Forgiving imelda marcos, p.5
Forgiving Imelda Marcos, page 5
The next morning, my father ventured out on his own. He found a dry creek to use as a trailway and trusted in its contours to lead him somewhere, anywhere. A bamboo trunk that had been last year’s flotsam lay on the ground. He skinned it for a walking rod and for protection. The sun was already directly above, but the cool breeze coated my father from the heat. Only when he brushed against some amor seco and scratched his leg did he realize that his skin had burned all over. He sought shelter in the trees. There, the grass gave way to decaying wood. Fungi and ferns grew in a pattern, rarely side by side but alternating, growing bigger and bigger as the canopy expanded overhead. Wherever light penetrated, the mist created diagonals that seemed to be infused with both the fantastical and the diabolical. Shadows lurked in the dark. Not since he was a child reading Aesop’s fables, my father said, had he felt such a sense of fairy-tale wonder. That sense of wonder would turn into something more indigenous, no less magical, for as soon as he came out to a clearing, he found himself at a hill surrounded by rice terraces. So vast were the terraces carved into the mountainside that my father felt as if the smallest movement would cause him to stumble, the gravity created by the bowl-like void between sky and terraces pulling him in.
And then, he told me, he realized why my mother had not been happy.
* * *
“It’s because of you,” he said.
I almost choked on my cappuccino, for I’d burst out laughing. My father seemed to have expected this. He waited as I retrieved a napkin to wipe off my nose and mouth. A few more giggles came out before I could stifle them. The waiter stopped by and asked if I wanted water. In between coughs, I said I was okay. He brought it to me anyway. I took a sip from the glass just to clear my throat and force my lips from curling up.
Throughout all this, my father remained stone-faced. And then, when I looked ready, he spoke again, in a kind of whisper.
“What I’d done to you.”
That was it. The syntactic amendment that would change the meaning of his original sentence. It was the closest he’d come to asking for forgiveness. For being an awful father—my words, not his. To this day, I sometimes wonder if that was indeed his intention. Or was it perhaps to appease my dead mother, in case she’d haunt him and rob him of more sleep? Nor did my father ever clarify just how staring at some ancient staircase, no matter how majestic, provoked in him this particular epiphany. I guess that, in a way, he diverged from most conversion stories, which tend to spell out exactly what one saw and its symbolic equivalence. In any case, after I’d finished my drink, he drove me back to the boarding school, and I requested that he drop me off a good few meters away. As I closed the door of the car, he asked if he could take me out again someday.
“Someday,” I said, feeling all too pleased with myself.
* * *
He arrived the next day shaved, combed, and cologned.
Look, maybe I was naïve to fall for his trick. Or maybe I enjoyed listening to his stories more than I’d ever admit. They were, after all, the kind of stories I liked at the time—the supernatural and the metaphysical. And, of course, they also had to do with my mother, whom I had essentially never met and whom my father, until then, had never deigned to discuss.
But I was mistaken. From then on we would just sit at the café, he with his Bible or The Communist Manifesto, and I with my coffee and pastry. In the beginning I thought it was part of his devious scheme to force me to talk. So I called his bluff. I asked the waiter for a newspaper while he refilled my cup. I also decided to order from the lunch menu, sampling the appetizers and then the main courses, more food than I could possibly eat, just to see my father’s reaction. He’d always been a cheapskate. He’d often complained about restaurant markups, swearing that he could make the same dishes at home, never mind that he was barely ever at home.
This time, however, he never flinched. He even asked to see the dessert menu himself—my father, who disliked all things sweet and peripheral. When he went back to reading his books, he’d pause to pick up his pen, smile, and jot down a few notes on the side. I almost envied him his devotion. All right, I did envy him. So I brought my own books the following day—I’m guessing they were books such as Dune and The Last Unicorn—because I was so sure he’d object, saying I should read something more “substantial,” and then I’d have a chance to defend myself by throwing the question back in his face—“But what, sir, is substantial?”—or perhaps I could annoy him by saying, “Do I look like I care?”
Instead, he just let me be.
Was it possible, I started to wonder, that he was truly a changed man? Was I just imagining things, or did he have a new aura about him—a certain calmness that seemed to unwrinkle him, to soften his forehead? The silence we shared became part of the expectation, and because of this, I forgot the game I had been playing. Now I kept silent because I was comfortable doing so. And he didn’t tell any more stories, because, maybe, for him there simply were no more stories to be told.
Such was the state and ease of our interaction, or lack of it, that when he did break the silence one day by asking me if I was happy, I didn’t know how to respond.
“I meant, are you happy,” he said, “with where you are?”
“The boarding school?” I asked.
He nodded.
“Of course,” I said, pausing to clear the cobwebs in my throat. “In fact, I’m very happy.”
“Okay,” he said. “Just curious.”
It wasn’t until he returned me to my room that I thought about his question more thoroughly. I went back and forth about whether he had deliberately planted an idea in my mind, using the Socratic method, to expose certain weaknesses. I concluded that I could not reach a conclusion, for lack of evidence. What was indisputable to me, meanwhile, was that I had exposed myself as a fool. Where a simple yes or no or even maybe would’ve sufficed, I’d chosen to say that I was “very” happy. And that, in turn, could mean only one thing: that I was terribly lonely.
I grabbed my towel and headed for the showers, promising myself that I would never again let my father think that I hated my life. You know, I had developed this whole mental system when I was little that allowed me to enter parallel universes through the power of words. I discovered early on, during those days when I was frequently left at home, that if you don’t have a choice in a particular matter, complaining only makes it worse. Hell exists only for those capable of imagining it. “Conditioning,” I think, is what the experts call it nowadays. Back then, it was merely mumbling to oneself.
“I’m alive and I’m happy,” I said, as I lathered on some shampoo. “I am thankful for the roof above my head and the food on the table.” I rubbed soap on my chest. “I am blessed, and must remember there are others not so lucky.” I moved to wash my legs and feet. Just as I was about to stoop down, I heard a plopping noise behind me. I thought that perhaps I had dropped something. But it had sounded wet, like meat being slapped on a chopping board.
Then I cried.
Whoever said that boys will be boys needs to be locked up in a dank shower stall with his towel taken away from him. He needs to grapple with the image of a dead rat, pregnant, the seam of its belly half open to reveal the little pink maggots wriggling inside, unable to escape their mother’s bruised body, and then he needs to tell me with a straight face whether boys should be boys, or wouldn’t they be better off as men?
* * *
I waited for my father’s arrival the next morning. I knew him from his footsteps because he always struck his heel on the upswing. His soles always wore off quicker than the rest of his shoe. But I was wrong about him. Because the man who knocked on my door that day did not tap his heel anymore. He walked with a confident stride. And that, more than anything else, proved to me that he was a changed man.
“Take me home,” I begged.
“I haven’t told you,” he said. “But I’ve sold our house.”
“Take me with you.”
“Come live with me, then,” he said. “Up in the mountains.”
* * *
Milo came by again just as I was about to tell you my experience living in the mountains of Zambales. He said I had a visitor.
The truth: I was somewhat petrified, because I couldn’t imagine who it was that might pay me a visit. I didn’t exactly part on good terms with Manang Dionisia the last time she was here, when she accused me of being a coward. I was a bit apprehensive, then, because if it wasn’t her, I imagined it could mean only one thing. Even though I knew Manang Dionisia to be highly virtuous, I was afraid her loyalty to her employer might supersede our friendship. And I couldn’t blame her, really. People like us don’t have the luxury of keeping each other’s secrets.
But Milo had played a trick on me, that naughty boy. The “visitor” turned out to be none other than my doctor, or rather, the doctor assigned to my case. He was here to discuss the results of my urine test, the details of which I will not bore you with. The only thing you need to know is that I’ve suffered complications from surgery, which might require me to undergo some kind of dialysis—the doctor hasn’t decided yet. And I’m telling you this only to save you a world of pain later. Because I’m sorry to say that you are inheriting from me, as I have inherited from my father, a pair of weak kidneys. But you are healthy, I hope, so you should take care of yourself while you still can.
* * *
There is another thing to which I must confess.
After Milo and the doctor left, I heard the clanging of silverware against ceramic coming from a few beds down the hall. We are separated here by thin plywood walls, but I could still make out some of the conversations from one of the patients who gets real visitors. His family comes to have dinner with him every weekend. They talk about the most mundane things, about the TV show he likes to watch, or whether he needs extra pillows for his bed. Sometimes, when he’s feeling well enough, they talk about the prospect of him going back to school. It’s really tempting for me to put myself in his place. And for a second I did wonder what it would’ve been like if you and your mother were here to visit me. What would we talk about? What kind of meal would we share? But this is too much of a good thing even to imagine.
Instead, I tried to think of what it must be like for you there, with your mother and her partner. I imagined the three of you sitting around a wooden table, soft, warm light pouring in from above, not the stark fluorescent we have here. You mother says something about how she’s messed up the chicken, that she should’ve put it into the oven much earlier but completely forgot. She’s always been very humble about her skills, you know, whatever they may be. Anyway, right after that, there’s a man’s voice, calm and reassuring, telling her that in his opinion the chicken has actually been cooked to perfection, not one minute over or under. He also calls her “my dear” not a few times. “My dear,” he says, “you know you could open your own restaurant someday,” and that makes your mother blush.
I’d be lying right now if I said that I wasn’t jealous. I’d also be lying if I said it was the first time I imagined that scene. In fact, it’s always the same dinner, the same soft lighting and the same roasted chicken. The man who has replaced me always cracks the same corny joke. But it doesn’t matter. Because, deep down, I know that he’s a good man. Between the two of us, in fact, he’s the better sort of man. He has made her quite happy. And perhaps, in him, you’ve finally found yourself a good father.
4
WE WERE ON the MacArthur Highway, having already passed the San Miguel Brewery and crossed a few rivers along old bridges, when I heard the passenger window at the back being rolled down.
“Feeling hot, ma’am?” I asked.
“Just want to take in some fresh air,” Mrs. Aquino said.
But fresh it was not. Although the tall buildings had receded, we had yet to escape the smog of Manila. Industrial chimney stacks loomed large like half-used cigarette packs on the horizon. I was going to ask Mrs. Aquino if she was feeling okay when I saw her wince. She looked pale, and the hand propping up her forehead told me everything I needed to know.
“I’m stopping here, ma’am.”
“Don’t,” she said. “Just a little motion sickness. It’ll go away.”
“I’m stopping,” I said. “Fuel’s running low.”
There was traffic as soon as we entered Malolos. Then I remembered it was Independence Day, and that a parade must just be starting, which would eventually make its way to Barasoain Church. This whole town is steeped in history, having been the birthplace of the Philippine Revolution. But all I wanted that morning was a gas station, and an excuse for Mrs. Aquino to catch her breath.
At the very first sight of a Caltex I pulled over and instantly forgot that the Crown’s fuel tank was on the opposite side. I had to reverse and make a three-point turn. I was afraid this would make Mrs. Aquino even dizzier, so I drove very slowly, and the gas attendant must’ve thought I was a novice driver. After telling him to fill up the tank, I popped the hood open and read all the gauges out loud. This seemed to convince the attendant that I was no amateur, because, to my relief, he finally looked away.
Just as I was about to fill up the radiator fluid, I thought I saw a shadow emerge from the car and wobble into the convenience store. I quickly screwed the cap back on. When I checked, Mrs. Aquino had indeed disappeared from the backseat.
* * *
Inside the store, I rushed to find the bathroom. The ladies’ room was locked but I could hear a faint sound. It was just as I had worried.
Someone was throwing up, or trying to throw up. I wanted to knock but thought better of it. Instead, I went to the cashier and asked for some medicine and a bottle of water. Not long after, Mrs. Aquino came out. I took her by the arm and helped her to the car before she could protest.
“I’m okay, Lito,” she said.
But I insisted that she take the pill to help with her nausea. Her hand trembled as she drank. She managed a smile and said that, really, she was beginning to feel better. She didn’t want us to waste any more precious time.
“All right, ma’am,” I said.
Back at the car, as I fastened my seat belt, the gas attendant came over with the bill. Mrs. Aquino threw me her handbag and told me to look for her wallet.
“Excuse me,” the attendant said. “But isn’t that Mrs.—”
“No,” I interrupted. “I’m afraid you’re mistaken.”
In the heat of the moment, I hadn’t realized how exposed Mrs. Aquino had been. I told myself I had to do a better job of keeping her safe. The attendant looked disappointed.
I combed through the handbag in search of her wallet. It wasn’t the first time I’d done this, by the way, but I knew Mrs. Aquino as a tidy woman, and that day the contents of her bag were a mess: sets of spare keys, rolled-up paper, receipts, sticky notes, a hairbrush, a compact mirror, an eyeglasses case, even what looked like half-eaten bread wrapped in plastic. Finally, I found the wallet.
“She sure looked like her,” the gas attendant said, giving me the change.
“She gets that often,” I said. “But you really think a president would be riding in an old piece of junk like this?”
“I guess not,” he said. “You’re right. Anyway, I think the real one’s actually a little fatter.”
“Right,” I said, and thanked him. I closed the window to engage the full protection of the tint.
“Sorry about that, ma’am,” I said.
“Don’t worry,” she said. “I rather took it as a compliment.” I smiled, glad that she seemed to be back in good spirits.
As I was putting the wallet back in its place, something caught my eye. Wedged between the eyeglasses case and the hairbrush was a pink envelope—the baronial envelope Mrs. Aquino had read from this morning in the sunroom. I’d like to think that what I did next came from a sense of duty. I peeked, because I’d wanted to make sure that we were really headed to the right place—in case Mrs. Aquino had, you know, made a mistake. What I had not expected to see, however, at least not in my lifetime, was the sender’s name right above the address of Baguio City.
Written in elegant handwritten script was the name
Imelda Marcos
* * *
Whatever in the world Mrs. Aquino has planned to do with Imelda Marcos is none of my business, I told myself. Not only was Mrs. Aquino an adult—she was my boss, my provider, and, lest I ever forget, a woman whose very face would likely grace the currency in this country someday. And who was I but a lowly driver, a man whose existence nobody would remember—if they’d even known I existed in the first place?
The medicine seemed to have taken its full effect on Mrs. Aquino. She slept with her head leaning against the window. The back of her palm served to buffer any shakes from the occasional potholes. We were then going rather slowly, as the road had narrowed quite a bit as it led to a set of humpbacked bridges. Flame trees on both sides covered the highway, slowly revealing the view ahead as if they were stage curtains being pulled to the sides.
I turned on the radio, which was preset to the classical station. Together with the wonderful scenery, the music somehow calmed me down. It reminded me of the pleasures of driving. No other profession allows so much access to both the city and the countryside. As I sat there with my hands effortlessly draped over the steering wheel, the gentle breeze of the air conditioner against my face, it struck me that I was still on my employer’s time. I was using her vehicle and fuel, too, listening to Beethoven and Mozart, getting to do what doctors and lawyers and other educated types work so hard for all week long, hoping to experience on their vacation days a magical moment just like this one.
