The villa once beloved, p.6
The Villa, Once Beloved, page 6
“Yes, a homecoming. That’s exactly what it is,” she answered Divina. “I feel so … welcomed here, thanks to you all.” Her gaze roved the room and landed on Olympia, whose lips were drawn in a thin smile. “You have a lovely home, and a lovely family.”
Adrian gave Sophie the quick and dirty tour after dinner. Each bearing a candlestick, they walked the halls past darkened rooms, not so much to show where was which as to give Sophie her bearings, in case she needed something in the middle of the night. Adrian’s room, unsurprisingly, was past a turn on the opposite end of the hallway, as far away from Sophie’s as possible. He didn’t find this nearly as amusing as Sophie did, and was in fact quite miffed at being treated like they were a couple of horny teenagers. Between their two rooms were his parents’, Divina’s, and the lady’s bedchamber. For obvious reasons, the master bedroom, the one where Don Raul had died, stayed unoccupied.
“So whose room am I in?” Sophie asked. “Please tell me they didn’t kick Kai out to make space for me.”
“Trust me, there’s plenty of space. You’re in one of the guest rooms. Besides, no one’s even sure if Kai is coming,” Adrian replied.
“Not even for their dad’s funeral?”
“Let’s just say it wouldn’t be the biggest surprise if they didn’t show. They’ve had a lifetime’s worth of dinners just like the one we just endured.”
Adrian helped Sophie unpack, made sure she had everything she needed. What she really needed was a shower, but the power was down and so was the water heater. The shock of cold water would keep her awake when she should be cutting down on her sleep debt. She also needed wi-fi, and her phone could use a charge.
“You’re a sweetheart, but I have this covered, babe. You should go to bed,” Sophie said. “Look at you—you can barely keep yourself upright.”
“I’m fine for a while. I don’t think I can sleep, honestly.”
“Do you want to talk about it?”
She swept the hair off Adrian’s face. He had an air of melancholic absence to him, like he was lost and overwhelmed in his being lost. He drew a gummy from his pocket absently and held the baggie out to her. Why the hell not. Sophie took one as well, doing a mock toast before swallowing.
“Seeing him is too much,” he started. “I loved Lolo Raul. Sure, he’s not perfect. And he scared the shit out of me. Still does, even dead. But underneath all that, he loved me too. He didn’t have to say it.”
“He never did?”
“Not to anyone. Not the entire time I’ve known him.” Adrian choked up. “And he thought film school was a joke, always made snide remarks about my ‘hobby.’ I mean, I got into fucking Stanford and all he said was that it was a waste of time and money. His money. Like it wasn’t Dad and the farm that paid for everything. He blamed Dad too. I should be in business school, Lolo’d say, and it was Dad’s fault for spoiling me.”
Sophie had heard of Raul’s renowned severity, but by the time she’d come into Adrian’s life, his lolo seemed less like a vicious lion and more like a meek lamb. Adrian had told her about the old man’s addled brain, the way he’d put salt in his tea, the times he’d roam the halls late at night, naked, calling out for Ayam, a dog that he had when he was a child. Raul sometimes snuck out of the mansion, fleeing the night nurse and running through the gardens, all the way to the cliffs that overlooked Belvedere cove. These stories painted a different man from the one Sophie heard about now.
“I can’t tell you how happy I was to move out,” Adrian continued. “I mean, I was excited for college and all, but being away from Lolo was a definite upside. He was either a monster or a burden and I was just … so sick of it.” He hung his head, chuckling. “Fuck, that’s cold. I’m sorry. I don’t know why I said that.”
“Just let it out,” Sophie replied. She understood why Adrian might have previously needed to gloss over the ugly parts of the dead man’s life. She also understood his need to unload them now. “Families are complicated. But I’m sure there were good parts, right? Think about that instead.”
Adrian nodded, then fell into Sophie’s arms and wept. She soothed him, rocking him like a child. She thought this part would be difficult. She’d had tragedies in her life, and she was touched by death as soon as she came into this world, but she herself had never had the chance to grieve. Nor had she needed to console another in their grief. Yet doing that now for Adrian seemed like second nature.
In time, Adrian hushed. He stared at the candle flames. Sophie dried his cheek.
“I’m so glad I decided to bring you here with me,” he said with a quaver in his voice. “But I hope none of this changes your feelings about me. This … is a lot to handle. As far as first times go … and my family … ”
“Like I said, families are complicated. And you’re all hurting.”
“It’s not just that. It’s also that other thing … the Marcos thing. My heart literally stopped when Lola mentioned them,” Adrian said. “I don’t know what I’ll do if I come face-to-face with any of them.”
“Look, we’ ll deal with it if it happens,” she told him. “It sounds like they might not even come to the funeral. It’ll make good material for the doc, at least.”
Adrian frowned. She knew making light was not the right call, but Sophie didn’t want him saddled with more guilt than he already was. He’d only just confirmed what she’d always suspected: that his film project was at least in part an act of rebellion against his family, who disapproved of his choice of career, who viewed him as a disappointment. “The personal is political” was how he had initially pitched it to his program mentor, who didn’t grasp how personal this was to Adrian. Blood Relations would document both the Marcoses and the Sepulvedas, starting from his great-grandfather and Imelda’s mother, who had been siblings. “Not quite The Act of Killing, more like The Look of Silence.”
By Raul’s generation the blood tie was already at a remove, but the families’ bond—social, economic, and political—was just as strong during the dictatorship; at least, that was what Adrian’s research has unearthed. Leyte was a small province, after all, and it all belonged to the same extended clan, even to this day. How did the two families flourish before the president took power? How did they fare during the decades of martial law? And then when Marcos fell? How did it all make Adrian Sepulveda feel, coming from that place, that lineage, with that proximity to power and perfidy? How did it feel learning that another Marcos was now president? It was such a rich period, his mentor had said, that era in your country’s history. And the topic’s in vogue too! There’s so much to mine here, especially from the Filipino American perspective. Do it right and this film might get you to Sundance.
“You know how much I admire your passion,” Sophie continued, taking him into an embrace. “But remember what I keep telling you: Whatever the Marcoses did, that has nothing to do with you, no matter how related you are. You disapprove of them and what they did and you’ve put your beliefs into action. That’s all that matters to me.”
Adrian sighed. “I love you, Sophie. I don’t know how I’d survive this without you.”
“And you almost didn’t want me to come,” she said, giving him a playful jab.
“Yeah, what the hell was I thinking.”
Adrian leaned in to give her a chaste kiss, but the two of them broke off when a knock came through the door. Eric’s muffled voice asked, “Anak, are you in there? It’s time for bed.” The doorknob jiggled.
“Coming, jeez!” Adrian called out with no effort at hiding his contempt. “He’ll be treating me like a damn kid all week,” he complained to Sophie.
She shrugged. “Their house, their rules.”
“Yeah, well.” He gave her another kiss, one not so chaste this time, before they both opened the door.
Eric peeked into the room and smiled awkwardly at Sophie. “So sorry for the interruption. Just came to get this guy. I hope you’re settling in all right?”
“Yeah, Dad, she’s fine,” Adrian answered, annoyed. He waved his arm at the room. “See? Now can we get out of here?”
Eric bade Sophie good night and escorted his son toward the far end of the hall. She watched their candle lights grow fainter and then closed the door.
Sophie blew out her candle. She lay on the bed, listening to the hard rain hitting the tile roof in an unceasing fusillade. The winds were still whipping the trees, and the windows creaked against the blows. Then, a clicking and buzzing sound cut through the noise. The white linen canopy above her bed began to crest and fall like a wave. A breeze passed above her, grazing her skin.
The ceiling fan had gone on. She turned to the writing desk and saw that the indicator on her laptop charger had lit up.
The power’s back.
Sophie thought about reaching for her phone, but the breeze was so calming, and she was so tired, so she let the sounds of the storm lull her to sleep.
That night, Sophie dreamed about her mother. Not Frances Anderson, but her biological mother, or at least who Sophie imagined her to be. What she looked like, what she smelled like, what it felt like to be carried in her arms. She imagined her mother having long, jet-black hair just like her, and her skin was the same warm tan. Her mother had kind, roundish eyes, and a button nose with a low bridge. She had an oval face. Adrian once showed her this movie, On the Job. “It’s a modern classic. Neo-noir but distinctly Filipino, not a Hollywood knockoff. It got a standing ovation at Cannes.” She indulged Adrian’s snobbery, a minor hazard of dating a filmmaker, but she didn’t care much for the movie. Still, it left a lasting impression: It was the first time she’d seen Angel Aquino, and she was struck by how the actress mirrored Sophie’s vision of her own nanay. From then on, she’d always imagined her like the actress.
In truth, her mother might look nothing like that at all. Sophie had never seen her nanay, not even a photo. That was for the best. She didn’t want to see the images from the news, or from federal records.
Sophie was nine when Roy and Frances told her how she came to be their daughter. She was strong and mature enough, they’d told her, and they didn’t want to hide things from her. Besides, her inquisitiveness could no longer be kept at bay, and their attempts at ignoring Sophie bred a palpable resentment.
“She was smuggled into America,” they’d told Sophie, “seeking a better life for you.” This last part, Sophie knew, was one of the Andersons’ benevolent additions to the case history they received from the foster agency that took care of her while her placement was determined.
The cold facts from the ICE report and the local news story were these: Her nanay was one of eight men and women who flew from Manila to Mexico City, and were then loaded into vans for the trip up the coast. None of them had identity documents. Shortly before the border, they were moved into a long-haul truck with a container that had a false back. The cramped and dark conditions were uncomfortable, but that part of the voyage, from Hermosillo into Tucson, was supposed to last no more than five hours. It wouldn’t have imperiled anyone, not even the pregnant woman. The compartment had jugs of water and a box of saltine crackers. Coyotes didn’t want their cargo to die.
As Roy and Frances recounted the little that they knew, Sophie felt—not imagined, felt—what her nanay must have gone through. The heaving and panting in the back of that truck, her entire body slick with sweat, her mind reeling in fear. Her baby pressing on her bladder, every small bump in the road threatening to unleash its contents. She must have prayed to the Virgin Mary, using her fingers as rosary beads, stopping only when the truck slowed into the border inspection.
The shootout occurred after they crossed into Arizona. Gang wars, the border agents speculated. The driver and his shotgun rider’s bullet-ridden bodies were splayed in the front cab. In the back, two men supposedly protecting innocuous shipments of toasters and flat irons were likewise gunned down. At nighttime, smugglers tended to steer clear of the roads to avoid encounters such as these, and so the authorities didn’t spot the truck until three days later, deep in the desert. Even if there hadn’t been a dust storm, they wouldn’t have found it easily, and certainly not in time. When they opened the compartment, all but one of its occupants had either suffocated or died of thirst.
“You were born in the back of that truck. It was a miracle you survived.” It was the only time she ever saw Roy cry.
In her mind’s eye, Sophie saw her nanay, splayed out on the metal floor of the pitch-black compartment. She felt her sweating, crying, her stringy hair, the blood running down her legs, the iron smell mixing with that of afterbirth and shit. Did the baby’s cry give her hope for survival, or did it plunge her into despair? Or did the despair only come when her companions’ wails turned into whispers, before their breaths turned into silence? When came the smell of death? The ripe corpses steamed in the darkness. Her nanay mouthed her goodbye. Sophie saw herself, bloody, naked, the mother’s cord tangled around her neck like a noose.
“You are a miracle.”
That night, her first night in Villa Sepulveda following her own long and arduous journey, Sophie found herself in that truck once more. The deeper she slept, the more vividly her nanay’s face became, as clear as she’d ever seen it, as though it was a memory. As though she’d met her mother, as though her mother stood before her now.
The desert fell away. The truck, the dead coyotes, the container vessel and its cargo vanished. All that remained was her nanay, her nameless mother, standing tall with an open hand reaching out for her. Sophie felt alert, alive. She held out her hand, not quite asleep, not quite awake either, struggling in that in-between place, waiting for a touch that never came.
DSC_20250302.docx
Source: A003C005_20250302_DivZoom.mov
[AUDIO CUTS OUT FOR A FEW SECONDS AROUND
00:08:04
00:11:47
00:13:13]
Divina Sepulveda-Cuesta: We’ll have much to discuss of the men, and so I would like to begin with the woman without whom our house would never have existed. Dorotea, the marquesa, was a great beauty. This much is known. She was refined and well educated too. The royals envied her, or so we’ve been told, and they all sighed in relief when her husband Bartolome decided to move to the colony. This was in 1834, right around the time when Spain opened the Port of Manila to world trade. However, the couple didn’t settle in the capital. Bartolome wanted to build a country house in one of the Visayan islands. No one knows why he eventually picked Leyte, but, here we are.
Adrian Sepulveda: You sound like you don’t like it there.
DSC: Oh, I do. How can I not? This is the land of my heart. It’s just … interesting how these things happen. The marqués could have easily picked another island, another colony, even. Our family might have ended up in Mexico instead—imagine that!
AS1: Tell me more about Dorotea.
DSC: Now, her—she didn’t like it here at all. She sorely missed society. She missed the courts, the exhibitions and salons … a quite relatable sentiment, to be honest. Living here must have made her feel like a cloistered nun. The mountains offered cool air and good food, but Leyte had none of the culture she craved. Things haven’t changed much, and even back then, the plaza was spare: a couple of food stalls, a wet market, and a capilla that doubled as a school. You see, at the time, this was true of most of the country. Leyte didn’t even have a city, let alone one that could compare to European capitals. The nearest large town, Ormoc, was a two-hour carriage ride through rough roads. Manila was two-day journey by boat. Even if the capital was closer, it was hardly a cosmopolitan city either. It would have been only a slight improvement if her husband decided to settle there and made Villa Sepulveda merely their country house.
AS1: What happened to her?
DSC: She made the best of it. Having a lot of money helped, and her children did too. Four of them, and each inherited her renowned good looks. She died young, though … only a decade after she moved here. They say she died of loneliness.
AS1: I’ve heard some stories …
DSC: I’m sure you have. But you did say you want a factual account, no? The real deal, as you called it.
AS1: As real as you can give me.
DSC: Real and unadulterated. On with the family tree, then. Bartolome and Dorotea had four kids: Oscar, Mario, Jacinta, and Luz. Jacinta died of the flu when she was little; Mario was a spendthrift who met his fate at the end of a thief’s dagger, so after the marqués passed away, it was only the eldest and the youngest left to fend for themselves.
AS1: Sounds tragic.
DSC: Very. But unlike his father’s, Oscar’s life was marked not by tragedy or scandal, but by prosperity. You see, my lolo was tenacious. Ambitious. By the time he came of age, Bartolome’s holdings on the peninsula had suffered years of drought and poor harvests. The trade in luxuries between Manila and Mexico had severely dwindled too. As the heir, it fell to Oscar to save the Sepulveda fortune. He found salvation here, in this island’s acres of coconut trees. He founded Sepulveda Farms and turned the wilderness into a moneymaker. He also enlarged the family and thus ensured that the family name continued to live on. He married Mercedes, the daughter of a rich doctor from Cebu. She was an indio, much to Bartolome’s dismay, but she was a dutiful wife and mother who sired Oscar seven sons.
AS1: No daughters?
DSC: One. Soledad, fittingly named. Oscar shrewdly married her off to one of Leyte’s great families, the Romualdezes. They were indios too, but that began to matter less around the turn of the century. As for—
AS1: I’m sorry, Romualdez as in Romualdez-Marcos?
DSC: The very same one. Surely you know this already.
AS1: Seems like I don’t know nearly as much as I thought.
DSC: We’ll get to them later. And so—Oscar and Mercedes had my father, Claudio; then there was Paciano, Gabriel, Soledad, Manuel, Fidencio, and the twins Lorenzo and Leonardo.
AS1: Huh. Another firstborn.
