In Memory of Dex

The Breaking of Bones

(Published 5/18/12, Phil. Free Press)

I lost my son, my father, and my mother in that order, within years of one another.

I have questioned God’s wisdom in this matter; not for their deaths – I know that’s non-negotiable – but for Him taking my son first. I reasoned that if He is truly merciful and all-knowing, He would have put my father’s name at the top of the list. I wouldn’t have argued with that.

My father was a charmer. He was handsome, gregarious, smart, charismatic, and visionary. But he was not an easy man to love. The fierce blood of the conquistador flowed strongly in his veins and in our home he was unquestionably lord and master. His word was law; break it and you were in for a world of pain.

I remember how the sound of his belt whistling through the air used to strike me with absolute terror. It didn’t matter if it was directed at me or at one of my siblings. We had all felt the sting of that leather on our young bodies and occasionally, even the bite of its metal buckle.

I don’t think any of our caring relatives or friends ever questioned my father for imposing such harsh “discipline” on his spirited children. Mother was our finger in the dike. She tried to intervene but there was never any doubt that her gentle spirit was a poor match to our father’s domineering personality.

So I grew up pretty much hating my father.

One night the beeping of my phone woke me; a cousin calling from the Philippines with news that my father had died. Pulmonary edema from pneumonia and heart complications.  Not unusual for a man of 95.

He died alone, separated from his wife and children who had long ago left him and the life he clung to back in his hometown of Pampanga. What a pitiful denouement for a man who had been such a powerful presence in our lives.

I extricated myself grudgingly from the warm comfort of my bed, muttering with ill humor as I saw the time -- two in the morning at the height of the winter season. All I wanted was to crawl back under the covers and snuggle inside my cocoon. I didn’t want to stand irresolute in the middle of the room thinking about my father growing old and infirm and dying alone in a country I no longer called my own. Most of all, I didn’t want the rush of forgotten childhood memories that were suddenly bearing down on me.

New Look/new passion

I was about five years old, playing in the stream with my two older brothers; Titong was nine and Eddie seven. There was a depression on one side of the stream that served as a natural pool, deep enough for us kids to swim in. The water was clear but biting cold.

My brothers wrapped their skinny arms around their knees and jumped into the water, bottoms first, screeching with pretend laughter to disguise the chattering of their teeth. I dipped one tentative toe in and then the other, blinking away tears as my brothers called out jeering taunts at my “girly cowardice.”

And then Dad was there, hands on hips, telling my brothers to stop bullying me “or else...” He was attired in his city clothes so we knew he was about to leave for Manila where he travelled occasionally.

“What do you want me to bring back for you, Belmamina?” he asked.

“Nuluk,” I told my father softly, my voice barely above a whisper. He frowned but he didn’t scare me; I knew he wasn’t really annoyed. Our father was always in a good mood before his trips to the city.

“New Look again? Don’t you want something else this time? My lower lip started to tremble but I shook my head stubbornly. My father’s will was implacable but he knew that in my own timid way, so was mine.

He came back from Manila with the prettiest New Look for me – a white dress with red polka dots, velvet ribbons, and a frothy petticoat. And he also brought a book for each one of us.

“These should help keep you rascals out of mischief for a while,” he said. His eyes zeroed in on Titong, who managed to get into more trouble than I could count on all fingers.

I don’t remember the title of the book my father gave me but I remember its heft and size. I remember holding it close to my nose to inhale its clean book scent and sliding my palm repeatedly on its glossy cover in the same loving way I stroked my cat.

Strange animals and pictures of children who didn’t look anything like us leaped out of the pages as I quickly riffled through the book from cover to cover. My father beamed with approval at my obvious excitement. I don’t think I could have loved him more than at that moment. It almost made up for the last time he used his belt on my backside because I had refused to greet him good morning.

Indiana Jones

My father loved to hunt the deer and the wild bearded boar with deadly tusks that roamed free in the mountains of Mindoro where our orchard farm was located. I always looked forward to his return, not only for the fresh meat that the men roasted in darkened pits they dug in the ground, but for the stories my father brought back from his most recent adventure.

Dad was a riveting raconteur. He told his stories with much enthusiasm and eloquence, the pitch and timbre of his voice changing with each up and down twist of his tale. In my mind’s eye my father didn’t just tell stories -- he performed them.

I remember one hunting trip to Palawan where he and his friends had to cross a wild raging river in pursuit of their prey. They tied a stout rope around a tree and the strongest swimmer in the group crossed the river with the other end of the rope, which he then secured to another tree on that side of the river. The rest of the men followed, using the rope as their guide and life line.

Halfway through, one of the men lost his hold on the rope and was quickly swept away. Luckily, debris around a large rock stopped his impetus and he was eventually able to get back to safety. The only casualty was the sack of food he had been carrying, which was lost in the surging current.

Dad wasn’t worried. They would have fresh meat as soon as they took down their first kill. But the wild game they sought eluded them for two full days. The men grew increasingly hungry and exhausted. Their only food was the occasional fish they caught and water fresh from the river or boiled with wild mushrooms and river stones for a bit of flavoring.

Then on the third day a flock of wild geese foolishly wandered were the men were hunkered down. Their meat gave the men strength enough to return to civilization, empty-handed but grateful to be home.

“I’ve never tasted food as mouth-watering as those tough old birds,” my father laughed, “and hopefully never again.”

Years later I watched the adventures of Indiana Jones on the big screen with a sense of déjà vu. I had seen all that machismo twenty years earlier, sitting by the firelight with work-hardened men, watching my father perform.

El Rancho Grande

We were hunched around a mound of loosely piled soil, intently focused on our youngest sister Eva May as she poked at the mound with a long, narrow stick.  Thin rubber bands were buried in the soil and whoever teased out the highest number of rubber bands got to keep the spoils.

The morning was young but already my sister’s left arm from wrist to nearly her elbow was ringed with blue, yellow, red and green rubber bands. “It’s not fair,” Eddie complained. “She’s cheating.” “Am not,” Eva May shot back heatedly.

“Shush,” I hissed, tilting my head toward the side of the house where the familiar lyrics of “El Rancho Grande” came floating from the kitchen where our father was cleaning his carbine.

         Alla en el rancho grande, alla donde vivia

         Habia una rancherita, que allegre me decia

         Que allegre me deciaaaaaa

Soon our mother’s lilting contralto merged with dad’s rich baritone.

         Su mama le dice a Julia

         Su mama le dice a Julia

         Que te ha dicho ese senor

         Ay ay ay ay ay…..

We sat back on our haunches to savor the moment, our game of luck forgotten.  Our parents next sang “Adios Mariquita Linda.”  Eddie joined in the chorus enthusiastically to annoy Eva May whose given name was in fact – much to her annoyance – Mariquita Linda.

The beginning of the end

I was snacking on plump red aratiles from the huge tree in our front yard when I spied my father coming through the plantation pulling my brother Titong who was struggling in his grasp. I followed with a pounding heart as Dad dragged Titong through the house, his face a purple thundercloud, the veins in his neck like fat snakes wriggling to break free.

He pulled his belt off as my brother cowered in a corner, arms raised protectively around his head.

“You think you could run away again?” Dad yelled as the belt uncoiled and smacked Titong’s legs.

“Did you think I wouldn’t be able to track you down? WHACK “I hunt wild animals for sport.” WHACK “You’re just a boy.” WHACK WHACK

“Would you shoot me, too, Dad?” Titong asked through his snot and tears.

Our mother hurried into the room with Eddie and Eva May peering behind her, their eyes wide and wet.  Dad threw Mom a forbidding glace as she struggled to speak.  She looked long and hard at him, then turned on her heel and left without a word, pulling my siblings protectively along.

I ran sobbing to the den where shelves filled with books lined one wall. I pulled out a book I knew well and I ripped its pages savagely and tossed them on the floor while my brother howled with pain in the other room.

My father came into the den shortly, his breathing deep and ragged.  He gazed at the torn pages and the broken spine of the very first book he gave me, the one I treasured most.  Tears streaked my face but I looked at him defiantly, thinking that if I were bigger and stronger and meaner I could break his bones just as easily as I had torn that book apart.

His jaw tightened and his fists clenched but he turned around and left the room without saying a word, his shoulders bowed almost as my mother’s had been.

I never figured out who among us hurt the most that day, but I was certain it was the beginning of the end for my family.

**********************************

SPEED

Short Story Published on February 18, 2012
Philippine Free Press Online


AFTER MONTHS of interviews, endless paperwork, and interminable wait, Emil finally secured a position to manage a modern poultry farm in Sana’a, Yemen. This after he had lost his job selling veterinary products for a foreign company headquartered in Manila.

How well she remembered those early days – long rides in the Beetle with their infant son in her lap, crisscrossing Batangas, Laguna, and Calamba in search of poultry and piggery farms. Map Quest and GPS had not yet been invented, but they had something more reliable – they followed their noses. They knew they were close to their target when the air started smelling foul. The stronger the odor, the bigger the farm, and the faster Emil drove toward it.

She always suspected their son’s love for cars started when he was barely three months-old, riding with them on those sales calls, lulled to sleep by the movement of the car and the cooling breeze blowing from the windows. Sometimes when he was awake she would put him down on the back seat and he would gurgle happily, legs thrashing, fists clenched, arms pumping almost in rhythm with the hum of the engine and tires’ swishing. Surely it was during those long rides when the obsession for cars took root in her son’s soul, fueling his need for motion and speed. And was she wrong to blame her husband for that, too?

They called him Dr. Emil. He had a degree in Veterinary Medicine from Araneta University but he was a far better salesman than a veterinarian. Case in point; he successfully sold himself to her, didn’t he? She – Manila-born and raised, a true-bred kolehiyala with big dreams – had somehow fallen for this tough, macho Batangueno with his quaint probinsiyano ways. In fact his old-world gallant manner: opening doors for her, treating her like a queen, protective and caring – charmed her city-cynical heart. Certainly, having a cooler-full of live crabs and dozens of fresh buko left at her doorstep was a refreshing change from the tiresome flowers and chocolates other suitors plied her with.

Above all, she liked playing Henry Higgins to his Eliza Doolittle, advising him on the latest cut of jeans, taking him to museums and plays, introducing him to her artsy, sophisticated friends. Si malakas at si maganda, she’d inscribed on the leaf of her photo album chronicling their days together: swimming in the beaches of Nasugbu, haggling with fruit vendors in Tagaytay, enjoying bowls of steaming bulalo in a little tienda on the road to Tanauan. She’d never been so vastly entertained.

Nonetheless their courtship was fraught with dire warnings from family and friends (his and hers), which only strengthened her conviction that they were meant to be. The romantic in her was totally enchanted with the idea of the two of them standing resolute in the face of such universal disapproval. So Romeo and Juliet, she could barely stand it.

She married him on a crisp May morning in a dress so short, his mother fell to her knees with a quick sign of the cross as though her morals and character fell just as short of the older woman’s expectations. But Emil gave her a look of such total indulgence she couldn’t help flashing her fakest sweet smile at the woman she would soon be addressing Inay. And while the fad lasted, she wore her micro-minis whenever she accompanied her husband on his visits to the barrio, fully enjoying the attention and shocked exclamations that followed her wake. Emil never objected. She rather thought he liked parading her around. Look what I caught!

Emil left for the job in Yemen when their son was six and his sister Annie was five. Alex was a dynamo in motion. He learned to walk when he was barely a year old and then he was running all over the place, the quick staccato of his bare feet on the wooden floor of their home a constant rhythm that started in the morning when he jumped out of bed eager to see what the new day brought in terms of excitement, and up until he slumped back in bed at the end of the day, finally exhausted but blissfully fulfilled, his latest speed toy clutched in his arms. That’s how she would always remember Alex – a risk-taker perpetually in motion: a lightning streak on roller blades, daring moves on the skateboard, leaps in the air on his racing bike; and one of her most distinct memories – his Acura overtaking her Ford effortlessly, the throb of his car like wild horses momentarily held in check, laughter trailing as he zoomed past her yelling, Wanna race me, Mom?

She conceived their youngest Samantha when she ran out of her contraceptive pills the month she visited Emil in Yemen. Typical. How could she have imagined she could get her prescription filled in that hauntingly beautiful but backward country? Sana’a is the world’s oldest populated city, stretching back to about 1000 BC. It is home to the Great Mosque, Jami’ al-Kabir, considered as one of the oldest mosques in the Muslim world. The city itself is famous for its unique buildings towering several stories high, decorated with colorful geographical shapes, carvings, and stained-glass windows. Yet for all that, she couldn’t find a decent drug store that carried her birth control pills. Hello, Samantha.

In the days following her arrival in Sana’a, she soaped and scrubbed clean the walls and ceiling of his small company-owned bungalow and hand-sewed curtains for the windows. She framed collages of photos and hung them on his walls where before they were bare. One evening when he came home, the dining table was draped with an exotic scarf she had purchased from Souq al-Fetlah. A filigreed brass lamp in arabesque motif glowed faintly in one corner and his favorite country rock singer crooned softly in the background. At the center of the table was a water glass with maple-colored wildflowers she had rescued from the weeds that struggled to grow outside his back door where there was nothing but soil and sand and scraggly scrub.

Emil was exhausted from a full-day’s work culling sickly birds from the healthy and making sure his non-English speaking crew of Somali, Ethiopian, and Yemeni workers were on the job and not crouched in corners chewing khat and comparing jambiyas. He paused at the door in his dusty work boots and sweaty baseball cap looking bemused at the transformation she had created. Wow, he finally said. “Do you think we should take pictures for your mother?” The sheen in her eyes belied the mocking timbre in her voice.

He gave her a heavy, gold bracelet the morning of her flight out of Sana’a. It was a beautiful keepsake she cherished for the memories it brought back of dry, arid hills and strange, enigmatic people; and a husband who was yet to grow into himself. She nurtured those memories and the ones that came after, layering each loving touch, each challenge and triumph, to the perfect world she was building in her mind.

But fate, ever relentless and indifferent, had finally caught up with Alex and dealt her dreams a sweeping blow.

It had rained early that afternoon and there was water on the freeway. It was hard to see in the dusky October light. Alex was driving fast from work, weaving in and out of lanes to avoid slower-moving vehicles. He was meeting his friends for a hastily planned street race. One of them had just traded in his car for a new import and they were all excited to see how their own cars would perform against it. Alex was running late and he was growing increasingly annoyed with the slower car in front of him. He moved to his right impatiently and stepped on the gas to get ahead of it. That’s when he hit the spot on the road where water had collected. It was a shallow pool, but he was speeding and his car was light because he had taken out the back seats to max out his speed for the street race. His Acura hydroplaned, spun around, and when it landed, Alex was facing the fast oncoming freeway traffic racing toward him at 70 miles per hour. He never had a chance.

She thought she would die, too, but work saved her. When the tragedy struck she was working full-time and pursuing a graduate degree three evenings a week. Yet the weekends stretched before her like the sand dunes of Yemen: endless, dry, and pitiless, devoid of life and hope. Desperate, she applied for weekend work and soon found herself too busy and too tired to think about anything else but a quick meal and a soft bed at the end of each day, seven days a week. She learned to survive, one day at a time. Not so, with Emil.

Later she would ask herself how she could have been so oblivious to the extent of her husband’s pain; so blind to the despair that gripped him like a pit bull that had sunk its teeth into his throat and would not let go.

Witnesses at the scene said he had accelerated toward the concrete barrier instead of swerving to avoid it. The damage to his car almost mimicked the total wreck of his son’s.