Forgiving imelda marcos, p.13
Forgiving Imelda Marcos, page 13
I know it sounds strange, if not a little silly, because that was almost ten years ago now, when you’d have been in your mid-thirties. But I often still think of you as a naughty six-year-old, since that’s what you were the last time I saw you in person. You were always a little sweaty, your mother always chasing you down for a bath.
* * *
Did I ever tell you that your mother has sent me only three pictures of you in your whole life? I suppose you might not even know that she sent me any pictures at all. But it was my only way of connecting with you. I hope you don’t mind.
There was that high school portrait, your smile still adorable amid the braces, the pair of dimples perfectly intact. Then there was an official picture with an embossed seal from a college in San Francisco, where she said you’d studied political science, and graduated with honors. Afterward, you moved to the capital to work for a newspaper, where you married another journalist. The two of you looked so happy together in that wedding photo. You were still in your twenties then, and wearing a tux. But I thought you’d grown to be such a mature and good-looking man.
It was only years later that I found out from your mother that you’d gone back to live with her in California. I think she must’ve felt guilty about sharing all those images without your permission, because she stopped talking to me for a time. But I did my best to pry.
Eventually I learned that you had gotten a divorce, and that you’d lost your job when your newspaper company closed down. She admitted that you’d been depressed and that she felt very helpless about it. I hope you don’t mind me knowing this. Your mother told me only because I insisted she do so, so the fault lies entirely with me.
In any case, I wish I could’ve done something about your troubles. I would’ve flown there to see you in a heartbeat, if I could. But, you know, someone like me would be denied entry right away, because they’d suspect that I would overstay my visa, which I might very well do, since I’d have nothing to lose. I even entertained the idea that perhaps it might do you good to take a break and come stay with me. I don’t believe you’ve ever been back here, to the Philippines, and I always wondered how you’d see it as an adult. What would you think of this place today, and what could we have offered you that you don’t already have over there?
But, no, I was quite sure that there were many other countries that you’d consider visiting first. I hear the beaches in Thailand are pristine. The food in Indonesia and Malaysia is colorful and diverse. And the culture and history in Japan or Korea or Taiwan are richer and painstakingly preserved. Even when I think of our best churches—the Manila Cathedral, the San Agustin Church, the Paoay Church, to name a few—none of them can rival the ones in Europe, from which we’ve derived our imitations. So we have nothing much here, I’m afraid. And I say this with great sadness, because I wonder where we went wrong. I think that all these countries were poor at one time, but they’ve managed to overcome their poverty. Is there something in us, then, we Filipinos, that makes our characters gravely flawed?
Sitting in that church, staring at the stained-glass windows depicting the Stations of the Cross, I thought that even religion had failed to save us. Did it make us more honest than our neighbors? Did we commit fewer crimes and become less corrupt because of our love of Jesus? Or perhaps we’ve been so poor for so long that we can no longer afford to be virtuous? For what is honesty or virtue, when you’re watching your son or daughter or father or mother waste away and starve?
I’ve said before that I think the land has an amazing capacity for memory. What I mean to say is that people come and go—we are born and then we die—but the land remains. The land has witnessed all the injuries we’ve suffered. Far more so than its people, it would be in the best position to answer the question of whatever happened to the Philippines. Because the Aquinos always blamed the Marcoses; the Marcoses blamed the Communists and the Muslims; the Communists and the Muslims blamed American imperialism; the Americans blamed the Japanese and fascism; the Japanese blamed Western colonialism; the colonialists blamed the uncivilized natives; and so on till the dawn of time.
Does this mean that nobody is to blame, or everybody is?
I don’t know. It’s no surprise, perhaps, that most of us have given up already. Ours is a history of sorrow without clear redemption in sight. Which is probably also why, I thought as I sat there in the church, listening to the boy, so many of us love to sing, and sing so well. Scientists would probably explain our innate talent in terms of genes—perhaps the vocal cords of the Filipinos are somehow longer or thicker. But I’d like to think otherwise. I think we sing so well because singing has become our armor, the way our bodies have responded to centuries of brutality, our longing to be free.
And when I come to think further about the earlier question of what we have to offer the world, I realize that I was a bit hasty. In the first place, we don’t in fact owe anyone a favor, nor are we obligated to offer up anything of ours. We may not have the landmarks that the average tourist seeks, but we do have a resilient people. And for better or for worse, and rather incredibly, we have chosen not to hold on to any grudge or anger. We’ve chosen to forgive, and to forgive rather easily. This is the amazing quality that makes us so warm and openhearted, but also allows us to be abused, to be tricked, to be hurt, over and over again.
As I sat there looking at Mrs. Aquino with her head bowed and her eyes closed, I felt my blood pressure begin to rise and my palms to sweat. “Ma’am,” I finally said. “With all due respect, what makes you think you have the right to forgive Imelda Marcos?”
* * *
And Mrs. Aquino rose up from her prayer, looked at me, and said, “I’ve been asking myself the same thing.”
She took off her eyeglasses and began wiping them with her scarf. “Lito,” she said, “do you believe in ghosts?”
I said that I did not.
She nodded. “This afternoon when I was taking a nap back in the old house, I thought I might’ve seen my husband. Actually, I did see him, and I got to talk to him. I said, ‘If you’re who you claim to be, then swear upon your mother’s grave that you are real.’ And he did just that. I thought to myself, If I am just imagining things, would I ever be so brazen as to make someone swear a falsehood upon my mother-in-law? No, I’m too terrified of that woman. So I concluded right there and then that Ninoy was actually present. Am I crazy to say that?”
I said nothing.
She continued: “The first thing I noticed was that he was wearing the same shirt as on the day he boarded the plane. Cream-colored, with extra-long lapels, very stylish back then. Except his clothes were clean. I told him, ‘Don’t tell me you’ve disobeyed your mother and gone ahead and washed your shirt?’ Because, of course, his mother ordered everyone not to touch the body after he was shot. She wanted the clothes to be saved, no matter how bloodied they were. ‘I’m fine,’ he said. ‘And she’s fine, too, by the way. I have merienda with her from time to time. So, you know, swearing by her grave doesn’t mean much these days, with it being empty and all.’
“I didn’t find it funny and I told him not to laugh at me. I said he was being mean. And then, I don’t know why, I couldn’t control myself, I began to cry. ‘Don’t cry,’ he said. ‘I was just joking.’ And I said, ‘How could you?’ He asked why I was so cross with him over a little joke. And I said, ‘How could you have done it to us, knowing all along you were going to get yourself killed?’ He said, ‘Are you really still thinking about that, after all these years?’ He looked like he wanted to defend himself, which he was always good at.
“But I wasn’t done yet and I didn’t give him the chance. I said, ‘You know, that night, the kids saw the news on TV. I had to try to put them to bed, afterward. Imagine, how could I explain to them that you had gone away for good? So I improvised, saying something about your principles, your hope that things would change for the better back home. I said you thought returning to the Philippines was the right thing for you to do, and that was very important. And, you know, they actually believed me! I was surprised that they did. I was afraid one of them—especially Ballsy—would ask, “But why did he decide to go back? What kind of a father would abandon his own children?” And maybe that was just me putting words into their mouths. Because what I really wanted to ask was “What kind of a husband?”’
“‘Come on, dear,’ he said. ‘You’re making it sound like the whole thing was my fault. Remember, I was the one who took the bullet. Right here at the back of my head. See? Did I know what would happen to me? Yes, it was always a possibility, but I wanted to think I had a chance, that our enemies wouldn’t be so callous or stupid. I had to believe it.’
“‘Would you still have done it today,’ I asked, ‘knowing what we know now to be true?’
“He gave this some thought and said, ‘I’m afraid I would.’”
Mrs. Aquino folded her glasses, only to open and close them again, as if she were testing the strength of the hinges.
“He said, ‘Dear, I’m sorry if that’s a hurtful thing to say, but I’m just being honest. I can’t isolate my actions based on the end result. That’s the way to perdition. Think about it. Wasn’t there ever a time when you had to make a decision, but you knew that the outcome would leave everyone unhappy?’
“I told him I didn’t know. And that I was just tired. I said that I missed him—I always have. People often said that it would get better with time, but I told him I thought it was becoming worse for me, because look at me, now I’m all alone. I wish that he could just come back, even if just to spend a few hours with me. We could sit outside and stare at the clouds, for all I care. ‘Don’t worry,’ he said. ‘It won’t be much longer until we meet again.’ Then he disappeared.”
Mrs. Aquino put her glasses back on. She sighed. “I might have just been hallucinating, Lito. I’ve been warned this may be a side effect of my treatment.”
I nodded. I was trying to imagine what her husband might have looked like in her dream. I could only think of him when he was young and healthy, as he was when I briefly worked for him.
“You know,” Mrs. Aquino said, “when we were at that car shop earlier, and I was talking to the owner, I kept wondering if I could’ve done more to help him. When I was still in office, I mean. People always talk about legacy, but to tell you the truth, most days back then were a blur. You were shuttled from one meeting to another and you were lucky if you could catch something decent to eat. Perhaps that’s where I failed, Lito. I was so overwhelmed that I ended up not doing enough to make an impact. And here I am now, on my way to Baguio. Isn’t it selfish of me to pursue my own little peace when so many people are still suffering?”
The young boy was still singing and the guitar still being played in the background. So I didn’t hear the footsteps until the man was right behind me, tapping me on my shoulder. It was the proprietor’s brother. He told us that the Crown was ready.
9
I’VE THOUGHT ABOUT that moment many times. If we’d waited inside the church awhile longer, how would I have responded to Mrs. Aquino? There was a frighteningly good deal she didn’t know about me. She didn’t know, for example, that the town we were stuck in was my hometown. I’d never found a reason to tell her. She also didn’t know that I’d once lived in the mountains of Zambales with a group of people that many today would call a cult. And though I once told her my father was a businessman, Mrs. Aquino knew little else about him. I guess I should consider myself lucky. Back in the old days, one tended to rely upon one’s intuition about somebody. I hope she saw that deep inside I was, more or less, a passably honest person.
“Ma’am,” I might have said. “There are certain people in my life who have done me much harm. And God knows I’ve done my share of terrible things in this world. Maybe forgiving others is just an acknowledgment that we see ourselves in them, that we, too, are capable of committing their crimes. I could be wrong, ma’am, but forgiveness might just be a form of putting oneself in another person’s shoes.”
But coming up with such wisdom spontaneously was never my forte. I’m always late to the party. And now that I think about it, the reference to shoes might throw Mrs. Aquino off, considering whom we were about to visit. Or perhaps I might make her laugh inadvertently, which could be a good thing. You see what I mean. I take too long to think and I second-guess myself.
* * *
It is possible that I would finally have opened up about you. I’ve always wanted to, you know. But it has never been easy. And with each missed opportunity, the impulse to go back in time becomes harder and harder to justify.
You gave me that chance, once.
I’m talking, of course, about the letter you sent me many, many years ago. You were still in high school, but you said that your classmates had already started planning for college. This was why you wrote to me. You had just found out that you weren’t qualified for your government’s financial aid, because they couldn’t find your name in the documents where it was supposed to appear. You and your mother technically didn’t exist in the U.S.
I can only imagine how hard that must’ve been for you. How angry you were at your mother for hiding this terrible secret. All this time you thought you were just another immigrant kid on the block. You’d lost your ability to speak Tagalog, you said in your letter. But, like many other Filipinos in America, you could still understand it. Over the years, you said, you’d never once stopped to question the things your mother had told you. When she said that you couldn’t get a summer job because you had to take piano lessons, you accepted it. During spring break of your freshman year, your friend’s family invited you to go to Costa Rica. Your mother told you that you couldn’t go, because money was tight. And when your friend offered to pay your part, your mother said, “What do they think we are? A charity case?” You were baffled by her reaction, but still, you never suspected her. And finally, when it came to me—your biological father—you were told about my true identity and how we got separated, that I had “a very important job” working for “a very important person” in the Philippines. That was why I had to stay here, she said. How the story evolved to fit the changing circumstances as you grew up, I will never know. I imagine that the topic of your long-neglectful father was not a favorite one at the dinner table.
But I was resurrected after you found out about your legal status. Suddenly, at sixteen, you were trying to reconnect with me. You said in your letter that you had some faint memories of us together. You told me of a time when we were at an arcade in Manila, one with lots of neon lights. After playing a round of hoops, you intended to exchange the prize tickets for some cotton candy. But some other boy swiped them away when you weren’t paying attention. You pointed him out to me. The boy wasn’t much older than you, you wrote, but he was bigger. When I confronted him, the fool ran to his father, and then both of them denied the theft of the tickets. I expected that you’d tell me how I’d fought them bravely and saved the day. But no, the story ended right there.
To be honest, I don’t remember this whole episode. But being bullied does seem to fit what it means to be a man in our family. So it felt true enough, and it broke my heart to pieces.
* * *
* * *
After I’d received and read your letter back then, for a few days I could think of nothing else. You hadn’t quite said that you wanted me to intercede on your behalf. But I felt it was implied. Of course, I don’t think you knew then what kind of job I really had, how little ability I possessed to request such a favor.
Still, I thought I could try. Mrs. Aquino had powerful friends in the Department of Foreign Affairs and even in the U.S. government, no doubt. It was just a matter of principle, and, for me, of extreme discomfort. How far would she go to do a good turn for her driver’s long-lost son? And what would she think of me for even asking? I hoped that it could be the kind of thing that involved a simple call to a lower-level officer. I had no real idea of how citizenship was given out. It seemed to me like it should be granted to a person if he truly wanted it and worked hard for it. But I guess I was talking myself into thinking I could help you.
I chose a morning in December, when the climate tends to be cooler, when everyone is preparing for Christmas and feeling a little more generous. I remember I was driving the Mercedes, listening to the radio, on my way to the palace to fetch Mrs. Aquino. I was rehearsing in my mind how I could tell your story as delicately as possible.
That was when I heard the news of a coup. A convoy of trucks had gotten inside the presidential compound, and some armed men wearing ski masks had flung mortars and grenades. The rebels had also taken over the airport and some air bases near the capital. I could get only as close as to the Quezon Bridge before traffic hit a standstill. In the distance I thought I could make out the sound of rapid gunfire. I wanted to charge through the blockade and then to the palace, but at the same time I wanted to stay the hell out of it. Nobody was responding to my questions on the two-way radio. I began to worry about Mrs. Aquino.
While I waited for news, the thought came to me that the rebels might have something to do with the Communist Party. By that time it had been more than a decade since I’d lived in the mountains with my father. And even though there were a few different Communist factions—some more local than others—all of them wanted a revolution. I always worried that if anyone found out about my past, I’d be suspected of being an enemy plant, plotting to harm the president. Nothing could be further from the truth, of course. But the truth is not always so apparent.
