Ilustrado (16 page)

My high school years were passed in Iligan, a city that didn’t even aspire to pretensions. The things I learned to love founded what I enjoy until this day. I hiked the miles of dry rice paddies behind the houses of my classmates. I explored, astride my 50cc Honda, the squared-off hilltops in our newly developed subdivision. I took long walks on the beach, finding myself enamored with and frightened by the sea. All those, simple acts pertaining to movement, to locating myself in the world.

I remember, too, many evenings in the untrimmed, unlit streets of Santo Niño Village, at the home of my classmates, Ping-J and JP, sons of Filipino missionaries. There I learned friendship, proclaiming them my best friends, regardless of whether or not they did the
same. We excruciated over pictures of the latest Air Jordan sneakers. Rode jeepneys to town during lunch break, to watch the girls in their blue-and-white uniforms. We lined up for hours when the first McDonald’s in the province opened. In the evenings we ventured beyond permission, three of us boys pressed together on my tiny motorcycle, our heads unhelmeted, our legs bent, our feet held an inch off the ground—to visit girls we planned to admire, to half dance, half pose at the open-air discos, to marvel and pity and squirm at the freak shows in the fiestas with their naked bulbs and the sounds of gambling and the scent of fallow fields. We courted our crushes. Brought them to movie houses that screened films without show times, coming in halfway through and watching the end, then the beginning, then the end again. I eventually had a pretty girlfriend with hideous teeth, Darlene, whom I never had the guts to kiss, though I did tell her I’d belonged to a Filipino gang back in Vancouver and had stabbed a man to see what it felt like. She asked me if he died, and I said I didn’t know and that not knowing would haunt me forever. When Darlene dumped me, by mailing me a note with lyrics from the girl group Wilson Phillips’s hit “Hold On,” I wanted to give up on life competely. If that was love, I didn’t want it. How could a feeling that leaves you so hollow be a pain that is so sharp? I tried to win her back, wrote her a poem, went shyly to Jesu with the lyrics and asked him to compose a song for me to sing to her. He informed me, gently, that music, and other things, don’t work that way.

I recovered. Eventually I fell for a girl named Leanne, a real love which betrayed all the earlier ones as insignificant, untrue. I later found out what it was like to hurt someone I’d promised not to. And what it was to really regret one’s actions.

In short, I made the mistakes of youth. I learned. I earned a diploma. I threw my cap into the air during my high school graduation.

In 1993, my family moved to Manila. For my college. For Granma’s treatment at Fresh Starts Rehabilitation Retreat Home. For the new family enterprise Grapes set up for Jesu and Mario, as pioneers in the scented candle export trade. And, though it was never mentioned, we also returned to the capital for Grapes’s revoked promise
and his renewed pursuit of politics—a plum spot in the administration of the newly elected President Estregan.

There, in the nation’s capital, our fractured family rejoined the world that always seemed to overlook Iligan. Ourtopia stood empty, the caretaker and her husband going room to room to turn on lights once a day, run the taps, open and close the windows so that they wouldn’t rust shut. Grapes tried to sell the house, but nobody would buy it. Dreams are always patently personal. The house is now rented by a Japanese-owned school for instruction in English as a second language.

*

In the diary of Lena Salvador, found in the old overnight suitcase in the locked chest in Crispin’s bedroom, there is an entry, written in the universal penmanship of an Assumption girl, dated December 25, 1941: “The family celebrated Christmas mass at Malate church today. Many families we knew failed to attend. For the past days all American soldiers are leaving the city and we’re frightened. Mama says they are abandoning us to the Japs, but Papa says we are safer this way, in an open city. ‘Don’t let’s frighten the children,’ he said. When will he realize I’m no longer a child? At church we prayed for those who were not with us. I prayed an extra Apostles’ Creed for Tito Jason, who has stayed in the city to protect us. After mass, Father O’Connor dressed up like Santa Claus, even if he is too thin to fool the kids and they recognized him right away. Indeed, he made a poor, sad Father Christmas. While we walked home, Crispin took me by the hand and told me he no longer believed in Santa Claus.”

—from the biography in progress,
Crispin Salvador:
Eight Lives Lived
, by Miguel Syjuco

*

Dulcé and Jacob looked behind them as they sprinted. “I told you,” Jacob said, huffing and puffing, “They’re going to eat us alive! We should’ve only gone there while it was still light. We should’ve listened to old Gardener.”

At the end of the fence, they crouched down and hid. In the alley, in the full moon’s blue cast, the dwendes came skipping along. Six of them. Their eyes glowed like insane fireflies, and their flowing silver beards fluttered like
smoke. They stopped and sniffed the air. They were tiny, cute even, but possessed an air of vicious territoriality.

“We can’t go home,”Dulcé whispered, “ they’ll find out where we live. They’ll hurt my family.”

“I told you,” was all Jacob could reply. “I told you. We shouldn’t have disturbed their tree. I told you.”

Dulcé had a sudden idea. “Follow me,” she whispered, before jumping into the alley, in full view of the dwendes. Jacob crouched, shocked, frozen. He was used to following Dulcé’s craziness, but this was too much. The dwendes smiled, clapped their hands happily, bared their razor-sharp teeth, and skipped forward at full speed toward the kids. “Come on!” Dulcé said, pulling Jacob by the shirt. The two ran toward Dulcé’s backyard, their breaths and hearts and the cracking of underbrush the only things they could hear.

—from
QC Nights
, Book Two of Crispin Salvador’s
Kaputol
trilogy

*

The rest of the afternoon is spent with Lena. When our inquisitive protagonist presses her about Crispin’s death, she doesn’t hear and instead asks him who his parents are. He tells her. Taken aback, and looking chastised, she replies, “I knew of your parents. They were very good people. Your father shouldn’t have run back in. There was no saving Bobby Pimplicio. No, I’m sorry. Your father was a hero. A true patriot. If Pimplicio had survived, he would have won the presidency and the country wouldn’t be as it is now.” A familiar comment that always splits our protagonist in two—proud and indescribably sad. Lena rings a small brass bell. A maid in a baby-blue uniform appears, embracing a tray to her chest. She begins to clear the dishes. From the shadows of the house, the maid in the mint-green uniform appears, carrying a child of about two years. A dark boy, both in skin and apparent disposition, dressed in red overalls. He keeps repeating the word “doughnut.” The way he says it, it sounds like a warning. Lena’s eyes light when the child is passed to her. She straightens, becomes more animated, as if recharged by the sudden proximate youth.

“This is my son,” Lena says. “Moses, the child of my laundrywoman. She died a few months ago, hardly more than a girl herself. Didn’t wake up one morning. We never knew the father. Probably one of the farmhands. The boy is mine now. His mother gave him another name, a particularly silly one, and I changed it. Moses is rather fitting, isn’t it?”

The maid stands behind them, nodding at Moses. “Tell Mama,” the maid says. “Come on. Tell her.”

“I love you,” Moses mumbles.

“What silly things did they teach you? I didn’t hear. Again.”

“I love you,” Moses says.

“What?” Lena says. “Island view? What a stupid thing for you to learn.” The maid looks disappointed. “Oof! I think you need to be changed. Go back to yaya.” Lena passes Moses to the maid, who takes him back into the house.

“That boy brings me a joy I never thought possible. All my life I was too busy taking care of Papa, pushing him in his wheelchair. Though there isn’t anything wrong with taking pride in having your father be proud of you. Papa died five years ago, Mama . . . what’s it been? The cancer took her nearly a decade already. Narcisito’s been gone three years this Christmas. And Crispin, well, you know when that happened. So why can’t I have my own time now? Moses is
my
baby boy. All that we have left here in Swanee will be his. Who’ll contest it? Crispin’s daughter probably won’t. Dulcinea has her own life. Sometimes I wonder if she even remembers that the man who raised her isn’t her real father. Well, I suppose he actually is. The year her mother was stabbed, I thought of attending the wake. But I had to respect my brother’s decisions . . .”

Lena stops, surprised, only now noticing our tender protagonist’s expression. “What?” she says. “Didn’t you know? I thought it was the worst-kept secret.”

*

I graduated from being a provincial high school kid into the heady lifestyle of a college student in cosmopolitan Manila. I lived from weekend to weekend, party to party, a time in my life now gathered in my head like a highlight reel. At my first party: San Miguel Beer, the frustrated lullabies of Kurt Cobain, a cool night sky over Quezon City, and everyone later raising their bottles to shout along to the lyrics of The Dawn’s “Iisang Bangka Tayo.” I met my first big-city girl worth falling head over heels for: bright-eyed Anais, flirting with me all night, debating José Cuervo Gold versus Silver, then asking for a ride home. I drove slowly and we spoke about graphic novels, about which teachers we’d gotten for Theology 101, about the Impressionists. She seemed thoroughly impressed that I knew my Manet from my Monet. After dropping her off, I’d sped down
Edsa in my lowered Corolla, windows down, stereo blasting, drunk on life as only a teen can be, screaming and almost crying for unaccountable, unforgettable joy. I’d fallen down the precipice of love. Three months later: the breakup by phone. You’re too clingy, she said. I want to be free, she said. I don’t want to “mollycoddle” you, she said. I didn’t know what the word meant, but had stalled as I brought the cordless phone to the study to look it up. Then I cried and made it worse. Dumped, I moped through days, then weeks, then finally two months passed. Resilient and young, I had gotten over her.

Then came her quiet, quivering phone call. I wish I could remember—for the sake of writing honestly, for the sake of understanding our humanity—the words she told me.
I’m pregnant
, I assume now, is what they were. I’d like to think I immediately gave her the right response. I’d like to think that even at that young age, I was heroic.

I guess I asked Anais what she wanted to do. I imagine she said, incredulous at my question, that she would see things through. Of these, my words, I’m almost certain:
I want to do the right thing
. Of these, her words, I’m sure:
We’ll see
.

In the taxi on the way to the Bacolod airport, I take from my hand-carry Crispin’s photo album. The covers wrapped in vinyl crinkle and smell of old plastic. I leaf through it: a hand-tinted print of a toddler Crispin beside his father, both saluting while wearing identical military dress uniforms; an overexposed snapshot of Crispin as a bearded young man, in fatigues and holding a Kalashnikov as if it were a guitar, behind him a mountain furred in green; a Polaroid of a Cinco Bravos “Occurrence,” Miggy Jones-Matute and Danilo de Borja dressed in loincloths in the foreground, Crispin in a tiki shirt between the spectacled Marcel Avellaneda and the tiny Mutya Dimatahimik, his arms draped around both their shoulders. There are more family photos: fourteen-year-old Lena doing a cartwheel, her long red skirt blooming toward the sky; nine-year-old Narcisito dressed like Sherlock Holmes, blowing bubbles in a pipe; Junior and Leonora on the campaign trail, farmer hats in bright violet, arms around each other in front of an old Baldwin locomotive engine; Crispin among his Lupas cousins at some reunion in a seaside resort (one cousin wears a T-shirt with Junior’s face above a slogan:
I REELECT MY SALVADOR
). There is also a color photo of a pretty girl, probably three years old, with hazel eyes and amber hair. It is un-dated, but already fading.

*

Dulcé and Jacob circled, full tilt, around the pool. Jacob ran like his pants were on fire. Dulcé was a blur of gangly limbs and golden locks. She pointed
to the shed where Gardener kept his tools. “In there,” she whispered, “but make sure they see us.”

Jacob couldn’t believe what he was hearing. “Are you serious?”

Dulcé nodded. “I have a plan.”

The pair went inside the dark shed. Dulcé found some rope and tied it to the doorknob. She unraveled the rope to the far end of the room, where she sat in the corner.

“Okay,” Dulcé said. “I’ll stay in here with this. You step out and let them see you.”

“Wha—?
Me?
You’re crazy, Dul!”

“I’m older than you by a month, so it should be you. Besides, like you said the other day: I’m just a girl.”

“But—but—but,” Jacob stammered, “I didn’t mean it. And we’ll be trapped in here with them.”

Dulcé looked him in the eye. “Trust me,” she said.

Jacob stepped out just as the dwendes were arriving in the garden. They were looking around, a couple of them even admiring the flowers. Jacob thought: This is a bad idea! But Dulcé had gotten them out of so many scrapes before, Jacob couldn’t help but trust her. “Hey!” Jacob shouted. “Hey you silly dwarves! Here we are!”

The dwendes turned, clapped happily again, bared their ice pick–like teeth, and skipped toward the shed. Jacob ran inside and crouched beside Dulcé.

“Ready?” Dulcé whispered. They waited for what seemed like an eternity. Finally six pairs of orange eyes entered the darkness of the shed. They floated, sliding sideways, tilting up, glancing down. Finally, one pair zeroed in on the kids. A ghastly chuckle cut through the air. All six pairs of orange eyes turned red and were suddenly looking straight at them.

—from
QC Nights
, Book Two of Crispin Salvador’s
Kaputol
trilogy