga mandirigmang umaawit ng rawod.

220 Tula Wala nang dumadalaw sa mga puntod na may bakod-batong balangkas-bangka maliban sa mga turista at arkeologo. Wala nang ibig magbasa ng langit sa pagdating ng sigwada. Nagsilakihan na ang mga sanggol na iniwan sa mga vakul habang nagbubungkal ng ube’t kamote ang kani-kanilang ina. Marami nang nagtatanim ng kani-kanilang paa sa mga banyagang bayan; ni ayaw nang manghayuma o mangkurag ng dibang. Tila ba tigib ng nakalipas ang Batanes. Tinitibag ang korales at kalisang bahay para sa kongkreto’t bakal. Ang vakul na panangga sa sungit ng panahon ay iniwang inuuban.

Mark Angeles 221 Takaan

Kabayong kahoy na nilikha para itago sa pagawaan, hinahaplos kang gaya ng isang bathala. Matapos kang damtan ng balita muli ring susugatan. Salat ang talas ng sundang sa katawan. Itinaga sa bato ang patibay: ilang ulit mang maghunos ng hiram na balat, ilang kuwadra man ang kinapal, hindi ka matatawaran.

Manunggul

Umuugit, hindi sumasagwan ang gumagaod sa taluktok ng tapayang manunggul. Dalawang katao sa magkabilang dulo ng bangka, wala ni layag o katig. Hindi na kakailanganin pagka’t hindi gigiwang o tatalikwas;

222 Tula pagka’t hindi kailanman naligaw ang bangkero. Nakahalukipkip ang pasaherong kanyang itatawid— kaluluwa ng yumaong ang mga buto ay nakasilid sa bangang sinakluban, pinahiyasan ng alimbukay. Mabibilang sa mga daliri ang mga dalumat kung ano ang himala ng matandang tapayang natagpuan sa karurukan ng matarik na dalisdis: Isang kasunduan sa pagitan ng baylan at Nagsalad: hindi magiging maunos ang paghahatid sa inmortalidad kaya’t nakatanaw sa karagatang may gayak na sangyutang antitilaw.

Mark Angeles 223 Plakang Tanso

Ipinahahayag ng batbat sa pilas na tanso ang kahatulan sa mga buhay na supling ni Namwran; isang tipan sa pagitan ng panginoon at maginoo. Anong ginto itong pinag-ugatan ng pagkakautang? kasimbigat ng sampung buhay; naisasalin sa kaapu-apuhan? Sa wawa ng Lumbang natagpuang nakalulón ang talaan sa binistay na buhangin: sapantaha ng deskubridor ay ginto ang nadukal— natanso nang matantong tanso ang lumitaw. Bulawan ang naminang makislap na plakang nakalahok sa alabok; sampung siglong naghintay ng dudukal. Pinakamatanda sa kaban ng katibayang ginintuan ang kabihasnan ng tinubuang bayan bago nadiwalwal sa krus at limbas. Bulawan gaya ng mga pahiyas sa katawan ng nabubuhay at nawara tulad ng marangal na si Namwran—gintong hikaw, gintong kuwintas, gintong pulseras, gintong sinturon, gintong ngipin; gintong bathala

224 Tula na tampulan ng mithi; gintong budhi na tahasang isinalang sa timbangan katapat ng kalakal. Tiim-bagang na tinanggap ang inakalang kapalaran: kaalipnan sa halagang ilang tipak ng ginto. Binatbat doon sa pumusyaw nang pahina ang lahat, ang lahat-lahat ng maaari pang lingunin. Isang pilas ng tansong badha at mukha ng nakalipas. Isang labí, isang labíng nawawala ang kapingas.

Mark Angeles 225 Estranghero at Iba Pang Mga Tula ALLAN POPA

Estranghero

May naitago ka na bang tao? Ako, tatlo. Isa sa aking pitaka, isa sa ilalim ng kama, at isa sa aklat, sa pagitan ng mga pahina. Gaano man kakitid, naipagkasiya ko sila. Isinuot ko ang mukha ng pagmamaang-maangan upang walang makahalata. Sa salamin hindi ko nakilala ang sariling mukha. Natuto akong sumipol upang magbigay ng babala na nasa may bintana ang naghahanap. Sa awang at bitak nag-abot ako ng pagkain, mumunting mumo at patak-patak ng maiinom sa loob ng maraming taon.

226 Napakaliit ng kanilang pangangailangan. Natuto akong makinig sa pinakamahinang bulong. Naturuan ko ang mga mata na makita ang pagdapo ng alabok sa sulatang mesa. Hanggang isang araw naglaho sila sa kaliitan at pagbukas ko ng pintuan nakita ko sila sa sanlibutan.

Tarangkahan

Hindi iyak ng babae ang narinig mo sa kusina kanina kundi nagdaang hangin lamang. Hindi hangin kundi katok sa pinto ang iyong pinagbukasan. Hindi katok sa pinto kundi tunog ng kadenang kinakaladkad sa semento. Hindi kadena kundi takatak ng lumang makinilya. Hindi makinilya kundi tunog ng paglakad ng isang bata sa mahabang pasilyo na nag-iwan ng mga bakas sa alikabok. Hindi mumunting hakbang kundi lagaslas ng tubig mula sa gripo sa tuyong banyo. Hindi tubig kundi sapatos ng nars na may dalang heringgilyang puno ng pampatulog. Hindi puting sapatos kundi umaapaw na laylayan ng abito ng paring walang ulo. Nakatingin siya sa malayo. Mahal na Mambabasa, nagtatagpo tayo nang mata sa mata, hindi mo man ako nakikita.

Allan Popa 227 Biyahe

May nakatabi akong ale sa loob ng siksikang jeep. Hindi siya mapakali. Bubuksan ang bag sa kanyang kandungan, hahalughugin, isasara, bubuksan muli. Nakangingilo ang paroo’t parito ng zipper. Lumaki nang lumaki ang kanyang ligalig sa gitna ng trapik at nasagi ang aking bisig. Bumuka ang kanyang bibig. May umalpas na ungol, ilang katagang naipit sa galit na hindi mawika, hindi mabuo ang mura na dumiriin sa ngalangala. Hindi ako napakali. Hindi nakausog. Sinilip ko ang sariling bag. Wala roon ang hinahanap. Hindi ko malaman kung saan ibabaling ang tingin. Wari ko nakatitig ang lahat ng pasahero sa akin. Hanggang magsalubong ang aming mga matang punong-puno ng pangamba at habag sa isa’t isa.

228 Tula Ang Tagagawa ng Palaisipan

Katulad ng silid mo, may apat na sulok din ang kanyang silid. Ngunit sa pakiramdam niya, hindi pantay ang haba ng bawat panig. Gusto niyang tinatalikuran ang bintana. Lagi niyang iniiwang bahagyang nakaawang ang pinto. Hindi niya rin ito hinaharap. Pipikit siya para makiramdam. Kapag sapat na ang talas ng mga linyang hindi nagtatagpo, ilalatag niya sa mesa ang blangkong papel. At hahanay ang mga liwanag na pinahintulutan niya sa silid sa kanyang likuran. Umaga na. Punong-puno ng mapagkukublihan ang mga sulok ng kanyang silid.

Pinakamahaba ang Gabi sa Panitikan

Isa kang bata sa harap ng estrangherong naghihingalo sa gitna ng gubat. Mabigat ang kanyang habilin na tila hindi makakayang gawin ng mumunti mo pang kamay ngunit susunod ka sa kanyang pakiusap. Hahakutin mo ang mga panggatong para gumawa ng apoy na susunog sa kanyang bangkay. Kasama niyang mabubura ang iyong ina. Hindi sila maaaring makilala. Minsan nang lumambitin sa iyong harap ang daan palayo sa anyo ng mahabang lubid mula sa bunganga ng kampanang basyo ang tinig sa iyong pandinig. Hindi mo ito nagawang kapitan o igapos sa sariling leeg.

Allan Popa 229 Nakadiin ang gabi sa katawan ng lalaking hindi mo malalapitan. Ikaw ang huling makakikita sa kanyang mukha, bata.

Alinsunod Kay Victor Hugo

Sa kabila ng karahasang nagawa natin sa isa’t isa, sa kabila ng mga kasinungalingan na pinaniwalaan upang makapahinga, sa kabila ng mga pagdurusang pinipiling hindi makita, sa kabila ng mga nilimot na, magsusulat ka, gamit ang mga kamay na marami na ring nagawang pagkakasala, ngunit naniniwalang may mababago pa, kahit munti, kahit kaunti, dito sa pahina, ibig sabihin, dito sa lupa.

230 Tula Sanaysay

Pugon na De-Gulong CHRISTOPHER S. ROSALES

oong bata pa ako, mga lima o anim na taong gulang, pangarap ko Ntalagang maging isang mahusay na mandirigma. Maging tulad ni Pedro Penduko na nakapapatay ng iba’t ibang maligno, o ni Nardong Putik na hindi tinatablan ng mga bala, o ni Panday na nakagagapi ng masasamang-loob sa isang wasiwas lang ng espada. Makalipas ang halos isa’t kalahating dekada, natupad din naman ang hiling ko. Naging isang mandirigma nga ako. Iyon nga lang, wala pa rin akong taglay na anumang natatangi o nakabibilib na kapangyarihan. Hindi ko pa rin kayang iurong ang bundok sa pamamagitan ng mga daliri, pagalawin ang mga bagay gamit ang isip, magbuga ng apoy o sapot sa palad, o saluhin ang bumubulusok na eroplano sa kalangitan. Mandirigma akong ang tanging armas lang ay tibay ng tuhod, lakas ng gulugod, at mahabang-mahabang pasensya. Mandirigma akong walang tama ng bala o daplis ng kampilan mula sa mga kalaban, kundi mitig sa binti, gasgas sa braso, at sandamakmak na paltos at kalyo sa paa. Mandirigma akong araw-araw na nakikibaka sa trapik sa kalsada, araw-araw na nakikipagpatintero sa peligro ng pagsakay sa mga tren ng Maynila. Maaaring ang tingin sa akin ng ilan ay isang simpleng komyuter lang. Ngunit sa tagal na ng panahong nakikipagbuno ko sa dagsa at agos ng libo-libo, pulu-pulutong, bata-batalyong pasahero ng tren lalong- lalo na sa Pambansang Daang-Bakal ng Pilipinas (PNR), masasabi kong isa na akong magiting at full-blooded na Spartan (minus the abs siyempre pa).

Kompanyerong De-Gulong Totoo, naging malaking bahagi na ng buhay ko ang mga daang-bakal ng Maynila. Noong nag-aaral pa ako ng pag-iinhenyero sa isang unibersidad malapit sa Luneta, limang taon din akong naging suki ng noo’y tig-isandaang stored value card ng LRT na siyang nagsalba sa ’kin upang di na suungin ang araw-araw- na-ginawa-ng-Diyos na trapik sa Taft Ave. tuwing umaga. Noong kasagsagan

233 ng bagyo at parang bulto ng mga ipis na pinausukan at nagsilabasan sa kani- kanilang mga lungga ang alon ng mga tao, ang LRT ang naging takbuhan ng mga gaya kong basang-basa, nanginginig sa lamig, nakayapak, at parang busabos na buhat ang sariling nanggigitatang mga sapatos matapos lumusong sa abot-tuhod na baha sa Maynila. Noong makatanggap ako ng dalawang malutong at mainit-init na singko sa major at minor subjects ko, sa himpilan ng LRT ko minuni-binuo ang mga tamang salita at lakas ng loob upang sabihin ko sa mga magulang ko na, Ma, Pa, sori talaga, pumalpak ako, hindi na ’ko makakalibre ng pambaon at tuition, sibak na ako sa DOST scholarship ko. Noong minsang mahuli ako ng gising para sa isang pambansang kompetisyon kung saan ako pa naman ang naatasang maging presenter ng aming thesis/ project study, naging kaibigang karamay ko ang PNR na siyang sumaklolo sa ’kin upang umabot pa ako sa nakatakdang iskedyul. Noong nagre-review na ako para sa board exam, sa PNR ako sumasakay upang di maipit sa usad- millipede na trapik sa Quiapo pabagtas ng Morayta at España. Sa pagtatapos ng unang araw ng makabagbag-utak naming board exam, naging sandalan kong balikat ang PNR (na himala-sa-lahat-ng-himala ay kakaunti lang noon ang nakasakay) upang makaidlip ako ng kung ilang minuto at matanggal ang lahat ng lumiliglig na ligalig sa aking isip. Noong maging isang ganap na nga akong lisensiyadong inhenyero, sa PNR pa rin ako sumakay upang magsimba at magpasalamat kay St. Jude at Nazareno. At ngayon ngang nagtatrabaho na ako sa isang telco sa Makati, ang luma at kinakalawang na mga bagon ng PNR pa rin ang nagdadala sa akin pauwi ng bahay. Para na talaga kaming magkumpare, magkatropa ng mga tren ng Maynila. Naging kasa-kasama ko ang mga bagon sa lungkot at saya, pait at glorya ng liko-tuwid-kurbang biyahe sa daang-bakal ng buhay. Sa pitong taon kong pagiging komyuter ng tren, masasabi kong bihasa na ako sa pagsakay dito. Kabisado ko na ang pangalan ng halos lahat ng mga estasyon sa lungsod. Aral ko na ang lengguwahe ng pagal-sa-maghapong mga bagon, ang tamang tinis at tempo ng umuugong nitong sipol, ang heometriya ng pakiwal-kiwal na kinakalawang na mga riles na pinamumulaklakan sa gilid ng mga tambay at iskuwater, ang siyensiya ng pagtitig sa wala habang ngarag na pumipila sa kahera ng tiket. Kung magkakaroon lang siguro ng mga asignatura sa eskuwela tungkol sa pagkokomyut, pwede nang i-ruler ang TOR ko sa dami ng uno. Kung saka-sakali, baka nga nag-cum laude pa ako.

234 Sanaysay Bachelor of Science in Tulakan, Major in Siksikan, with Specialization in Mahabang Pilahan Maituturing na ngang isang kurso ang maka-survive bilang komyuter ng tren sa Maynila. Ang guro mo rito—karanasan. Ang silid-aralan—ang himpilan na nag-eextend hanggang sa kalsada. At ang exam na nagsisilbing sukatan kung pasado ka ba o bagsak—kung makararating ka sa pupuntahan mo nang nasa oras, umalis ka man sa inyong bahay nang advanced o sakto lang. Ang LRT ang unang humubog at nagturo sa ’kin ng “basic skills” sa pagiging komyuter sa tren. Kumbaga sa regular na institusyon ng edukasyon, dito ako nag-kinder, elementary, at high school. Sa LRT ako nahasang tumakbo nang ubod-tulin—parang Super Mario na naka-turbo—sa tuwing sumisilbato na ng pag-alis ang tren at humahabol pa ako sa pagpasok sa tumitikom na salaming-pinto ng mga bagon. Dito ko rin natutuhang magbalanse ng sarili tulad ng isang sirkero—tumayo sa gitna ng tren nang hindi humahawak sa handrails, at hindi matumba o makadagan ng iba sa biglang liko-talbog-kalabog-hinto ng mga bagon. (Ang teknik ay simple lang: salungain ang direksiyon ng puwersa. Kung hihinto ang tren sa kanan, itulak ang sarili pakaliwa. Kung umalog ang tren at mahuhulog ka na paharap, itulak ang sarili patalikod. Mahalaga rin na may sapat na espasyo sa pagitan ng iyong mga paa upang malubos ang kakayahang mabalanse ang katawan. Dapat ding ituon parati ang lakas sa ’yong binti, daliri ng mga paa, at sakong upang hindi agad-agarang mahulog). Sa LRT ko rin natutuhang matulog nang nakatayo, at tantiyahin kung nasaang estasyon na ako kahit nakapikit pa ako. Siyempre pa, dito rin ako naging maláy sa iba’t ibang uri ng mga kawatan, kaya nga ni minsan sa buhay ko ay hindi pa talaga ako nadudukutan. Kabisado ko na ang mga estilo nila. May Salisi Gang, may Laglag-Piso Gang, may Gitgit-Sabay- Dagit Gang, at may Gawa-Tayo-Ng-Eskandalo-Para-Madistact-Ang-Mga- Tao-At-Makadekwat-Ang-Kasamahan-Natin Gang. Pagkalipas ng limang taon, nang lisanin ko na ang aking Alma Mater at gumradweyt bilang pasahero sa LRT, tumuloy naman ako sa bagong yugto ng buhay-komyuter ko. Ang inang ugat ng lahat ng riles sa buong estado, ang kolehiyo ng mga nagsasabarbarong pasahero—ang PNR. Maraming nagsasabi na malaimpiyerno ang sumakay sa LRT at MRT. Lagi itong binabanggit sa mga salimbibig, higit lalo sa diyaryo, radyo, at

Christopher S. Rosales 235 TV. Mas pokus kasi lagi ang midya sa dalawang tren na iyan. Pero lingid sa kaalaman ng marami, mas impiyerno sa pinakaimpiyerno ang PNR. Dito, kailangan mo talaga ng matinding resistensiya at tatag ng loob para makatagal. Parang Hunger Games lang, “may the odds be ever in your favor.” Kung hindi, tanggal ka. Ligwak ka. Talo ka. O kung minalas-malas pa, baka ang uwi mo’y hindi na sa bahay kundi sa ospital na. Sa PNR, kapag sinabing siksikan, SIKSIKAN talaga. Exaggerated man sabihin, totoong mas close pa kayo ng mga katabi mo kaysa sa dalawang butas ng ilong mo. Gamit na gamit maski ang pinakakatiting na milimetro kuwadradong espasyo sa sahig. Huwag na huwag kang magkakamaling iangat ang isang braso mo dahil di mo na ’yan maibababa pagkatapos. Pati ang paa mo ay huwag na huwag mo ring itataas nang kahit isang segundo. Tiyak, pagbaba mo niyan, pulos sapatos, tsinelas, at sandalyas na ang maaapakan mo. Nangyari na kasi sa ’kin ’yan. Halos sampung minuto rin ako noong nakakandirit sa loob ng tren. Nasa gitna pa man din ako kaya wala akong makapitang anumang handrail. Nanginginig na talaga ang mga binti ko sa sobrang ngalay at mitig. Wala akong choice kundi magpaubaya na lang sa pag-urong-sulong, pagpaling pakaliwa’t kanan ng dagat-dagatang mga tao. Kahit weekends, balyahan pa rin sa PNR, lalo na kung Linggo. Ang dating 30 minuto kasing pagitan sa pagbiyahe ng mga tren ay nagiging isang oras. Kung kaya, naiipon nang naiipon ang mga pasahero sa loob at labas ng estasyon na sa sobrang dami’y aakalain mong may gaganapin na munting People Power Revolution. Buti na lang talaga at una na ’kong nahasa’t nahubog sa LRT. Hindi na gayon kabigat ang mag-adjust sa serbisyo/perhuwisyong hatid ng naturingan pa namang pambansang daang-bakal ng bansa. Sa PNR, hindi uso ang beep card o anumang magnetic card sa entrance. Ang meron lang dito’y munting papel na tiket na kalimitang pinambabalot ng tsiklet o sinusulatan ng Can u be my textm8? Walang anumang makina o detektor dito na makahaharang sa mga di nagbayad ng pamasahe, kaya umaasa na lang talaga ang buong pamunuan sa Pinagkakatiwalaan Kita System. Mayroon namang inspektor kung minsan na nag-iikot-ikot sa mga bagon at naniningil ng kaukulang multa sa mga nahuling di nagbayad. Ang kaso, dahil para ngang San Marino corned tuna ang mga tao sa loob ng mga bagon, madalang pa sa blue moon at umento sa sahod at regularisasyon ng mga kontraktuwal kung maglibot ang inspektor.

236 Sanaysay Upang makasakay agad sa PNR-Buendia, isa sa mga ninja moves na ginagawa ko ay ang pag-angkas sa pinakadulong bagon nito. Doon kasi bahagyang mas kaunti ang mga tao. Kung bakit ay dahil ang bahaging ito ay hindi naman nakatapat sa elevated platfrom kundi sa kalsada na mismo. Kaya naman tanging ang mga alagad lang ni Taguro ang nangangahas na magtungo rito. May munting hagdang-bakal naman sa gilid na puwedeng sampahan upang makaakyat. Pero sa oras na balyahan na talaga at pumipito na ang guwardiya tanda ng pag-arangkada muli ng tren, kailangan mo na talagang humingi ng tulong at magpaakay sa mga nasa itaas. Siyempre pa, kung pahirapan ang pag-akyat, pahirapan din ang pagbaba. Dahil ilang dipa rin ang taas ng tren mula sa lupa, kailangang matibay ang tuhod mo upang kayanin ang grabedad ng paglundag. Sa karanasan ko, parang tinatambol na gong ang bayag ko sa tuwing lumulukso ako mula sa itaas. Para na rin akong nagpa-parkour. Ang problema pa, sa estasyon ng FTI kung saan ako bumababa, hindi patag ang tatalunang lupa kundi mistulang burol na may mga bato-bato pa. Minsan nga ay nagkamali ako ng bagsak at bigla akong natapilok pagkaapak ko sa lupa. Ilang araw din ako nu’ng parang bagong tuli na iika-ika habang naglalakad. Noon, wala ring mga plakard sa PNR na nagsasabi kung nasaang estasyon ka na. Kailangan talagang maging alerto ka’t mapagmasid, kung hindi’y baka sa Tutuban o Alabang ka na makarating. Bawat preno ng tren ay required ka talagang maghagilap ng anumang palatandaan o landmarks. Di kasi gaya sa LRT at MRT na sa bawat hinto ay ibubunghalit ng drayber/announcer ang kasalukuyan at susunod na estasyon ng tren, sa PNR ay madalang itong mangyari, lalong-lalo na tuwing gabi. Ang totoo niyan, mas ipinapanalangin ko pa nga minsan na huwag nang magsalita ang drayber/announcer ng PNR. Kalimitan kasi, kapag narinig na ang garalgal niyang tinig sa lumang speaker, tiyak na pagkasira ng makina at pagkaantala ng biyahe lang naman ang iaanunsiyo niya. So shut up na lang sana siya, hindi ba? Nagkaroon lang ng mga bagong pintang plakard sa mga estasyon ng PNR nang magkaroon ito ng renobasyon bunsod na rin ng aksidenteng kinasangkutan nito nang minsan itong tumagilid at madeskaril sa may gawing Magallanes at magtigil ng operasyon sa loob ng halos tatlong buwan. (Naglalakad ako ng lisensiya ko sa PRC noong hapong iyon ng Abril 29. Mabuti na lang talaga at may dinaanan pa ako sa SM Manila kaya hindi na ako nag-PNR. Kung hindi, marahil ay naging isa ako sa humigit-kumulang 80 na nasugatan at napilayan sa nakahihindik na insidenteng iyon.) Nang

Christopher S. Rosales 237 magbalik-riles ang mga bagon ng PNR noong Hulyo 23, 2015, isa ako sa mga unang nakasaksi at nakaramdam ng pagbabago rito. Mas naghigpit na ang mga guwardiya sa paligid. May mga nangangasiwa na rin sakaling may mga sumisingit sa pila ng tiket. Mas maaliwalas na ring tingnan ang mga himpilan. Sa loob ng tren ay hindi na rin gaanong siksikan at damang-dama ko pa ang napakalamig na bugso ng aircon sa kisame. (Dati kasi ay maligamgam na hangin ang lumalabas dito at parang bentilador lang na naka-number 1.) Tuwang-tuwa talaga ako noong araw na ’yon. Sabi ko sa sarili ko, shet, ang sarap-sarap, sana araw-araw ganito, damang-dama ko ’yong pinatutunguhan ng tax ko.

Pero hindi rin pala ’yon magtatagal. Kamag-anak pala ni Steve Harvey ang PNR. Na-Colombia ako. Sa mga sumunod na araw at linggo ay bumalik muli sa kinamihasnang chaotic na sitwasyon ang PNR. O baka mas lumala pa nga kaysa dati. Nag-I shall return ang matinding problema sa pilahan, tulakan, siksikan, singitan, dukutan, at delayed na biyahe. Noon ko lang napagtanto na kaya siguro kakaunti lang ang mga tao no’ng unang araw ay dahil hindi pa informed ang lahat na umaarangkada na muli ang tren. Unti-unti ay pumalya na rin ang ilan sa mga aircon. Naging bentilador na sila ulit na naka-number 1. Sa kabilang banda, tulad ng MRT at LRT, natatakdaan din kung sino ang mga pasaherong maaaring sumakay sa bawat bagon ng PNR. Ang unang dalawang bagon ay para lamang sa mga babae, matatanda, at may kapansanan. Ang mga natitira naman ay malaya nang sakyan ng lahat, subalit ang karamihan ng mga pumipisan dito ay pulos kalalakihan. Pero kung minsan, lalo na sa katirikan ng rush hour, may mangilan-ngilan pa ring mga dalagita na nangangahas na makisiksik sa isinumpa-sa-sikip na bagon ng mga lalaki. Ewan kung dahil nahuli lang sa pagbili ng tiket, o sadyang punuan na rin sa puwesto ng mga babae, o sadyang single lang at naghahanap ng ka-sparks sa tren. Sa mga ganitong sitwasyon sumusulpot na parang kabute ang mga gumagalawang Breezy na pobre. May ilang pasimpleng nang- aakbay o nanggigitgit upang madikit sa porselanang braso/balikat/binti ng dalaga. May ibang hayagang nang-iipit upang mamasdan nang masinsinan kundi man lubusang makadaupang-katawan ang nanunuksong “hinaharap” ng morenang kolehiyala. Mayroon ding matitindi—humu-Hokage level. Sinasadyang itapat-ilapat ang tigang nilang “bukana” sa maumbok na likuran

238 Sanaysay ng kaawa-awang dalagita. Bagama’t paminsan-minsan ay makasusumpong sa bawat bagon ng mga nakapaskil na babala ukol sa RA 9262 o “Anti-Violence Against Women and their Children Act of 2004,” ang mga ganitong uri ng karumal-dumal na insidente ay patuloy pa ring nagaganap. Hindi naman fatal ang trapik, sabi nga ni dating DOTC Sec. Jun Abaya. Hindi naman fatal ang maging isang regular na komyuter sa Maynila. Hindi mo naman ikamamatay kung ma-late ka at makaltasan ang gamumo mo na ngang sahod na nauna na ring kinaltasan ng gobyerno na hindi mo rin malaman kung saang bulsa ng impaktong malignong demonyo napupunta. (Sa ipinapatayong mansiyon ba ni senador o sa mga pa-jueteng ni gobernor o sa mga kerida ni mayor? O baka naman sa air-conditioned na babuyan ni Nognog?) Hindi mo naman ikamamatay kung ma-suffocate ka ng kung ilang minuto tuwing sira ang naghihingalong aircon, samantalang kasuklam- suklam ang bentilasyon sa loob ng mga bagon at hindi mabuksang ganap ang mga salaming-bintana upang may makapasok namang sariwang hangin mula sa labas (na kung tutuusin ay hindi naman talaga sariwa dahil malaon nang giniyagis nang buong bangis ng polusyon sa kalsada). Hindi mo naman ikamamatay kung matuyuan ka ng gabaldeng pawis sa ’yong likod, kung mabilad ka sa gitna ng tirik na tirik at sing-init ng bagong kulong tubig na araw, kung magsulputang parang mapa ng Ermita ang mga ugat sa ’yong binti at eyeballs sa kapipila, kapipila araw-araw, araw-araw. Hindi iyon ikamamatay ng mga pasaherong sakitin, hikain, may komplikasyon sa puso, may kapansanan, at uugod-ugod na. Paespesyal? Nag-iinarte? Nagmamaselan? Anak-mayaman? Hindi nila ’yon ikasasawi, ano ba. Hindi rin ikamamatay ng mga babae kung mahipuan sila’t madungisan ang puri gayong wala silang magawa kundi magtiis, manahimik, at magsawalang-kibo kesyo rush hour, kesyo gano’n talaga at siksikan, kesyo choice nilang sumakay sa tren kaya magdusa sila. Hindi, hindi naman fatal ang maging komyuter. Anong fatal do’n? Sa’n banda do’n ang fatal? Pakituro nga. Fatal ng ina niya.

Tren, Tren Desarapen Mabuti na lang talaga, no’ng nagpaulan ng ka-witty-han ang Diyos, may dalang palangganang sinlaki ng La Mesa Dam ang mga Filipino. Tingnan mo, subukan mong bigyan ng sunod-sunod na delubyo/sakuna/pasakit/ problema ang mga Pinoy. Tiyak, iiyak siya saglit sa isang tabi, magsasara ng pinto, hihikbi, mag-eemote, magbabato ng vase o naka-plastic na stuffed toy

Christopher S. Rosales 239 sa ibabaw ng kabinet, magwo-walling kung may malapit na dingding, pero maya-maya’y ngingiti na, magdyo-joke na, at sa tinig ng komedyanteng may sa-kabayo ay sisigaw ng isang nag-uumigting, tumataginting na “E di wow!” Kung ibang lahi ’yan, malamang ay matagal na silang nagbigti, tumalon sa gusali, o kaya’y nasiraan na ng ulo’t palaboy-laboy sa mga kanto at humihiyaw na hindi bilog, hindi oblate spheroid, kundi octagon ang mundo. Totoong hindi matatawaran ang pagiging resilient, masayahin, at bibo ng mga Filipino. Lalo pang tumitingkad ang kulturang ito sa mga panahon na walang-wala, wasak na wasak, basag na basag na tayo. Kumbaga, imbes na malungkot at magmukmok at magpakapangit ka sa isang sulok, piliin mo na lang na maging masaya. Idaan mo na lang ang nararamdaman mo sa paggawa ng mga nakakatawa ngunit sarkastikong memes, sa pagda-dubsmash, sa pagha- hashtag, sa pagpa-pabebe wave, sa paglikha ng mga hugot line. O kung artist ka, sa pagsusulat, sa pag-awit, sa pagtugtog, sa pagpinta. Hindi naman ito isang uri ng karuwagan, ng kahinaan, ng pagtakas sa bagsik ng realidad. Isang coping mechanism ito ng mga Pinoy upang sabihin sa sariling okey lang ’yan, kaya mo ’yan, ’yong bida nga sa pelikula sinuntok-sinapak at binaril na’t lahat-lahat, nakatayo pa’t nabuhay at may 3-minute monologue pa. Ikaw pa kaya? All is well, kapatid! Kani-kaniya rin ng paraan ang mga pasahero ng tren upang hindi maasar o mayamot o mabato sa loob ng kabit-kabit, kakarag-karag na mga bagon ng Maynila. May ilang nagbibisi-bisihan sa pagsi-COC, o nanonood ng telenobela sa I-Want TV, o nakatanghod sa bagong torrent na animé series. May ibang nagse-selfie, naggu-groufie. Maraming nagpapakalunod na lang sa pakikinig ng music. May ilan ding pirming umiidlip, kulang na lang ay latagan mo ng banig, kumot, at kulambo sa himbing ng kanilang tulog. May ibang panay ang chat at pakikipaglandian sa FB at Viber. May mangilan-ngilan ding dakila’t uliran na nagbabasa ng nobela o di kaya’y nagbubuklat-buklat ng kanilang teksbuk. (Di ko malilimutan ang isang bagitong estudyante noon na armado ng bolpen at Casio scientific calculator na kuntodong nagpapraktis mag-solve ng iba’t ibang Thermodynamics problems habang umaalog- alog ang tren na di mo malaman kung sadyang nagsisipag-sipagan lang o nagpapaka-ideal student o sadyang mamabi lang. As in mamabida. Takot ko lang kapag nagawi siya sa Luneta. Baka barilin siya doon!) Madalas, para na ring isang malaking entablado ng comedy bar ang mga bagon. Sa mga panahong sikip na sikip ka na, pawis na pawis ka na, pagod na pagod ka na sa loob ng kulob at nanggigitatang tren, may mga bigla na lang

240 Sanaysay hihirit-babanat na kung sino d’yan sa tabi-tabi na pihadong magpapahagalpak sa ’yo hanggang sa kaibuturan ng ingrown mo. At sasabihin mo sa sariling shet, ayos na ’ko, solb na ’ko, masaya na ulit ang mundo. Ilan sa malulupit at palong-palong punch lines na narinig ko sa loob ng PNR ay ang mga ito: Tapos na New Year, ah. Bakit may paputok pa rin? Mawalang-galang na, kuya. Ang paksiw, inuulam, hindi ginagawang pabango. Kasiya pa ’yan, maluwag ’yan! Araw-araw ginagamit! Huwag mo po silang salubungin sa paglabas! Hindi mo sila kamag-anak! Oy, ate, kalma lang, huwag ka masyadong manulak. Sige ka, baka ma- “fall ” ako sa ’yo. Kanina ’pag pasok ko, kamukha ko pa si Alden. No’ng paglabas ko, kamukha ko na si Jose! Putsa, ’yong matris ko naipit! Baka reglahin ako nang wala sa oras! Hoy, totoy, huwag kang ilusyonada! Gusto mong masapak at nguso mo ang magregla? Minsan pa, isang grupo ng mga kabataan ang naringgan kong nakapag- akda ng parodiya habang nakasalampak sa maalikabok na sementadong sahig ng estasyon at naghihintay sa karimlan ng gabi kung kailan susulpot sa guhit- tagpuan ng langit at lungsod ang matang-bombilya sa noo ng PNR.

Tren, tren desarapen Bandila na, wala pa rin. Awts, awts, laging sira’t Tumitirik. Braso’y pili-pilipit, Haggard, losyang Pag-uwi sa bahay! Siyempre pa, hindi rin mawawala ang mga nakakaaliw na eksena sa PNR na ala-Banana Split o Bubble Gang. Minsan, may mga aleng parang nasa bahay lang na pirming nagkukutuhan, naglilisaan. May isang lalaki rin dati na sa katatawa sa pinanonood niyang video sa YouTube ay bigla siyang nauntog nang matunog na matunog sa matigas na hawakang-bakal, subalit imbes na hipuin ang bukol sa ulo ay tumikhim lang siya at humagikhik muli at nagpanggap na walang sinuman ang nakasaksi sa naganap na 5 seconds

Christopher S. Rosales 241 na kahihiyan sa buhay niya. Gayumpaman, ang pinaka-epic talaga sa lahat ay ang lalaking muntikan nang ma-GOMBURZA. Noon kasi, tinatawag ng mamang ito ang mga kapuwa niya pahinante (na kumakaripas ng takbo sa pagbili ng tiket) dahil maluwag-luwag pa roon sa puwesto niya. Ang kaso, biglang-bigla, sumara ang pinto. Talagang napapikit at napasigaw ang lahat dahil naiwan sa labas ang leeg at ulo ng pobreng mama. Mabuti na lamang at may sensor ang pinto na sa oras na may pumipigil sa pagsara nito ay agad-agaran din itong bumubukas. Alangang napapangiwi na napapangisi ang lahat habang hinahaplos-haplos ng mama ang namumula niyang leeg. Biglang may dumaang anghel. May kuliglig sound. May moment of silence. Pero maya-maya pa’y may di na nakapagpigil at malutong na napahalakhak. Natawa na rin ang lahat. Pati ang mama ay napahagalpak na rin dahil sa sarili niyang kasutilan (o katangahan). Ayan, tawag pa more! hirit ng isa. ’Tikan ka na pre ma-Samurai! segunda ng isa pa. Sa bandang huli ay hindi rin naman nakaaabot sa tren ang mga kasamahan niya. Ang mga katropa niyang inalayan na nga niya ng pagmamagandang-loob ay siya pang nagpaulan ng katakot- takot na pang-aalaska sa kaniya.

Benepisyo De-Bobo May choice naman talaga akong hindi sumakay ng PNR. Mula sa opisina ay puwede naman akong sumakay ng dyip pa-EDSA Ayala at doon na pumara ng bus pa-FTI. Ang kaso, kapag gano’n ang sinunod kong ruta, walang katiyakan kung anong oras pa ako makakauwi sa bahay, o, mas malala pa, kung makakauwi pa ba ako nang buháy sa bahay. Pahirapan kasi talagang sumakay. Bago pa mag-alas singko ay punuan na ang halos lahat ng mga bus sa EDSA. Minsan ay sinubukan kong ipagsiksikan nang todo ang sarili sa sinapupunan ni Joanna Jesh. Kasama ng mga kapuwa pawisang obrero ay sumabit ako sa pinakabungad mismo ng pinto. Kaso, para naman akong nakasakay no’n sa Star Flyer ng Star City nang walang anumang harang o seatbelt. Buwis-buhay talaga kaya di ko na inulit. May isang Biyernes din na talagang nag-effort akong maglakad mula Ayala hanggang Guadalupe makasakay lang sa buwakananginang bus na ’yan. Pakiramdam ko no’ng gabing ’yon, ang dumi-dumi ko. Para na akong taong-grasa. Tangan-tangan ko na ang lahat ng polusyon sa EDSA. Kung kaya, mas pinipili ko pa rin talagang makisiksik at masiksik ng kung ilang minuto sa PNR kaysa naman ma-stranded nang kung ilang oras sa kalsada. Biro nga minsan ng isang kakilala, sa sobrang hirap sumakay at sa labis na trapik sa EDSA, kapag bumiyahe ang isang buntis mula Magallanes

242 Sanaysay hanggang Trinoma, pagbaba niya, Grade 6 na ’yong nasa loob ng tiyan niya. Partida, marunong na rin ng Physics at Algebra. Kahit papa’no, malaking tulong pa rin naman talaga para sa marami ang PNR. Halimbawa na lang, noong bumisita si Pope Francis sa Pilipinas at isinara ang maraming kalsada sa Maynila, operasyonal pa rin ang PNR kaya’t nakapasok pa rin ako sa walang hintuang review classes noon para sa board. Noong mag-surprise strike ang mga tsuper ng dyip sa Taguig na bukod sa hindi na bumiyahe ay hinarangan pa ang malaking bahagi ng East Service Road, nand’yan ang PNR upang magsakay ng mga na-stranded na obrero’t mag-aaral at umakay sa lahat ng bad vibes ng umaga. Maaga rin akong nakauwi sa bahay noong panahon ng APEC Summit kung saan nagkaroon ng part 2 ang penitensiya at Mahal na Araw ng karamiham dahil naging isang dambuhalang parking lot ang kalsada at wala silang ibang choice kundi ang mag-on-the-spot alay-lakad nang tatlo, lima, sampung kilometro makarating lang sa kani-kanilang tahanan. (Di ako informed, magpa-fun run pala ako pagkaalis sa opisina, post ng isa kong kaibigan gamit ang hashtag na #APECtado.) Sa kabilang banda, bukod sa pagiging isang alternatibong moda ng transportasyon, daan din ang mga tren para sa mga naghahanap ng abentura sa kanilang buhay. May isa akong kilalang matagumpay na propesyonal na ang makasakay sa PNR kung rush hour ang isa sa mga nasa bucket list niya. May mangilan-ngilan ding mga manunulat na sa integrasyon sa mga karaniwang tao sa tren humuhugot ng iaakdang kuwento, tula, o dula. Hinahanapan ng kahulugan/talinghaga/hiwaga ang bawat imbay ng kamay ng mga nakasakay, ang bawat kunot-noo nila, ismid, kurap, singhot, palatak, bahing, gitla, gatla, puting buhok, pileges, agnos, armband, at sukbit na kupasing bag na may nakaguhit na peace sign. Ginagawang salukan ng emosyon at pantasa ng pamdama ang sari-saring pasahero’t estranghero sa mga bagon. Sa lahat ng mga nagnanais na magpapayat, mabisang solusyon din ang PNR. Hindi mo na kailangang mag-enroll pa sa kung saang mamahaling gym na kung tutuusin, ang tunay na pakay mo lang naman ay magpapawis nang kaunti pagkatapos ay poporma sa harap ng salamin at magse-selfie at magpo- post sa FB ng #StartingTheYearRight #ForABetterMe #BalikAlindogProgram #ParaSaEkonomiya. Hindi mo na rin kailangang parusahan ang sarili sa pagsa-South Beach Diet o Atkins Diet o Dukan Diet o Hanggang-Tingin- Na-Lang-Sa-Lechon Diet. Hindi mo na rin kailangang tumungga ng tatlong pitsel ng Fit ’n Right at uminom ng kung ano-anong slimming pills na sa tindi

Christopher S. Rosales 243 ng tama sa tiyan mo ay para ka na ring Harry Potter na may septology araw- araw sa kabanal-banalang trono. Sa sobrang siksikan, tulakan, at balyahan kasi sa PNR, pihadong matutunaw-matatagtag ang lahat ng fats at calories sa ’yong braso, hita, at kalamnan. Para ka na ring binoksing ng sampung Donaire, benteng Mayweather, at trentang Pacquiao. Para ka na ring naging isang buhay na stress ball na pinitpit-pinilipit ng pawisan at pasmadong kamay ng Maynila. May libre pang hard massage kung nagkataong sinlaki nina Big Show o Dumbo ang makakasiksikan mo. Pati nga kaluluwa mo ay para na ring na-exercise (o na-exorcise) sa tindi ng makanginig-gilagid na galit at konsumisyon. Gayundin, sa sobrang init sa loob ng bagon, na animo’y isang kalawanging pugon na tinubuan ng gulong, daig mo pa ang nag-intensive steam & sauna sa Ace Water Spa. Tiyak na bubukas ang lahat ng pores mo sa katawan. (Oo, pati ang pores sa ’yong ear drums). Magtatampisaw ka hindi lamang sa sariling pawis, kundi maging sa rumaragasang anghit at lagkit ng mga katabi mo. Sa tindi ng amoy, daig mo pang nakadroga. May kasama pa minsang libreng paligo kung nataong nasa tabi ka ng bintana at magbuhos ng kung anumang mapanghi/malansa/maasngaw na likido ang mga nasa gilid ng riles mula sa kanilang marurungis na arenola’t palangganita. Aabutan (o pupukulin) ka pa minsan niyan ng mga batong panghilod na kasinlaki ng hollow blocks. Sa mga makasalanan naman, may libre ring pabasbas ang PNR kapag natapat ka sa palyadong aircon sa kisame na umuuha ng dilaw na likidong benditado ng alikabok at kalawang. (Pati ba ang makina’y nahihirapan na rin at marunong nang magdrama?) Marahil, kung guguhitan ko ng bibig ang mauka at tuklap-na-ang-pinturang mukha ng PNR, uusalin nito ang pinakamalalim na buntooooong-hininga matapos magsa-armalite ang bibig at magpakawala ng katakot-takot na mura at sumpa sa bulok/bugok/ugok na gobyerno.

Lokomotibong Paurong Ayon sa isang matandang kasabihang Tsino, kung nais mo raw magkaroon ng isang maunlad na bayan, magtayo ka muna ng mga kalsada’t daang-bakal. Nobyembre 24, 1892 nang ganap na buksan ang kauna-unahang tren sa Pilipinas—ang Ferrocaril de Manila-Dagupan. Ito’y batay na rin sa plano ni Don Eduardo Lopez Navarro at sa dekreto ni Haring Alfonso ng Espanya. Totoo nga ang kasabihan. Hindi lamang naging daanan ang 195.4 kilometrong riles na ito ng libo-libong mamamayang tangan-tangan ang kani- kanilang bagahe’t kargamento, naging daluyan din ito tungo sa kalinangan ng lipunan at kaunlaran ng buong estado. Sa pagsasanga-sanga ng iba’t ibang

244 Sanaysay lunan at ruta ay yumabong din ang komersiyo’t kalakalan sa mga lugar na dati’y liblib, madawag, magubat. Sa paglipas ng mga taon ay nadagdagan pa ang mga estasyon ng tren mula sa San Fernando, La Union hanggang sa Legazpi, Albay. Samantala, sa panahon ng mga Amerikano ay pinalitan ng Manila Railroad Company ang pangalan ng tren, na paglao’y naging Philippine National Railways noong Hunyo 20, 1964 sa bisa ng Republic Act No. 4156. Ito na ngayon ang kilala nating de-diesel na tren na araw-araw sinasakyan ng humigit-kumulang 70,000 pasahero sa Maynila at Laguna araw-araw. Pagkalipas ng 123 taon mula nang buksan ang PNR, matapos ang kung ilang digmaan, bagyo, lindol, sakuna, pagkaraan ng kung ilang dekadang pagpapabaya ng pamahalaan, ang dating 161 na operasyonal na estasyon ng tren, ngayon ay 24 na lang. Ang dating 1,100 kilometrong nilalandas ng mga bagon mula hilaga hanggang timog-Luzon, ngayon ay 56.138 kilometro na lamang. Imbes na maging pasulong ang takbo ng lokomotibo, tila naging paurong pa. At dahil hindi na nga (raw) kayang sustentuhan ng gobyerno ang gapiranggot na ngang pondo para sa operasyon ng mga tren, ang PNR ay nagbabadya nang ipraybatisa at ipaubaya sa mga kapitalista, gaya ng malaon nang kinasapitan ng LRT, MRT, at ng marami pang pampublikong eskuwelahan at ospital sa bansa. Parang OLX lang. Di mo na kayang i-subsidize? Ibenta mo na! Sa panahon ngayon kung saan parang spaghetting pataas nang pataas ang presyo ng mga bilihin, pababa rin nang pababa ang pagpapahalagang iniuukol ng pamahalaan sa sambayanan. Imbes na i-“boss” ang mga Filipino’y inaabuso’t binubusabos pa nga. Noong 2015 ay tinaasan ang pamasahe sa LRT at MRT ng 50 hanggang 87 porsiyento subalit ni gamunti mang ginhawa ay hindi dito nadama. Mas tumindi pa nga ang sitwasyon. Saan ka nakakita ng mga taong pinaglalakad sa tulay, sa gilid ng riles dahil biglang tumirik sa gitna ang mga bagon? Saan ka nakakita ng tren na kuntodong humahagibis samantalang bukas ang pintuan at isang maling hakbang lang ng mga pasahero’y maaari na silang malamog, malasog, at maitsa sa ere nang kung ilang talampakan mula sa lupa? Nasa 600,000 ang sumasakay sa MRT araw-araw kahit pa 350,000 lang ang kapasidad nito. At ngayon, sasabihin nila na taasan din ang pamasahe sa PNR upang gumanda ang kalidad ng serbisyo nito, at tutal dalawang dekada na rin naman ang nakakaraan buhat nang magtaas-pasahe ito? Maski ata di edukadong galunggong ay hindi maniniwala sa kagunggungan nila. Napatid na ata sa makikitid nilang isip na ang pampublikong transportasyon ay isang serbisyong panlipunan at hindi isang negosyong pampuhunan.

Christopher S. Rosales 245 Imbes na paigtingin ang iba’t ibang programa para sa kapakanan ng buong bayan, mas gusto pa ng gobyernong suportahan ang pagtatayo ng mga mall at condo na iilan lang naman ang nakikinabang, bakbakin-aspaltuhin ang kay ayos-ayos namang kalsada, magtindig ng flag pole na nagkakahalaga ng 7.8 milyong piso (kapag itinaas ba ang bandila, bigla ’yang magbubuga ng confetti at fireworks?), at mamigay ng buwanang 500 na limos sa bawat pamilyang naghihikahos samantalang 10 milyong Filipino pa rin ang walang trabaho noong 2015 (ayon sa SWS), at 7 sa bawat 10 ang nagsasabing nagdarahop pa rin sila (ayon sa Ibon Foundation). Hindi ko talaga alam kung saang brand ng semento humuhugot ng kakapalan ng mukha ang mga politiko. Siguro, kung pagsasama-samahin ang kara ng lahat ng mga tiwaling opisyal sa bansa, puwede nang makagawa ng earthquake-proof na gusali sa sobrang tigas ng balat nila. Panlima na ang Pilipinas sa may pinakamalalang trapik sa buong mundo. At simple lang naman ang solusyon dito—ang pagpapalawak at pagsasaayos ng mga daang-bakal sa lungsod. Kung magiging mura, de-kalidad, at maaasahan ang mga tren sa bansa, magiging bulto-bulto pa rin ba sa dami ang mga pribadong sasakyan na kakaunti lang naman ang laman subalit kumakain ng napakalaking bahagi ng kalsada? Tatangkanin pa ba ng marami na ilabas ang kani-kanilang kotse’t van gayong di naman kalayuan ang opisina at may kamahalan ang bayad sa pagpa-parking at gas? Ang bawat isandaan o higit pang mga sasakyan na mababawas sa kalsada ay napakalaking tulong na sa pagluluwag ng trapiko sa kalunsuran. Kung maghihigpit ang gobyerno at kapulisan sa pagpapatupad ng mga batas, hindi naman malayong ganap na malutas at mautas ang matinding trapik sa Maynila. Naalala ko bigla ang kumalat na larawan noon sa social media na nagpapakita ng mga linya ng tren sa iba’t ibang bansa. Halos bawat kanto sa Paris, London, Seoul, at Tokyo ay kris-krusang nadaraanan ng mga riles ng tren. Napalilibutan ang buong lungsod ng daan-daang nagsasalimbayang mga himpilan. Samantalang sa Pilipinas ay kayang-kayang bilangin ng Grade 3 ang dami ng mga estasyon, kahit pa halos isang milyon ang kabuuang bilang ng mga sumasakay dito buong maghapon. Sign of progress naman daw ang trapik, hirit ni Noynoy. Nagsisiksikan sa kalsada ang maraming manggagawa, ibig sabihi’y gumagalaw, lumalago, nananagana ang ekonomiya ng bansa. Kahit pa halos 3 bilyong piso ang nalulustay at nasasayang araw-araw dahil sa trapik, tanda pa rin ’yan ng growth. Hindi ko lang alam kung no’ng bata siya ay kinulang siya sa

246 Sanaysay iodized salt, o kung gano’n lang talaga siya mag-isip dahil sa lumalala niyang pagkapanot.

Digmaan sa Daang-Bakal Isa sa pinakahindi ko malilimutang karanasan sa PNR ay ang naganap noong Enero 22, 2016. Biyernes nu’n. Gabi. Gaya ng dati, naging ilog ng mga nakatirik at nagngingitngit na sasakyan ang kalsada, kaya sa PNR ko piniling sumakay. Nasa estasyon ako ng Pasay Road. Dalawang tren din muna ang pinalampas ko upang pansamantala akong makapagpahinga sa upuang bato. Nang paparating na ang tren ay isinukbit ko na sa harapan ko ang aking bag bilang paghahanda. Ano’t bago pa man makarating sa platform ang tren ay bigla itong huminto. Nagkagulo ang mga tao. May mga pulis na dali-daling pumito’t tumakbo. Hinubad ko ang suot na headset upang makiusisa. Biglang-bigla, sa di kalayuan, sa gilid ng kalawanging riles, malapit sa may checkpoint, natanaw ko ang anyubog ng isang lalaking nakahandusay sa damuhan. Sinaklot ng kaba ang dibdib ko. Pinalibutan ng mga pulis ang lalaki. Panay ang satsat nila sa kanilang radyo ngunit wala namang maihandog na saklolo. Gusto ko sanang lumapit upang makisimpatya, makibalita ngunit bigla nang umandar ang tren at nagsakay ng mga pasahero. Pumisan akong may nagdadabog-nangangalabog pa ring tambol sa dibdib ko. Baka naman nadaplisan lang ang mama. O nadulas lang. O baka may shooting pala ng pelikula. Maya-maya pa’y isang lalaki ang humahangos na humabol sa pagsasara ng pinto. Nakiusyoso pala ito. Tinuldukan niya ang mga tanong at agam-agam sa isip ng lahat sa loob lamang ng tatlong pangungusap: Wala na pre. Sabog ang utak. Tigok na. Noon ding gabing iyon hanggang sa sumunod pang mga araw ay pilit kong hinanap ang balita tungkol sa lalaki. Ang lalaking iyon na wala marahil ibang nais kundi ang makahabol sa paparating na tren, makauwi nang maaga sa bahay, at makasama sa hapunan ang kaniyang pamilya habang nakatutok sa paborito nilang telenobela. Matiyaga akong nag-Google ng anumang artikulo tungkol sa aksidente ngunit wala akong nakita. Maging sa TV at radyo ay wala rin. Ang meron lang ay ang tungkol sa pagkaka-link ni Pia Wurtzbach kay Noynoy, at ang kawalan ng love life ni Kris Aquino. Sino nga naman kasi siya? Hindi naman siya isang sikat na politiko, o boksingero, o artista. Hindi naman siya kamag-anak ng kung sinong matagumpay at maimpluwensiyang businessman. Karaniwang tao lang siya. Bakit pa pag- uusapan? Singkaraniwan ng nasagasaang kiring pusa sa kalsada ang nangyari

Christopher S. Rosales 247 sa kaniya. Sino pa ang mag-aatubiling sumubaybay sa kuwento niya? Sino pa ang magtatapon ng kapiranggot na awa sa isang hamak na layak na gaya niya, na gaya ko at ng iba pa’y suki ring pasahero sa mga tren ng Maynila? Matatandaang sa mga riles ng PNR minsang naglandas ang mga bagon ng digma. Dito noon sumakay ang daan-daang Katipunero upang makipaglaban sa mga sakim at mapang-aping dayuhan. Dito binaril, nabuwal, namatay ang maraming Filipino sa ngalan ng hinahangad na kalayaan. Mahigit isang siglo na ang nagdaan ngunit patuloy pa rin ang digmaan sa daang-bakal. Libo- libo pa ring mandirigma ang sumasakay dito, at isa na ako rito—nakikibaka sa hirap ng buhay, binabata ang lupit ng hagupit ng opresyon sa lipunan. Ang masaklap pa’y hindi na mga dayuhan ang katunggali ng mamamayan, kundi ang mismong gobyerno na nag-aasal banyaga. Silang nagpapanggap na makamasa ngunit may pusong imperyalista. Silang nangangako ng tuwid na daan, na ang dulo pala’y diretso sa bangin ng kamatayan. Lagi’t lagi, bago pumasok sa loob ng estasyon ng tren, mamamasdan ang mga guwardiyang panay ang pag-iinspeksiyon sa bag ng mga pasahero. Kung makakapkap ay parang may ipinuslit o itinatago ka na kung ano. (Subukan kaya nila minsang sa Malacañang at Kongreso mangapkap?) Madalas ay nanggigigil pa sa kahahanap sa kasulok-sulukan ng bag kung may nakatagong anumang patalim o bomba. Ang hindi nila alam, nasa puso ng mga pasahero ang patalim at bomba. Araw-araw na humihiwa, lumalaslas, sumusugat, sumasabog sa ubod ng mamamayang ganap nang tinalikuran ng pamahalaan.

Hayan na naman. Sinasabi ko na nga ba. Biglang tumirik sa gitna ng madamong riles ang tren. Narinig ko na naman sa lumang speaker ang garalgal na boses ng drayber/announcer ng PNR. Magandang araw daw sa ’ming mga minamahal nilang pasahero. Pasensiya na raw. Nagkaroon ng aberya ang makina ng tren at di pa alam kung gaano ang itatagal bago ito maayos. Kung maaari’y bumaba raw muna ang lahat upang hindi mainip at mainitan. (Nakapatay na kasi ang mga aircon na parang bentilador na naka- number 1.) Paglundag ko mula sa nagsasapugon muling bagon ay bumungad sa ’kin ang nakangiting mukha ng politiko sa poste. Halatang phinotoshop ang kutis ng animal. Di ko alam kung ano na namang pagdadahilan ang sasabihin ko mamaya sa opisina kung bakit ako nahuli, bukod sa pagkaantala ng biyahe. Pero di bale. Idadahak ko na lang muna sa plastadong ngiti ng politiko ang namumuong plema sa bibig ko: puta de leche.

248 Sanaysay Salvacion JOSE DENNIS C. TEODOSIO

atagal na akong nakatayo at nakatanghod sa harap ng lumang elevator. MAng pagkulo ng aking sikmura at ang pamimitig ng aking mga binti ang mga piping saksi kung ilang oras na akong naghihintay roon. Ala-sais pa lang ng umaga nang ipasok si Mama sa operating room at hanggang ngayon, hindi pa rin nila siya inilalabas. Niririndi pa rin ang tainga ko ng walang kaasug-asog na turan sa akin ng nakabusangot na nurse kanina, “D’yan ka lang.” Dahil doon, ayun, hindi na ako natinag pa sa puwestong iyon. Walang nagsabi sa aking magiging malaking dusa pala ang paghihintay ko sa harap ng lumang elevator na iyon. Ni hindi pumasok sa isip ko ang ganoong pangitain. Nakondisyon akong matatapos ang operasyon ni Mama sa loob lang ng isa o dalawang oras. Kagabi, ako ang tokang tumingin kay Mama. Naghahanda na kasing lumipad si Glenn pa-Middle East. Sinuwerte siyang mabak-apan ng isang kapitbahay naming matagal-tagal na rin doon. Iyong susuwelduhin daw niya, tama lang sa mga gastusin nila. Tatlo na rin kasi ang tsikiting niya at lahat, nagsisipag-aral na. Dalawang taon ang pinirmahan niyang kontrata. Para sa akin, mas mabuti na rin iyon—kaysa wala. Para makaalis, nabraso niya akong magpahiram ng pera. Kahit gipit, hindi pa rin ako nakatanggi. Umasa siyang gagawa ako ng paraan (dahil ako ang panganay sa aming tatlo). Hindi nga lang namin napag-usapan kung babayaran niya ako o hindi. Si Erwin naman, ang bunso namin, mula nang ma-lay off sa huling pinasukan niya, nalulong na sa katamaran. Mahigit limang taon na rin siyang tambay. Hindi nakatulong ang pambubulyaw ko. Katwiran niya, hindi naman siya ang dapat sisihin kung wala siyang mapasukan. Pinalampas ko na lang ang pamimilosopo niya kasi, kahit papaano, naaasahan siya ni Mama sa bahay (kasi, ako, nakabukod naman sa kanila). Isa pa, mabuti na lang, may trabaho iyong ex-wife niya at nasusustentuhan ang pag-aaral at pangangailangan ng nag-iisa nilang anak. Dahil wala siyang pinagkakakitaan, naging kargo ko na rin siya (at ang anak nila) dahil kay Mama sila nakapisan. Pinauwi ko muna si Erwin para asikasuhin ang bahay.

249 Hindi ako iyong tipong palagay ang loob kapag nakikipaghuntahan sa kapamilya. Parang meron akong “split personality.” Sa labas, maboka ako. Ako ang laging bangka. Maingay. Palabiro. Maraming hirit. Life of the party, sabi nga nila. Pero pagdating sa amin, tameme ako. Kapag pumasok na ako sa bahay, bigla, parang nalululon ko ang dila ko. Wala akong masabi. Wala akong ganang makipag-repartee. At kinasanayan na nila iyon sa akin. Hindi ko alam kung ba’t ganoon ang naging siste ko. Suspetsa ko, dahil siguro iyon sa trabaho ko. Pag-uwi ko kasi, nagkukulong na lang ako sa kuwarto para bunuin ang mga iskrip na dapat ipasa. Lumalabas lang ako kung kakain na o talagang kailangang mag-inat-inat. Paano pa ako gaganahang magsalita kung puro salita na ang binubuno ko at pinipiga sa utak ko—sa araw-araw? Tapos, kagabi, bago kami matulog, kinailangan kong kausapin si Mama. Hindi madali iyon para sa akin. Hindi kasi niya maitagong kinukubabawan siya ng takot na walang pangalan. Banas ako pero sumige na lang ako. Sa isip ko, hindi na ako dapat magpasakalye. Dapat, sabihin ko sa kaniyang tigilan na niya ang arte. Hindi makatutulong ang pagdadrama. Pero walang ganoong ibinulalas ang aking bibig. Kasunod ng isang malalim na buntonghininga, bumaling ako kay Mama at bumanat, “Ano ba ang ipinag-aalala mo? ’Pag gising mo, tapos na ang lahat. Uuwi na tayo. Ayos ka na.” Sa tono ko, at sa mga pangungusap ko na walang “po” at “opo,” parang kapa ko ang lahat. Walang sasablay. Pero sa halip na humirit si Mama na katulad ng nakagawian niya, lumayo lang siya ng tingin sa akin, parang paslit na nasigawan at naghahanap ng paraan para maitago ang tinamong hiya. Hindi nakatulong ang katahimikang namagitan sa amin. Dahil sa ginawa ni Mama, bigla, sinunggab ako ng matinding galit. Narinig ko ang sarili kong paghinga, tanda kung paano ko pinigilan ang tuluyang mapundi. Tapos, narinig ko si Mama. Bawi niya, “Gano’n lang ata ’ko. Maraming inaalala. Maraming iniisip.” Pero sa halip na kumalma, kumabig pa ako. Tumaas at lumakas ang boses ko. Sa bawat bitaw ko, halata ang panlalait. Sabi ko, “Ba’t ka pa kasi nag-aalala at nag-iisip? Ooperahan ka na nga bukas, di ba?” Salo niya, “Pero, pa’no kung—” Tumingin ako sa kisame. Hindi ako nakasagot. Wala akong naisagot. Hindi man natapos ni Mama ang sasabihin niya, parang malinaw na agad ang tinutumbok niya. Peste. Saan ba ako huhugot ng paliwanag, ng pansalag? Bigla, parang may lumatay sa aking pisngi. Bigla, parang sinampal ako ni Mama. Malakas. Walang pasintabi. Parang ipinamukha niya sa akin kung gaano kakitid ang utak ko, kung paano ako umaastang nagmamalaki, kung paano ko binalewala ang pangambang bumabagabag sa kaniya ngayon. Parang sinabi niya sa akin, “Wala kang utang na loob. Kung pagsalitaan mo

250 Sanaysay ako, parang hindi ako ang nagluwal sa ’yo. Di porke ikaw ang sasagot ng mga gastusin sa ospital, may karapatan kang umangas nang gan’yan. Ano ba ang problema mo? Di mo pa rin ba nasasakyan ang sinasabi ko? Pa’no kung magkabulilyaso sa operating room? Pa’no kung mamatay ako?” Kung isang eksena lang ang lahat sa iskrip na isinusulat ko, parang wala akong magiging hasel. Magiging madulas ang batuhan ng linya. Pero, letse, iba ang totoong buhay. Sa totoong buhay, di uubra ang dialogue techniques. Sa totoong buhay, matalim at madaling makasugat ang mga salitang binibitawan. Para makadistansiya, agad kong pinalipad ang utak ko. Kailan nga ba ako huling nagkasakit? Dalawang okasyon lang naaalala ko. Una, noong binulutong ako. Si Mama ang nagtiyang naglanggas sa mga sugat kong nagnanaknak. Ngalngal lang ako nang ngalngal dahil sa sakit at hapdi pero paulit-ulit lang niyang sinabing gagaling din ako. Grade 5 yata ako noon. Hinding-hindi ko makakalimutan na binulutong ako dahil sa mga peklat ko. Tapos, noong nasa second year high school na ako, tinamaan naman ako ng sore eyes. Grabe ang trauma na dinanas ko noon. Sa lugar namin, parang ako ang pinakaunang nagkaroon ng sore eyes. Sa madaling sabi, ako ang napagbintangang virus carrier. Ayun, iniwasan ako ng lahat. Iyong tiyahin kong nakatira malapit sa amin, sininghalan ako. Sabi niya, “Oy, wag kang pupunta rito. ’Wag kang lalapit sa ’min.” Mangangatwiran pa sana ako pero malakas niyang sinalya ang pintuan nila. Pakiwari ko, aso akong binato para kumaripas ng takbo. Kumahol man ako, di na ako makakakagat. Bumahag na ang buntot ko. Ang sama-sama ng loob ko noon. Hanggang ngayon, galit pa rin ako sa tiyahin kong iyon dahil sa sinabi at ginawa niya sa akin. Pakiwari ko, OA ang naging pagtrato niya sa akin. Sore eyes ang tumama sa akin—hindi ketong. Pero si Mama, hawak ang Eye Mo, walang kagatol-gatol na nagsabi sa akin, “Halika, patakan natin nito ang mga mata mo. ’Wag mo na lang intindihin ang Tita mo. Praning ’yon.” Parang meron invisible shield si Mama. Parang meron siyang kung anong secret power laban sa sore eyes. Si Papa, si Glenn, at si Erwin—lahat kami sa bahay—nagka-sore eyes. Pero si Mama, hindi. Napuwersa akong bumalik sa nangyayari nang muli kong marinig si Mama. “Pasensya na,” bawi niya. Medyo basag na ang boses niya noon. Parang isang pangungusap pa, maningilid na ang luha niya. Pumikit ako, tapos, napabuntonghininga. Paraan ko iyon para magkunwaring ako pa rin ang may kontrol sa sitwasyon at hindi ako natitinag o naaantig. Naisip ko,

Jose Dennis C. Teodosio 251 dapat, hindi sumagi sa isip ni Mama na nag-aalala na rin ako, na binabagabag na rin ako ng pangambang lumalamon sa kaniya. Naisip ko, sana, bulutong o sore eyes na lang ang dumali kay Mama. Kahit paano, magiging patas kami at makababawi ako. Matatapatan ko ang paglalanggas niya ng mga sugat ko o pagpatak niya ng Eye Mo sa mga mata ko. Pero, hindi ganoon, e. Dahil sa edad ni Mama, may namuo raw na bato sa daluyan ng ihi niya. Kasinglaki na ng piso ang bato kaya kailangan siyang operahan. Kailan lang namin nalaman ang kondisyon ni Mama. Nilagnat siya at kinailangang isugod sa ospital. Tapos, kung anu-anong laboratory tests ang ginawa para malaman ang dahilan. Na-bad trip talaga ’ko noon. Nataon pa kasing katatapos lang ng isang project ko. Para sa katulad kong freelancer, pinakanakakatakot ang pagtatapos ng isang project kasi hindi ko alam kung may kasunod pa. Iyong kinita ko roon, sakto lang pambayad sa hinuhulugang bahay at lupa at pantawid sa mga dapat bayarin bago matapos ang buwan. Hindi ko alam kung saan ako huhugot ng pambayad sa doktor at sa mga niresetang gamot para kay Mama. Meron akong checking account sa Cainta Rural Bank pero ang laman noon, tama lang pang-minimum balance. Kapag nag-withdraw ako ng sandaan, malilintikan na ’ko. Hindi ko naman p’wedeng ipangalandakan sa lahat na kapos ako. Bulong sa akin ng pride ko, malalagpasan mo rin iyan. Kapit ka lang. Ayun, kumapit nga ako. Kaya lang, matalim ang nakapitan ko. Literal na nagkasugat-sugat ang mga kamay ko. May nautangan nga ako pero nadale ako sa laki ng tubo. Kasunod noon, naalala ko iyong alkansiya ni Mama. Parang nasa third year high school ako nang magwelga sila Papa. Napilitan si Mama na tumanggap ng mga labada at plantsahin. Iyong kinikita niya, hinuhulog niya sa malaking garapon. Kapag may biglaang gastos sa school, doon siya kumukuha ng iaabot sa akin. Dahil masinop si Mama at tila wala siyang pagod maglaba at mamalantsa, mabilis na napuno ang garapon niya. Sakto namang nagbukas ang kauna-unahang sinehan sa may amin. Para makapanood, hindi ako nagdalawang-isip na kumupit ng pera sa garapon. Ang yabang-yabang ko pagkatapos kong mapanood ang Dolphy’s Angels in Technicolor. Pag-uwi ko, hindi ko na nakita pa ang garapon ni Mama. Inilipat niya iyon sa ibang taguan. Mas nakonsensiya ako nang wala akong narinig mula kay Mama. Ni hindi niya ako sinumbatan. Para makabawi, tinipid ko ang baon ko (na galing din kay Mama). Tapos, isang araw, inabot ko sa kaniya ang naipon ko. Paliwanag ko, bayad iyon sa kinupit ko sa kaniya dati. Ngumiti lang si Mama. Tapos, tinanggihan niya ang iniabot ko. Gamitin ko na lang daw pampanood ng sine. Narinig daw niyang may bagong pelikula si Chiquito. Masaklap

252 Sanaysay isipin na sa paglipas ng panahon, hindi na kinaya ni Mama na mag-ipon pa ng pera sa garapon. Hindi na rin kasi kinaya ng katawan niya ang tumanggap pa ng labada at plantsahin. Aminado ako. Hirap akong mag-move on sa usapin ng pera sa garapon. Para makabawas ng bigat, nag-ipon ako pambili ng isang mamahaling bag para kay Mama. Kumbinsi ko sa sarili, symbolically, papalitan ko ang garapon niya ng mamahaling bag. Kung meron man siyang naitatabi, mag-le-level up na siya kasi, bag na ang gagamitin niya—at hindi garapon. Nang ibinigay ko sa kaniya ang bag, normal ang reaksyon niya. Nagustuhan daw niya ang kulay—pula. Sabi ko, “Tingnan mo ang brand.” Binasa niya ang tatlong letra sa bag—Y S L. Tapos, tumingin siya sa akin. “Mahal ba ’to?” Bigla, napikon ako. Alam kong hindi niya binalak na b’wisitin ako pero hindi ko talaga kinaya ang hinirit niya. Dahil napikon ako, tumahimik na lang ako. Mabilis namang napik-ap iyon ni Mama. Ngumiti siya at bumanat, “Masaya na rin ako kasi para akong si Aling Dionisia.” Sabi ko, “Sino?” Paliwanag ni Mama, “Si Aling Dionisia. ’Yong nanay ni Manny Pacquiao. Niregaluhan din s’ya ni Manny ng bag. Sa akin, YSL. Sa kaniya, Hermes.” Inulit ko ang Hermes (nang may tamang articulation). Parang nalito si Mama. Ipinaliwanag kong mali siya sa pagsasabi ng Hermes. Humagalpak siya. Naisip niyang mahirap palang i-pronounce ang bag ng mga sosyal. Napangisi ako. Tapos, sa isip ko, pumasok ang pagkakapareho at pakakaiba namin ni Manny Pacquiao. Pareho naming ginagamit ang mga kamay namin. Siya, para sa boxing. Ako, para magsulat. Magkaiba kami kasi siya, may pera. Ako, isang kahig, isang tuka. Hindi ko na sinabi iyon kay Mama. Natuwa na akong makita siyang kalong- kalong ang bag na pinag-ipunan ko para sa kaniya. At sa wakas, naka-move on na rin ako. Nang matiyak na may batong bumabara sa daluyan ng ihi ni Mama, diniretso ako ng doktor. Kailangan daw ng operasyon para maiwasan ang komplikasyon. Sumeryoso ang mukha niya nang sabihin niya ang salitang “komplikasyon.” Diniretso ko rin ang doktor. Salo ko, “Magkano po ba?” Ngumisi lang ang doktor. Tapos, sabi niya, “P’wede kang humingi ng second opinion.” Bulong sa akin ni Mama, “Anong ibig sabihin ni Dok?” Sinagot ko lang si Mama nang nakalabas na kami sa clinic. Sinagot ko siya sa paraang hindi siya malilito. Tanong niya ulit, “O, ano na?” Sabi ko, “Kailangan natin ng malaking pera.” Hanggang sa makauwi kami sa bahay, hindi na humirit o kumibo pa si Mama. Alam kong alam niyang pag pera ang pag-uusapan, madali akong napipikon. Sa pananahimik niya, para na rin niyang sinabing ako na ang bahalang dumiskarte. Mag-aantabay na lang siya.

Jose Dennis C. Teodosio 253 Humingi ako ng tulong sa mga kaibigan at kakilala. Sinabi ko kung magkano ang kailangan ko para sa operasyon ni Mama. Pero sa halip na tulong, pawang puro mga insulto at kutya ang nakuha ko sa kanila. Sabi ng isa, “Pasalamat ka at hindi kanser. Mareremedyuhan pa ’yan. Ayos na rin ’yan, di ba?” Kompara ng isa, habang nakangising parang si Joker, “Si Mommy ko, weak ang heart. Sa pang-maintenance pa lang n’ya, namumulubi na kami. Gusto mo palit na lang sila ng sakit?” Tapos, iyong isa pa, “Punta kayo sa Manaoag, Friend. Makukuha ’yan sa dasal.” Kung hindi ko pinigilan ang sarili kong manuntok, malamang, sa kulungan ako nagpatuloy mag-isip kung paano maitatawid ang operasyon ni Mama. Maraming gabing nakatitig lang ako sa kisame at umaasang may himalang mangyayari. Kinumbinsi ko sa aking sarili na merong genie o fairy godmother na kayang magkaloob ng anumang hihilingin ko. Pero, mabilis na lumipas ang mga araw. Walang genie o fairy godmother na tumulong sa akin. At kung meron man akong natiyak, isang bagay lang ’yon—walang maibubunga o maitutulong ang pagtitig ko sa kisame. Dahil sa Google, nagkaroon ako ng kaunting pag-asa. Gamit ang search engine, naghanap ako ng mga paraan para maremedyuhan ang nakabarang bato sa daluyan ng ihi ni Mama. Para sa akin, ang ibig sabihin ng paraan ay iyong “mura”—iyong hindi kakailanganing gumastos ng malaki. Merong nagsasabi na dapat uminom lang ng ganoon at ng ganito. Meron din akong nabasa tungkol sa shockwave at sa laser. Pero, sa huli, wala pa ring nangyari at nakatulong. Sa napakaraming options na meron, iisa lang ang naging common denominator—pera. Tinapat ko si Mama. Sabi ko, “Tiis muna, ha. Pag-iipunan ko ang operasyon mo.” Ang subtext? Hindi ko alam kung kelan ko siya mapapaoperahan. Sagot niya, “Kaya ko pa naman, e.” Sa sinabi niyang iyon, alam kong ayaw niya akong magalit at mag-aalala. Pero, sa totoo lang, ang sagot niyang iyon ang naging dahilan para magalit ako at mag-alala ng todo. Salo ko, “Ano bang gusto mong palabasin? Hindi kita inintindi? Na pinababayaan kita?” Depensa niya, “Bakit? May sinabi ba akong masama?” Sabi ko, mas malakas at may diin, “Ang drama mo talaga, Ma.” Tapos, umalis na ako bago pa malaman ni Mama na ako talaga ang nagdadrama at hindi siya. Sa pag-alis kong iyon, sigurado akong may kinimkim na sama ng loob sa akin si Mama. Dinibate ko ang sarili ko. Ano ba ang karapatan ni Mama na magkimkim ng sama ng loob sa akin? Nang mamatay si Papa, kinailangang pangatawanan ko ang pagiging breadwinner. Dahil sa mga sinakripisyo ko, malamang,

254 Sanaysay maeengganyo na si Charo Santos na isadula sa telebisyon ang mga pinagdaan at tiniis ko para sa pamilya ko. Dapat sa edad ko, pag-aasawa na ang inaatupag ko. Dati, sabi ko, kailangan munang mapagtapos ko sila Glenn at Erwin. Ayun, sa awa ng Diyos, dumiretso sila sa simbahan. Si Glenn, nakabuntis bago ang graduation sa college. Si Erwin, nagtanan bago magmartsa sa high school. Tapos, kumambiyo ako at nag-iba ng mantra. Sabi ko, kapag natapos kong hulugan ang bahay at lupa, sarili ko naman ang iisipin ko. Ang masaklap nito, magsasampung-taon na akong naghuhulog sa bahay at lupa, pero parang ni hindi nababawasan ang principal. Parang sa interest lang napupunta ang ibinabayad ko buwan-buwan. Dagdag pa sa iniintindi ko ang mga gastusin sa bahay—pamasahe, pamalengke, association due, ilaw, koryente, cable, telepono. Tapos, ngayon, eto pa. Ang operasyon ni Mama. Katwiran ko, may karapatan akong mag-init ang ulo ko kasi ang dami kong iniisip. May karapatan akong mawala sa huwisyo ko kasi marami akong pinapasan at iniintindi. Para mabawasan ang bigat ng dibdib ko, tinext ko ang lahat ng angst ko sa kaibigan ko. Sagot niya, “Tanga ka kasi. Wala namang batas sa Pinas na nagsasabing mag-feeling dakila ka. Ikaw ang may gusto niyan.” Hindi ko na sinagot ang tinext niyang iyon. Wala kasing smiley. Naisip ko ring hindi obligasyon ng ibang taong pagnilayan ang anumang problema ko. Halos dalawang buwan din akong umantabay bago dumating ang susunod kong project. Dahil may downpayment, naabutan ko si Mama. Inilapag ko sa mesa ang pera pero parang wala siyang balak kunin iyon. Sabi ko, “Di ako mag-so-sorry sa ’yo, ha.” Ngumiti si Mama. Kimi. Paalis na sana ako nang humabol siya. Sabi niya, “Sa ’yo na muna ’yang pera mo. May nakuha ako sa PNB.” Isa lang ang ibig sabihin ng PNB. Dumating na ang buwanang pension niya. Galing ang pension sa pagiging SSS member ni Papa. Sabi ko, “Kelan pa nagkasiya ang pension mo para sa mga gastusin?” Kalmado akong nagsalita pero naramdaman ko sa boses ko ang sarili kong pang-iinsulto. Ako ang napahiya. Bawi ko, “Kunin mo ’yan.” Tumango si Mama. Dagdag ko, “Kumusta ka na?” Lumayo si Mama ng tingin, tapos, kinapa niya ang tagiliran niya, parang sinasabi sa aking tumitindi ang sakit na nararamdam niya. Diin ko, “Hayaan mo. Gagawa tayo ng paraan.” Nakita ko na lang ang sarili kong humahagulgol sa kuwarto. Hindi ko alam kung bakit. Siguro, dahil naalala ko ang nangyari kay Papa. Wala ako noon sa bahay. Nakatanggap na lang ako ng beep kay Glenn. Sinugod daw nila sa ospital si Papa. Nahilo raw. Tapos, kumpirma niya, inatake raw sa puso si Papa. Atake sa puso. Parang ganoon din ang nangyari kina Tito Odong at Lolo Pule. Walang kaabog-abog. Nahilo. Tapos, patay bigla. Traidor

Jose Dennis C. Teodosio 255 na sakit. Nang tumakbo ako sa ospital, nakita ko si Mama, si Glenn, at si Erwin. Binabantayan nila si Papa. Una kong napansin ang sari-saring tubo na nakasaksak kay Papa. Bulong ko sa sarili, “Lord, kunin n’yo na si Papa. Ayokong maghirap pa siya.” Walang ibang nakaalam ng bulong ko na iyon. Tapos, kinahapunan, parang dininig ako ni Lord. Namatay si Papa. Hindi ko alam kung dapat ba akong magpasalamat sa langit. Dahil ako ang panganay, ako ang nagsabi sa mga kamag-anak naming wala na si Papa. Habang nasa bus, pina-practice ko sa isip ko kung paano sasabihin ang tungkol sa pagpanaw ni Papa. Pero kahit anong practice ko, iba pa rin ang sinabi ko noong kaharap ko na ang mga kamag-anak namin. Wala akong nasabihan nang maayos. Hindi pa tapos ang sinasabi ko, pumapalahaw na sila. Nang makauwi ako sa amin, ako ang naghanda ng bahay para sa burol ni Papa. Kalmado kong nagawa ang lahat. Makalipas ang isang oras, nang maayos na sa bahay, dumating ang bangkay ni Papa. Doon, bigla, pumalahaw ako. Umatungal ako pero walang boses na lumabas sa bibig ko. Mabilis akong nagsiksik sa sulok. Dumaloy ang luha ko. Pakiramdam ko, hiniwa ang apdo ko at sumambulat ang pait at sakit sa buong katawan ko. Natauhan lang ako nang makita ko si Mama na nakatayo sa pintuan at nakatitig sa akin. Namumugto ang mga mata ni Mama. Pinakalma ko ang sarili ko at saka ako lumapit kay Mama. Sabi ni Mama, “Wala na si Papa mo. Ikaw na ang aasahan namin.” Tumango ako kay Mama. Hindi ko naisip na pangangatawan ko ang pagtangong iyon. Disiotso lang ako noon. Ano ba ang malay ko sa ibig sabihin ng pasanin at responsabilidad? Nagulat na lang ako nang masulyapan ko ang nurse na kanina ko pa inaasam-asam na makita. Kalalabas lang niya ng elevator. Abala siyang nagsusulat sa dala niyang chart habang naglalakad. Parang hindi niya ako nakita sa kinatatayuan ko. Hindi ko siya pinalagpas. Sabi ko, “Excuse me. Tapos na ba si Mama?” Sagot niya, “Sinong Mama?” Diin ko, “My mother.” Tanong niya, “Marami kaming pasyente rito.” Ganoon? Bakit kaya siya naging nurse kung hindi maaasahan ang memorya niya? Sagot ko, “Sabi mo, dito ako maghintay. Remember?” Umismid ang nurse. Umasta siyang nainsulto. Pero anong magagawa ko? Baka iyon ang hinahanap niya. Baka kailangang insultuhin ko siya para bumalik sa kukote niya na nurse siya at hindi prinsesang nakaupo sa tasa. Dapat niyang maintindihan na hindi ako araw-araw na nasa ospital, na hindi madali ang mangamba sa buhay ng taong pinagkakautangan mo ng buhay, na hindi tamang maging insensitive siya sa nararamdaman ng mga kamag-anak ng mga pasyente ng ospital. Tapos,

256 Sanaysay tumingin ang nurse sa dalang chart. Usisa niya, “Ano bang pangalan ng pasyente?” Sabi ko, “Salvacion—.” Tumingin siya sa ’kin. Paliwanag niya, “Kanina pa tapos ang operasyon no’n, a.” Sabi ko, “Ha? Kanina pa? E, ba’t walang nagsabi sa ’kin? Kanina pa ako naghihintay rito.” Pakli niya, “Di ko problema ’yon.” Kasunod noon, tuluyan siyang umalis nang hindi ako nilingon. Nagpuyos ako sa galit pero sa halip na sundan ang walang modong nurse na iyon, sumakay ako sa elevator at dumiretso sa operating room. Si Mama. Dapat, makita ko si Mama. Madali kong nakita ang operating room. Malaki ang lumang karatulang nakabitin. Pero sarado ang pintuan. Kumatok ako pero walang nagbubukas. Sandali pa, may dumating at pumasok sa operating room. Hindi ko alam kung sino siya o ano ang ginagawa niya roon. Desperado lang ako kaya ako sumunod sa kaniya. Pero, hindi umubra ang diskarte kong iyon. Sabi niya sa akin, “Hoy! Sa’n ka pupunta?” Sinabi kong nasa loob si Mama at gusto ko siyang makita. Diniin niyang authorized personnel lang ang puwede sa loob kasunod ang pagturo sa isang sign na nakapaskil sa dingding malapit sa pintuan ng operating room. Tanong niya, “Authorized personnel ka ba?” Sagot ko, “Anak ako ng pasyente.” Bago kami tuluyang magsalpukan ng kausap ko, may isa pang nurse na lumabas. Mas bata siya kaysa sa kausap ko kanina. Dahil naramdaman siguro ng nurse na magwawala na ako, nakialam na siya at nag-usisa. Siya ang nagsabing nasa baba na si Mama. Hindi ako nagpasalamat. Mabilis kung tinunton ang tinuro niyang baba. Gusto kong makita si Mama. Gusto kong malaman kung ayos na siya, kung ligtas na siya. Sa paggalugad ko sa mga madidilim na pasilyo ng lumang ospital na iyon, mas bumigat ang pakiramdam ko. Nakita ko ang mga pasyenteng nakaratay. Depressing. Para silang mga imahen sa napakalaking mural na naglalarawan ng estado ng public health service sa Pilipinas. Sa paghangos ko, unti-unti kong narinig ang boses ko noong kausap ko si Erwin sa telepono. Noon ko unang narinig ang pinaggagawa ni Mama. Dahil daw alam niyang hindi ko kakayanin ang gastos, nagtiyaga si Mama na pumunta sa ospital na iyon. Tuwing Biyernes, umaalis daw si Mama sa bahay ng alas singko ng umaga para mauna sa pila sa ospital. Nakailang bisita na rin daw si Mama doon. Dahil government-owned, libre daw ang serbisyo ng mga doktor sa ospital. Tanong ko kay Erwin, “Sa panahon ngayon, naniniwala pa ba kayong merong libre?” S’yempre, hindi alam ni Erwin ang ihihirit niya sa akin. Sinabi na lang niya sa akin na nakumbinsi ni Mama ang doktor

Jose Dennis C. Teodosio 257 na i-schedule siya ng operasyon. Libre raw ang bayad sa doktor. Iyong mga gamot lang daw ang iintindihin namin. At saka iyong sa anesthesia. At iyong mga laboratory tests na kailangang gawin para malaman kung fit si Mama na sumailalim sa operasyon. Kailangan daw kasing gumawa ng maliit na hiwa para matanggal ang bato sa daluyan ng ihi. Dahil senior citizen si Mama, may discount daw siyang makukuha sa mga gamot. Marami pa sana akong bubusisiin pero hindi ko na tinuloy. Kapag ginawa ko kasi iyon, sa huli, baka lumabas pang ako ang kontrabida. Sa madaling salita, sumang-ayon ako sa balak. Isang Biyernes, sumama ako kay Mama sa ospital para personal na makausap ang doktor. Bibo naman ang doktor. Naglabas pa siya ng chart para ipaliwanag sa akin kung anong procedure ang gagawin kay Mama. Para akong dumalo sa isang lecture tungkol sa pagtanggal ng bato, na may kasama pang visual aid. Sa estimate, kakailanganin daw naming maghanda ng 50,000. Di hamak na mas mababa iyon kaysa sa ibang option na aabot sa 250,000 ang pinakamababa. Sa huli, diin ng doktor, “Kung wala pa kayong pera, tapatin n’yo na kami. Marami kasing pasyenteng nakapila.” Tumingin si Mama sa akin, parang nagsusumamong sabihin ko sa doktor na tuloy na ang operation. Doon ko lang natimbang ang kahulugan ng kasabihang “Beggars can’t be choosers.” Simula nang nangako ako kay Mama na bubunuin ko ang 50,000, parang pumanatag ang lahat. Hindi ko na inisip kung sino ang doktor na gagawa ng operation. Para sa akin, isang bagay lang ang pagtutuunan ko— ang mahagilap ang 50,000. Nasa ground floor na ako nang tumigil ako sa paglinga. Hinahanap ko pa rin kung saan nila dinala si Mama. Huminto ako saglit para kapain ang perang nasa bulsa ko. Nakahinga ako nang maluwag. Meron pa akong natitirang 100. Tapos, nang ibabalik ko na ang pera ko sa bulsa, doon ko nakita si Mama. Sa dulo ng ground floor, may napansin akong mahabang pila ng mga tao. Limang dipa mula sa pila, may stretcher na nakaparada. Sa stretcher, may matandang babae na nakahiga. Nanikip ang dibdib ko. Hindi ako maaaring magkamali. Si Mama ang matandang babae na nakahiga sa stretcher. Isang manipis at maikling kumot ang nakatakip sa hubad niyang katawan. Anong ginawa nila sa kaniya? Dahan-dahan akong lumapit kay Mama. Pinagmasdan ko ang mukha niya. Humpak ang kaniyang mga pisngi. Maputla ang kaniyang mga labi.

258 Sanaysay Ano kayang hirap ang dinanas niya sa operating room? Bakit iniwan lang siyang ganito? Hinawakan ko ang kamay ni Mama. Laking-gulat ko nang naramdaman kong pinisil niya ang kamay ko. Tapos, napansin ko ang banayad na pagtaas at pagbaba ng kaniyang dibdib dahil sa hirap na paghinga. Nagitla ako. Napanganga. Sa isip ko, sumisigaw ako nang pagkalakas-lakas. Ang sigaw ko ay naging palahaw. Mabilis na rumagasa ang luha ko. Saglit pa, kinubabawan ako ng galit. Sinugod ko ang in-charge ng departmentong iyon na nasa ground floor. Sumigaw ako. Sa akin natuon ang tingin ng lahat ng mga nasa pila. Narindi ang in-charge sa sunod-sunod kong sinabi. Para siyang ginulantang ng walang patumanggang putok ng armalite. Sa halip na sagutin ako, dinampot niya ang landline sa ibabaw ng mesa niya. May tinawagan siya. Pinakalma ko ang sarili ko pero naririnig ko pa rin ang malakas kong paghinga. Pakiwari ko, sasabog ako sa tindi ng galit na kinikimkim ko. Nang harapin ako ng in-charge, ipinaliwanag niya sa akin na dapat ma- x-ray si Mama pagkatapos ng operasyon. Iyon ang dahilan kaya siya dinala roon sakay ng stretcher. Kaya lang, mahaba ang pila kaya hindi pa naaasikaso si Mama. Walang bahid ng paumanhin ang pagbibigay niyang iyon ng mga detalyeng nalaman ko. Narinig ko na lang ang sarili kong dinidiretso siya, ’Yang mga nakapila, malalakas sila. Kaya nilang tumayo at maghintay. Ang nanay ko, kakaopera pa lang. Walang malay dahil sa anestisya. Hubad. Sa palagay mo, matatanggap ko ang paliwanag mo? Naghihintay ako sa taas. Kung kailangang dalhin siya rito, dapat, pinatawag n’yo ang kasama n’ya? Common sense lang ’yan, di ba?’ Bago maka-depensa ang in-charge, isang attendant ang dumating. Humahangos siya at nagmamadaling tinulak ang stretcher na kinahihigaan ni Mama. Mabilis akong lumapit sa kaniya. Sa isip ko, isa pa siya sa mga dapat sisihin. Dinala niya at iniwan si Mama roon. Hinarap ko siya at tinanong kung saan niya dadalhin si Mama. Galit ang boses niya nang sabihin niya sa aking i-e-x-ray na si Mama. Nagpanting ang tainga ko. Hinablot ko ang kuwelyo ng uniporme niya at saka ko ibinulalas ang galit ko. Sabi ko, “Kung ikaw kaya ang hubaran ko, operahan, at iwan dito, ano bang mararamdaman mo?” Wala akong nakuhang sagot sa attendant. Sa mukha niya, nakita ko ang takot. Sa laki ko, kaya kung basagin ang mukha niya. Narinig ko na lang ang in-charge na noon ay lumapit na sa amin. Sabi niya, “Sir, pa-x-ray na natin ang pasyente para matapos na.” Wala na akong nagawa. Hinayaan

Jose Dennis C. Teodosio 259 ko ang attendant na ipasok si Mama sa x-ray department. Sumandal ako sa dingding, umaasang kakalma. Narinig ko ang bulungan ng mga taong nakapila. Babalingan ko sana sila pero hindi ko na tinuloy. Baka kung ano pa ang masamang mangyari. Nang matapos ang x-ray procedure, dinala ng attendant si Mama pabalik sa kuwarto. Tahimik lang akong sumunod. Nang umalis ang attendant, nilapitan ko si Mama. Tinitigan ko lang siya. Sa pagkakataong iyon, hindi na ako nagdrama. Kinausap ko na lang si Mama—kahit alam kong hindi niya ako naririnig. Sinabi ko kay Mama ang tungkol kay Papa. Inamin ko sa kaniya kung ano ang ipanagdasal ko. At kung talagang dininig ng langit ang hiniling ko, dapat, sa akin niya ibato ang sisi. Nangako ako sa kaniyang pangangatawanan ko ang anumang obligasyong hindi na nagampanan ni Papa. Sa unang pagkakataon, nag-sorry din ako kay Mama. Nag-sorry ako kasi hindi ko siya nabigyan ng maganda, ng maginhawang buhay. Nag-sorry ako kasi pagsusulat lang ang kaya kong gawin. Nag-sorry ako kasi kinupitan ko siya noon. Nag-sorry ako kasi hindi ko siya mabibilhan ng Hermes na katulad ng kay Aling Dionisia. Nag-sorry ako kasi, hanggang ngayon, marami pa rin akong excuses kaya hindi ako nag-aasawa at hindi siya nabibigyan ng apo. Nag-sorry ako kasi hindi ko siya binibigyan ng pagkakataong mapalapit sa akin. Nag-sorry ako kasi ang dami kong reklamo sa pagiging panganay ko at sa mga pinasan kong responsabilidad. Ayoko kasi ng drama. Panay drama na nga ang sinusulat ko, tapos, magiging madrama pa ang relasyon namin sa totoong buhay. Hiniling kong intindihin niya iyon. Maghihintay pa ako ng isang oras bago tuluyang magising si Mama. Pero sapat ang isang oras na iyon para makapag-bonding kami at makabawi ako sa lahat ng mga pagkukulang ko. Matapos lumipas ang isang oras na ’yon, maraming bagay pa ang magiging posible. Hindi na ako magpapasa ng formal complaint laban sa ospital dahil sa naging kapabayaan nila. Makikinig kasi ako sa sasabihin ni Mama na ipa-d’yos na lang namin ang lahat. Ididiin din niya kasi sa kukote ko na, sa huli, nakatulong naman ang ospital para malampasan namin ang krisis na dinanas. Isa pa, pangangatwiranan niyang mas magastos ang magsampa pa ng kaso. Lilipas pa ang ilang buwan at malalaman naming hindi naman pala talaga iyong doktor na nakausap ko ang nag-opera kay Mama kung hindi iyong interns lang niya. Ginamit nila si Mama na parang guinea pig. Dahil sa kakulangan ng karanasan ng interns (o sa kapalpakan nila), muling

260 Sanaysay ooperahan si Mama. Lilikha kasi ng keloid ang pinagtanggalan ng bato niya at kakailanganing lagyan ng stent (o tubo) ang daluyan ng ihi ni Mama. Hindi ko na sisisihin pa si Mama sa pagkumbinsi niya sa aking doon na sa government hospital na iyon magpaopera. Susuwertehen akong makakuha ng permanente at magandang raket— sa labas ng bansa. Makakaipon ako at tuluyang mababayaran ang bahay at lupang hinuhulugan. Tapos, ipapakilala ko sa kaniya ang magiging partner ko sa buhay at hindi siya masusurpresa (dahil, siguro, alam niyang kontento ako sa buhay na pinili ko). Tatanggapin niya kaming dalawa at magiging masaya siya para sa amin (kahit di kami makapagbibigay ng apo sa kaniya). Sa kalaunan, babalakin kong isatitik ang lahat ng mga nangyari para may maisali ako sa Palanca (pero iinsultuhin lang ako ng aking mga kapuwa manunulat at sasabihin ine-estap’wera o ini-isnab sa Palanca ang mga akdang nababahiran ng melodrama). Pipiliin kong hindi sila pakinggan. At sa huli, aasa at huhugot ako ng positive vibes sa pagbabakasakali. Nang magising si Mama, mukha ko ang una niyang nasungawan. Ngumiti ako sa kaniya. Umasta siyang parang giniginaw kaya mabilis kong inayos ang kumot niya. Tapos, tinanong ko siya kung anong pakiramdam niya. Ininda niya ang kirot ng hiwa sa kaniyang tagiliran. Nang tingnan ko ang hiwa, napatigalgal ako. Halos isang dangkal iyon. Malayo sa sinabi ng doktor na maliit lang. Hindi ko agad ibinida sa kaniya ang paghihintay ko nang matagal at ang nangyari sa x-ray department. Naisip ko, hindi naman siguro masamang sa mga susunod na mga araw na naming ’yong pagdidiskursuhan at pagpapagaling na lang muna ang dapat niyang isipin. Hinawakan ni Mama ang kamay ko. Sabi niya, “Tama ka. Tama ang sinabi mo sa ’kin Pag gising ko, ayos na lahat. Uuwi na tayo.” Tumango ako. At ngumiti. Naramdaman at natiyak kong simula sa araw na iyon, mag-iiba na ang takbo ng lahat para sa akin, para sa kaniya, para sa aming dalawa. Kung tutuusin, sa mga nangyari, si Mama ay nagkaroon ng pangalawang buhay, at ako, sa huli, natutong humarap at magpatuloy sa buhay. Napagtanto ko rin na kung anumang lakas at pagmamahal na nanahan sa dibdib ko ngayon, lahat iyon, galing sa lakas at pagmamahal ng aking ina. Sandali pa, sinenyasan na ako ni Mama na buksan ang bintana. Mabilis kong sinunod ang pinakiusap niya. Sa aking pagtayo, bigla, naisip ko kung bakit nga ba Salvacion ang naipangalan sa pinakamamahal kong ina. Sinapuso ko na lang ang nahagilap kong paliwanag. Nang tuluyan kong mabuksan ang bintana, sa labas, namangha ako sa dahan-dahang pag-aliwalas ng mga ulap.

Jose Dennis C. Teodosio 261

Forum From left to right: Charlson Ong, Luna Sicat Cleto, Dean Francis Alfar, J. Neil C. Garcia, Gabriela Lee, Eliza Victoria, and Jaime An Lim

Lines of Flight: The Practice and Limits of Realism in Philippine Fiction

264 Lines of Flight: The Practice and Limits of Realism in Philippine Fiction

A Forum

Panelists: Luna Sicat Cleto, Dean Alfar, Charlson Ong, Jaime An Lim, Eliza Victoria, and Gabriela Lee. Moderator: J. Neil C. Garcia The following is a transcription of the University of the Philippines Press panel discussion that took place at Raffles Makati, on the first day of the Philippine Readers and Writers Festival, sponsored by National Bookstore, on August 26, 2016. JNG: In literature, realism is the production of “reality effects” in texts—a specific form of referentiality that seeks to faithfullypoint to the nature of the world and of human life. While seemingly universally self-evident, as a representational process, literary realism—critics now tell us—is indicatively Western. It is rooted in the “dominant mood” of nineteenth-century Europe, and was premised upon “a rationalist epistemology that turned its back on the fantasies of Romanticism.” The social, political, and scientific events of its time and place all contributed to shaping it. As such, realism is a staunchly secular vision that emerged in the West when empiricism and materialism were in full sway, when the mechanistic paradigm rendered reality explainable in terms of causalities and determinations, when individualism had been rationalized in terms of rights, and when the economic system of capitalism had effectively reified many aspects of human life. Owing to the ascendancy of critical theory, we now understand that the “real” in realism is, of course, merely a convention—an effect of a signifying system that permits this kind of referential logic in literary representations.

265 Historians have concluded that literary realism is analogous to journalism in the sense that like a news report, it aims to achieve “objectivity” in its rendering of scenes. In Victorian England, the better-known realist novelists of this period, in fact, worked in journalism, in the main. Realism can be seen as a precursor of documentaries in this sense, and like this contemporary mass media genre, it treated the lives of the socially downtrodden, as well as the difficulties being faced by the bourgeois class in Europe and America. Moreover, literary realism draws from psychological science, operationalizing its insights into human behavior, motivation, and emotions, which it attempts to render in all their complexity. Realist fiction regards people as the locus of complicated forces and influences, and it deploys the technique of internal monologue in order to reflect this “truth.” A realist fictional text, therefore, dwells more on inner transformation than outer plot, registering its movements as changes in the main character’s perception and understanding. Unlike Romantic novels—in which emplotment was both obvious and orderly—the narrative arc of realist novels traces trajectories that are not easily apparent. Further examining realism in formal terms, we easily notice that the omniscient point of view—that was the norm in Romantic writing—in this fictional mode gives way to the selective omniscient or even the first person perspective. Often, in these instances, the narrator proves himself to be far from reliable. Realist stories are also commonly framed within bigger narratives—a technique that further distances the reader from the story’s external events. This complication of narrative logic serves to further imitate reality, which is, by definition, difficult, intractable, and shifting. I would like to ask our speakers, by way of an introduction, to describe their respective journeys as writers—in particular, as fictionists. I would also like to ask each of them to answer the following questions: Are you or aren’t you a realist? What exactly does the “realist” or “non-realist” (or “speculative”) description entail in terms of the topics, characters, “worlds,” plots, and themes that you work with when you write? LSC: Mabato ang daan ng naging landas ko sa pagsusulat. Parang hindi, di ba, kasi pinalad akong magkaroon ng ama na nagsusulat—at isa siyang magaling na fictionist. Mas matinding hamon ’yon

266 Forum kasi ayaw mong maging alingawngaw o anino lamang. Ayaw mo rin na susugan ’yong idea na awtomatiko nang naipapasa ang talent dahil sa genetics. Pierre Bourdieu likened the artist to the family idiot and maybe he said that because art isn’t financially rewarding, kahit na it’s backbreaking work actually. Nakita ko ito firsthand sa karanasan ng tatay ko, naging emotionally isolated rin siya sa amin (in my version of things) dahil nauuna ang pagsusulat niya Sa Lahat. Ito na rin siguro ’yong dahilan kung bakit hindi ko naman talaga pinangarap na maging manunulat, sa totoo lang, noong bata ako. May talent ako noon sa sining biswal, at ’yon ang inakala kong magiging ikid ng buhay ko, ang magpinta lang, o gumuhit. Bigyan mo ako noon ng papel at lapis, parang kapalit na noon ang camera. Bukod sa napaligiran kami noon ng mga libro (sari-saring mga nobela at short story collections), hindi ipinagdamot ng aking ama na basahin namin ang mga ’yon. Tila alam niyang makatutulong rin iyon sa amin. Karaniwan lang kaming angkan na nakatira sa Quezon City: nagtuturo ang aking ama sa unibersidad at accountant ang aking ina. Praktikal siguro ang dahilan ng tatay ko nang sinabi niyang hindi ko ikabubuhay ang pagpipinta lamang (siyempre), at maaring nasindak ako sa bigat ng aking pasiya nang sabihin niyang kung hindi ako sigurado na mahusay na mahusay ako sa aking kakayahan (siyempre hindi!), ay huwag ko na lang ituloy … ’Yong ellipsis na ’yon ang nagpreno sa aking huwag nang magtuloy sa pangarap na maging pintor. Nag-aral ako ng Journalism sa UP, na bandang huli’y napagawi sa Film. Nakalangoy naman ako sa kurso dala nga ng hilig ko sa pagbabasa at kakayahan sa pahayag. Nakilala ko ang gurong si Prof. Luis Beltran, kilalang journalist. Natutuhan ko sa kanya ang ekonomiya ng mga salita, at ok na sana kaso dinapuan ako ng bagot, nasisikil sa itinatakda na “stick to the facts,” at maging accurate sapagkat ang katotohanan ng ibinabalita ay mahalaga. Isang araw, sumama ako sa isang kaibigan na mag-sit in sa workshop ni Rene Villanueva sa TELON. Natatandaan kong natuwa talaga ako sa pakikinig ng dramatic reading, at bago ko pa namalayan, sumasali na ako sa pagsulat ng mga monologo, eksena, character studies. Nakatuklas ako ng anyong para kang nasasapian kapag in character ang sinusulat mo, lalo na kapag naitanghal iyon at nadarama ng audience ang nangyayari sa tanghalan.

Lines of Flight: The Practice and Limits of Realism in Philippine Fiction 267 Sa dula ko natutuhan ang basics ng fiction writing. Character, plot, dialogue. Buto ng dula ang scenario, parang notecards sa pagsusulat ng fiksiyon. Dumaan rin ako sa yugtong sinubok kong tumula, at napasama ako sa mga workshops ng KATHA at ng Linangan sa Imahen, Retorika at Anyo. Hindi man ako naging makata ngayon, napakahalaga ng natutuhan ko sa pagkakaroon ng metaphorical eye. Kung natuto ako sa pagmamapa ng kuwento sa dula, at nagkaroon ako ng unawa sa pananalinghaga sa tula, sa gabay naman ng screenwriter na si Armando Lao ko natuklasan ang panahunan (tense), narrative voice, at imaginary present. Sa cinematic language, mas blurry ’yong signposts ng panahon, ang viewer ang bahalang magbalasa ng “kuwento” ng “panahon.” Aniya, maraming literary devices ang pelikula, hindi lang natin alam na iyon pala iyon, at magkahawig ang konsepto ng auteur at awtor. Tinuruan niya kaming basahin ang wika ng imahen sa panonood ng mga pelikula. Noon, nabalahaw ako sa nobela kong Makinilyang Altar. Nawala iyon nang magka- epiphany sa paghawak sa time. Hindi iyon kailangang maging chronological, ni hindi nga kailangang maging totoo lagi. This insight was so valuable then to my work because it helped me to distantiate the material from the speculative and the real. While the real served as a touchstone for authenticity, the speculative helped me to find better ways to tell the story. Mahalaga iyon kasi kung hindi ko ito nauunawaang lahat through practice bilang isang fictionist, aakalain kong tatatlo lamang ang panahon: nakaraan, ngayon, at bukas. Aakalain kong ang mga imahe’y naroon lang, at hindi na matuto sa kanilang semiotika. Aakalain kong ang tula’y nasa pahina lang. Binuksan sa akin ang posibilidad ng mga probabilidad ng panahon—maaring nakalipas, maaaring bukas, at maaaring ngayon. At ganito rin ’yong patakaran pala maging sa setting. Nasulat ko ang Mga Prodigal halimbawa, na nangyayari sa Dubai, nang hindi kinailangang makarating mismo doon. Nakataya ang believability ng signposts ng panahon at tagpuan, pati ang mga tauhan, sa ekspertong pakikilaro ng manunulat sa totoo at posibleng mangyari. Kaya lamang, dahil pinili kong magsulat sa Filipino, kung minsan may bagahe (at alagwa iyon) ng reponsabilidad sa kultural at materyal na realidad.

268 Forum Parehas akong umiigib sa balon ng realismo at ng spekulatibo. Realist akong manunulat in the sense na kailangang kapani-paniwala ang hubog ng mga tauhan, lalo na ang mga pasiya, kilos, winiwika ng mga ito; may verisimilitude ang tagpuan, panahon, nakikilatis ang awtentikong karanasan na naging batis o sanggunian ng teksto. Speculative o non-realist na ako pagdating sa pagkahubog ng isang “imaginary present.” Ang katangiang ito actually ang pinakanakakatuwa sa pagsusulat ng fiksiyon. Isang anyo ito ng pagtakas, ng “pagbubuong- muli.” Maaari ngang isipin na kaya rin natin sinusulat ang mga kuwento’y sapagkat nasunog na ang tulay ng nakaraan, ngayon at kasalukuyan—at ang kawalan na iyon ang binubuno ng mga salita. DA: Good morning. I grew up as a lover of fantasy, things that are peculiar. I read everything I could but there came a point in time when I ran out of books to read. So my kiddie self raised my kiddie fist to the sky and said one day I will write books that I would like to read. When I was older I started to write what is now known as speculative fiction, which is an umbrella term used for non-realist fiction that includes the genres of fantasy, science fiction, horror. And I wrote a story called “The Kite of Stars.” It was published in Strange Horizons. A few months later, it was anthologized in the latest edition of The Year’s Best Fantasy & Horror—in the table of contents, it’s Neil Gaiman, Stephen King, Dean Francis Alfar, Ursula Le Guin. For me, it meant that the kind of writing that I valued was recognized. And a Filipino, more importantly: it meant if I could do it, then other Filipinos should be able to do it as well. We all need to produce. And we need those stories to be both wonderfully written and have a variety of themes, a variety of concerns. There is the misconception that speculative fiction or genre writing is lightweight, that it is not necessarily of value. When I was much younger, I really bought into this false dichotomy of realism vs. speculative fiction. Because at that time I was so focused on getting spec fic read and recognized. I wanted spec fic to be taught in schools. Well fast forward, it is recognized. It is being taught in schools. But realism and speculative fiction are not opposites. They are both denizens of the country called “Story.”

Lines of Flight: The Practice and Limits of Realism in Philippine Fiction 269 It becomes a matter of, as an author, what is the best way for you to tell your story? What matters is how we tell it, how it is received, and what truths we can impart. JNG: How are we going to have an argument? You’re basically saying that we should all just embrace one other and sing “Kumbaya …” GL: Yes! DA: Because in this day and age we should all try to see the bigger picture … JNG: But we invited you all here so we could have an argument! DA: Hold on. In this day and age we are living in a place and time of fear, we fear for lives, we fear for our future. We need writing. We need realist writing. We need speculative fiction. We need to be able to create order from the chaos that’s happening. Realism and spec fic can do that. We need to engage people. We need to get them reading, we need to get them thinking. And it is writing that will do that, that has always done that. If, here and now, because of our politics and our political realities we are a nation divided, then I would prefer in my speculative fiction that we are a nation united. Amen. JNG, EV, and Audience: Amen! CO: Kung napapansin niyo, kami ni Jimmy Lim ang nasa gitna. At wala kaming gadget. We’re being flanked by the enemy. I’ll answer some of the questions. I’m probably a realist writer, because I don’t tend to create parallel universes when I write. On the other hand, I’m not very comfortable also with these categories. I have stories that are not conventionally realist. Recently, a teacher asked to use a story of mine for an introductory class in magical realism. It’s a story titled “Season of Ten Thousand Noses,” which I wrote almost as a history lesson. It’s about the burning of the Parian. Do you know the burning of the Parian? Some of you might not even know that. I think it’s a big deal in our history that these things happened. There were pogroms, there were burnings of ghettos, but very few people know about them. They had been swept under the rug. So I wanted to write a story about that, for younger people, and it became that story.

270 Forum And then I also wrote a story called “Widow,” that could be timely these days. I wanted to write a story kasi, given all the hullabaloo about the refrigerated cadaver of Marcos, they said, ang yumaman lang dito ’yong embalmer niya. So I wanted to write a story from the point of view of the embalmer. And it ended up being a story called “Widow.” And then again my first novel, An Embarrassment of Riches, has been described by a researcher online as dystopic, which is why I was invited once to speak on dystopic writing. They called it the only dystopian novel in and about the Philippines. It has been called many things by many critics. I started the book about 1993 and hoped to finish it at least by 1998 in time for the Philippine Centennial celebrations. Wala pang contest noon. So I wanted to write a book about the Philippines a hundred years after the revolution. But I couldn’t. The times then were like ngayon. You didn’t know what the headlines would be the next day, what the President would say, who would be killed. I’m a Martial Law minor; I grew up under Martial Law, and then EDSA, and all that. And that period of our history was exciting, brutal, maraming pinapatay, it was like a state of war between the RAM and the Left. So I didn’t know how to go about it. Things were so strange, so I had to create, in a way, a parallel, a shadow nation that I could use as a kind of template. So anyway, it ended up being An Embarrassment of Riches, and I called this country “Victorianas”—the fictional island where the action is set, a “shadow Philippines,” or at least that’s how I wrote it. So I think in the end it’s really about wrestling with the material. How do you deal with material in front of you, and you have to find a way, and that was the way I thought could do it. I didn’t really care what might happen after I wrote it, but anyway, it won at the Philippine centennial awards. And then after that, I thought I’d do a more conventional historical novel because again … we’ve talked about realism, but we don’t even have history in much of our literature. Where are our historical novels? I can’t even name one off the top of my head. So I wrote Banyaga, which is really a hundred years from the nineteenth century. And I used immigrant boys. And they became patriarchs of clans and to me it’s also the Southeast Asian

Lines of Flight: The Practice and Limits of Realism in Philippine Fiction 271 story. Both An Embarrassment of Riches and Banyaga represent the immigration story. And by the way, what happened with An Embarrassment of Riches, I think, if you read it, a lot of the issues that it discusses, are becoming urgent again. Like our issues with China. Almost prophetic in a sense. So I guess writing is really about thinking things through. DA: Kasi spec fic writer ka talaga. (Laughter.) CO: No. It’s really thinking things through, no matter what form you want to use. You need to ask yourself: are you thinking clearly or fuzzily? So you have to think through your own logic. And then after Banyaga I wanted to write crime fiction—again, since we don’t have a lot of crime fiction—and so I wroteBlue Angel/ White Shadow, which I think is not a bad book of crime fiction, (chuckle), if I may say so. DA: You may say so. CO: I think there are so many forms that we haven’t really explored yet, speculative or ano pa man. There are just so many things to do, so many fictional structures that haven’t been explored by our writers. JNG: Are those forms mostly realist forms? CO: Yes. JNG: Not enough crime fiction, which is realist, right? CO: Yes, but you can have a crime fiction that is not purely realist. It doesn’t have to be. JNG: Ah, yes. Trese, for example. CO: I’m just saying, marami pa tayong hindi nae-explore, di ba? There’s so much to be done, and to me historical writing is still important, and we have barely scratched the surface. And now I’m doing a thriller, with a lot of religion and a lot of sex. Priests and prostitutes, my favorite characters. So I’m doing a thriller now—think it will be that, or I hope, anyway. And I also got dragooned into writing a horror movie—obviously, something speculative. On the other hand, it’s also true that you can write realistic fiction without saying anything real … DA: Agree.

272 Forum CO: Case in point: movies. My favorite movie is The Godfather, and it’s fiction. In 1960, I think, that was the first time there was a US congressional hearing on the Mafia that was televised, and Mario Puzo saw it and then he asked for the congressional records; he got them and then wrote a book based on that. But then when he was asked, o sino si Vito Corleone, he said, “My mother. And if you knew her you wouldn’t ask why.” So mothers are always there. DA: There you go. CO: On the other hand, and dami nating mga biopic dito, for instance, The Kingpin of Tondo or whatever, na you know are absolute nonsense. So again, it’s not really the form, but your intention, and how you deal with the material. And I think at some point, the spirit of the material will almost decide where you should go, how you should write. Again, maybe, this is just me being exclusive. DA: Again, snobbery. Mag-aaway tayo. CO: Mamaya, mag-aaaway tayo. But again for now I think the universe of letters is so vast and there’s so much that we haven’t done yet, although it’s my belief that realist fiction is being read by intelligent people. About who reads non-realist fiction? Well, you’ll have to ask them. DA: Ok, them’s fighting words. I’ll be back. JNG: You will have your turn later; let’s allow everyone to speak first. DA: Hmpf. CO: Readers now are swimming in new media, movies, so I think that sort of determines what people read. It can’t be helped. Our reality is really virtual, much of it is cyber anyway, and it will be determined by the platforms that are going around. You have Lav Diaz doing ten-hour movies, who’s going to watch that you might ask? And yet, surprisingly, mayroon din naman. DA: People without bladders. CO: So I think it’s sort of open season kung ano ’yong gusto ko mong gawin.

Lines of Flight: The Practice and Limits of Realism in Philippine Fiction 273 JAL: Good morning. I would like to start with something about why people end up as writers. I’ve spoken with a lot of other writers and somehow there are commonalities. There are events that are almost true for all writers. Number one, they got interested in stories very early. This is because there was a storyteller in the family. DA and GL: Yes! JAL: That could be a mother, that could be a yaya. In my case, it was my elder sister. So all the stories they took up in class, she would retell to us. And we were all excited. We would listen. Instead of being noisy, unruly, we would settle down and listen. And we were really serious. We were taken up by the stories. For us, the stories were real. And we enjoyed them. And that is the love that started there, because later on, when we ran out of stories and the stories ended, we had to look for other stories. And the next thing is, you have to read early. DA: Yes. JAL: I noticed that nowadays children generally have to be ten years old to be able to read. I was reading when I was in Grade 2. DA: Earlier. JAL: Cebuano was very close to English, I thought, because it is syllabic. You say “Bi-sa-ya” and that’s it, “Bi-sa-ya”: they’re all expressed in syllables. English is practically the same. And so I was reading early, something that Dean also mentioned, and then of course there was the availability of a library … DA: Yes. JAL: And a bookstore. Do not underestimate the value of early exposure to books. Sometimes you don’t think that this is very crucial. But it is. So bring your kid to the library, and just let your kid wander around, discover the place, because that child is going to develop the love of reading. And he’s not going to stay put with just the garden variety Pepe and Pilar material. The child is going to move on. Even if you have to go through Emilie Loring, that sort of thing. Love stories, crime stories, whatever. Give the child a chance to read because eventually, the child is going to find that the old material is repetitive. The child will

274 Forum want something else. And then the child will grow. And his taste will become more sophisticated. You give the child a chance to really explore the riches of literature. And once that child learns to love reading, he is also going to try his hand at writing his own stories. Believe me. Even if the first stories are terrible, that’s fine. Because that child is going to grow. And even without you knowing it, and without investing in a four-year course you have created a writer. I don’t know if he’s always good, but at least if the child could write, that’s better than not being able to write, right? DA: Kaso nga lang, hindi na siya doktor. JNG: The child will be miserable and poor. DA: Kasi hindi doktor. GL and EV: PhD! JAL: I don’t know. Well, money is not always the last measure— DA: Yes! JAL: Of success or happiness. So I went through that route and when I was in elementary school I was buying books. How many elementary school students do you know would buy books? Usually they would buy clothes, toys, and food, and whatever, but not books. When I had a chance as a kid, I bought books. And the books that I bought were not for kids. Boccaccio’s Decameron. Some of the stories there are very bawdy, but I did not know that. And then the other book that I bought at a drugstore was a paperback and it is one of my favorite books up to now. Ray Bradbury’s The Golden Apples of the Sun. It’s science fiction. But you know back then I didn’t even know it was science fiction. DA: Wonderful. JAL: The stories are so haunting. Haunting. You know there’s this boy, for example, who does not grow old. Can you imagine living from year to year to year, and remaining young? The parents who adopted him would grow old and so the boy would try to escape because now they would realize there is something strange about the boy, the boy who is always young. And so his life is about this “Hail and Farewell.” That’s the title of the story,

Lines of Flight: The Practice and Limits of Realism in Philippine Fiction 275 and I thought, “oh my God, this is so sad.” I was only a young boy, but I empathized with the sadness of the boy who could never be at home with his parents. He had to leave them because they grew old and he remained young. You know, that kind of story—from The Golden Apples of the Sun. If you get a chance, get a copy. But I did not end up writing speculative fiction. DA: That’s okay, I still love you. JAL: I’m considered as a realistic writer, partly because of my sensitivity, I think. I have the natural inclination for realistic fiction, I like realistic stories. But another reason was because of my training and exposure. In college, who were my early Filipino models? I read Kerima Polotan, who wrote about ethical dilemmas among middle-class couples. I liked NVM Gonzalez, who wrote about kaingeros in Mindoro. I liked Bienvenido N. Santos, who wrote about old-timers, pensionados living in America. I liked Edilberto T. Tiempo, who wrote about American and Filipino soldiers during the Second World War. Their writings would be considered realistic; they were realist writers. So they were my early models. And the same thing with the foreign authors. Chekhov’s “The Lady with the Pet Dog,” Hemingway’s “A Clean Well-Lighted Place.” So they are also realist writers. You could say that was my training. And because I liked their writing, I thought I would try to write in the same way. So essentially I looked for inspiration from the world around me. I don’t explore too much about what is outside my world. Perhaps I am just lazy. I just look around, and there are already many stories. DA: All around. JAL: And so my technique would be linear, very predictable, point A to point B to point C, and there are no abrupt jumps, no drastic introductions of impossible materials. So no telegrams, no emails, just stories. Just the flow of the narrative. I find it easier that way. Not too imaginative, but I am also old. That explains probably my preference for realistic fiction, because I think speculative fiction is a young person’s genre … Although you might think that we have exhausted the possibilities of reality in fiction. Not true, not true at all. We’ve barely even touched the tip of the iceberg. If you pursue the realist mode in writing,

276 Forum you’ll discover that there are still a lot of other stories that need telling. Come to think it, however, I also use the speculative mode when I write stories for children. DA: Yes. JAL: Like my story “Encanto” … I do have to say that when I wrote it, I did not realize that this story would be speculative, because in our town, encantos or fairies are real. And so I thought it was part of my reality. And even ghosts, for the longest time, I tell you, I thought they were real. DA: They are, right? JAL: And when I go out, I’m always afraid that something might happen to me, because there’s a dark shadow behind the tree. They are real. And so even if we say later on that they are elements of speculative fiction, for some time, I thought they were real. Superman? He’s part of my reality. He lives in the US! And I thought actors never died, because they appeared in movie after movie after movie. DA: Tama. JAL: I mean, I was a very gullible child. But I have admit I would like to try writing more speculative fiction—this time, for adults. DA: Yes! JAL: You’ll be surprised. I think this old man still has a trick or two. Chorus: Yipee! DA: I’ll write a realist story. Trade tayo. JAL: Ok. But anyway, like I said in the beginning, if you have kids of your own, one way to encourage them to read and write is to expose them to stories, tell them stories. Make them fall in love with stories and they will look for stories, because stories are really exciting. So thank you very much. EV: I wanted to start with a question: Isn’t all fiction speculative? Yes, but what do you speculate on? With speculative fiction you speculate on what happens when you change the rules of the world. Like extending the

Lines of Flight: The Practice and Limits of Realism in Philippine Fiction 277 “what if.” What if you’re a nun and you fall in love? This is a good premise already for a realist story, but what if you extend that? What if you deepen the question to push past what science informs us, past what our senses show us? What if you’re a nun, and you fall in love, and you explode? Now you have speculative fiction. What if you find a dead body inside your house? This could definitely happen, and if you answer this question through fiction, you’ll have a thriller or a mystery story. In my novel, Dwellers, I decided to deepen the question. What if your soul or your “essence” has the power to jump from one body to the next, and the body that you jump into has a house, and in that house is a dead body? Does this dead body now belong to you? If the body is a house, how will you investigate this house? How will you investigate yourself? So it becomes not just a mystery story, but an exploration of body politics, gender, faith, the nature of the soul, and the fallibility of memory—themes I indeed ended up exploring in this work. In realist fiction you find the extraordinary in the ordinary, but in the kind of stories that I write, I place them side-by-side. I just want to see what will come out from that kind of equation. Reasons why I write like this: I grew up with stories that science and our senses may not accept, but which my family accepts as absolute truth. In our household, the “speculative” becomes real. My mother’s family comes from the Cagayan Valley, from Tuguegarao, and they have a lot of stories from that town. Their neighbor is a witch. My uncle was almost taken by a sirena. All of these stories, these fantastic stories, were told in a matter-of- fact way, and it’s no surprise that such tales—that juxtaposed fantastic topics with a matter-of-fact tone—eventually entered my fiction. I read a lot, growing up. My mother bought a bunch of books, a complete set of encyclopedia, so that’s what I first read. She also had a lot of books from college. There was one called The Complete Development of Philippine Literature in English Since the 1900s. It’s a green volume, and it has all these stories from NVM

278 Forum Gonzalez, Nick Joaquin, Gregorio Brillantes, Tuvera. So I grew up reading all of these stories also. And I guess when I ran out of stories to read, I wrote my own. Having read all these stories, the question at the back of my mind, up to now, has always been, What else can I contribute? What new insight can I tap into, and share? I guess with speculative fiction, or genres, it becomes like a shared language for readers, especially if they follow certain beats. I read in the Guardian this thing that I really liked, that the greatest barrier to sharing culture sometimes is culture itself, so genre becomes a language to open doors to readers. For example, maybe you’re talking to a teenager who doesn’t want really to talk about poverty or totalitarian regimes, and then you’re like, “Oh I have this novel which is about a contest, and it’s Hunger Games.” So that’s a way to introduce them to these topics that maybe, at face value, they wouldn’t want to read about or talk about. Or you may be someone from outside of Filipino culture. You may not be drawn to Filipino culture per se. But you may want to pick up, let’s say, Mythspace by Paolo Chikiamco, which is a space opera, but features aswang. So you may have the beats of the space opera, you have the fight scenes, space ships, the prophecy of the chosen one and you can use that to introduce readers to important topics that you find important. And I guess to react also to what was mentioned that there are still so many topics that we haven’t tapped yet, I remember talking to a friend who’s spoken to a reader who reads only a certain portion of Filipino literature, so it becomes like a sort of Filipino literature bingo, like, May sapa ba diyan, may kalabaw, may magsasaka, and you’re like, that’s not the only kind of stories that we have, so it’s really important. While I do enjoy that kind of literature, I’d have to say that these are not the only stories that we can or should tell. DA: Yes. EV: Think about how certain people view the world. Some people take in stimuli, and then they write them as they are, but some people add something extra. Look at how Einstein and the scientists saw the world, and interpreted the world, and

Lines of Flight: The Practice and Limits of Realism in Philippine Fiction 279 how they talked about their theories. They talked about them through thought experiments and explanatory stories, basically. What if you move so fast, so close to the speed of light that time slows down? If you want to talk to a layperson, a non- expert, you need to talk to them in terms of stories to make them understand how you see the world. Scientists have stories that are backed by theories. Fictionists have stories backed by an honest interpretation of the human condition. Realist or non- realist, these stories need to come from a place of honesty. GL: When I started writing, I didn’t write fiction. I actually wrote poetry. I came in to this particular writing life because of two things. One was because I couldn’t be a doctor. The other thing I realized I was good at because I was also not very good at math and science was that I knew I was good in reading. I was lucky though that my parents were very much willing to let me experiment on things and think about what I wanted to be and were never really strict about that. It also helped that much like the rest of the panel, my mother is a storyteller. In particular she’s a visual artist and she writes storybooks. So I grew up in a house that very much privileged the creation of art and of storytelling. One of the things that influenced my writing was really personal experience, and I think that’s really important, to stretch yourself and try out new things because you don’t know what kind of stories are going to come out of it. I discovered that writing to a certain extent is also about community. It’s about people who are around you and help you to be a better writer. So looking for that kind of community, I found it when I studied in UP. But I studied poetry. I had fantastic poetry teachers, Sir Neil among them, and I wrote my thesis on poetry and writing poetry, but on the side, I enjoyed writing fiction but I never took it seriously. And so I graduated and I had to look for a job. I went looking for a job. And then Dean Alfar gave me a job. And uh … JNG: Did he pay you well? EV: Naghesitate siya. DA: We’re on the record here.

280 Forum GL: I was paid in experience. (Laughter.) And money, too. At least may ganun. But one of the things that I learned from Dean, he knew that I wrote but he didn’t know that I wrote fiction. And so when the first call for speculative fiction came up in 2005, he said, Why don’t you submit a story? And I did. And it didn’t get accepted the first time around. Okay, so I said it’s not for me talaga. Too bad, I’m going back to writing poetry. And then he came up to me later on and said Gabby actually we have space for two more stories, and I want yours to be one of them. And then I realized later on when it first came out and I saw the book, I realized that this was something that eminently suited the way I saw the world, which was kind of slantwise, kind of strange, and kind of, again I think of what Eliza said earlier, extending the “What if …” The what-if was already for me something that you could explore in poetry, actually. But here in speculative fiction—I didn’t even know it was speculative fiction until the anthology came out—to me that was just story. I realized that this was another way of engaging the world that I live in. This was another way of me trying to understand the world that I live in, but you use a different lens, and a different way of seeing things, and trying to engage with it. And so to me that was when I got hooked. And one of the other things that influenced me was when I studied abroad. Studying abroad also kind of broke down all those rules, and said genre is a label and if that’s what you want to call your story, go ahead and call your story that, but for us we’re concerned with what is it you’re trying to say—Is it the best way of executing this story in the manner that you want to tell it? And to me that was such a novel way of looking at things, kasi I didn’t have the checklist anymore, of ah ’yong character mo ba ito ’yong ginagawa niya? Ito ba ’yong rules nung ano mo? But rather is this the best use of technique? Is this the best use of language? One of the things also that helped me in that particular stage and still helps me right now is because I studied poetry I pay attention to the use of language because poetry is such a precise craft, and you have to pay attention to every word that you choose. And in fiction, normally some fictionists use the excuse na mahaba naman iyan eh, pwede mong itago.

Lines of Flight: The Practice and Limits of Realism in Philippine Fiction 281 But the truth is each word is important, and where you place them is still important. And the value of the meaning changes when you change the meaning and the placement of words. And to me that was such a valuable lesson that poetry taught that I still carry up to now, writing fiction. But I’ve always thought this way—I never thought that there were boundaries and I never thought that to be labeled one is to immediately cancel out the others. I think that every story is important. What we should be paying attention to is the manner of the telling, and the message that it’s trying to convey. Because once we get to the meat of it, all stories are just talking about the way we see the world. EV: Yes. GL: And if we accept that particular premise, that means that whatever the genre is, the story should be important, and should at least be given the chance to be read. JNG: Thank you for your rather exhaustive summations and introductions. Let me explain that I thought of this topic because I believe it is a timely one. I believe—I know—that so many of our young writers have given up on realism, and are happily writing different kinds of speculative fiction. This is clear, going by what’s being increasingly written in Creative Writing classes, and going by the entries to the fiction category in such contests as the Palanca Awards, for example. The thing is, not everything is hunky-dory in this picture, because it’s not entirely clear that these young writers have tried realism seriously—and consistently—enough to actually be able to mindfully (or credibly) give up on it, or whether speculative forms of fiction are simply what they have been exposed to and therefore prefer to read (and write). Moreover, while speculative fiction may have more adherents among the young than realism, institutionally the latter still dominates the scene, receiving accolades and recognitions, while the former still mostly gets affirmed in “indie” and non-institutional ways. While we would like to believe that we are all citizens of “the Republic of Letters”—and that we are all denizens of this country called Story—we may still need to question this mode called realism, which we may need to “provincialize,” because it arguably is a

282 Forum culturally specific way of telling a story (or indeed, of seeing a world). As such it is constrained by narrative conventions and expectations, many of which—as a number of you have pointed out—may not be even be appropriate to our cultural situation. While initially understood as being strictly a question of formal accomplishment, realism is now seen by many literary critics as a signifying practice that exceeds surface technicality. As such it is comprised of discursive strategies that encourage the reader to believe in the text’s referential power. Over and above the technical features of this mode of writing, there are certain “conditionalities” that are required for realism to work. First, the world must be an abundantly “describable” location. Next, it must be possible to fully name and communicate something about this world. And then, words must be deemed as capable of imitating—but not literally producing—the real. And then, both the message and the style must be as unobtrusive or “imperceptible” as possible. Finally, the reader must believe what the author is saying. Clearly, these requirements cannot be easily assumed by us, especially as regards the usefulness of an always already perceptible and self-consciously deployed textual literacy in a residually but powerfully oral culture, whose realities aren’t entirely describable, nameable, or even “capturable” in literary (that is, scriptural) language, and whose linguistic situation is dizzyingly mixed and multifarious right from the start. And then, the last condition proves most salient, indeed: basically, for realism to be possible, both reader and author must share the same “attitude”—needless to say, must share the same language and the same cultural ground, the same habitus that deems this form of imitation as realistic, precisely. Given the multiple “divides” in Philippine society, the uniformity of any “reality effects” in a literary or writerly tradition that is not even evenly legible or “available” to the majority of its citizens (who don’t really read) obviously cannot be stabilized or assured. On a related note, as we have appropriated it in our tradition, realism is routinely confounded by the inescapability of and almost perfunctory recourse to translation. Think of

Lines of Flight: The Practice and Limits of Realism in Philippine Fiction 283 Rizal’s novels, which supposedly lie at the very wellspring of the realist canon in our literature, and their scenes that should have realistically happened in Tagalog, but that Rizal willfully translated into Spanish. Or think of the touchstone works of our great anglophone fictionists—for instance, NVM Gonzalez, whose characters are typically peasants conversing in perfect “standard” English in the middle of the ash-covered loam. In a manner of speaking, writing realistically—at least, in English—in our country will always be “speculative” or transformational, precisely because it will inevitably require verbal and cultural translation (which is about approximation/ speculation, at its very best). If this is so, then the tradition of speculative writing in our country becomes suddenly much larger—and older. What can you say about that? To the fictionists in English: if you are indeed enacting verbal and cultural translations in your works, then to what kind of translation practice are you inclined? Do you promote equivalence rather than difference—opting for a “domestication” of the foreign (for instance, “sour pork broth” instead of sinigang na baboy)? The former endorses the idea of commensurability across cultural experiences and promotes a seamless reading experience premised on the illusion of sameness; the latter insists on the irreducibility of cultural realities, and indeed registers the source text’s “foreignness” in the target text itself. What do you believe might be the advantages of the translational practice that you prefer? LSC: My stand on the value of translation is this—I’d go for using the original term like sinigang na baboy and letting the reader figure it out for herself, because I think she can gauge the meaning through context clues. Pangarap kong mabasa ang Makinilyang Altar ng iba pang mga mambabasa, na labas sa ating bansa, kaya pinasalin ko iyon sa Ingles. ’Yong pakiramdam na ito matagal ko nang napapansin sa sarili—’yong parang ang liit ng sapa, tapos ang likot ng buntot at hasang mo at gusto mong makalangoy sa mas malawak na katawang-tubig. Mapalad ako at tinanggap ni Marne Kilates ang proyekto. Alam ko ang kalidad ng trabaho

284 Forum ni Marne, at dahil isa siyang makata, alam kong malalim ang kanyang pagpapahalaga sa wika. May footnotes originally ang salin niya, para ipaliwanag ang mga salitang tulad ng bisor, dirty ice cream, etc. Naipabasa ko rin ang draft ng salin ni Marne kay Andrea Pasion-Flores. Pinayuhan ako ni Andrea na hindi na kinakailangan ang footnotes, at ang reference niya dito ’yong experience niya bilang a Singapore-based literary agent. I followed her advice. May mga bahagi sa draft ng salin na dala pa rin ang bagahe ng pagkokompara sa wikang lirikal ng orihinal. Sa salin ni Marne (Kilates), napanatili naman niya ang lumbay ng personang si Laya, pero kung minsan sumusungaw sa dialogo ang asiwa ng timpla ng wika. Parang radio drama ang dating, kung magiging tapat. Pero ’yon ang nakasulat sa Filipino, e. Mas naidiriin pala kapag sinalin ’yong melodrama. ’Yong pamagat ng akda ay ginawang literal na salin. Ayaw sana ni Marne ang title, mas gusto niya ang, “At the Altar of the Typewriter” dahil hindi idiomatic ang Typewriter Altar. In the end, pinaubaya na lang ni Marne sa akin ’yon, which I appreciate. The translation process went fine, but the review process was not as smooth as I hoped it would be. If it’s any consolation to the younger writers, kami rin ay may mga rejection slips na natatanggap. The review process was a study in contrast. ’Yong isang reader, gustong-gusto ang salin habang ’yong isa’y hinding-hindi. The press director did not elaborate their reasons, she only said that they needed to break the tie, but it took another year bago ko nalaman na hindi na sila interesado sa proyekto. Eye-opener ’yon para sa akin on many levels. Una, kailangan talagang ilaban ng awtor na isalin ang akda niya, at itaya iyon. Sana nga automatic na itong kasama kapag nakapasa ang isang manuskrito sa isang university press (or any publishing house for that matter). Ikalawa, na-realize ko sa experience na iyon na if we are up against the world (kasi nga we have to compete with other authors globally) we must do our best to write it well, and to translate it well, and not to look at ambition as a bad thing. Kung walang aspirasyon o pangarap, bakit ka pa nagsusulat? Ikatlo, sana ang review process ay mas transparent, at mas nag-uusap ang publisher at author para mapaganda talaga ang akda niya.

Lines of Flight: The Practice and Limits of Realism in Philippine Fiction 285 DA: I prefer to render the names of things in the original language, then provide a context for readers to understand what I’m saying. There will never be 100 percent correspondence translating across cultures. It really depends on the needs of the story. But in the end, what matters more to me is uniqueness of cultural experience, whether writing in the realist or the speculative mode. EV: I’ve always wanted to ask English fictionists: in your head, and in the world of the story, do your characters actually speak English? They don’t, in my case. They speak Filipino (or, in certain stories, an otherworldly language), so I see my English-language fiction as translation. I used to italicize Filipino terms in my English- language fiction dinuguan( , sinigang na baboy, atbp.), but I also italicize words to emphasize, so it looks strange on the page. Now my practice is just to translate everything—for a seamless reading experience, as you mentioned. This is tricky, because if this is all translation, then you can’t apply the grammar rules of English. We often read this cliché, grammar-dependent pronouncement after a character’s recent death: She is a teacher. No, I’m sorry. She was a teacher. Was. Was. Was. I’m still getting used to this. If you’re speaking Filipino, you won’t have the same problem, at least not immediately. Same with gender pronouns: “I’m taking him out to dinner.” “So you are dating a guy!” If they’re speaking in Filipino, the character can continue being cryptic about his sexual orientation, because Filipino pronouns are not gendered. I’m still problematizing this. I also write fiction in Filipino (though rarely), and I love how it frees me from all of these translation problems! GL: As for me, I think in English—it’s the language that I find most comfortable for me to express myself. I think that there’s never been any overt decision in terms of self-translation. What I do take care in rendering in my writing is the milieu, whether it is a reimagining of the world around me or a completely secondary world, what I prioritize is the translation of the space and the place. I can use all the Filipino words in my (admittedly limited) vocabulary, but if I don’t believe in the space, and if I don’t believe in the project, then the story doesn’t go anywhere.

286 Forum JNG: Needless to say, “realistic” is not the same thing as “real,” and going by your presentations it’s clear you all have—you all start from—the “real” in your works. In Luna’s and Jimmy’s case the real is relevant or urgent personal experience, both their own and other people’s, as they remember, imagine, or research it. The real in Dean’s case would seem to be the charmed country of childhood, its elemental hurts, fascinations, and joys. Charlson’s real is history, especially its nagging questions and silences—a concern that’s particularly interesting, as we know, because history is itself necessarily narrated, isn’t it? Eliza’s real is pretty interesting, too, because it is constituted of questions, sourced from knowledge systems other than fiction, that could nonetheless serve as the jumping-off place for fictional explorations. It’s the same for Gabby, more or less, although because she started out as a poet language to her is “real” as well, which she painstakingly minds, other than just the story per se. Allow me to raise this question, then. Given the fact that you all agree that reality is important, what you can say about the various ways—many of them resolutely ironic and “distantiating”—speculative or non-realist writing handles or approaches it? In particular I would like you to weigh in on the following commonly heard accusation: Are the various speculative flights from realism nothing more than escapist gestures? In other words: Are speculative writers simply in denial of the complexities and difficulties of contemporary life? LSC: Iba ang game plan ng mga nagsusulat sa Filipino pagdating sa pagpili ng anong uri ng realidad ang itatanghal. Tingin ko na- stereotype na rin ang maikling kuwento at nobela sa Filipino na binanggit sa checklist ng sapa, kalabaw, bukid. Totoong may mga ganoong kuwento na dinakila, at magpahanggang ngayon ay itinuturo bilang mabuting ispesimen ng kuwentong Filipino. Pero dapat hindi doon tumigil sa pagkaunawa natin sa kayang gawin ng maikling kuwento, prosa o nobelang Filipino. Ayaw kong ituring na parang nagtuturo kami ng ambahan (pasintabi, hindi ko intensiyong isawalang bahala ang anyo’t tradisyon na ito) at fineafeature na lang sa mga dokumentaryong nilikha ng NCCA. Hindi naman dapat alienated ang mambabasang Filipino sa sariling panitikan. Kaya lang, batay sa napagmamasdan

Lines of Flight: The Practice and Limits of Realism in Philippine Fiction 287 kong mga paraan ng pagtuturo ng panitikan at kakulangan ng talas para ituro ang panitikan na umaayon sa panahon at pangangailangan ng kontemporaneong Filipino, tila parang napakalaking pagsalunga(t) ang itaya pang sumulat sa Filipino sa panahon ngayon. Hindi ko rin sinasabi na dapat kalimutan natin ang mahuhusay magkuwento sa Ingles. Ang sinasabi ko, lawakan natin ang nalalangoy natin sa pagbabasa at sa pagsusulat. Gusto kong banggitin ang ambag sa realismo ni RM Topacio Aplaon, na masasabi kong nagpapatunay na ang tunay na talent ay laging matatalunton, basta’t hindi napapupurol ang paraan ng pagbasa at pagtuklas. Pinatunayan ni Aplaon na wala sa edad ang sopistikasyon at maturity ng pananaw pagdating sa pag-angkin ng isang mundo, isang karanasan na bagama’t paulit-ulit nang nakikita’y maaring maging bago pa rin, dahil sa kapangyarihan ng kanyang paghawak sa panahunan, tauhan, imahen, talinghaga. Ang mga touchstone na ito para sa akin ay hindi kukupas sa alinmang panahon. JAL: Realism as a mode of representation pays privileged attention to contemporary society and life. This has been the prevalent mode for sometime. I don’t think it has become outmoded, despite some speculations to the contrary. For as long as we still consider the world around us as important, then any literary representation that recognizes its own continuing importance is still workable and relevant. Can you imagine a world where all books deliberately ignore the immediate world and focus instead on an alternative reality in another universe? That, of course, is the ultimate nightmare. The poet and critic Gemino H. Abad has come out with several anthologies of Filipino short stories in English spanning several decades: Upon Our Own Ground, 1956–1972; Underground Spirit, 1973–1989; and Hoard of Thunder, 1990–2008. From his comprehensive survey, you can already chart the relative fortunes of the realist and the non-realist story. In fact, in his Introduction, Abad observes that among the stories in his anthologies, there are non-realist stories, stories of the marvelous and the supernatural, but he observes that the dominant form in Philippine fiction is still realistic. Despite the growing popularity of speculative or non-realist fiction in the

288 Forum Philippines, I believe the enduring dominance of realist fiction will continue in the foreseeable future. Incidentally, you might think that the non-realist or the speculative mode of writing is a very recent Filipino literary development. Not so. It was already very much around before the formulation of this Western term, if you consider the magical nature of our ancient legends, cosmological accounts of the universe, folktales, myths, and epics with their talking animals, flying carpets, and levitating datus. To appreciate the magical nature of our folk literature, we only need to revisit Damiana L. Eugenio’s comprehensive folklore series. An important current trend in Philippine writing is the growing popularity of modern speculative fiction.Wikipedia defines speculative fiction as “a broad category of narrative fiction that includes elements, settings and characters created out of the imagination and speculation rather than based on reality and everyday life. It encompasses the genres of science fiction fantasy, science fantasy, horror, alternative history, and magic realism.” It may feature “mythical creatures and supernatural entities, technologies that do not exist in real life like time machines and interstellar spaceships, or magical or otherwise scientifically inexplicable elements.” How do we explain this development? Some of our friends on this panel are non-realist writers or writers of speculative fiction, and they have already mulled his question with more substance. But allow me to give my five- cents’ worth—my own attempt at a “speculation.” Like everyone else, writers are susceptible to the influence of popular culture from abroad. Western books and movies are ever present in the national consciousness of readers and movie-goers. And writers as well. Just think of the popular recent releases: Game of Thrones, The Hobbit, the Harry Potter books, The Lord of the Rings, Cloud Atlas, The Hunger Games, Ender’s Game, The Time Traveler’s Wife, etc. They are all over the place. I think Filipino writers are inspired by this exciting field of the imagination, so they try their hand to participate in the global speculative conversation.

Lines of Flight: The Practice and Limits of Realism in Philippine Fiction 289 Speculative does not automatically mean escapist. It depends on how the speculative is developed. For instance, it can be developed as a possible future of the world, given the state of contemporary realities. Think of such books as Brave New World, The Handmaid’s Tale, 1984, and Fahrenheit 45—all of them far from being merely trivial flights of fancy. DA: The best, or most engaging, speculative fiction is anchored in truth. We may create a secondary world with mindboggling realities but still, it needs to be anchored in some emotional truth. Speculation is not merely an escape. It is a strategy to cope with the real world, an effort to question events and circumstances and see if things could be different. We ask the question, “What if?” and we provide stories that explore answers. EV: I was in Hong Kong very recently, and I met up with a friend, Crystal Koo, who also writes, and she teaches literature also. And I asked her, so what do Hong Kong teenagers write about? And she said, life in Hong Kong is very fast, right. It’s very natural to see people running to the trains, and when the train is late by five minutes it ends up on the front-page of their newspapers, and so on. And the teenagers, in her class, they write slow stories, very inward-looking. So I’m thinking, maybe that’s their escape. You have a very fast city life, with hardly any room for personal contemplation in a way, and that’s what your commit to the page. I’m thinking with young writers now, what they find important may seem frivolous to us, but it means the world to them. So I think that it’s still important in class to treasure that, to honor that. As they grow older, what’s important in their lives will change also. And I’m pretty sure they will become more socially aware. And then their stories, as well as their craft, hopefully will improve. Personally, in my writing, I want my stories to be well- written and entertaining, but I also want them to be thought- provoking, without being didactic or preachy. I want people to read my stories, and enjoy them, but I also want my readers to think. Speculative fiction, it’s just a different lens, really, to look at the world. And you can’t completely escape the world, the

290 Forum way you can’t completely escape your culture, your family, your humanity, your own body. GL: To borrow and bastardize C. S. Lewis, the only people who should be concerned with escapism are jailers guarding prisoners. Otherwise, all fiction is escapist, speculative. There is no other way to imagine contemporary life as being anything other than speculative—many of the ways in which we relate and communicate and experience life has been imagined by science fiction writers in the ’60s and ’70s and onwards. “Cyberspace” as a practical concept was first articulated in William Gibson’s Neuromancer, a cyberpunk novel from the 1980s. In fact, I’d argue that SF writers confront the complexities and difficulties of contemporary life simply because it highlights and extrapolates experiences from the disparate elements of the present. The horrors of war, the fear of famine, the terrible things that people do to each other—these are all highlighted and emphasized in SF. When people read widely and deeply, whatever stories they encounter, I think that the genre boundaries blur even more, because at the end of the day, what matters is the immersion, the experience. JNG: Let us now venture into potentially perilous territory. As has been the experience of so many of our writers (and artists) across a tumultuous century, realism is not always the easiest—or the safest—strategy or mode to use in one’s work. The question is, should realism necessarily be the preferred vehicle for protest and/or “resistance” in our own time? What can you say about the idea that speculative writing can, in the face of repressive regimes, in fact function as a “strategy of circumvention” for socially engaged writers? Have you ever availed yourself of this strategy in your work? Conversely, can one be a staunchly speculative writer and still espouse a politics or be an advocate for something? JAL: Of course, either way. Protest is a function of rhetorical strategy. Protest is bodied forth in a sliding scale from outright to subtle. You can deal with protest directly in realist fiction. Or you can deal with protest indirectly through allegory, irony, metaphor, etc. in non-realist fiction. In Abad’s anthology Underground

Lines of Flight: The Practice and Limits of Realism in Philippine Fiction 291 Spirit, which covers stories from 1973 to 1989, some Filipino writers resorted to such strategies of circumvention. As Abad pointed out in his Introduction, “because of the ever-present danger of arrest (torture, imprisonment, disappearance), writers during the Marcos dictatorship (1972 to 1986) were driven to other forms or guises of the short story: fantasy, fable, ghost story, parable, science fiction, tale.” DA: The burden of the political should not be placed on every story in existence. But certainly, fantasy, science fiction, and horror have been used to comment on political situations by authors here and abroad. We can project a utopia, for example, to counter the dystopian feeling of the current times in our country. We can create fantasy worlds where women are not treated as inferior, in hopes that one day, it will come true. We can write horror to deal with the real monsters in our society. Speculative fiction can advocate for the political just as realist fiction can. Spec fic classics, such as Ursula Le Guin’s “The Ones Who Walk Away from Omelas,” are particularly resonant in the context of extrajudicial killings. But we need to recognize that not all stories need to be so. Stories that spark a sense of wonder are just as vital. EV: Definitely. As I mentioned earlier, speculative fiction just gives you a different lens to look at the world. It’s a way, an instrument, to talk about topics that people may be tired of thinking about, and talking about. Recently I was part of the Virgin Labfest, my entry was called Marte. It’s about OFWs on Mars. People can be sick of talking about the plight of poor migrant workers—my father was an OFW when I was younger—they’re overworked, they’re underpaid, they get abused. How can you talk about abusive labor practices without alienating people? How can you engage them? Speculative fiction, genre fiction, has always been seen as a vehicle for entertainment, but entertainment can also educate. So for that piece, I changed the lens, I moved the OFWs away from Dubai, UAE, Hong Kong, and placed them on Mars. So we have a new conversation, and we can listen to each other again.

292 Forum I’m not going claim that I’m an activist for migrant workers, because that’s unfair to the people who draft laws, who reach out to OFWs and help them escape that life, but I want to use my fiction to educate (especially since I see that my readers are mostly in their early twenties, or younger). My latest novel Wounded Little Gods touches on eugenics. Who the hell wants to talk about eugenics? But perhaps if I package it in my fiction, even high schoolers won’t tune me out. GL: All writing is political. One’s stories can carry with it one’s beliefs and opinions and politics. What SF does is it provides a different, alternative lens in viewing what is otherwise a massive and overwhelming info-dump. For example: Orson Scott Card is a terrible human being, but Ender’s Game is a fantastic meditation on the nature of politics and political discourse during a time of war. It asks the important questions: who should be responsible for the destruction of another life? Who bears the guilt of war— the politicians making the decisions or the soldiers carrying them out? Add to that the personal journey of Ender as he moves from innocence to experience, the classic bildungsroman, and you have a novel that plays on the anxieties of a society that feels both responsible for its own actions and at the same time, fearful of retribution. Except that, you know, this takes place in a futuristic military camp in space, with technology that far outstrips what we have now, and subverts the entire humans vs. aliens space battles that were a staple in military science fiction. But the questions and concerns are still valid, I think, for the way we live now. JNG: Fantasy is a very popular subgenre in the non-realist canon, and this is the case not just textually but also transmedially, on both the local and global fronts. In an interview with a local magazine during his visit here a few years back, Neil Gaiman gushed about our country’s rich mythological worlds, and issued a subtle challenge to our young writers to tap into them (or else he would). What can you say about Filipino works of fantasy that do tap into our native myths? Are there better or more “effective” ways of going about this project? While Gaiman

Lines of Flight: The Practice and Limits of Realism in Philippine Fiction 293 obviously didn’t have any experiential claims to know about this important misgiving or caveat, nevertheless we do need to ask ourselves: Might there be ethical questions to the “mythopoetic” use of regional folkloric material—especially when the users are Manila-based and from the middle class? DA: There will always be a struggle and a negotiation between cultural ownership and appropriation, between promoting and exoticizing our own. We need to respect the cultural contexts and history of our sources when we borrow from the myths and stories outside of our own experience. We can use these as a springboard, to creatively construct something new, but there will always be the root of it. JAL: The use of our own mythologies as the basis of Filipino works of fantasy is not only logical but also desirable. We don’t want to be known simply as copycats, making our local versions of Star Trek and Superman. However, the use of regional folkloric material by just anybody may raise the question of authenticity, knowledge, and ownership. The material is not just any story but an important part of the cultural identity of an ethnic group. There is something fraudulent about somebody freely singing somebody else’s song as though it were his own. I would encourage the lumad writers to write about the materials because otherwise I think it’s sort of preempting them. You take their stories, you tell their stories, and you tell the world you are the owner of the story and you’re not, you just heard it. But that’s my point of view. Probably it’s just a personal opinion, I would like the lumad writers to have the chance to tell their own stories. I think this is a very delicate question. It’s like if you are in the US, you are a white writer, and you write the story of a black person. How authentic is your story? I mean it boils down to that, eventually. Are you just capitalizing on something that is popular? And you have things like this big case of an American poet who was rejected so many times, he was forced to take a pseudonym, a Chinese woman’s name, and the poem was Chinese-themed, and the poem was accepted and was included in the Best American Poetry of the year. Actually he admitted it, he thought poets of color had it easier than white male poets.

294 Forum When people found out that this came from a white man and not from a Chinese woman, they got angry because they felt that he was capitalizing on something that he did not really earn. JNG: Yellowface. JAL: For a Chinese woman writing as a Chinese woman, there already exists a history that she has to overcome, a history of discrimination and oppression … EV: Sexism. GL: Patriarchy. JAL: All of these things. But the white writer did not suffer, he did not go through all that, and as if through a sleight of hand, by using a mask, he got the reward without the pain. I mean it could be interpreted that way. EV: I grew up in Bulacan, with maternal roots in Cagayan, so when I do tap into folklore and myth, I tap into the stories I know. If you’re a writer who’s going to appropriate something outside your own region or culture, it’s important to remember context. You have to be extremely circumspect. Where is your information about the culture or the myth coming from? Is it reliable? Is it fair? Are you writing the story from a place of empathy—or are you writing it from a position of power? Come to think of it, these questions should be asked by every writer, but even more so by the writer who plans to step into a life he or she has never lived, has never even brushed against. GL: I think that there’s a difference between adaptation and appropriation. This is something that, I believe, has been discussed in the ongoing conversations regarding diversity in SF. As a Filipino, I think I have every right to use what is available to me, and what is interesting to me, in order to tell a story. My loyalty, first and foremost, is to the story. Am I telling it the best way I know how? If it needed research, did I do my research? Was I faithful to the core concepts? Am I respectful to the sources, and can I stand by my creative choices? That’s how stories survive: by being adapted, by being passed on. If I wanted to write an academic essay about myths and legends, then I’d write that. But I’m writing fiction, and fiction

Lines of Flight: The Practice and Limits of Realism in Philippine Fiction 295 is about imagining a “What if?” scenario and pursuing it. Otherwise, if we’re just going to put up walls and boundaries and borders between them, if we’re just going to keep on saying “No, you can’t have this, it’s mine,” as if anyone can just claim entire pantheons for themselves, then there’s no point in imagining anything. We might as well just stop ourselves—and stop people like Rick Riordan (he’s not Greek, so why does he have the right to retell Greek myths?) and Neil Gaiman (he’s not South African, so why is he allowed to adapt the story of Anansi, or play around with different pantheons in American Gods?) and even Budjette and Ka-Jo’s Trese series—because of this perceived demand for fidelity to a singular source, which may or may not even exist. JNG: Many of us may have problems—or “disenchantments”—with realism, but at least as a dominant literary mode it has been rationalized, its ideal qualities inventoried and generally agreed upon and understood. What about non-realist or speculative fiction: How exactly do you determine excellence in this mode of writing? What are its formal or technical “touchstones,” and how might one productively deploy them (for instance, in the business of curating and/or editing manuscripts)? JAL: If not verisimilitude, then a thoroughness in the construction of the imagined world, action that begins somewhere and ends in some manner of completeness and satisfactory closure, characters that behave consistently according to their inner nature and motivation, etc. In other words, more or less the same things I look for in realist fiction. DA: In terms of the literary, the basic elements are the same: narrative techniques, character, plot, setting, world-building, language, tone. But with spec fic, there are also the specific genre tropes that define the type of story. Science fiction, for example, needs to explore some scientific notion or scenario, whether hard or soft scifi. But ultimately, spec fic needs to engage readers and draw them deep into the unreal worlds. Because it needs verisimilitude, it needs to be anchored on truth, whether that truth is a personal truth or a speculative one.

296 Forum EV: The formal or technical “touchstones” for speculative fiction are similar to the “touchstones” for realist fiction, except that the speculative fiction writer has to work harder to make the reader believe that the story he or she is telling is true. How will you build this never-before-seen world without relying on “info-dump,” or paragraph after paragraph of description and exposition? One of my pet peeves in fantasy or science fiction is when characters explain certain aspects of their world to each other. Why are you explaining what a mandrake root/time machine/wormhole is? You are sorcerers/scientists/adventurers who live in this world— you should know this already! Obviously, they’re talking about it for the sake of the hapless reader, but how can you write the scene in a way without making it seem contrived? GL: It’s the same as with any other piece of writing: Does it make sense? Was the writer able to wield the elements of fiction together in order to sustain the story? Is it better/worse than other stories that have followed similar beats, or paths? As with any other genre, writing SF requires that the writer must be familiar with the tropes or conventions of the field, has a clear vision or project that was pursued throughout the text, and is able to maintain the suspension of disbelief necessary in all forms of fiction. I think in addition, for SF, we need to be more aware of the world-building as well—does the world you’re creating make sense to the reader, who does not live in that world, but who wants to enter it? JNG: Finally I want to bring up the question of language, which the presence of Luna in this panel all too powerfully sets in bold relief. At the end of it all, we simply must flag the fact that the choice of language is entirely determinative of so many things in our literature—calling forth questions about its inception and reception, which of course bring up (the) usual and inevitable regional, national, and class concerns. While we can easily accede to the idea that we may not need to challenge or reject realism outright (simply because the exciting depth and full range of its possibilities have not been sufficiently explored in our literature), nevertheless, as it is practiced and taught, especially in English Creative Writing

Lines of Flight: The Practice and Limits of Realism in Philippine Fiction 297 classes, it seems to be obviously culturally circumscribed, its fictional worlds much too limited (and diminished). I know that the situation may indeed be different, or even opposite, in the history of fiction in Filipino, but the fact is, unlike in the generation of anglophone writers like Kerima Polotan Tuvera, Juan Gatbonton, NVM Gonzalez, and Aida Rivera Ford, nowadays many realist stories being written in English (especially by the younger authors) are narrated in the first person. As a realist formal strategy—that betrays a cultural fetish for authenticity on one hand, and intimates the rise of “antifiction” fiction on the other—this narrative method renders these stories experientially limited, especially as it is wielded by the soft and sheltered hands of English-proficient, mostly city- bred, and middle-class young Filipinos. Admittedly, while these writers normally can’t be expected to immerse themselves in the realities of the rural and urban poor, it’s very troubling to think that, going by the evidence of their literary output, many of them may just be oblivious and entirely self-satisfied in their own little corners of the Philippine reality, and not remotely care about what’s happening to the rest of the country. Might commonly endorsed writing protocols—for instance, “Get Real”—in our Creative Writing programs have something to do with this trend? Should it be time to rethink—or even, reject—this artful but dangerously solipsistic imperative? JAL: I think your personal excitement, if it’s really there, would be communicated and they might get wind of that. So you have to be interested in what you’re teaching. Some teachers, really, they have no business being in the classroom. They just collect their salary, and that’s the most dulling experience, if you’re under a teacher who does not love the subject matter. And then I think it is important to recognize the interest of your students. Look at their current level of proficiency. For example, if they don’t understand the language, say English, very well, don’t give them very difficult or highly symbolic stories; stick to something that is very simple, on the surface, the meaning is right there, that they can see. Don’t give them Eric Gamalinda just yet. I think you start with this decision. Just give them something that is of

298 Forum interest to them, and then capitalize on their level of proficiency, their current interests, and then you can move on to something more difficult at the end of the semester. DA: I write in English because I grew up reading and speaking in English. And while writing only in English may seem limiting, the question is actually easily answered by the very nature of speculative fiction itself: we speculate. We go beyond the boundaries of our immediate surroundings and experiences. We question our limitations and create new worlds to explore the answers in. We are not all immersed in the realities of the urban poor, but we can research and imagine a Philippines in the far- flung future when we are an entire nation of scavengers—and take it from there. While young writers tend to turn inward, as they mature they will tend to look around, away, and beyond themselves. EV: I think I’d begin by asking these young writers themselves why they decide to write these, as you say, “experientially limited” stories. Maybe it isn’t because they don’t care, but because they are overwhelmed, or scared, or tired. God knows the world is a wearying place. I think before we demand them to be socially aware, we should first see if they are even aware of their own thoughts and feelings and their place in this world, if they have the strength to constantly interrogate themselves. GL: As one of the young faculty who teaches fiction, okay, one of the things that I actually enjoy from students are stories that take their reality and make it new in some way or form. One of the things I tell my students obviously, I cannot experience what you’re experiencing right now, una sa lahat, kasi mas matanda na ako sa inyo. Pangalawa, ’yong reality ko when I was in college is probably different from your reality right now. For example, everyone’s on their phones. And when you ask them, my first instinct is always, nagbubulakbol ka ’no? And then it turns out that they’re actually looking for definitions, for things that I say, or looking at other things that can inform what they say in class, for example. So okay, it’s knowledge-gathering pala, and it helps them craft the ideas they will eventually say in the classroom or whenever we have discussions, and to me that’s always helpful.

Lines of Flight: The Practice and Limits of Realism in Philippine Fiction 299 The second thing is, and this is one of the eternal frustrations that I think student writers have, is that nobody listens to them. And so the best that I can do as a teacher is to give them a range. And then to find, from this particular range, what they’re particularly interested in. I think there’s always a moment of emulation, because that’s the way we learn. We copy the people that we like to read or the stories that we respond best to. Certainly that was how I started. And a lot of student writers, I think, are in that particular stage. And I think it’s unfair to tell them immediately, “This is terrible,” without giving them the chance to experience things. Because I always think there’s a curve. And I think that, to tell young people that just because you’re not writing in one way doesn’t mean that it’s bad writing. I think that socially conscious writing can, and should be part of one’s writing life. In fact, just by being sensitive to the world one lives in, one will already build one’s social consciousness, which is reflected in one’s writing. And as storytellers, the choices we make—the language, the genre, the politics—will always play a part in crafting a story. LSC: Mahalaga na alam ko—at hindi ito sapilitan dapat—na mahalaga pa rin nating basahin sina Lazaro Francisco, Macario Pineda, Rosario de Guzman Lingat, Marcel Navarra, Wilfredo Pa. Virtusio at marami pang iba. Hindi lang naman Filipino at Ingles ang mga wika natin, di ba? Mayroon tayong mga wika sa Waray, Sugbuanon, Ilokano, Hiligaynon, at madalas nakakalimutan natin iyon. At siya nga pala, ang katumbas ng speculative sa Filipino ay sapantaha. Pag sinabi nating sapantaha, ay parang nahuhulaan o nakukutuban mo. So related siya sa prophecy, pero hindi katulad noong halimbawa ng mga futuristic visions na may mga robot—mahirap sumulat pala ng ganoon sa Filipino kasi hindi kapanipaniwalang magiging technogically advanced tayo, or makakarating ang isa sa atin sa buwan … Totoong masalimuot, pero nagpupursigi pa rin kami—sa pagsulat na iyon, at doon sa path na iyon, kasi ang paniniwala namin, katulad ng sinabi ninyo, we need to expand our universe.

300 Forum Sayang nga lang at hindi natutuklasan ng karamihan ang kahusayan ng mga naunang sumulat ng sapantaha tulad ng ginawa ni Macario Pineda sa Ang Ginto sa Makiling, o ang mga kuwento ng katatakutan/domestikong drama ni Rosario de Guzman Lingat. Tingin ko kailangan ring baklasin ang stereotipong nasa sosyal na realismo lamang ang lipad ng kuwento o nobela sa Filipino. Bakit kailangan maliit lamang? Noong panahon na nagsulat ang aking ama kasama ng kanyang mga kasabayang sina Ave Perez Jacob, Efren Abueg, Dominador Mirasol at Edgardo M. Reyes, ang mga realistikong kuwento nila tungkol sa mga aguador, tungkol sa mga atsoy, tungkol sa mga aping manggagawa, ay reaksiyon din dahil ang mga nilalabas ng Liwayway at popular na magasin ay mga kuwentong pag labas mo ng pintuan ay makakakita ka ng bayong ng ginto, o mga duwendeng nagsasalita. Speculative ang mga iyon, ’di ba, o mas angkop sigurong tukuyin na eskapista, at sa kasaysayan ng kuwento sa Filipino, “nauna” sila sa uri ng realismong tumutuligsa sa lipunan. Kaya inis na inis ang mga manunulat na tulad ng aking ama dahil nga ang hirap hirap na nga ng buhay, dekada ’60 na noon at malapit nang mag-Martial Law, tapos puro duwende at kapre ang pinupuntirya ng maraming kuwentista. Mabuti na rin at pinulot ng mga manunulat sa SIGWA tulad nina Ricardo Lee, Fanny Garcia, at Levy Balgos de la Cruz, ang mga tematiko’t mga diskursibong mga tanong. Ito ang dahilan kaya hindi pa rin kumukupas ang mga istorya na nakaugat sa ating katotohanan o sa ating mga realidad. Babanggitin ko lang ’yong isang maikling kuwento na nabasa ko. Kasama ito sa anthology na ipinasa namin sa UP Press. Ito ’yong “Hasang,” na sinulat ni Jolly Lugod. Ang premise niya ay nasa coastal village nakatira ’yong mga mangingisda. ’Yong asawa doon ay labis na nalungkot sa pagkalunod ng kanyang anak na batang lalaki, kaya bawat gabi ay lumulusong siya sa dagat, hanggang sa tubuan siya ng hasang. Sa dulo ng kuwento, ’yong babae ay maglalaho at sasama doon sa anak niyang lalaki. Noong una kong nabasa iyong kuwento, sabi ko, Grabe, ang galing-galing ng manunulat na iyon. Buong-buo ’yong kuwento’t damang-dama mo ’yong pang-araw-araw na buhay ng mga

Lines of Flight: The Practice and Limits of Realism in Philippine Fiction 301 mangingisda. ’Yong description, halimbawa, ng alat sa dila— may nangyayari kasi sa balat mo sa labis na paglusong sa dagat, iyong mga ganoon, mahirap siyang hanapan ng kahambing o isalin sa Ingles—kailangan precise, at kuhang-kuha ito ni Lugod. Sa huli’t huli, ito siguro ang mga pinakaimportanteng isipin ng nagtatangkang sumulat. Unang-una, kailangang magwagi siya sa digmaan ng wika. Ikalawa, kailangang buo ang kanyang kuwento, anumang kategorya iyon. Kapag napagtagumpayan niya ’yong dalawang tests na ito—hindi naman siguro test, kundi kahilingan—may istorya na nga siya. Ang kuwento, akala ng marami, ay ang dali-daling isulat. Actually, ang hirap-hirap niyon—tinutulay mo ang hamon para matandaan ng mga tao na may kuwento ka, sa pagsalok sa pang-araw-araw na buhay at dalumat, ngunit para maging memorable ang kuwento, humihigit dapat sa pang-araw-araw ang saklaw ng dalumat. At walang ibang paraan para magawa iyon maliban sa pagiging ispekulatibo. Ito ang challenge na lagi naming binubuno bilang mga manunulat sa Filipino. Kaya ang paanyaya ko sa mga kapuwa ko ring denizens, citizens sa repubika ng kuwento, ay tuklasin din natin ang isa’t-isa. Idadagdag ko pa na kinakailangan din nating umalpas paminsan-minsan, at lumabas sa ating bayan. Ang dami-daming mga kuwento sa mundo.

302 Forum Participants/Winners/Organizers Lota Lleve of Visayas State University (VSU) University State Visayas of Lota Lleve (VSU) University State Visayas of Catre Salvador of Cebu (UC) of University Eras John (CNU) University of Cebu Normal Gilbuena Jessrel Recoletos Jose of San of University Jr. Avenido Manuel (USJR) (LNU) University of Leyte Normal Arjay Babon (VSU) University State Visayas of Tubigan Elaine Precious University State Samar of Northwest Mahilum Byron (NwSSU) of Eastern Philippines of University Banagbanag Rogelio (UEP) (UP of the Philippines Cabasag of the University Lloyd Diliman) (LNU) University of Leyte Normal Salazar Mae Ela of the of the University Toledo Leihmar C. John (UP Diliman) Philippines 1) 2) 3) 4) 5) 6) 7) 8) 9) 10) 11) 12) (ALAG Writers) Inc. (ALAG Writers) Sebuano: Waray: Inabaknon: English: Filipino: Held by Katig Writers Network Inc. and Abaknon Literary and Abaknon Arts Inc. Guild Network Writers Katig by Held December 2015 December Event 12th Lamiraw Creative Writing Workshop 12th Writing Lamiraw Creative 2–4 Date Literary Calendar Literary

303 by by Jun Jun by by Joselito delos Joselito by by Edgar Calabia Edgar by by Rey Ventura, Ateneo de Ateneo Ventura, Rey by iStatus Nation iStatus Cherry Blossoms in the Time Time Cherry in the Blossoms Ang Labintatlong Pasaway Ang by Nikki Alfar, Anvil Publishing Inc. Anvil Publishing Alfar, Nikki by Wonderlust Ramon Obusan, Philippine Folkdance, and Me Folkdance, Ramon Philippine Obusan, by Eliza Victoria, Visprint, Inc. Visprint, Victoria, Eliza by Participants/Winners/Organizers Samar, Adarna House, Inc. House, Adarna Samar, Dwellers English: Visprint, Inc. Reyes, Tsunami and of Earthquakes Press University Manila English: English: Inc. Anvil Publishing Kanami Namiki, Tabon ng Tiyanak at ang Silang Janus Si Inc. Visprint, Cruz Reyes, Juan C. Laya Prize for Best Novel in a Foreign Language: in a Foreign Novel for Best C. Laya Prize Juan in Fiction Book of Short for Best Prize Bautista Cirilo F. Book of Essays in Filipino: Best Book of Essays in English: Best Anthology in Filipino: Best Artline Highlighters Prize for Best Book of Non-Fiction in Book of Non-Fiction for Best Prize Artline Highlighters Language: in a Philippine Novel for Best C. Laya Prize Juan Critics Circle (MCC) Circle Critics Winners: Hosted by Anvil Publishing Inc. Anvil Publishing by Hosted Fraternity UP Alpha Nu by Organized (NBDB) and the Manila Board Book Development the National by Held December 2015 December by Event And Then She Laughed Then She And Sylvia Claudio Sylvia Awareness Book Launch: for HIV-AIDS Battle A Poetry Boses x Berso: Book Awards 34th National 3 5 5 Date

304 Likhaan 10

Tikum Tikum by Jose Marte Marte Jose by by Federico Federico by by Rebecca T. T. Rebecca by by Marne Marne by Talab: Mga Talab: The Postcolonial The Postcolonial edited by Regina Regina edited by Kundiman sa Gitna ng Karimlan sa Gitna Kundiman Agam: Filipino Narratives on Narratives Filipino Agam: Hidden Codex: Fictive Scriptures Codex: Fictive Hidden Participants/Winners/Organizers by J. Neil C. Garcia, The University of the Philippines of the Philippines The University C. Garcia, J. Neil by Uncertainty and Climate Change Uncertainty Cities for Climate and Sustainable Institute Abuyuan, Criticism/Literary History in Filipino: at Pagtuturo Wika, sa Panitikan, Sanaysay Press University de Naga Ateneo Añonuevo, Criticism/Literary History in English: Vol. Culture Philippine of Contemporary Critiques Perverse 1 Press or Kinaray-a: Hiligaynon Press of the Philippines The University Juan, E. San by Book 1 of Panay (Epics) Kadlum: Sugidanon Caballero-Castor, “Abyaran” Teresita Caballero, “Tuohan” of the Philippines The University Magos, and Alicia P. Press in English: House; Publishing Tomas of Santo University A. Abueg, Reflections and Other Enchantment Time’s Press University de Naga Kilates, Ateneo Best Anthology in English: Anthology in English: Best Book of Literary for Best Prize Sr. Clodualdo del Mundo Book of Literary for Best Prize Alcantara Dimalanta Ophelia Language other than in a Philippine Book of Poetry Best or Kinaray-a: in Hiligaynon Book of Poetry Best Book of Poetry for Best LiteraryPhilippine Arts Council Prize December 2015 December Event Date

Literary Calendar 305 by The by

Rido: Journey of a Journey by Manix Abrera Abrera Manix by by Norma Absing Absing Norma by Tabi Po (Isyu 1) (Isyu Po Tabi Rodski Patotski: Patotski: Rodski 14 translated by Paul A. Dumol, A. Dumol, Paul translated by by Bettina Rodriguez-Olmedo, Rodriguez-Olmedo, Bettina by by Gerry by Alanguilan (story) and The Manila Synod of 1582: The Draft of The Draft of 1582: Synod The Manila Buti Pa Ang Roma, May Bagong Papa Bagong May Roma, Ang Pa Buti Country Regional Cooking: Philippine by Michaela Fenix, Anvil Publishing Inc. Anvil Publishing Fenix, Michaela by Participants/Winners/Organizers Mervin Malonzo, Visprint, Inc. Visprint, Malonzo, Mervin Baby Dalagang Ang Comics Publishing (illustration), Meganon Arnold Arre House Inc. Visprint, (writer and illustrator), for Confessors Handbook Its Press University de Manila Ateneo Cuisines Mindanao Management in and Conflict Clan Feuding Edition, III, Expanded Torres Magno Wilfredo edited by Press University de Manila Ateneo of a PR Girl Adventures Inc. Anvil Publishing Inc. Capili, Anvil Publishing Noreen Weave The Philippine Thousand Shuttles, and the Arts Commission for Culture National Respicio, Best Book of Graphic Literature in Filipino: in Filipino: Literature Book of Graphic Best in English: Literature Book of Graphic Best Literature: Graphic Wordless Book of Best Book: Translated Best Book on Food: Best Sciences: Book in Social for Best S. Cruz Prize Elfren Book in the Professions: for Best Prize Valledor C. Victorio Book in Leisure: Best Book on Art: for Best Prize Ongpin T. Alfonso December 2015 December Event Date

306 Likhaan 10 by Motoe Motoe by Birds of Cebu of Cebu Birds Sakdalistas’ Sakdalistas’ designed by Karl Fredrick M. Karl Fredrick designed by by Nilo Arribas Jr., Bobby Kintanar, Kintanar, Bobby Arribas Jr., Nilo by Vantage Point: The Sixth Estate and Estate The Sixth Point: Vantage by Michael M. Coroza and Galileo S. and Galileo M. Coroza Michael by by Luis V. Teodoro, The University of The University Teodoro, V. Luis by Ambagan 2011: Mga Salita Mula sa Iba’t Ibang Ibang sa Iba’t Mula 2011: Mga Salita Ambagan The Manila Synod of 1582: The Draft of Its of Its The Draft of 1582: Synod The Manila Participants/Winners/Organizers and Bohol Philippines Carlos of San University Puentespina, and Raul Benjamin Press 1930–1945 Independence, for Philippine Struggle Press University de Manila Ateneo Terami-Wada, Discoveries Other Press the Philippines Studies: sa Filipinas Wika Press of the Philippines The University Zafra, for Confessors Handbook Press University de Manila Ateneo Castro, Pilipinas Shell Prize for Best Book in Science: for Best Prize Shell Pilipinas Book in History: for Best C. Kaw Prize John Book of Journalism: Best Book in Language for Best Prize Filipino Wikang sa Komisyon Design: Best Inc.” Visprint, Year: of the Publisher Hosted by Anvil Publishing Inc. Anvil Publishing by Hosted ng Kabataan Ang Ilustrador by Organized Inc. Anvil Publishing by Hosted December 2015 December by by Noel Noel by Event Mag-Artista Ka! Mag-Artista ay Di Biro Maglandi Ang Ferrer Hernandez Dani Book Launch: Ang INK Annual Exhibit Twice: Book Launch: 5 6 5–28 Date

Literary Calendar 307 and Ateneo de Manila University de Manila and Ateneo Participants/Winners/Organizers Kritika Kultura Ferdinand Pisigan Jarin Pisigan Ferdinand Angeles Mark Alvin Capili Ursua Antonio Rodas Marco Aguila Molina Reuel Speakers: Hosted by Anino Comics by Hosted Awards Writers East Asian South by Hosted (LIRA) at Anyo Retorika Linangan sa Imahen by Organized Inc. Anvil Publishing by Hosted Whistle The Red by Hosted (LIRA) at Anyo Retorika Linangan sa Imahen by Organized (LIRA) at Anyo Retorika Linangan sa Imahen by Hosted Kataga-Lucena by Organized by Hosted December 2015 December by Andrew Andrew by by Dr. Milagros Milagros Dr. by edited by Fidel Rillo Fidel edited by Event Kare-kare Komiks Kare-kare Luzon at War ng Dekada Tatlong LIRA 30: Conflicts Drilon Guerrero Launch Literary Folio Pagkakaibigan LIRA Makatang Racial Ki: Performing Hyunjoo Book Launch: Week Write East Asian 2015 South Night 30 Fellows Lira Batch Book Launch: Whistle Art + The Red Letter Days: Red at ng Pagtula Taon Tatlumpung Lira 30: Book Launch: Pampanitikan Usapang Dinsulan: Series: Lecture Kritika Kultura 12 15 15 19 22 22 29 Date 13–18 21–23

308 Likhaan 10 Participants/Winners/Organizers Amado V. Hernandez (Literature, 1973) (Literature, Hernandez V. Amado 1976) (Dance, Leonor Orosa-Goquingco 1990) (Literature, Arcellana Francisco 1999) (Literature, Tiempo L. Edith 1997) (Literature, (NVM) Gonzalez Madali Vicente Nestor (Theatre, 1997) Tinio S. Rolando 1997) (Music, M. Maceda Jose 2001) (Literature, Jose Sionil Francisco 2003) S. Almario (Literature, Virgilio 2006) (Literature, L. Lumbera Bienvenido 2009) (Literature, A. Francisco Lazaro 2014) (Music, Santos Ramon P. 2014) (Literature, Bautista Cirilo F. National Artists: National University Silliman Hosted by Philippine High School for the Arts High Philippine by Hosted in partnership with UP College of Arts and Letters UP Press by Held DLSU Libraries by Organized Writing PUP Center for Creative by Organized Inc. Anvil Publishing by Hosted Center of Writing Creative Tiempo the Edilberto and Edith by Sponsored February 2016 February by by Edel E. Garcellano E. Garcellano Edel by Event Sons of Naujan: Poems in the Poems Sons of Naujan: Poems and Other Hai[na]ku Artists of the UP Press Jose Sionil with F. A Dialogue Labyrinth of Time AA Patawaran Makiling Inter-Cultural Arts Festival Inter-Cultural Makiling to the National Tribute A Pagpupugay: The Narrative The Art of Fiction: Book Launch: Book Launch: Mata Ginny by Talk A Words: Tasting 5 5 5 9 11 1–7 Date

Literary Calendar 309 in cooperation with Kagawaran ng Filipino Participants/Winners/Organizers Kritika Kultura maka-Araling Pilipino (UP SIKAP) and UP Writers Club Writers (UP SIKAP) and UP maka-Araling Pilipino of Creative and Likhaan UP Institute Departamento ng Filipino, Writing Initiative First Youth and Fair Weekend Lokal with Produkto Inc. Philippines, and SuWhat Gorordo, Pizza Handuraw Organized by Kataga-Lucena Panitik Kataga-Lucena by Organized PUP Kagawaran ng Filipinolohiya by Presented ng Kamalayang sa Ikauunlad ng Mag-aaral UP Sandigan by Presented by Hosted DLSU's Center, Writing Creative N. Santos Bienvenido by Presented House Adarna by Organized cooperation In Manunulat and Hubon Kasingkasing Press by Presented Sugbo, BATHALAD The Nomads, TINTA, UP Cebu by Presented February 2016 February by by Rhod V. Nuncio V. Rhod by Event agupa: Antolohiya ng mga agupa: Antolohiya Lucena: Dagim at Dagitab Dagim Lucena: at ang Misteryo ng Omnibus Artistic Production in Filipino in Filipino Artistic Production Diaz Robert by Canadian Lives Alvin Capili Ursua ng Guro ng mga Makatang Tula ng PUP ng Filipinolohiya Kagawaran (1927-2004) Torres Cesario Y. Ricky Celeste Ornopia by Lecture Citizenship: Cultural Reimagining Ulo Nawawalang ng Klasikong Panitikan Pagtuturo Night Book Launch: Book Launch: S kay at Paggunita Pagpupugay Salamyaan: Series: Lecture Kritika Kultura Book Launch: para sa mga Guro: Klasrum Adarna Book Launch Deriada Leoncio P. Poetry Tinagsip sa mga Kasumaran: Pisik 12 17 18 23 26 26 27 27 Date

310 Likhaan 10 Participants/Winners/Organizers Aurora A. Año Aurora Baran Gilmar Nacario Boy Danny Rivera Gem Nicky Bryan Cariaga D. S. Claveria Georgina Rizalyn Sahagun Sales Michael Christine Uy Infante Krizelle Kate Closa Gomez Agriculture Fellows: Gender Women and Center for University and Office, Gender Studies University de Manila Held by Sentro ng Wika at Kultura – Central Bicol State University of University State – Central Bicol at Kultura Wika ng Sentro by Held UP Diliman Filipino-Diliman, Wikang ng UP Sentro by Organized of the Ateneo Studies The Department of Interdisciplinary by Presented Center Writing Creative N. Santos the DLSU Bienvenido by Hosted March 2016 March February 2016 February by by Love in the Love Event The Golden Dagger The Golden Tungong Kamulatan Tungong Pagsulat Katuturan at Kasarian: Mulang Wika and Antonio G. Sempio Stories Short and Other Rice Fields Pineda Macario Rosca 2016 Palihang SWK-CBSUA sa Malikhaing sa Malikhaing SWK-CBSUA 2016 Palihang Talasalitaan: Book Launch: Ninotchka by Talk A the Faraway: Writing 4 4 5 Date 27–28

Literary Calendar 311 Participants/Winners/Organizers (J. dela Cruz) (Tricia) “Binhi” by Rani Mae B. Aberin (Michelle Faucult) (Michelle B. Aberin Rani Mae by “Binhi” (Plainjane) Peña V. Michael John by “Curfew” (Sadle) A. Portes Jan Miko by “Layo” sa Eskinita) (Pusakal Medina Reena by “Deadline” G. Deoso George by dela Cruz” sa sindak si Juan “Patayin Wan) (Yi Orias P. Evan John by “Panty” C. Pancho Beatrice Ma. by ng Pool” sa Palaruan Paggiba “Ang C. Celso (Kai B. Ghan) Ernest Patrick by Nota” “Kuwentong Honorable Mention Honorable Place Third Place Second Place First Place Third Place Second Place First Organized by Adarna House Adarna by Organized Yugto: Isang May Play/Dulang One-Act Winners: Sanaysay: March 2016 March Event (Pagtuturo ng Wika: Pagtataya tungo sa Pagtataya Wika: ng (Pagtuturo Paghasa) Klasrum Adarna: Paggamit ng WiKAHON WiKAHON ng Paggamit Klasrum Adarna: Ustetika 31st Gawad 5 5 Date

312 Likhaan 10 Participants/Winners/Organizers (Kai B. Ghan) Noval) P. (Eloisa A. Bagayas Micah Catacutan) (Conchita D. Mabuhay) G. Deoso George Sunflower) “Working Scholar and Other Fees” by Patrick Ernest C. Celso Ernest Patrick by Fees” Scholar and Other “Working Nathan by Lane sa España” Pedestrian Pinakamahabang “Ang Ang) (Mark Mendoza Christian P. by “ZXCVBNM” A. Herrera Miguel by Lalaki sa Banyo” “Ang San) V. (Farrah A. Bagayas Micah Nathan by “Pangngalan” (Juan Peña G. Dela John Joshua by Maria” Sta. Pamilya “Ang by Tula” Mga ni Godot: na Salinlahi Watak-Watak “Ang (Desmond A. Portes Jan Miko by Tatlo” Dalawa “Isa Honorable Mention Honorable Place Third Place Second Place First Place Third Place Second Place First Mention Honorable Katha: Tula: Pambata: Kuwentong Maikling March 2016 March Event Date

Literary Calendar 313 Participants/Winners/Organizers Rabena (Mirus Alumnus) Rabena (Mirus Wellerstein) dela Paz) (Margaret “That Moment When I Envisaged A Priest” by John Alfred F. F. Alfred John by A Priest” When I Envisaged “That Moment (Abyss) J. Crisologo Kimberly Mae by a Game!” Just Not “It’s (Jamie A. Bagayos Micah Nathan by Years” Ten “The Last Cruz (Punny) P. Patricia Tanya Maria by Story” “Origin G. Deoso George by Dihagiba” in the Life of Ivan Night “One (AHP) B. Felicilda Mari Johannah by “TheWoman” Wan) (Yi Orias P. Evan John by “Aswang” Martinez) (Lucas J. Gabuat Miguel Paulo by “The Lampiko” Honorable Mention Honorable Place Third Place Second Place First Mention Honorable Place Third Place Second Place First Essay: Fiction: March 2016 March Event Date

314 Likhaan 10 in cooperation with the Fine Arts Program Arts Program in cooperation with the Fine Participants/Winners/Organizers Garcia (Mikel Macay) (Mikel Garcia An Words, in Six World the Around Trajectory, Sonnet, A. Espino (Aninag) Michael John by Arbitrary Picture” Kruczynski) D. Makalimot) Kritika Kultura “Flowering Shade and Other Poems” by Nikko Miguel M. Miguel Nikko by Poems” and Other Shade “Flowering Adam’s You, to Forget Why is it Hard #1, “Choreography (Clementine Camille H. Que Patricia by “(Dis)closures” Quijano) (Pat C. Atanacio Reitchelle Jan by Weather” “Spare (Jose G. Deoso George by of the Matriarch” in Praise “Poems Honorable Mention Honorable Mention Honorable Place Third Place Second Place First Martinez) (Lucas J. Gabuat Miguel Paulo by “The Lampiko” Sarthou-Lainez and Nikka Santos Ana P. by Facilitated and the Rizal Library(AdMU) Poetry: Literary Award: Rector’s Philippines Block Writer's by Hosted by Hosted Press Club and Balangiga Writers UP by Presented March 2016 March by Rogelio Braga Rogelio by Event Colon Workshop and Ramon Guillermo Villanueva Travel the Write Way: A Travel Writing Writing Travel A Way: the Write Travel Martin Series: Reading Kritika Kultura Book Launch: 12 15 19 Date

Literary Calendar 315

Participants/Winners/Organizers

Kritika Kultura Jessmark D. Acero Jessmark Christian S. Baldomero H. Esparrago Jane Adeva Alexis C. Gonzaga Stephanie Arvin (Poetry) E. Narvaza L. Aspera (Non-Fiction) Hazel-Gin R. Jamero Gari D. Macalam Mae Jeany (Fiction) G. Silva Ervin Patrick (NAGMAC), in partnership with Xavier University-Ateneo de in partnership with Xavier University-Ateneo (NAGMAC), Cagayan's Department of English Fellows: Organized by the Nagkahiusang Magsusulat sa Cagayan de Oro sa Cagayan de Oro Magsusulat the Nagkahiusang by Organized by Hosted House Adarna by Organized April 2016 April Event too-human: Richter and Littell’s too-human: Richter and Littell’s of a Nazi Representations Intimate Raftery-Skehan Mark Dr. by Unbearable Affinities with the All- Unbearable for Kids 1st Cagayan de Oro Writers Workshop Writers 1st Cagayan de Oro Series: Lecture Kritika Kultura Workshop Book Making Klasrum Adarna: 4 1–3 4–8 Date

316 Likhaan 10 , the official student publication of Central Luzon Luzon , the official student publication of Central Participants/Winners/Organizers Kritika Kultura Kritika Kultura LSU Collegian Robinsons Galleria Robinsons University State Essayists, Novelists) Playwrights, Writing for Creative Hosted by by Hosted Center in partnership with the USC Cebuano Studies by Organized by Held (Poets, PEN Center of International Philippine by Organized (PUP) Center of the Philippines University the Polytechnic by Organized House Adarna by Organized by Hosted April 2016 April Event National Identities for Armenian- Identities National Americans during the Great D. Mauricio Dr. by Depression Aguilera Linde tungo sa Paghasa) Pagtataya Wika: L. Rafael, Ramon Vicente by Totanes Guillermo, and Vernon Saroyan’s Travel Memories: Contesting Memories: Travel Saroyan’s Madrid Conference Campus Press Integrated and Competition in High Literature Philippine Teaching School and College ng (Pagtuturo WiKAHON ng Paggamit Anderson: Lectures Benedict On Kritika Kultura Lecture Series: Lecture Kritika Kultura to Renato Tribute 2016: A Dandaniw 1st 2016: CLSU Collegian’s PahinaLaya on Workshops Word: of the Love For Seminar Media Literaturang Pang-Mass Klasrum Adarna: Series: Lecture Kritika Kultura 7 8 14 15 9–10 Date 11–12 13–15

Literary Calendar 317 Participants/Winners/Organizers Mon Joar Imperial (Calabanga, Camarines Sur) Imperial Joar Mon Asas (Calabanga, Camarines Sur) Rency (Masbate) Canares Kreselle (Calabanga, Camarines Sur) Tuzon Mack Camarines Sur) Marvin (Tinambac, Aquino Camarines Sur) (Balatan, Baran Gilmar Camarines Sur) (Pili, Mary A. Galvez Camarines Sur) (Baao, Rivera Gem Nicky Camarines Sur) (Pili, Sales Michael (Calabanga, Camarines Sur) Clinton Caceres (Catanduanes) Barrameda Emmanuel City) (Naga Rizalyn Sahagun City) (Iriga B. Nacario Boy Danny (Ligao, Albay) Jr. Leopoldo C. Brizuela (Calabanga, Camarines Sur) Pineda Cris John Ana (Calabanga, Camarines Sur) Sta. Abegail City) (Naga Armie Cardema-Cedo (Calabanga, Camarines Sur) Clarisse Molin City) (Naga Ahj Eufracio Fellows: (BNSCWC) Organized by the Parasurat Bikolnon, Inc. Bikolnon, the Parasurat by Organized Center Writing Creative N. Santos the DLSU Bienvenido by Organized April 2016 April Event 6th Saringsing Writers Workshop 6th Writers Saringsing 2016 Workshop Writer's The Young 16 Date 15–17

318 Likhaan 10 , in cooperation with the Ateneo Institute of Institute , in cooperation with the Ateneo Participants/Winners/Organizers Kritika Kultura English: Hazel Meghan Hamile and Gari Real Jamero Real and Gari Hamile Meghan Hazel English: Tapar Varona Ali and Isaac Pariente Abby Filipino: Galendez Tiffany and Mae Dazo Joseph Cebuano: Roehl Ho Crisostomo Adrian for drama in Filipino: Fellow Literature, UP Lunarock, Graphic Literature Guild, and The Dark The Dark and Guild, Literature Graphic UP Lunarock, Literature, Knight Philippines and the Arts Program, (AILAP),Literary the Fine Arts and Practices Rizal Library of Iowa at the University Program Center (BNSCWC) Writing Creative N. Santos Bienvenido (KASUGUFIL) Commission for Culture and the National University La Salle De and the Arts for fiction: Fellows Hosted by KOMIKON, Inc. in partnership with UP Graphic Arts in in partnership with UP Graphic Inc. KOMIKON, by Hosted by Organized Writing writers who completed the International for Filipino A workshop in partnership with the DLSU in Manila the US Embassy by Organized sa Filipino at Guro Kapisanan ng mga Superbisor by Organized Center of Writing Creative N. Santos the Bienvenido by Co-sponsored April 2016 April Event : An Online Journal and Small and Small Journal : An Online Press Initiative (Lecture and (Lecture Initiative Press Reading) Transit Workshop Writers Kaalaman sa Pinayamang Filipino: Literasi sa Ibang ng Iba’t Pagtatamo sa Elementarya, ng Filipino Pagtuturo School High Sekundarya, at Senior Summer Komikon 2016 Komikon Summer Series: Reading Kritika Kultura Alumni Program Writing International Wikang sa Kongreso Pambansang Ikapitong Workshop 16th Writers' IYAS National 16 18 Date 18–20 19–22 24–30

Literary Calendar 319 Participants/Winners/Organizers Bengzon Eastern Samar) Samar) City) Kritika Kultura English: Miguel Antonio Lizada and Regina Angelica Theresa Theresa Angelica Antonio Lizada and Regina Miguel English: Tabula and Joey Dormiendo Abner Filipino: Librado Joy and Reyanne Sanchez Cebuano: Herminigildo Javines Kinaray-a: Tracy Corillo Jean Anne Franceine Hiligaynon: Ayeng for poetryAlternate fellow Nancy in English: Eastern Samar) Tacloban/Dolores, (UP Badulid Aivee City) (DWU/Tacloban Eguia Butz University/Salcedo, (Leyte Normal Anita Christine Macale University/Talalora, Ortego (Leyte Normal Kimberly Mae University/Calbayog State Samar (Northwest Ostulano Ryan Fellows for poetry: Fellows Carlos (USC) San Inc., Writers CALAO Inc., Network Writers cooperation with Katig Inc. Writers) Literaryand Abaknon (ALAG Arts Guild Waray: Organized by by Organized of (KWF) and University Filipino Wikang sa Komisyon by Organized (KWF) Filipino Wikang sa Komisyon by Organized (NwSSU), in University State Samar Northwest by Organized April 2016 April Event Kabataan Panitikang Sebwano Panitikang para sa mga sa Pagsasalin Timpalak Kritika Kultura 26: Issue Launch 26: Issue Kritika Kultura at Wika sa Kumperensiya Pambansang na, Shakespeare! Sali(n) Workshop 13th Writing Lamiraw Creative 25 25 26 Date 25–27 27–29

320 Likhaan 10 Participants/Winners/Organizers City) Sarah Masiba (UP Los Baños/Ozamis City) (UP Los Baños/Ozamis Masiba Sarah City) University/Talisay Cabusas (Cebu Normal Wilfreda of Cebu/Cebu City) (University Nasol Nicolo University/Tacloban de Manila Escaño (Ateneo Cesar Miguel City) (UP Diliman/Quezon Santiago Plaridel Daniw Sebuano: English: Filipino: Pangmadla ng Komunikasyong ng Kolehiyo Wika sa and Komite (UP Diliman) Essayists, Novelists) Playwrights, Presented by UP Sentro ng Wikang Filipino-Diliman (UP SWF-Diliman) (UP SWF-Diliman) Filipino-Diliman Wikang ng UP Sentro by Presented (NBDB) Board Book Development the National by Held (RAP) Association of the Philippines The Reading by Hosted sa Pilipinas ng mga Manunulat Unyon by Held Kasingkasing Press by Presented (Poets, PEN Center of International the Philippine by Hosted April 2016 April by Alain by by Agnes Españo- by Event Mansyon Martial Law: Never Marcos

by Raissa Robles by Eleksiyon Against Forgetting Festival: National Transforming Convention: Language and Literacy Through Lives Manunulat Dimzon and Rehabilitations Repentances Dimzon Russ Again Talasalitaan: Wika ng Midya at Kultura ng at Kultura ng Midya Wika Talasalitaan: Literary International 7th Philippine Association of the Philippines 2016 Reading ng mga Kongreso Pambansang UMPIL Book Launch: Book Launch: 28 30 30 30 Date 28–29 28–30

Literary Calendar 321 Participants/Winners/Organizers CCWLS), in cooperation with the UST Department of Literature Philippines of the Office Property Intellectual (FWGP), Philippines (NBDB), and Board Book Development National (IPOPHL), (FILCOLS) Copyright Licensing Society Filipinas University) de Manila Allanegui (Ateneo Patrick John of the Philippines-Diliman) Borlaza (University Catherine Regina Baños) of the Philippines-Los (University Christian Ray Buendia de Cagayan) Cabildo (Xavier University-Ateneo Angela Bernice de Cagayan) (Xavier University-Ateneo Gumalal Christine Faith of the Philippines-Mindanao) Lao (University Chris David Bacolod) La Salle of St. RJ Ledesma (University of the Philippines-Miag-ao) (University Arnel Murga Tomas) of Santo (University Nono Freya Marianne University) (Silliman Vega Veronica (ALBASA) Inc. Held by the UST Center for Creative Writing and Literary Studies (UST and Literary Studies Writing the UST Center for Creative by Held of the Guild Writers Freelance Inc., C&E Publishing, by Co-organized Fellows: Library Heritage Filipinas by Presented Association, Systems Libraries Book Acquistion Academic by Organized Inc. Anvil Publishing by Hosted May 2016 May Event Remembering/Rethinking Remembering/Rethinking edited by JPaul Manzanilla and Manzanilla JPaul edited by Miguel Syjuco Miguel with Book Champion and Textbooks Siy IP Ambassador Bebang Workshop Book Designer EDSA Hau Caroline Writing in Exile: A Conversation with A Conversation in Exile: Writing Copyright and on Philippine Seminar Writers’ National University 55th Silliman of Books: Karl Castro, Lives Secret Exhibit: Assembly Annual General ALBASA 43rd Book Launch: 4 7 17 19 9–27 Date 18–20

322 Likhaan 10 Kritika Kultura Participants/Winners/Organizers Vijae Alquisola (Tula, Filipino) Alquisola (Tula, Vijae Filipino) (Nobela, Aplaon Topacio RM English) (Poetry, Dioquino Vince English) Esguerra (Fiction, Mina English) Nonfiction, (Creative Fabie Celine Beatrice Filipino) (Tula, Monteseña Francisco English) Nonfiction, Ortega (Creative Jude English) Nonfiction, (Creative Paulma Elena English) for Children, Story (Short Cheeno Sayuno English) (Poetry, Turao Melecio Filipino) (Dula, Vergara Carlo Filipino) (Tula, Villasis Enrique City) (Makati J. Atienza Wilfrido Luis City) (Pasig C. Jimenez Jayson City) (Quezon Vasquez Victoria Louyzza Maria Writing Fellows: in collaboration with in English: Poetry Hosted by Adarna House Adarna by Hosted of Creative Institute of the Philippines the University by Organized (AILAP), of Literary Institute the Ateneo Arts by and Practices Organized Fellows: May 2016 May Event Making Literature Making Sipat|Sulat: A Workshop on Seeing and on Seeing Workshop A Sipat|Sulat: Workshop 55th Writers UP National Workshop Writers 14th Ateneo National Date 20–21 22–29 23–28

Literary Calendar 323 Participants/Winners/Organizers Paterno B. Baloloy Jr. (Calauag, Quezon) Jr. B. Baloloy Paterno (Taguig) C. Mariano Nicole Beatriz City) (Bolbok, Batangas Ramos Jr. Ronald Cavite) (Noveleta, G. Samson Romel City) (Quezon D. Ignacio Jerome Quirino) (Cabarroguis, Mondragon T. Arvene Jayson City) (Davao Ballena V. Kenneth Occidental) Negros City, (Sagay Gamao P. Rex Austere Lanao del Norte) City, (Iligan Charis I. Mostrales Deo Arabia/Cagayan de Oro) Saudi (Al-Khobar, A. Alvarez Jack Bulacan) (Baliuag, Lenin Carlos M. Mirasol City) (Quezon J. Adriano Krizel Reina City) (Quezon Toledo Leihmar C. John City) (Las Piñas Acuña Arbeen Regalado Rizal) Mateo, (San Christian Benitez City) Raymon D. Ritumbán (Quezon City) (Mandaluyong Tan Carol Neslie (Manila) Velasco Ching Joseph Poetry in Filipino: Poetry Drama: in English: Fiction in Filipino: Fiction Essay in English: Essay in Filipino: Criticism: May 2016 May Event Date

324 Likhaan 10 Participants/Winners/Organizers Hosted by University of the Philippines Press of the Philippines University by Hosted May 2016 May by Sir Anril Sir by by Jamie An Jamie by edited by Dean Dean edited by by Jose Wendell Wendell Jose by by Luna Sicat Sicat Luna by by F. Sionil Jose Sionil F. by by Cirilo F. Bautista Cirilo F. by by Filipinos (Volume (Volume Filipinos by by Francis C. Francis by edited by Alicia P. Alicia P. edited by Event Science Padilla- Gisela III) edited by Concepcion Tiatco Pineda of Southeast Asian Emergence in Australia, Writers Diaspora 1972–2007 Capili P. Adults Young Yu Alfar and Kenneth Francis Cleto Lim Macansantos Caballero, Federico Magos, Limoso and Anna Razel Ramirez Selected Poems Selected Stories Selected on Essays Science Philippines: Catholicism Performing The and Mediations: Migrations for Fiction Filipino Science Fiction: Altar Typewriter Colony The Axolotl Fever Snail Kalampay Book Launch: Paglulunsad 27 Date

Literary Calendar 325 Participants/Winners/Organizers (Fiction, English) (Fiction, Tagalog) English) (Fiction, Kinaray-a) Waray) Thomas David Fillarca Chaves, UP Diliman (Poetry, English) (Poetry, UP Diliman Chaves, Fillarca Thomas David Filipino) (Poetry, UP Diliman Gonzales, Apellido Rogene Erwin Cabucos UP Diliman; Escarola Sy, Chow Paul Dominic Filipino) (Fiction, UP Diliman Acuña, Arbeen Regalado (Drama, University La Salle De Roque, Villena Josephine Carlos of San University Sanchez, Pelaez Charles Dominic Agustin (Poetry, of San University Togonon, Silfavan Elsed (Drama, University Leyte Normal Babon, Amado Arjay Babida Commission for Culture and Arts (NCCA) Commission for Culture Luzon: Visayas: Funded by MSU-Iligan Institute of Technology and National and National Technology of Institute MSU-Iligan by Funded Fellows: May 2016 May

by by by Weldon M. Weldon by Event McCarty Stories and Other Speak Charlson Ong Alano Reguyal Trixie by at Pagkaulol Pagkautal Rolando B. Tolentino Bamboo Bed Bamboo Now We CountryThat Other Of Places Two Bohemian Rhapsody of ng Mga Aporisimo Araw/Gabi: 23rd Iligan National Writers Workshop Writers 23rd Iligan National Date 30 to June 3 30 to June

326 Likhaan 10 Participants/Winners/Organizers General Santos (Poetry, English) (Poetry, Santos General Foundation of Iligan Lyceum Gra-as, Al Bangcolongan Sebuano) (Poetry, Filipino) (Fiction, Hiligaynon) (Fiction, of Davao Saquina Karla Cagoco Guiam, Mindanao State University- State Mindanao Karla Cagoco Guiam, Saquina University; de Davao Ateneo Ceniza Zabate, Krishna Mie Aguid Alvarez Jack Xavier University; Villena, Betita John Eric College Women’s Philippine Cabao-an Jalando-on, Andrea Nal Maynila Berroy, Rhea Rose Quezon Bringel, Mark Davao Kristine de Guzman, Julie Roma Estrada, Valenzuela Maynila Ocampo, John Quezon Paderes, Vincent Norman Quezon Lungsod Viscara, Aubrey Mindanao: (UP Diliman) Tula: Organized by the Romance Writers of the Philippines Writers the Romance by Organized ng Pilipinas at Panitikan the Departamento ng Filipino by Organized Fellows: May 2016 May June 2016 June Event (Seminar (Seminar and Workshop) Romance Masterclass: Editing Your Novel Novel Your Editing Masterclass: Romance 9 Sicat Rogelio Palihang 4 8–12 Date

Literary Calendar 327 Participants/Winners/Organizers Racquel Sarah A. Castro Racquel Sarah Arbeen Acuña, Quezon Arbeen Acuña, ng Korea Republika Seoul, Ana Algabre-Hernandez, Angeles, Maynila Rowena Ma. Zambales Banquil, Davidson Clete, Las Piñas Andrew Laguna Masiba, Sarah Maynila Sanchez, Barros Seymour Quezon Lungsod Villegas, Alexandra Quezon Lungsod Caballero, Francheska Nina Camacho-Tajonera Justine by Trail” “Bayawak’s by Schemer” Book 1: Chasing an ATM Hunter “The Fraud Soriano Yeyet by “The Retreat” Recto Michael by Me” With “Come Luis Sette by “Inertia” Kuwento: Sanaysay: The Study Run Why We #HeistClub: Organized by Ateneo de Manila University Press University de Manila Ateneo by Organized and Enderun’s Buqo by and sponsored Age Media Bronze by Organized E-book bundles released: June 2016 June

Event Batang Rizal at Iba Pang Dula Pang Rizal at Iba Batang by Christine Bellen by Book Launch: The #HeistClub: Launch 20 25 Date

328 Likhaan 10 , the international refereed journal of language, , the international refereed Participants/Winners/Organizers Kritika Kultura “Till Death Do Us Apart” by Irene Nicholas-Recio Irene by Apart” Us Do Death “Till Ann Guibone Jee by Makers” “Soul Gonzales Georgette S. by “Classified” Valenzuela Ana by Stakes” “High Cassandra Javier by to Kill” “Dressed Mori Bianca by “Snakehead” Manalang Mark by “Sampaguita” Polestico F. Farrah by Murder” Play “Let’s Strongwill Porcupine by “Corpus Delicti” E. Larsen Jessica by Prince” Sly “The Squad: Flame Arlene Manocot by Lady” “The Ho Gung #HeistClub: What We Fear What We #HeistClub: Hide What We #HeistClub: (PBBY) Young on Books for the Board Philippine Ateneo and cultural studies of the Department of English, literary, University de Manila This workshop (DLSU). University La Salle of De (BNSCWC) and Innovation the USA Center for Research, is cohosted by of the (CRID) and supported the DLSU Office by Development (VCRI) and Innovation Chancellor for Research Vice Presented by the National Book Development Board (NBDB) and the Board Book Development the National by Presented (CCP) Center of the Philippines the Cultural by Organized by Hosted Center Writing Creative N. Santos the Bienvenido by Hosted University–Manila La Salle De the Department of Literature, by Hosted July 2016 July Event Program Century:Eighteenth de Anda, Simon East India and the British Silang, Diego Thomas Megan Dr. Company” Criticism and Cultural 4th National Children’s Book Awards Children’s 4th National Fellowship Writing Labfest 12 Virgin in the Late Sovereignty “Performing on Art Workshop KRITIKA 2016 National conference in Art and Culture” “Elitism 1 13 23 5–7 Date 13–16

Literary Calendar 329 , the international refereed journal of , the international refereed Participants/Winners/Organizers Apollo Harvey D. Lor D. Barrios Renz Jason Kritika Kultura 1st Prize: “Hulagway sa Rabaw ng Tubig” by Mikaela Lu Lu Mikaela by Tubig” sa Rabaw ng “Hulagway 1st Prize: by Propagandista” Isang ang Nag-Selfie “Minsan 2nd Prize: by Piko” sa Larong Pamato Pinakamagandang “Ang Prize: 3rd language, literary, and cultural studies of the Department of English, and cultural studies of the Department of English, language, literary, the Rizal Library; by Co-sponsored the University. de Manila Ateneo Science, and Philosophy Political English, Departments of History, Abroad Study (Seattle) Washington of and the University (AdMU); Program Sanaysay: Organized by by Organized Makati and Raffles Book Store National by Hosted ng PUP sa pangunguna Kagawaran Filipinolohiya Pinangunahan Makati and Raffles Book Store National by Presented Winners: Kabataan Division August 2016 August September 2016 September Event EDSA” (A Roundtable Discussion Discussion EDSA” (A Roundtable Bello, Walden Carmel Abao, Featuring Heydarian) and Richard Curato, Nicole and The Practice 2016 Lines of Flight: Fiction" in Philippine Limits of Realism Pilipino at Kulturang Panitikan Children's 2016 National House's Authors Winning Book Award “Doing Digong: Politics in the Wake of Wake in the Politics Digong: “Doing Festival Writers and Readers "The Philippine Wika, sa Kumperensiya Pambansang with Adarna A Panel for Children: Writing Awards Memorial 66th Carlos Palanca 2 2 27 28 Date 26–28

330 Likhaan 10 Participants/Winners/Organizers Parreño Rosa G. Dela Emmanuele Gabriela Llantero Leyesa-Go Evasco Y. Eugene Agustin Sanchez 1st Prize: “To Thine Own Self Be True” by Jill Esther V. V. Esther Jill by True” Be Thine Own Self “To 1st Prize: Dawn by Misunderstood” Was The Abstract “Then 2nd Prize: D. Alpheus Matthew by iAm” Therefore “iThink, Prize: 3rd A. Oliveros Orlando by Daga” “Ang 1st Prize: Barrameda T. Emmanuel by “Bangkera” 2nd Prize: Tiausas G. Miguel Paolo by “Cutter” Prize: 3rd Annalyn by na si Lola Ising” Nakabibilib “Ang 1st Prize: Contreras-Cabrera Manuelita by Pula” “May 2nd Prize: Evasco Y. Eugene by ng Liwanag” “Ambon Prize: 3rd Christopher S. Rosales by na De-Gulong” “Pugon 1st Prize: by ng Siyudad” sa Paggalugad “Mga Pagsasanay 2nd Prize: Matias Segundo by “#PaperDolls” Prize: 3rd Anthony S. Angeles Mark by Lang Lalang” “Di 1st Prize: Louie Jon by Tula” pang Annum at Iba Per “Tempus 2nd Prize: Andres Allan John by “#PagsisiyasatSaSugat” Prize: 3rd Essay: Kuwento: Maikling Pambata: Kuwentong Maikling Sanaysay: Tula: Filipino Division Filipino September 2016 September Event Date

Literary Calendar 331

by Ymmanwel Rico Ymmanwel by by Eric Cabahug Eric by ni Jean by Ma. Cecilia C. De La Rosa Cecilia C. De Ma. by ni Jean by Lito Casaje by by Mark Adrian Crisostomo Ho Crisostomo Adrian Mark by by Guelan Varela-Luarca Guelan by Billboard Walking Deadma Ang Mga Bisita Ang Chiaroscuro ng Dagat sa Daing ng Lupa Alay Bait pa ng mga Bituin na Binudburan ang Gabi Lila Kulay Participants/Winners/Organizers German Villanueva Gervacio Villanueva German Solano Flores F. Jimmy by Provinio 1st Prize: “AngTotoo, Raya, ang Buwan ay Itlog ng Butiki” by by ng Butiki” ay Itlog Raya, ang Buwan “AngTotoo, 1st Prize: F. Patrick John by na Bugtong” “Tiniklop-tiklop 2nd Prize: Alquisola Orquia Vijae by ng Bakwit” “Awit Prize: 3rd 1st Prize: 2nd Prize: Prize: 3rd Prize: 3rd 1st Prize: 2nd Prize: Prize: 3rd CD Borden by sa Magay” “Tigpamaba 1st Prize: M. Rafanan Gumer by “Lumba” 2nd Prize: Jr. M. Avenido Manuel by “Estatwa” Prize: 3rd Tula para sa mga Bata: Tula Yugto: Isang May Dulang ang Haba: Ganap Dulang Pampelikula: Dulang - Cebuano: Story Short Regional Division Regional September 2016 September Event Date

332 Likhaan 10 Participants/Winners/Organizers Gadong Fabunan 1st Prize: “Ang Panaad” by Ritchie D. Pagunsan by Panaad” “Ang 1st Prize: A. Early Sol by nga Panapton” “Nagakaangay 2nd Prize: G. Dimzon Alain Russ by Tuba” Nga “Bahal Prize: 3rd Aragon V. Roy by “Pamulinawen” Prize: 3rd C. Cornelio Richard by “Zoetrope” 1st Prize: R. Suarez Larissa Mae by at the Cardozas’” “Sundays 2nd Prize: Tan Tiu Abigail Michelle by “Things that Matter” Prize: 3rd L. Furigay Joemar by “Saranggola” Prize: 3rd Vega Joel by Masada” From View “A 1st Prize: Q. Bolotaolo Hammed by “Circle” 2nd Prize: G. Umlas Roselle Maria by “Lip Reading” Prize: 3rd K. Lacuesta Ana Maria by Harbor” “Hush 1st Prize: Bobis Merlinda Dr. by of Composition” “Accidents 2nd Prize: Angela Gabrielle by Collection” “Homecoming Prize: 3rd Short Story - Hiligaynon: Story Short - Ilokano Story Short Story: Short for Children: Story Short Essay: Poetry: English Division English September 2016 September Event Date

Literary Calendar 333 by Patrick James Manongdo Manongdo James Patrick by by Michael Aaron C. Gomez Aaron Michael by by Joachim Emilio B. Antonio Emilio Joachim by by Peter Solis Nery Solis Peter by , the international refereed journal of , the international refereed by Robert Arlo DeGuzman Robert by 1990 Gawani’s First Dance First Gawani’s ng Tinago Tirador Tic-Tac-Toe Road The Floret Participants/Winners/Organizers Valera Kritika Kultura 2nd Prize: “The Small Bright Things” by Jaime An Lim Jaime by Things” Bright “The Small 2nd Prize: Celina A. Ngo Patricia by Masterpieces” “Miniature Prize: 3rd 1st Prize: 2nd Prize: Prize: 3rd 1st Prize: Prize: 3rd Poetry Written for Children: Written Poetry Play: One-Act Play: Full-Length (CCP) Philippines of with Likhaan: the UP Institute Literature, and Comparative Writing Creative and cultural studies of the Department of English, language, literary, University de Manila Ateneo and in partnership with the Xavier Center for Culture (NAGMAC) the Arts (XCCA) Organized by the Intertextual Division of the Cultural Center of the of the Cultural Division the Intertextual by Organized Department of English of the Philippines the University by Presented by Organized sa Cagayan de Oro Magsusulat the Nagkahiusang by Organized September 2016 September : book Event Motherless Tongues Motherless National Artist Francisco Arcellana Artist Francisco National Arcellana Celebrating Francisco forum and launch Centennial Celebration of the birth of Things: All Closed Open To L. Rafael’s Vicente Book Fair International The 37th Manila Clinic) Clinic (Poetry Writing 2016 CDO 6 9 13 18 Date 14–18

334 Likhaan 10 , the international refereed journal of , the international refereed Participants/Winners/Organizers Kritika Kultura Kritika Kultura Museum Essayists, Novelists) Playwrights, and cultural studies of the Department of English, language, literary, University de Manila Ateneo Hosted by by Hosted LiteraryVisayan Festival West Taboan the Iloilo by Organized (UP Press) Press of the Philippines the University by Organized (CCP) Center of the Philippines the Cultural by Organized ng Kabataan, and Ayala Ang Ilustrador House, Adarna by Hosted (Poets, PEN Center of International The Philippine by Hosted by Organized and the UP Press Writing of Creative the UP Institute by Sponsored

September 2016 September by Kapitbahay Kubo (by Lara Saguisag Lara Saguisag (by Event 27 Launch Musika sa Kasaysayan ng Musika at Play Kara of Poems Steadfast: Ye Be Performance Indicator of Higher of Higher Indicator Performance Ied Dr. by Institutions Education Sitepu Graduates’ Competencies as Graduates’ Contest Writing Hiligaynon Hugot Diskurso Pana-panahong Filipinas: PhD Raul Casantusan Navarro, launch Kingdom” and Bauza) and Jamie Acuña) Pergylene (by Mookie Daoana, Arcangel Carlomar Justo Katigbak-Lacuesta, and Allan Pastrana 39 themed “Kahayupan/The Animal Kritika Kultura Lecture Series: Lecture Kritika Kultura 2016 Manunulat Hubon Padya Book Launch: Ani Book Launch: Book Launch: Kritika Kultura Identities” Tattooing Ink: “Tapping 15 20 22 23 24 24 29 30 Date 20 to October 20 to October

Literary Calendar 335 Participants/Winners/Organizers Paul Cyrian Baltazar Cyrian Paul Rachel Castañares Leir Castro John Cruz Vida Medina Arby Onte Arianne Patricia Urquico Rosemarie PUP Institute for Cultural Studies (ICS) and PUP Office of the (ICS) and PUP Office Studies for Cultural PUP Institute and Development Planning Extension, for Research, President Vice (OVPREPD) Wikang ng Tagapagtanggol (PUP), Alyansa ng Mga the Philippines ng Tagapagtanggol WIKA), Alyansa ng Mga (TANGGOL Filipino Samahan Pambansang KASAYSAYAN), Kasaysayan (TANGGOL (PSLLF), and Alliance of sa Linggwistika at Literaturang Filipino (ACT-Philippines) Concerned Teachers-Philippines (UP ICW) Writing Creative for English: Fellows Presented by the PUP Center for Social History (PUP-CSH) under the the PUP Center for Social by Presented de Cagayan Xavier University-Ateneo by Organized of University ng Polytechnic Kagawaran ng Filipinolohiya by Organized of Institute of the Philippines The University LIKHAAN: by Organized October 2016 October Event Community in the Philippines: Community in the Philippines: of Local on the Production Focus Turgo Nelson Dr. by Knowledge” Filipino’s Zealand-Based New Construction in Social Identity Alwin Aguirre Dr. by Media” Lecture Series Lecture “The Local Life of a Fishing in Cyberspace: Filipino “Negotiating Edukasyon Makabayang Lapeña Bonifacio) Social History in PUP @ 30: National History in PUP @ 30: National Social Conference Studies Katatau: Mindanao sa Kumperensya Pambansang Unang (Amelia Workshop Writers 1st UP Basic 3 7–8 Date 14–16 14–17

336 Likhaan 10 Participants/Winners/Organizers Mary Gigi Constantino Mary Gigi Ching Jacob Donato Joel Christian Ray Pilares Isaac Ali Tapar Kristoffer Tiña Aaron Fellows for Filipino: Fellows Wikang ng Tagapagtanggol (PUP), Alyansa ng Mga the Philippines ng Tagapagtanggol WIKA), Alyansa ng Mga (TANGGOL Filipino Samahan Pambansang KASAYSAYAN), Kasaysayan (TANGGOL (PSLLF), and Alliance of sa Linggwistika at Literaturang Filipino (ACT-Philippines) Concerned Teachers-Philippines and in partnership with the Xavier Center for Culture (NAGMAC) the Arts (XCCA) and the Arts Commission for Culture Organized by Kagawaran ng Filipinolohiya ng Polytechnic University of University ng Polytechnic Kagawaran ng Filipinolohiya by Organized sa Cagayan de Oro Magsusulat the Nagkahiusang by Organized Guild Writers the Davao by Organized and National Baguio of the Philippines the University by Sponsored Saraswati Swari Mudra Yayasan the by Hosted Association of the Philippines the Reading by Hosted October 2016 October Event Engaging, and Enriching Engaging, Makabayang Edukasyon Makabayang Workshop Demofest: National for All: Enabling, Instruction Reading Unang Pambansang Kumperensya sa Kumperensya Pambansang Unang Clinic) Clinic (Fiction Writing 2016 CDO Workshop 2016 Writers Davao Writing Creative Cordillera The Fifth Festival & Readers Writers The 13th Ubud Association of the Philippines 2016 Reading 16 Date 14–16 22–26 24–28 26–30 27–29

Literary Calendar 337 Participants/Winners/Organizers and family of the late poet Francisco F. Guevara, in partnership with Guevara, F. and family of the late poet Francisco and (DLSU) Department of Literature University La Salle the De to Center (BNSCWC), Writing Creative N. Santos the Bienvenido commemorate his life and work and the Arts (NCCA) Commission for Culture National and in partnership with the Xavier Center for Culture (NAGMAC) the Arts (XCCA) of the (ICS) and PUP Office Studies for Cultural PUP Institute and Development Planning Extension, for Research, President Vice (OVPREPD) The Kokoy F. Guevara Poetry Competition was established by the friends Competition was established by Poetry Guevara F. The Kokoy and the and the Arts (XCCA) the Xavier Center for Culture by Presented Inc. KOMIKON, by Hosted sa Cagayan de Oro Magsusulat the Nagkahiusang by Organized History (PUP-CSH) under the the PUP Center for Social by Presented October 2016 October November 2016 November Event Dr. Milagros Guerrero Milagros Dr. Katagalugan?” Bayang ang Haring Charleston “Xiao” Michael by Chua in Mindanao Clinic) Series Lecture by Katagalugan” Bayang Haring “Ang Nga Ba Gobyerno “Rebolusyonaryong Kokoy F. Guevara Poetry Competition Poetry Guevara F. Kokoy Workshop 4: A Playwriting SULAT-DULA 2016 Komikon Clinic (Literary Essay Writing 2016 CDO History in PUP @ 30: National Social 28 20 29 Date 17–19 19–20

338 Likhaan 10 Lila ang Lila ; Tepai Pascual ; Tepai Sa Pagdating ng Pagdating Sa Mar Anthony Simon Anthony Simon Mar

; Kumpisal ; Rogelio Braga for Braga ; Rogelio ; RM Topacio-Aplaon for Topacio-Aplaon ; RM Isang Gabi sa Quezon Avenue at Iba Pang Pang at Iba Avenue sa Quezon Gabi Isang Überman ; Chuckberry Pascual for ; Chuckberry Pascual Maktan 1521 Maktan Participants/Winners/Organizers Kulay ng Pamamaalam Kulay Mga Dula Pang at Iba mga Barbaro Cruz for Dela Kuwento for Zero A.D. for Zero Shortlist: and in partnership with the Xavier Center for Culture (NAGMAC) the Arts (XCCA) Organized by the Nagkahiusang Magsusulat sa Cagayan de Oro sa Cagayan de Oro Magsusulat the Nagkahiusang by Organized December 2016 December Event 2016 Madrigal-Gonzalez First Book Award First 2016 Madrigal-Gonzalez Clinic) Clinic (Drama Writing 2016 CDO 2 11 Date

Literary Calendar 339

Literary Bibliography

English

A Abad, Gemino, and Myrna Peña-Reyes, eds. Artemio Tadena. Manila: University of Santo Tomas Publishing House, 2016. [POETRY] Gémino Abad and Myrna Peña-Reyes honor another acclaimed poet in this title. Artemio Tadena’s eponymous collection showcases the master’s power of diction. Using syntax, unusual wordings, and a colloquial tone, Tadena forges an imperial tongue into a familiar language. Alfar, Dean Francis, and Kenneth Yu, eds. Science Fiction: Filipino Fiction for Young Adults. Quezon City: University of the Philippines Press, 2016. [SHORT STORY, ANTHOLOGY] This anthology is the second installment in Dean Francis Alfar and Kenneth Yu’s genre-anthology series for young adults. It contains short stories that tackle the dilemmas of young adulthood through the lens of science fiction. Alunan, Merlie, ed. Susumaton: Oral Narratives of Leyte. Quezon City: Ateneo de Manila University Press, 2016. [FOLK LITERATURE] Susumaton, edited by noted writer Merlie Alunan, contains oral narratives in their original format as narrated by Waray storytellers. The narratives weave together the Waray people’s worldview, social values, and history. Alvarez, Ma. Ailil. Slivers of the Sky: Catholic Literary Readings and Other Essays. Manila: University of Santo Tomas Publishing House, 2016. [CRITICAL ESSAY] Slivers of the Sky, the first book of literary criticism by Ma. Ailil Alvarez, applies literary criticism to Catholic thought. The selections include a wide range of topics—from Carlomar Daoana’s poems to Akira Kurosawa’s films—that showcase a symphonic relationship between religion and theory.

341 B Bautista, Cirilo F. Selected Poems. Quezon City: University of the Philippines Press, 2016. [POETRY] Bautista’s twelfth poetry collection, which contains poems that are handpicked by the author himself, enhances the framework of Philippine nationalism and captures the vibrance of the Philippines as a nation of the world. Bilbao, Techie Ysmael, and Jose Mari Ugarte. La Divina: The Life and Style of Chona Recto-Kasten. Pasig City: Anvil Publishing, Inc., 2016. [BIOGRAPHY] This book is an inspiring biography that offers glimpses into the life of fashion legend and icon Chona Recto-Kasten.

C Capili, Jose Wendell P. Migrations and Mediations. Quezon City: University of the Philippines Press, 2016. [CRITICAL ESSAY] Jose Wendell Capili’s Migrations and Meditations is a book of scholarly work that focuses on literature produced by Southeast Asians in Australia. Cleto, Luna Sicat. Typewriter Altar. Quezon City: University of the Philippines Press, 2016. [NOVEL] In Typewriter Altar, Luna Sicat Cleto offers a peek into an artist’s life with the story of Laya, who wakes up from a recurring dream thinking that she can hear her parents’ voices. Silence soon settles, and she is always left with an empty house strewn with empty pages.

D Dimzon, Alain Russ. Repentances and Rehabilitations. Iloilo City: Kasingkasing Press, 2016. [POETRY] Described as a “trip to the jungles of the claustrophobic psyche,” this poetry collection gathers the earlier works of Alain Russ Dimzon, a Palanca and Gawad Emmanuel Lacaba awardee. Drilon, Andrew. Kare-Kare Komiks. Quezon City: Adarna House, 2016. [COMICS] Kare-Kare Komiks is an action-packed and delightful hodgepodge of comics from diverse genres—a collection of worlds and characters that are all tied to the journey of a metafictional protagonist facing a threatening apocalyptic entity. Dumdum, Simeon. The Poet Learns to Dance (A Dancer Learns to Write a Poem). Quezon City: Ateneo de Manila University Press, 2016. [POETRY] Simeon Dumdum revels in the marriage of dance and poetry in his new collection The Poet Learns to Dance (A Dancer Learns to Write a Poem). The acclaimed poet plays with movement and rhythm in choreographing poems that show the dynamism of human emotion.

342 Likhaan 10 E Españo-Dimzon, Agnes. Mansyon. Iloilo City: Kasingkasing Press, 2016. [ESSAY] Mansyon contains essays written by Agnes Españo-Dimzon. It is the first creative nonfiction collection published in Hiligaynon.

G Garcia, J. Neil C. Myth and Writing: Occasional Prose. Quezon City: University of the Philippines Press, 2016 [ESSAY] This is a personal anthology of prose pieces that reflect on the contact zones between creativity and the mythological imagination. This book’s conclusion is that all art finally aspires to turn into myth, which is nothing if not narration wielding powerful and transfigurative magic over the communal psyche that invents it, providing not so much explanations as experiences of its innermost depths, its uppermost visions, its intuition of the transcendental, without which it would be quite impossible for any of us to grieve, to love, and be fully a person in this world.

J José, F. Sionil. Selected Stories. Quezon City: University of the Philippines Press, 2016. [SHORT STORY] F. Sionil José’s Selected Stories is comprised of twelve stories that, while drawn from the mundane, become fantastic through the magical weaving of words.

K Kilates, Marne. Lyrical Objects. Manila: University of Santo Tomas Publishing House, 2016. [POETRY] Marne Kilates’s fifth poetry collection contains sixty poems written by the poet over three months before his sixtieth birthday. These poems capture the lyrical quality of objects, objects that embody the poet’s daily encounters with reality, memory, and the perpetual motion of time.

L Lee, Gabriela. Instructions On How To Disappear. Pasay City: Visprint, Inc., 2016. [SHORT STORY] Gabriela Lee’s debut short story collection entitled Instructions On How To Disappear contains eleven narratives that rework numerous genre tropes, creating atmospheres where familiarity breeds strangeness. Lee writes with a meticulous style that weaves the magical into everyday life.

Literary Bibliography: English 343 Lim, Jaime An. The Axolotl Colony. Quezon City: University of the Philippines Press, 2016. [SHORT STORY] This short story collection by multi-awarded author Jaime Ann Lim showcases the author’s control of plot and depth. Lim masterfully sketches his characters’ humanity and vulnerability in the face of fear, desperation, and dread.

M Macansantos, Francis C. Snail Fever. Quezon City: University of the Philippines Press, 2016. [POETRY] Snail Fever is the fourth poetry collection of Francis C. Macansantos, a five-time Palanca awardee for Poetry in English. Containing works that Macansantos wrote from 1997 to 2016, this collection tackles nature, history, love, and oppression. MacCarty, Weldon. Bamboo Bed. Quezon City: University of the Philippines Press, 2016. [AUTOBIOGRAPHY] This memoir by Weldon McCarty chronicles the musician’s life during his days in colorful pre-Martial Law Manila. Magos, Alicia P. et al., researcher and translator. Quezon City: University of the Philippines Press, 2016. [EPIC POETRY] Labaw Donggon and Masangladon fight for Matan-ayon’s hand in Alicia Magos’sKalampay . In order to save Matan-ayon, they must dive through the great waterfall Panibyungan to get to the underworld. Manzanilla, JPaul, and Caroline Hau, eds. Remembering/Rethinking EDSA. Pasig City: Anvil Publishing, Inc., 2016. [ANTHOLOGY, ESSAY] Remembering/Rethinking EDSA is an anthology of the narratives of activists, academics, and artists during the People Power Revolution of 1986. Marfil, Dawn Laurente. Looking for Polaris. Manila: University of Santo Tomas Publishing House, 2016. [ESSAY] Looking for Polaris is Dawn Laurente Marfil’s debut collection of autobiographical essays. It contains narratives that revolve around different spectrums of loss, told with a sly, ironic tone that deftly captures the harshness of agony and the hope that seeps underneath it. Mejia, Arnie Q. Writing Naked. Manila: University of Santo Tomas Publishing House, 2016. [AUTOBIOGRAPHY] Writing Naked is Arnie Mejia’s first book. It chronicles the author’s experience as a boy and a young adult in the United States of America where his family went to a voluntary exile during Martial Law. The book reveals the struggles of the author as a

344 Likhaan 10 young immigrant in the land of the free and his guilt at being away from his countrymen during one of the most intense periods of Philippine history. The book is a worthy addition to the literature published on Martial Law. Muslim, Kristine O. Lifeboat. Manila: University of Santo Tomas Publishing House, 2016. [POETRY] In Lifeboat, Kristine Ong Muslim writes about loss, the subject matter she masterfully handled in her previous works. The poems in the collection highlight the essence of absence, see beauty in the ordinary, and find hope in hidden corners.

N Navarra, Alan. Sacada: A Catalog of Commodities from a Period of Glorious Tumult. Pasay City: Visprint, Inc., 2016. [POETRY] Sacada by Alan Navarra is both a poetry collection and a graphic memoir of the city- dwellers of Manila. Presented in visual, experimental, and free-form poetry, Sacada explores the commodification of creativity.

O Ong, Charlson. Of That Other Country We Now Speak. Quezon City: University of the Philippines Press, 2016. [SHORT STORY] Charlson Ong’s fourth short story collection contains thematically and stylistically diverse stories that were written over the last two decades.

P Palanca, Clinton. The Gullet: Dispatches on Filipino Food. Pasig City: Anvil Publishing, Inc., 2016. [ESSAY] In Clinton Palanca’s fifth book entitled The Gullet, he traces the culinary revolution the Philippines has undergone in the past ten years through a collection of essays on food and travel. Patawaran, AA. Hai[na]ku and Other Poems. Pasig City: Anvil Publishing, Inc., 2016. [POETRY] This is the first poetry collection of AA Patawaran, author of Write Here Write Now and editor of Manila Bulletin Lifestyle. Pineda, Macario. Love in the Rice Fields and Other Stories. Makati: Tahanan Books. 2016. [SHORT STORY] Macario Pineda’s collection of short stories, retold in English by Soledad Reyes, sketches a landscape of emotions and experience. Love in the Rice Fields and Other Stories takes readers into a familiar road—from the innocence of youth, the disillusionment of old age, and the epiphany of death.

Literary Bibliography: English 345 Polistico, Edgie. Philippine Food, Cooking, & Dining Dictionary. Pasig City: Anvil Publishing, Inc., 2016. [DICTIONARY] Philippine Food, Cooking, & Dining Dictionary is a kitchen reference book that contains more than 8,000 terms related to traditional Filipino cuisine. Perfect for anyone who is passionate about Filipino food, this dictionary gathers entries ranging from ampapagot (Cebuano for triggerfish) toukuh ukuh (a Tausug dish resembling a sea urchin risotto). Popa, Allan. Incision. Manila: University of Santo Tomas Publishing House, 2016. [POETRY] Allan Popa’s poetry collection Incision displays man’s vulnerability, fear of consequence, and conscious decision-making. With an arsenal of poetic technique, Popa creates a unique effect of hesitation and enquiry relatable to all.

R Rafael, Vicente L. Motherless Tongues: The Insurgency of Language amid Wars of Translation. Quezon City: Ateneo de Manila University Press, 2016. [CRITICAL ESSAY] Motherless Tongues by Vicente Rafael looks at language and its effects on history in either colonial or postcolonial setting. The book touches on translation and the power of language in shaping history, knowledge, and power. Ramsey, Edwin Price, and Stephen J. Rivele. Lieutenant Ramsey’s War. Manila: University of Santo Tomas Publishing House, 2016. [AUTOBIOGRAPHY] This is a memoir written by a Philippine Scout cavalry officer who became one of the leaders of the guerrilla resistance movement in Bataan after the fall of the Philippines in 1942. Rapatahana, Vaughan. Atonement. Manila: University of Santo Tomas Publishing House, 2016. [POETRY] Vaughan Rapatahana’s poems in Atonement intersect with various pan-Pacific experiences while, at the same time, comingle with the familiarity of personal history: idealism, alienation, and identity. Mostly experimental, the poems in the collection explore binaries and possess a distinct voice in the midst of identity politics, history, and culture. Reguyal, Trixie Alano. Looking at the World: An Introduction. Quezon City: University of the Philippines Press, 2016. [ESSAY] In her collection of essays, Trixie Alano Reguyal explores the world in a wide array of topics ranging from food, music, family, and travel. The essays were written from the mid-1990s to the present.

346 Likhaan 10 Rillo, Fidel, ed. n.p.: LIRA 30: Tatlong Dekada ng Makatang LIRA, 2015. [POETRY, ANTHOLOGY] This anthology was launched by Linangan sa Imahen, Retorika at Anyo (LIRA) as part of its thirtieth anniversary celebration. It brings together poems written by member poets in the past thirty years.

S Sempio. Antonio G. The Golden Dagger. Manila: De La Salle University Publishing House, 2016. [NOVEL] The Golden Dagger is a novel written by Antonio G. Sempio and translated from Filipino by Soledad S. Reyes. By telling the story of Dalisay, a woman who experiences a series of tragedies because of love, the novel depicts the sociopolitical forces and tensions prevalent in Philippine society during the 1930s. Sitoy, Lakambini. Sweet Haven. Pasig City: Anvil Publishing, Inc., 2016. [NOVEL] Sweet Haven is Lakambini Sitoy’s first novel which was originally published in French as Les Filles de Sweethaven. The story is set in a decaying and unromanticized Philippines and follows Narita Pastor, a woman who is haunted by her dark past in Sweethaven, the community of her childhood, after learning about her illegitimate daughter’s scandal. Suarez, Michelline, Joonee Garcia, and Divine Reyes. A LOLO-ng Time Ago. Quezon City: Ilaw ng Tahanan Publinshing Inc., 2016. [HISTORY, CHILDREN’S LITERATURE] A LOLO-ng Time Ago is a children’s history book about the beginnings of the Philippines. The topics in the book include the formation of the Philippines as a group of islands, the life of the earliest ancestors, and the beginnings of our culture.

T Tiatco, Sir Anril P. Performing Catholicism. Quezon City: University of the Philippines Press, 2016. [CRITICAL ESSAY] Performing Catholicism is a book by UP Professor Sir Anril Pineda Tiatco who specializes on speech communication and theater arts. This book explores the intricate relationship between theater and religion, posing a question on Catholicism as performance. Torres, Catherine. Mariposa Gang and Other Stories. Manila: University of Santo Tomas Publishing House, 2016. [SHORT STORY] Mariposa Gang and Other Stories is Catherine Torres’s collection of ten short stories revolving around Filipino individuals as they navigate the seemingly exotic places and spaces where the writer herself once lived.

Literary Bibliography: English 347 Torres, Jose Victor. To the People Sitting in Darkness. Manila: University of Santo Tomas Publishing House, 2016. [ESSAY] Torres’s essay collection centers around historical footnotes, events that are often relegated to the margins of our past. In his essays, Torres provides in-depth discussions on these footnotes and situates them in the formation of the Filipino culture.

V Victoria, Eliza. Wounded Little Gods. Pasay City: Visprint, Inc., 2016. [NOVEL] Wounded Little Gods is a fantasy novel by Eliza Victoria. It tells the story of Regina and the events that lead her back to her hometown, Heridos, where gods and spirits once walked among mortals. Wounded Little Gods provokes a sense of mystery and is a good addition to the fantasy genre in the Philippines.

Y Yuson, Alfred. The Music Child & The Mahjong Queen. Pasig City: Anvil Publishing, Inc., 2016. [NOVEL] Alfred Yuson’s earlier manuscript called “The Music Child”—which would later become his third novel— was shortlisted for the Man Asia Literary Prize in 2008. It is a marvelous tale about a child who turns people’s words into music and a mahjong queen who stands undefeated in the game for angels speak through her fingers. ———. Islands of Words. Manila: University of Santo Tomas Publishing House, 2016. [POETRY] Poems set in folkloric scenarios and drawn from myth comprise Krip Yuson’s seventh poetry collection. Together, they form a narrative of a people and feature a collision of languages.

348 Likhaan 10 Filipino

A Acacio-Flores, Lin. The Secret (Filipino Edition). Pasig City: Anvil Publishing, Inc., 2016. [NOBELA, PANITIKANG PAMBATA] Ang The Secret ay isang nobelang pambata na hango sa sariling karanasan ni Lin Acacio- Flores noong Ikalawang Digmaang Pandaigdig. Sa Isang kumbento na pinamumugaran ng mga misteryosong anino, isang batang babae ang susubok tuklasin ang katotohanan. Adaya, Jomar, et al. Sagupa: Antolohiya ng mga Tula ng mga Makatang Guro ng Kagawaran ng Filipinolohiya ng PUP. Manila: Polytechnic University of the Philippines Press, 2016. Ito ay koleksiyon ng mga tulang nilathala ng mga guro ng Kagawaran ng Filipinolohiya ng Politeknikong Unibersidad ng Pilipinas (PUP).

B Bayuga, Mayette. Babae sa Balumbalunan ni Hakob. Manila: University of Santo Tomas Publishing House, 2016. [DAGLI, MAIKLING KUWENTO] Ito ay isang koleksiyon ng mga dagli at maiikling kuwento kung saan ang hiwaga at biyaya ng kalikasan ang tanging pumupukaw sa kamalayan ng mga Filipino. Bellen, Christine S. Batang Rizal at Iba Pang Dula. Lungsod Quezon: Ateneo de Manila University Press, 2016. [DULA] Binubuo ang koleksiyong ito ng mga dulang musikal na akma ang haba para sa batang mambabasa. Mithiin ng mga ito ang pagyamanin ang kultural at pangkasaysayang kaalaman ng batang Pilipino. Braga, Rogelio. Colon. Manila: Balangiga Press, 2016. [NOBELA] Ito ang pinakabagong nobela ng mandudula at mangangatha na si Rogelio Braga. Sa pamamagitan ng depiksiyon ng relasyong Moro-Filipino, tinatalakay nito ang isyu ng identidad, karahasan, at kapayapaan.

D delos Reyes, Joselito D. Troya: 12 Kuwento. Pasay City: Visprint, Inc., 2016. [MAIKLING KUWENTO] Ang Troya: 12 Kuwento ay isang koleksiyon ng maiikling kuwento ni Joselito D. Delos Reyes, ang ginawaran ng 2013 NCCA Writer’s Prize for Short Story in Filipino.

Literary Bibliography: Filipino 349 E Eliserio, U Z. Kami sa Lahat ng Mataba. Manila: University of Santo Tomas Publishing House, 2016. [KRITIKAL NA SANAYSAY] Sa koleksiyon ng mga kritikal na sanaysay na ito, nilapat ni U Z. Eliserio ang mga kanluraning teorya sa pagsuri at pagtalakay ng sitwasyong kultural, politikal, at panlipunan ng Pilipinas.

F Ferriols, Padre Roque J. SJ, at Leovino Ma. Garcia, ed. Sulyap sa Aking Pinanggalingan. Lungsod Quezon: Ateneo de Manila University Press, 2016. [AUTOBIOGRAPIYA] Ang autobiograpiyang ito ng dating propesor ng pilosopiya na si Fr. Roque J. Ferriols ay pinamatnugutan ni Leovino Ma. Garcia. Nilalaman nito ang paglalakbay ng dating propesor sa paghahanap ng katotohanan, mula sa kaniyang kabataan bilang isang paring Heswita hanggang sa kaniyang mga karanasan sa paghubog ng bawat henerasyon ng mag-aaral ng pilosopiya.

M Molina, Russell, and Kajo Baldisimo. 12:01. Quezon City: Adarna House, 2016. [KOMIKS] Ang komiks na 12:01 nina Russell Molina at Kajo Baldisimo ay tungkol sa kuwento ng isang barkada na nasiraan ng kotse sa daan lampas hatinggabi sa kasagsagan ng Martial Law.

T Tolentino, Rolando B. Araw/Gabi. Lungsod Quezon: University of the Philippines Press, 2016. [APORISMO] Twitter ang unang naging lunsaran ng mga aporismong bumubuo ng koleksiyong ito, na siya namang hinati sa dalawa: araw at gabi. Ang aporismo, base sa may-akda, ay “maiikling pangungusap na direkta ang punto … at ang pangungusap na ito ay nagbibigay-distinksyon, ng pagkakaiba’t pagmumukod-tangi sa ordinaryo. Ito ay isang definisyon din, ng paglalahad ng isang sintesis hinggil sa karanasan sa mundo ng makabuluhan aspekto nito … at hinggil sa sangkatauhan.”

350 Likhaan 10 Y Yapan, Alvin B. Sangkatauhan Sangkahayupan. Lungsod Quezon: Ateneo de Manila University Press, 2016. [MAIKLING KUWENTO] Ang Sangkatauhan Sangkahayupan ay ang unang koleksiyon ng maiikling kuwento ni Alvin B. Yapan. Laman nito ay mga kuwentong naglalayong ibalik ang mga nalimutang pisi ng kasaysayan sa pamamagitan ng tambalan at talaban ng mito at realidad.

Literary Bibliography: Filipino 351

Notes on the Contributors

Nagsisiyasat ng mga imahen at mga salita si Tilde Acuña para sa kanyang tesis. Mag-aaral ng MA Araling Pilipino (KAL-DFPP) at research associate (SURP) sa Unibersidad ng Pilipinas (UP). May-akda ng ilang piyesa sa Kritika Kultura, Likhaan, Tomas, UP Forum, Ani, High Chair, hal, Literary Apprentice, Bulatlat, atbp. Kalahok sa ilang pambansang palihan sa malikhaing pagsulat at sa kritisimo; iginawad ang apat sa naturang fellowship ngayong taon, kung kailan kinilala ang mga akda niya sa Critical Essay Contest (finalist) ng UP Press, sa Gawad Balacuit (unang gantimpala) ng Iligan Workshop at sa Gawad Rogelio Sicat (ikatlong gantimpala sa kuwento; unang gantimpala sa tula) ng Sentro ng Wikang Filipino. Buboy Aguay is a writer of Bikol poems. His collection, Gibsaw sa Salakab, was published in 2008. He won third prize in the Carlos Palanca Memorial Awards for Literature in 2011 with his entry “Posporo” (Dulang May Isang Yugto). Currently, Aguay is the Chairman of the Board of Directors of Parasurat Bikolnon, Inc. Aguay’s works have also won titles in the Bikol Film industry initiated by the Peñafrancia Short Film Festival where his scripts “Sakay: Andas sa Barotong Papel” (2013) and “Simong Lawog”(2015) were named Best Picture and Second Best Picture, respectively. Dennis Andrew S. Aguinaldo teaches at UP Los Baños. He was a fellow of the UP National Writers Workshop as well as the workshops of Iyas, University of Santo Tomas, and Ateneo de Manila University. His poetry has appeared in magazines such as the Philippines Graphic, Transit, and The Sunday Times. His fiction has been included in the PEN anthologies of 2007 and 2008, as well as in Kritika Kultura and The Cabinet. Mark Angeles was a writer-in-residence of the International Writing Program at the University of Iowa, USA in 2013. Lampara Books published his children’s books Si Znork, Ang Kabayong Mahilig Matulog and Si Andoy, Batang Tondo. His fiction collection Gagambeks at mga Kuwentong Waratpad was published by Visprint. A redux of his book Emotero is forthcoming. Angeles is a columnist of Pinoy Weekly, literary editor of bulatlat.com, and features

353 contributor of GMA News Online. He writes for DIWA textbooks and teaches senior high Filipino at Notre Dame of Greater Manila. He was conferred Makata ng Taon 2016 by the Komisyon sa Wikang Filipino. The poems that appeared here are included in his collection “Di Lang Lalang,” which won first place at the Palanca Awards of 2016. Ronnie E. Baticulon is a pediatric neurosurgeon. He graduated from the UP College of Medicine, and trained in Philippine General Hospital and The Royal Children’s Hospital in Melbourne. He posts his stories on being a Filipino doctor, teacher, and writer in his blog, http://ronibats.ph. Mananaysay, kuwentista, at mandudula si Rogelio Braga. Inilathala ng Ateneo de Naga University Press ang kanyang aklat ng mga dula Sa Pagdating ng Barbaro at Iba Pang Mga Dula na shortlisted sa 2016 Madrigal Gonzalez First Book Award at ng Balangiga Press ang una niyang nobela na Colon. Ang maikling kuwento, “Kabanalan sa Panahon ng Digmâ,” ay bahagi ng binubuo niyang aklat ng koleksiyon ng mga katha na May Rush Ba Sa Third World Country. Kasapi si Braga ng Naratibo at ng UP Writers Club. Fellow siya ng Asian Cultural Council ngayong 2016 para sa teatro sa Timog Silangang Asya. Thomas David Chaves is an assistant professor with the Department of English and Comparative Literature of UP Diliman. A medical anthropologist by background, he is currently completing an MA in Creative Writing (Poetry) in UP Diliman. His short stories have won both the Palanca and Nick Joaquin awards. Richard Calayeg Cornelio is a nineteen-year-old currently pursuing BS Materials Engineering at UP Diliman. His fiction and nonfiction pieces are included in Kritika Kultura, Philippine Speculative Fiction X, and Trash: An Anthology of Southeast Asian Urban Writing, and the forthcoming inaugural issue of Akda: The Asian Journal of Literature, Culture, Performance. He has received a couple of prizes in both the Amelia Lapeña-Bonifacio Literary Awards and the Carlos Palanca Memorial Awards for Literature. A recipient of the Palanca Award for Poetry, Rodrigo Dela Peña Jr. is the author of Requiem, a chapbook. He has been a fellow for poetry in various writers workshops. His poems have been published in Kritika Kultura, Rattle, Hayden’s Ferry Review, QLRS, and other journals and anthologies. He is currently based in Singapore. Israfel Fagela practices law out of Makati City. He holds degrees in economics (1998) and law (2004) from UP Diliman. His short stories and

354 Likhaan 10 poetry have appeared in Caracoa, Likhaan, Philippines Free Press, Philippines Graphic, and other literary anthologies and magazines. He is also a songwriter and independent musician, performing under the name “Easy.” His second solo album, Majorette, is out now. He is the recipient of a Nick Joaquin Literary Award and an alumnus of the UP National Writers Workshop as well as the National Writers Workshop of Dumaguete City. Paul Maravillas Jerusalem is a Singapore-born Filipino who is an undergraduate student at Yale-NUS College, a liberal arts college in Singapore. Three of his works have been published by the Quarterly Literary Review Singapore, and his poems will be published in SingPoWriMo 2016, an anthology of poems written during the annual Singapore Poetry Writing Month, as well as in ASINGBOL: An Archaeology of the Singaporean Poetic Form. Si Perry C. Mangilaya ay tubong Bagacay, Ibajay, Aklan. Kasalukuyan siyang namamahala ng patnugutan ng Liwayway magasin sa Manila Bulletin, bukod sa pagiging kuwentista ay isa ring nobelista. Ang huli niyang nobelang nalathala sa Liwayway ay ang “Silang mga Tumandok sa Isla.” Nakapagkamit na ng mga parangal sa pagsusulat sa Palanca Awards, GAWAD Komisyon, PBBY-Salanga Writer’s Prize at UN-Millennium Development Goals. Bukod sa mga nobela at maikling kuwento, nakapaglathala rin siya ng mga kuwentong pambata, tula, sanaysay, flash fiction, artikulo, kolum, komiks, at iba pang mga lathalain na karamihan ay sa Liwayway, Hiligaynon, at Manila Bulletin. Ilan din sa kanyang mga kuwento ay nalathala sa Ani 33–39 ng Cultural Center of the Philippines, Ani ng Wika ng Komisyon sa Wikang Filipino, at sa ilan pang literary anthologies. Bukod sa wikang Filipino, nakapaglathala rin siya sa wikang Hiligaynon, Akeanon, at Ingles. Naging Language Reviewer (Filipino) siya ng DepEd K-12 Learning Material (LM) at Teacher’s Guides (TG). Ana Margarita R. Nunez is a native of Iligan City. She has an MFA in Creative Writing from De La Salle University and is currently pursuing a PhD in Literature at the same institution. At present, she teaches English Literature for Senior High School at an all-boys’ school in Metro Manila. She was a fellow at the 48th Silliman National Writers’ Workshop, and her essays and short fiction have been published in Philippines Free Press and the Sunday Inquirer Magazine. Married and a mother of two boys, she hopes that her children will grow up with the same roots that she finds herself so fortunate to have.

Notes on the Contributors 355 Jose Luis Pablo is an associate creative director for an independent advertising agency located in Ortigas. He graduated from UP Diliman in 2013 with a degree in broadcast communication and is currently pursuing a master’s degree in creative writing at the same university. His poetry has been published in Likhaan Journal 9. Si Chuckberry J. Pascual ay nagtapos ng BA Malikhaing Pagsulat, MA Araling Pilipino, at PhD Malikhaing Pagsulat sa UP Diliman. Siya ang awtor ng Hindi Barbra ang Ngalan Ko (2011), 5ex (Youth and Beauty Brigade, 2012), at Kumpisal: Mga Kuwento (UST Publishing Hosue, 2015). Sa kasalukuyan, nagtuturo siya sa UST Faculty of Arts and Letters at nagsisilbi bilang Resident Fellow ng UST Center for Creative Writing and Literary Studies. Nagtuturo si Allan Popa sa Ateneo de Manila University at kumukuha ng PhD in Literature sa DLSU. Nagtapos siya ng MFA in Writing sa Washington University in Saint Louis kung saan siya nagwagi ng Academy of American Poets Prize at Norma Lowry Memorial Prize. Awtor siya ng sampung aklat ng mga tula kabilang na ang Incision (UST Publishing House, 2016), Drone (Ateneo de Manila University Press, 2013), at Laan (DLSU Publishing House, 2013). Ginawaran na siya ng Philippines Free Press Literary Award at Manila Critics Circle National Book Award for Poetry. Isa siya sa mga kasaping tagpagtatag ng High Chair. Jan Kevin Rivera works for Teach for the Philippines, a nonprofit social enterprise. He is currently seconded to a rural Mindanao town where he develops agriculture trade policies and teaches at a state college. He completed his BA in broadcast communication, cum laude, at UP Diliman. He attended high school at UST where he won an Ustetika, the university’s literary prize. He has been a Fellow for Creative Nonfiction at the National Writers Workshops of Silliman University and UST. Si Christopher S. Rosales ay isang lisensyadong electronics engineer na nagtapos sa Technological University of the Philippines-Manila. Minsan na siyang naging punong patnugot ng The Philippine Artisan, ang opisyal na publikasyong pang-estudyante ng TUP. Nakatanggap na siya ng mga parangal mula sa Palanca Awards, Talaang Ginto: Gawad KWF sa Tula, at Lampara Books Children’s Story Writing Contest. Nakapaglathala na rin siya ng dalawang aklat-pambata: Si Berting, ang Batang Uling at Namimingwit sa Langit. Kasabay ng pagsusulong niya ng kaniyang karera sa pag-iinhinyero ay patuloy pa rin siyang nagsusulat sa mga libre niyang oras.

356 Likhaan 10 Jose Dennis C. Teodosio’s portfolio garnered prizes from the Palanca Awards, the National Commission on Culture and the Arts, Gawad CCP, Gawad Ka Amado, the PBBY-Salanga Writer’s Prize, Gawad Teatro Bulawan, CineManila, Star Cinema, Viva Films, Philippine Pink Film Festival, Film Development Foundation of the Philippines, Film Academy of the Philippines, the Aliw Awards, China-Southeast Asia-South Asia TV Arts Week, and the Asian TV Awards. He was a fellow in the UP (1996 & 2007) and the Iligan National Writers Workshops (2002). He was a scholar of the 1st ABS-CBN2/ Ricky Lee Course in Soap Writing and was part of the Star Cinema Concept Development Group. After the 1st Virgin Labfest’s runaway hit, “Gee-Gee At Waterina” (2005), 31 of his plays were eventually staged. He was also commissioned to write plays for Gantimpala Theater Foundation and PETA. He is a member of the Writers Bloc and the PETA Writers Pool. Currently, he is based in Yangon, Myanmar. Jenette Ethel N. Vizcocho recently finished her MA in Creative Writing at UP Diliman. A speech therapist by profession, she is also working on interviews and features of interesting people, places, and events with her friends for their online magazine Murphy Report during her free time. She hopes to be more diligent in writing short fiction. To gain material, she has started traveling solo, the process of purchasing train tickets, eating alone, getting lost, and never understanding the local language of each country being wonderful potential for story ideas. The piranhas in “Wash And Wear” are real, and were inspired by her cousin Kuya Dennis showing her videos of his fish feeding on various small prey. This story is dedicated to his memory.

Notes on the Contributors 357

About the Cover Artists

Cover designer R. Jordan P. Santos is an independent graphic designer who loves books and designs them for a living. Follow him at https://www. instagram.com/rjordanpsantos/. Ang cover illustrator na si Bheng Densing ay may bachelor ng fine arts major in visual communication sa UP Diliman. Dati siyang graphics editor ng Philippine Collegian, at ngayon ay professional art director sa isang advertising agency sa Pilipinas. Bukod sa visual arts, devoted din siya mag- express ng kaniyang mga pananaw sa mundo by making rock songs kasama ang kanyang kasalukuyang bandang TAO.

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Notes on the Panelists

Dean Francis Alfar is a novelist and writer of speculative fiction. His fiction has been published and anthologized both in his native Philippines and abroad (Strange Horizons, Rabid Transit, The Year’s Best Fantasy & Horror, The Apex Book of World SF, The Time Traveler’s Almanac, and the Exotic Gothic series among many others). His literary awards include ten Don Carlos Palanca Memorial Awards for Literature—including the Grand Prize for Novel for Salamanca—as well as the National Book Awards for the graphic novels Siglo: Freedom and Siglo: Passion, the Philippines Free Press Literary Award, and the Gintong Aklat Award. He is a member of the Manila Critics Circle. Dean lives in Manila with his wife, award-winning fictionist Nikki Alfar and their daughters Sage and Rowan. Luna Sicat Cleto has published two novels, Makinilyang Altar (University of the Philippines Press, 2002) and Mga Prodigal (Anvil, 2010). Some of the awards she received were from the Don Carlos Palanca Memorial Awards for Literature, the Madrigal Gonzales Best First Book, and the Cultural Center of the Philippines for her poetry, prose, and plays. She is the translator of John Green’s An Abundance of Katherines (NBS and Anvil, 2015), and cotranslator of Eve Ensler’s The Vagina Monologues and William Shakespeare’s Othello. Her works in fiction, poetry, and essays have also been anthologized in many publications. She currently teaches creative writing and literature appreciation at the University of the Philippines Diliman, where she is an associate of the Likhaan: UP Institute of Creative Writing. Fictionist Jaime An Lim is cofounder of the Mindanao Writers Group and the Iligan National Writers Workshop. He has won awards for his fiction: “The Axolotl Colony,” First Prize in the 1993 Don Carlos Palanca Memorial Awards for Literature; “The Boy and the Tree of Time,” Second Prize (Short Story for Children) in the 1993 Palanca Awards; “Encanto,” originally titled “Yasmin,” Third Prize (Short Story for Children) in the 1990 Palanca Awards; “The Husband,” 1984 Ellis Literary Award for Best Graduate Fiction,

361 Indiana University; “The Liberation of Mrs. Fidela Magsilang,” Third Prize in the 1973 Palanca Awards; and “Outward Journey,” Honorable Mention in the 1973 Focus Philippines Short Story Contest. In 2000, the Unyon ng Manunulat sa Pilipinas (UMPIL) awarded him the Gawad Pambansang Alagad ni Balagtas for poetry and fiction in English. Eliza Victoria is the author of several books including the Philippine National Book Award-winning Dwellers (2014) and the novel Wounded Little Gods (2016). Her fiction and poetry have appeared in several online and print publications and have won prizes in the Philippines’ top literary awards. A story of hers (“Dan’s Dreams”) is included in The Year’s Best YA Speculative Fiction 2013, featuring stories from authors such as Ken Liu, Lavie Tidhar, Sofia Samatar, Nnedi Okorafor, and Neil Gaiman. She served as guest panelist in the 54th Silliman University National Writers Workshop, and was a Writing Fellow in the 54th UP National Writers Workshop.

362 Likhaan 10 About the Editors

Issue editor J. Neil C. Garcia teaches creative writing and comparative literature in the University of the Philippines, Diliman, where he serves as director of the university press and a fellow for poetry in the Institute of Creative Writing. He is the author of numerous poetry collections and works in literary and cultural criticism, including The Sorrows of Water (2000), Kaluluwa (2001), Performing the Self: Occasional Prose (2003), The Garden of Wordlessness (2005), Misterios and Other Poems (2005), and Postcolonialism and Filipino Poetics: Essays and Critiques (2003). In 2009, Hong Kong University Press published its own international edition of his Philippine Gay Culture (1996). Between 1994 and 2014, he coedited the famous Ladlad series of Philippine gay writing. Another important anthology that he edited is Aura: the Gay Theme in Philippine Fiction in English, published in 2012. His most recent books are The Postcolonial Perverse: Critiques of Contemporary Philippine Culture, Homeless in Unhomeliness: Postcolonial Critiques of Philippine Literature, and Myth and Writing: Occasional Prose. He is currently at work on Likha, his seventh poetry book. Associate editor Charlson Ong has published four collections of short fiction: Men of the East and Other Stories, Woman of Amkaw and Other Stories, Conversion and Other Fictions, and Of That Other Country We Now Speak and Other Stories, as well as three novels: An Embarrassment of Riches (which won the Philippine Centennial Literary Prize), Banyaga, A Song of War (which won the 2006 National Book Award), and Blue Angel, White Shadow (which won the 2011 National Book Award). He teaches creative writing at the Department of English and Comparative Literature, College of Arts and Letters, UP Diliman. Managing editor Gabriela Lee has been published for her poetry and fiction in the Philippines, Singapore, the United States, and Australia. Her latest short fiction appears in the anthologies Science Fiction: Filipino Fiction for Young Adults (UP Press) and Friend Zones (Ateneo University Press). Her first book of prose is titledInstructions on How to Disappear: Stories, published by Visprint Inc. She received a Master of Arts in Literary Studies from the National University of Singapore (NUS), and currently teaches literature and creative writing at the University of the Philippines, Diliman.

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