Iskwater
(Originally published in Kimata under the Committee of Culture and the Arts, UP Baguio)
Stepping down from the taxi, I spot a group of people gathering around the bulletin board of the barangay hall. I reach back into the taxi to get my change and drag out the two bayongs of vegetables, meat, and other foodstuffs that the sari-sari store needed for another two weeks. Dragging it out, I could feel the weight of the groceries cause the old Abaca weave to strain and rub against one another. I set them on the ground and take a deep breath before lifting them up and letting them rest on the nook of my elbows. I take a few steps forward and strain to begin making my way to the house but find that the Abaca is not the only thing that aged. I arch my back down and set them firmly on the ground once more, making sure that the contents would not spill out. Straightening back up, I could see the two brothers — Junior and Alan — walking towards me.
“Do you need help, nay?” Alan asked.
“Yes, thank you, but I already gave the boy in the market the last of what I can spare. I have only a few coins with me now, would you still help?”
“Of course, nay, it really isn’t a big deal,” Junior answered for the both of them.
The two boys reached for the bayongs and carried them with no problem, no strain on the youth they so proudly wore. We began to walk down the slope of the hill and the heels of our shoes dug into the rough gravel as dirt swirled in rhythm to our steps.
“Hijos, what is happening in the barangay hall? Is there a new announcement?”
The two boys looked at each other and then back at me.
“I thought you knew, nay, I imagined that my father might have already told you.”
“The old lakay told me nothing and your baket spends all day in her garden. No one has told me anything.”
The brothers looked at each other once again as if to make a decision between telling and keeping the suspense of the secret. We took a turn down a narrow path of stairs made of earth and knotted roots from the pine trees that still stood among the shanties of Apugan. The wind blows and rustles the branches of the pine, filling the silence left between the three of us.
“Out with it boys, what is the news?”
“Nay, it would have been better if father told you, but since you asked us we will say it.” Junior slaps the shoulder of Alan, signaling him to tell the news that I had missed.
“The houses will be demolished to make way for a new factory, they’re giving us three weeks to leave and a 15,000 peso settlement to make sure that there isn’t too much trouble.”
I felt shaken with disbelief. Can they really do that? Just run their trucks over the houses that had become homes? To swing a hammer through a wall that once had housed the Last Supper, to bring an ax and saw to the wooden dividers as if these walls had not been a home of love, of children, of happiness — was it that easy for them? I gulp and feel the dryness of my mouth as the world is silenced, leaving only the ringing in my ears.
“15,000?” I said, unable to say anything more. My heart thumped loudly and I could not believe that I would be homeless again after so long and in my age, that I would need to get up and do all that again after these long decades in the city. Oh Lakay, how I wish you were here. I wish you had not left me so early. I stop moving and make a sign of the cross to say a little prayer to the Virgin for mercy.
“Nay?” said Junior, walking back up the slope to see if I was okay.
“It’s nothing, hijo, don’t worry about me. I’m just a little shaken.”
“I’m sorry you found out like this, we thought that father had told you.”
“Help me with the bayongs and get them into the house. Then we will look for your father, I need to speak to him.”
Junior nods and catches up to Alan as I make sure of my footing down the stairs of dirt and roots. We make our way further down the hill to the house that I had made a home for three decades. I hold my knees as I step down the larger stairs and I could see Junior and Alan waiting for me by the closed store. I take a deep breath and look out into the distance where the Military Academy lay hidden among the trees. I look down and gaze into the middle distance where the cracked, unused airport was littered with people walking, jogging, and children playing and flying their kites in the wind that blew freely between mountains. This was home, this was the image of the home where I had settled with my husband, raised children, wept at his passing, and built an entire life. It was four decades and now, in a few weeks, it would only be rubble and a barren hillside. I understood. We built on land we ‘borrowed’ and some part of me knew that this was coming — I just never knew it would come like this. I always thought I would pass and they could take back the land that we borrowed — that I could die knowing that I had died at home, in the home that I had built and loved and cherished for so long.
I reach the gate and unlock the padlock only to find myself caressing the rusted, creaky, and noisy gate that had kept the family safe in all this time. I unlock the next padlock, the door to the store, and lift the covers. I motion for Alan and Junior to place the bayongs next to the frigider as I uncap three bottles of pop cola to quench the thirst of coming down the hillside as the strong but frigid 11 AM sun bore down on us. A mountain wind blew in from the airport and I handed the bottles to the two brothers.
“We don’t have any money, nay.” Alan said.
“Just take it, hijo, as thanks.”
“Thank you, nay.” said Junior as he grabs both bottles and hands the other one to Alan.
We gulp down the pop cola and I begin to take out and arrange the groceries into the shelves and the meats and vegetables into the frigider. The two boys sat outside conversing and laughing with each other. I step into the house and change into my bestida. I step back out and take an umbrella from the rack.
“Junior,” I say, “I am going to see your father, please stay here and keep watch over the store. There is a list of prices by the counter. When I come back everything should be in order and I will give you forty pesos. Alan, come with me.”
Junior’s face lit up at the possibility of forty pesos becoming his and I find myself smiling at him. Junior takes his spot at the counter with a jump and turns on the radio, tuning it to a station that was broadcasting a cowboy play. We begin to traverse the hill through a dirt path carved by feet, bound by wild grass, and streaked with the water working its way down from the houses above us. I look around the neighborhood and hear it filled with the noise of pots and pans clanging with the sandoks stirring the lunch that was being prepared by the mothers in anticipation of their families. It is littered with the sound of dogs barking and chickens crowing. Soon, the husbands would come home and the children would return from their schools to eat with their families before going back to studying, working at construction, man the stores, and all the other odd jobs that these families took to survive. In the distance, one could hear the swing and strike of a hammer in rhythmic symphony with the humming of saws. I didn’t think that there was still the will to create in the face of impending destruction.
The sayote vines crawled along the chicken wire that divides our houses and the smell of the putrid canals emanated with the heat of the summer. We cross planks to get over them as I bring my hand to my nose. As the hill began to slope upward, Alan held out his hand towards me to help me. Using the umbrella as a cane, we move up the hill and finally make it to their house.
“Lakay!” I said, calling Narciso.
“Who is calling?” A voice from inside the house replies.
“Tay! Nanay from the store is here, Junior is back in her store guarding it until she comes back.”
A figure emerges from the crowded bodega and wipes his hands free of grease on jeans that were now more stitched patches and oil stains than fabric. He runs his hand through his grey hair and wipes the sweat back on the denim. He sits down on one of the monobloc chairs and motions for Alan to bring another for me to sit on.
“Get a glass and some of the water from the fridge,” Narciso says as he takes out a cigarette and brings it to his mouth. He lights it and inhales.
“Nay, what has brought you all the way over here?” he asks as the smoke exits from his nostrils and swirls about us. I bat the fumes away and Narciso looks self-conscious for a moment. He turns to his side and begins to blow the smoke away from me.
“Is it true? Are we being driven out from here?”
“I see that the boys have told you. I knew that it was market day and I was hoping to go down to your store and tell you gently. I’m sorry, nay, but yes, it is true. In a few weeks this place will be nothing but rubble, wood, and whatever we could not take with us, but still,” he takes another drag from his cigarette, “15,000 pesos is very kind of them.”
“Is 15,000 the price of our lives? Our livelihood?”
“It is a large sum of money. I know you’ve lived here a long time, nay, we’ve been here almost as long as you and this is the only home that Alan and Junior have known. But what can we do? Barricade the road to stop their machinery? And what will happen when they send the policemen?”
“Narciso, you built almost half of this neighborhood with your hands. You patched the roofs, painted walls, erected dividers, and built entire houses for families — is there nothing we can do?”
Alan comes out with a pitcher of ice-cold water with two glasses and sets it on a third monobloc chair before he goes back into the house. The faint tick of a radio turning on comes from the house as Alan looks for a station. Narciso looks down at his feet and taps the ash of his cigarette into the ground. He pours a glass of water and hands it to me, he pours another one for himself, drinks, and sighs.
“Nay, look at our hairs, they are already greying. Perhaps in our youth, we could have fought our way out. You and me and Pareng Jose and all the people from the past. But look around you, people have already started packing, is it too much to ask for peace in old age?”
“You mention my husband as if he would have taken this sitting down as well. I see your point, Narciso, but look around as well, people are still living in their homes, some of them have not left. Maybe they have not heard the news, but I do not doubt that some of them will fight. Some of our neighbors work in the Military Academy, I think that might help us stay.”
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“They work as mess officers and carpenters. It is honest work, but I doubt that the military would help people who are squatting on government land.”
“Narciso, I just want to keep his memory alive. Is there really nothing we can do? I want to live the last of my years in the house that we built brick by brick, it is the last of my memories, do you not feel the same way about this house?” I say as my voice cracks and tears begin to well up in my eyes. Narciso reaches over and holds my hand as the tears begin to stream down my eyes. Jose! Jose! They are going to destroy our house, our home. Who will tend to the plants? Your children have all left me and have their own lives, who will stay with me in this old age? I begin to heave and Narciso places a glass of water in my hand.
“Nay, we knew this would happen,” Narciso rummages through the pockets of his pants and brings out a five peso coin, “and that house is not the last of Jose, call your children, tell them their home is going to be demolished. Here are five pesos to use the telephone in the barangay hall.”
“Yes,” I say, as my sobbing begins to falter and fade, “I’ll call them, if I have raised them right they will come home.”
I drink a glass of water and begin making my way back to the store.
I make my way home, greeting politely the anxious people who passed me by. There was Aling Marie with her bayongs for market day, smiling softly but unable to hide the fear from her eyes. There was Aurora who held her daughter’s hand as they walked through the path, her face still wet from the tears that she tried to hide from her daughter. There was Crisanto who did not greet me, but grit his teeth and clenched his fist, making his way home in all his anger and hurt. There was Jenny, who paid for her father’s utang. Finally, I reached home and saw Junior counting the money the store had made while I was gone. I walk over to the counter and he gives me the bills. I leaf through them and extract forty pesos.
“Your father and brother are waiting for you at home. Go, it is lunchtime.”
Junior runs from the store with his forty pesos in his hand and I am left gazing at the world that I knew and loved for the past decades. There was the store — a parting gift — the gravel and hollow block path that led out to the rest of the neighborhood, the grass I could no longer trim, and the plants that I could no longer prune, both overgrown except for the paths carved by feet. I sit by the counter of the store and turn off the radio — the cowboy and the bandit were standing at high noon. I take a deep breath and turn it into a sigh as I am left alone in the silence of the day and the loneliness of age.
“Nay! How many boxes do we still need to load into the jeep?”
“Wait a moment, anak, please, just give me a moment.”
“Nay, the trucks are coming tomorrow, we can’t afford to wait any longer.”
I sit down on the old rattan furniture that we had decided was not worth taking in the move. Reaching under the coffee table, I find an old album overflowing with memories of the past fifty years in this mountain city. Faded black and whites of moving from place to place, finding a place to settle as newlyweds, faded sepias of the relative comfort and security in the barracks, sepias of the first pictures of children, men in the porch with their beers and cigarettes, the women of the row-houses in the kitchen, the first colored pictures of birthdays and baptisms. I find myself crying and smiling and laughing. I flip towards the later pages of the album with the pictures filled with more life and color. There was the near-barren hillside, Jose and Narciso standing at the doorway of the half-finished house, laughing with cigarettes in their hands, a picture of Mark on his first day of school, a picture of Michael in his graduation toga — I could not believe that this was the last day I would be in this house, the last day it would ever exist.
“Nay!,” Mark called as he walks in with sweat streaming down his forehead, “we only have the jeep for today and the house is on the other side of town.”
He steps into the living room and spots me going through the albums. I wipe my tears with the face towel draped on my shoulder and try to bravely smile at him. He sits beside me and wraps his arms around me, kisses me on the forehead, and looks at me.
“Thank you, Mark,” I sniffle and begin to load the albums into the cardboard box lain out beside the table.
“I’m sorry we can’t take any more of the old furniture, Nay, Althea and I only have so much space in the house in Irisan and with the baby coming I — “
“Don’t worry about it, thank you for letting me stay in your house, I will try my best to not be a bother and when my apo comes I can take care of him while the two of you work. It will give me something to do now that the store is gone.”
“Nay, about the store,” Mark began as he wiped his sweat with a handkerchief, “what will we do with all that’s still left in it? Do we sell it at a loss?”
I looked at him blankly, “I don’t know, anak, I really don’t know.”
Mark stands up and begins to carry the boxes of clothes, kitchen tools, and other things that had accumulated over the years. I load the last of the albums into the box and look around the house — I don’t remember the last time it was this desolate. The cabinets were stripped of the pots, the pans, the calderos, and all the plates and utensils. The tears in the linoleum floor reveal the grey concrete below it, old appliances made shadows in the places they had settled over the years, and the aging concrete of the walls showed themselves after being hidden by curtains, closets, and shelves that had now been moved out. All that was left was the small rectangular room, the adjoining bedroom that we had all shared, the empty kitchen corner with its grease stains and spatters, the door heading out into the comfort room and the laundry area, the sampayan, and all the memories that these small areas had represented. There was the old rattan furniture, the springy bed, the moth-eaten curtains, and the other things Mark said could no longer fit in his house.
I walk into the store and see that everything was still in place. I had gone to one last market day accompanied by Mark to fill the store for one more week in case that people needed something to eat or drink. Mark carried a crate of beer along with it, he told me that people would buy more of it with everything that was happening. But he left the store untouched. He knew well enough that this was my domain, my space to be alone, and a place where I had complete control over — what happened to it was entirely up to me.
I run my hand through the old wooden counter and sit on the monobloc to watch the traffic of people pass by. Each of them was carrying furniture, cardboard boxes, heavy luggage bursting at the seams with clothes, and whatever they could carry. There was a solemn mood in the air. No one seemed to care for the cold wind or the sound of leaves rustling as the wind blew, nor for the clouds or the soft sun of the waning summer — it was a sad day. I knocked on the wood for good luck and cleared my throat.
“Bili kayo! Pop-cola, tsitsirya, at ice-cream!” I shouted at the top of my lungs. It had been the first sentence I had ever muttered when I opened the store and not it would be the last first sentence of the store. I attracted a few eyes but the procession continued — you knew it was a bad day when Filipinos were in no mood for food. “Sige na, pasok lang kayo, libre na po ito!” I shouted once more and, with the mention of libre, the procession was disrupted and people came into the store, put down what they were carrying on the overgrown grass, and began to say what they wanted.
There was Aurora and her child, who took a bottle of pop-cola and as many lollipops as her little hands could carry. There was Manong Crisanto whose eyes were bloodshot with his two daughters shrinking behind him as he took two packets of cigarettes and let a moment of kindness and gratitude pass in his eyes. There was Aling Rosie and Aling Marie who each took a kilo of meat and fish and placed it inside their styrofoam coolers, thanking me profusely and saying that their meals in the past few days had only been fried sayote in bagoong and rice. I smile and give them bundles of sitaw, pechay, and talbos ng kamote. There was Jenny, who took a box of pinipig crunch and gave it to her little brothers and to whoever might ask her for one. There was Marcus who took three packets of momma, tabacco, and apog and gave one packet to each of his friends. They stood by the corner, laughing and chewing and spitting as they took a break from the lifting. Salamat, ‘Nay! was the only thing I heard for a while and while it pained me to know that I might never see some of them again, their smiles would forever be in my mind. The heaviness of the day lifted a little and it seemed that the people were finally taking notice of the pale sky and the cool breeze of the mountains.
Mark came down confused by the commotion in the store, thinks for a moment and smiles at me. There was a time when he might have berated me for being too loose with the store, allowing utang after utang that the store risked being unable to continue. But there was a part of him that knew that something was dying inside all of these people that a 15,000 peso check could not fill. If people could dull the hole with sweets or food or smoke or nganga, I wanted to be able to help it even a little. I let myself smile for a moment and Mark walked into the store.
“This is smaller than I remember,” he said, wiping his hands and his forehead with a hand-towel.
“Mark, can you help me bring the furniture to the court?” I say, distracted.
“Nay, there is no more space in the house, I’ve told you about this, and we only have the jeep for a few more hours before we have to pay again,” Mark said, his eyebrows knotting.
“This is about giving, anak, not taking what we don’t have use for anymore, some of these people might have some use for the chairs, for the curtains, for whatever they might like. As for the jeep,” I take out whatever is left in the drawers, “pay him with half of this and tell him he will get the other half if he helps you with the lifting. Then tell the kagawads to bring out a small table in the covered court. Those boys owe me, so they will do it even if I do not have a permit.”
With that, Mark could only say yes. I took to work and brought out the big kaldero from its box and filled it with water. Seeing whatever was left in the store, I took out broth cubes, chicken, and egg noodles. I will not let the last day of this house, this community, be known for sadness and heavy hearts. I cooked the chicken mami as Mark and the jeepney driver hauled the remaining boxes and furniture out of the house. They placed whatever was left in the store in a few boxes and carried it out as well. There was a knock at the door.
“Baket, what are you making? I could smell it all the way from the path.”
Narciso stood at the doorway with Alan, Junior, and Aling Gabriela holding baskets of sayote, beans, and other greens and vegetables from their garden.
“It would have been a waste to let them all be trampled by the trucks,” Gabriela smiled at me, “we heard what you did earlier today, we decided to do the same.” I smiled at her and felt an understanding between her and me.
“I am making chicken mami for those who have not yet left, it is almost finished. Would you boys help me in carrying it to the court once you have brought those up? There should be a table set up there where you could leave the baskets.”
“Thank you, ‘Nay, for making this last day bearable,” Narciso said with an unlit cigarette hanging between his lips.
“Where will you go after this?” I asked. I hadn’t asked in the weeks that we knew, I wasn’t sure that it was actually happening.
“My family and I are going back to Isabela, my home province, my brother still has the old house and farm, we will stay with him until we get back to our feet. Alan and Junior are free to make their own lives as they please, as for me I will settle there, I’m tired of the city that needed us but didn’t want us.”
“I understand, Narciso, it has been difficult. I will stay with my son and I will ask him to give you his telephone number so that you can call when you are there. Thank you, for everything, if Jose were here the both of you would be drunk and your sons would have to carry you back home.”
He laughs as tears well up his eyes as he lights his cigarette. “One stick for the old man.” He laughs and takes a puff.
Junior and Alan return and begin to lift the mami up the hillside. The house is empty now, just a hollow shell of the memories that used to inhabit it. I take one last lap around the house, closing the lights one by one, close the doors, shut the store one final time, and close the door — leaving it forever. Jose, they are taking down our house, they are taking away the store, there is so little left of you, and still, they take this. I take the umbrella out and use it as a cane. A light mist has crawled over the airport as I take a final look at the vista. The world had softened in the afternoon and the world was solemn but not miserable.
Goodbye, I tell the house, thank you for everything. I hold back the tears and begin making my way up the hill. Back up the dirt and roots and earth, back up decades of memories, and bid goodbye to each of them.
I come up to the covered court to see the people camping out with their things and the large kaldero on a table by the bleachers. Mark brings out packs of paper cups and a ladle. Alan and Junior placed their baskets of vegetables beside it as Narciso lit another cigarette. The noise of the covered court fills the ears and people talk while children play as if their lives have not been uprooted.
I motion to Mark and he announces the last things that I am giving away — the mami, the vegetables, and the furniture. I didn’t have it in me to say more. I was tired. The people line up and take a cup of hot soup, a few vegetables, and settle back into their spots, waiting for their rides out of the barangay. There are thank yous all around and more smiles begin to form on the faces of the people who had lost their homes.
The day waned as the sun fell slowly behind the mountains. The fog had turned the world from the pale blue of the day to the thick lilac velvet of the twilight. In the distance, the orange streetlights began to light up as the houses created constellations in the mountain city pulsing in the approaching darkness. I sat as the mami ran out and I felt glad, even for just a moment. Mark takes my hand and looks at me — it was time to leave. There was nothing left I could do.
I get up and give Alan and Junior a hug, making them promise to call me. I give an embrace to Narciso and Gabriela, bidding goodbye and wishing them a happy life — telling them to call and visit when they could. I walk up to the jeep filled with the things we could salvage from the old house and felt the engine start. I take one last look at the world I had come to love and feel myself drifting off to sleep as it fades ever further in the distance.
