baliwasan grande, a reprise

photo by talisa





Remember the cat they dumped at our gate? Who would have thought it would survive? Then a couple of nights after, we heard it wailing among the crash of tinplanks. And then no more. That was your cat, Shi, you said into the dark as we quietly coaxed ourselves to sleep. Between the two of us, I was the one who was a streak messianic, always out to bring dead cats back to life. You were the one who always knew better, knew who will live and who would die.

Of course we never saw that cat again.

Later Gigi gave you a gun. How we laughed at it. Paltik. We said we could not fire a shot through all this rust! But how he made so much a show cleaning it. For the children to see. They liked to clamber up our fences and hang by the branches of the guava tree to watch us. You went to Zeni’s house across the street carrying the gun in your hand. That hushed them. The doctor has a gun! And even Zeni laughed, politic that she was.

Then I collared a man. How An-An shouted at them in the name of Allah. Don’t you know a little respect? She yelled. Are you doing this because she is a Christian? Later, Zeni would tell us that they went out and fired shots into the air. But I was so furious to listen and be frightened. What I felt then was, her young niece did so much better than she ever could by me. For I couldn’t remember a time when Zeni or anyone of the cadres I knew ever spoke up for me and I hated her cavalier defense of the offended distinct Moro culture. Iba kasi ang kultura ng Moro, she kept on yammering. I could have struck her if I were a rod. It was An-An I wanted to embrace and cry to, tell her that that was the first time someone ever stood by me against a tribe. But I didn’t. I was afraid she would smell my loneliness, my bereftness, and doubt me.

Soon, I would leave Zamboanga, without making leave. You said that was a good decision. I could have killed someone there, or I could've gotten myself killed. I said I couldn’t stand the quality of the anti-communist anti-Christian talk I was made to listen to. Said I couldn’t stand Moro nationhood, if that was all there is to it. Shirien would later relay to me the censure. You could have talked things out with them, he said, they would have understood, accepted any explanation you could have offered them. I did not tell him that leaving doesn’t need any reason or explanation, could not tell him that understanding and acceptance is the last that I wanted from anyone.

In Marawi twenty years later I would visit your mother and I couldn’t find the old hearth of the home I once knew. Tita Aida was forever wiping your car’s windows, forever testing your car’s battery, and I could not, for the life of me, understand why anyone in that freezing cold climate would aircondition their bedroom. I promised myself to not ever go back there and to not ever talk to you again.

Now Gigi is dead, leaving behind with me a nylon rope to make revolution with. I am honored by the gift. But I cannot even organize a forum without Gabriela’s minions barricading at the gate. How they buggered me. Had me bought and resold. Made me walk their dogs.

I feel irrelevant. I feel important.
I feel blasted, I feel blessed.

But I must have known, even then, that I will live.