ROADKILL! (The Seven Brothers)

III


The Seven Brothers, according to Mhang, is a religious group, some kind of a cult composed of men ages between 30s and 60s. People go to them for help, as when an injustice has been done to the family; as when a daughter disappears. They are armed with kalis, a bolo meant to cut off heads.

"I see. Are they the ones that perform the parrangsabil?"

"Yes."

Yess my ass. And God help me, help me to be afraid of people, not of rapists and revolutionists with heads to crop.

It was the Seven Brothers that went looking around Takut-Takut and went looking for Tumba Lata, Mhang explains, because they wanted Ferhayda and Ridz. They each was carrying a kalis.

"They came to Tumba Lata all seven of them and they each was carrying a kalis?"
"Some stayed right outside at the gate to Takut-Takut."
"You saw them yourself? All seven of them?"

"The people in the neighborhood saw them. There were four of them, two waited outside."

I wanted to cuss. If I could just make a joke out of it all.

Maybe they were just on their way to chop woods?

ROADKILL! (Or The truth about Mary)

II

A week back also, I was told of another series of roadkills. One was that Mary is pregnant, that is why she is leaving Jolo for Manila. Two, that her cousin, another devil-rider of a street tomboy, and whom I would now call Magdalene, has given birth to a baby, which they now gave to the rapist (they don’t use rapist there, though; they refer to him as the father); and that three, at Takut-Takut, another tomboy is going around with a bloated belly, courtesy of a pedicab driver who was forced by his elders to marry her and then left her for garbage a day after. 

So now, the dopeheads at Takut-Takut are talking. They say, Amun president niyu ha Tumba Lata yadtu? Hahaha. 

I told Karen it could be that some joke must have passed at the men’s lair; they must have wagered on the street dykes' pussies, or how come the serial kill. 

Karen was appalled. “That’s infuriating."

Yes, I assured Karen. Mary and her cousin Magdalene are the toughest in the gang, so they beat them first.

What I really thought was slander. And told Mhang, Tumba Lata’s resident reporter and information comptroller, You don’t believe men when they talk about women. Here that’s how the drug pushers get to marry the Muslim girls they want, by telling the entire barangay that she had had been had, she is no longer a virgin!

She carried on like I have not spoken. “Men could tell if a girl is pregnant.”

“They couldn’t!”

“They say Mary’s tummy is big."
"She drinks beer and slumps a lot."
 "And that she has the looks of someone having her morning sickness." 
"Whoaa."
"It must be Joseph, the guy who supplies him with shabu. Or that boy with a motorcycle, the one Mary borrows all the time, and the one who helps him with the laptop.”

“Who?”

“Joseph. A very ugly fellow, let me tell you. Dark-skinned, thin like a skeleton, a pedicab driver. They say that even when you were here, Mary was doing shabu every night.”

“Please, don’t believe them.”

"That’s why he was up all night." 
"Mhang, you're the only one who sleeps at eight and wakes at six."
“"One of the policemen was even saying that he has shagged Mary.”

"You’ve told me that already.”

“Once an addict, always an addict. Even when you were here? He was on shabu. It was his dinner, you don't know.”

Now I know that that statement was more for me and not about Mary. They tell me that all the time. You don’t know this and you don’t know that. You can’t do this and you can do that.  You don’t go out into the street without us, you don’t hang around with lesbians at the docks, you don’t jog, you don’t set up a program, you don't organize lesbians, you don't know Tausugs, you don't and you don't.

Well I don't. So I asked Mary. Are you pregnant?   Don’t lie. If it could happen to Magdalene, it could happen to you. In fact, it could happen to me. I didn’t tell him I have been getting an inordinate amount of propositions in my mobile lately.

Of course Mary got angry. And of course she covered up for his cousin Magdalene. "I will smash their teeth for spreading that kind of shit. I even went to see Magdalene to find out and it is not true!”

“I am not asking to accuse you. I want to know that I may know.”

“Don’t believe anything they tell you!”

That was the second time he said that to me in days. Don’t believe them; don’t believe the  Seven Brothers. They just want to scare you, so you won't go back there.  Huwag kang maniwala sa kanila, nananakot lang yan sila para hindi ka na bumalik doon. Huwag kang matakot, bumalik ka doon.  

You always root for that about Mary. He always was The Opposition. Everybody scampering for safety and he will go the other way. 

ROADKILL! (Or Confessions of a Window Cleaner)

I

Six months ago, I was asked to write a summing-up of a program now 17 years on the run. Compared to other NGOs that I know and have served at one time or another, this one is relatively cleaner in that they don’t duplicate receipts or buy them at the BIR or bribe gasoline stations and hotel desks into issuing bloated counterfeit bills. At report presentation, I was told, you don’t write political history; you focus on the program implementation, leave the social movements alone, use the evaluation reports. Or at least that’s one attorney-at-law who sits on Board said, to which most of the other board members agreed. Among other fears was, that the FA might think this NGO has some dubious association with groups out to destabilize government in its past or present or that whatever program it is pursuing might still be directly or indirectly supporting militants by virtue of this program’s early origins and still nurture agenda that are beyond project parameters. I almost packed up never to be seen again, had the Program Director, herself on her way out, took time to see me and made a confession.

But like it or not, that’s how we survive nowadays. Of course we have been co-opted, Shei. Even these projects we are running now, at the top of the heap of these little funding agencies is the World Bank.

I almost felt sorry I turned down a WB menial’s job a couple of months back so that I could go to Jolo and write their program report in between. I also felt envious: they have good governance and good funding on their side; I don’t.

Why am I suddenly filing this complaint?

On June 20, 2012 in Jolo, a lesbian was shot by a live-in partner's nephew. The partner's family is Tausug and religious and the father had early on asked this tomboy to keep away from the daughter for a little while because she is now a hajji (went on a pilgrimage to Mecca) as he is a hajji himself. The tomboy refused to budge. Then one day in July that a nephew had an emergency (a son or daughter taken to the hospital) he tried to borrow money from the couple and was refused, and so he went home to get a gun and came back to shoot her. She was taken to the hospital and was pronounced dead on arrival.

On July 18, 2012, another lesbian was shot dead while queuing to register with the Comelec.  The information that got to me was that 1) she eloped with a girl reported missing by the parents; but later, there was another version, that 2) she had been mistaken as the tomboy who pimped for a bunch of soldiers who raped and killed the woman she brought to them. The latest version (as of August 02, 2012) is that she was mistaken for the lesbian who eloped with the missing girl.

Soon after this series of incidents the guys in Jolo have been texting me. They are afraid, they are afraid to go out, they might get shot at next, because at one time or another, and to some not just once but seasonally, they got into a live-in arrangement or had eloped with a girlfriend. Some went back home in time; some of the girlfriends were fetched by their parents; and some were mauled by brothers or relatives; but none so far had been shot. This is the first time that they kill lesbians for the crime of our sex. (Note: I don’t use the word sexual orientation; I say their sex, our sex.)

I am therefore impressed.

The first casualty was an aunt to Susan, a Tumba Lata officer. It appears that her real crime was for being pagood-good, which in Pinoy slang means scoring pogi points. The first time I heard about this dead tomboy, she was still living. I was showing the guys pictures of New York gay marriages and Susan mentioned this tomboy to me. I told Susan and the few other guys sitting around that I myself is not really keen on gay marriage; but it serves well those who have properties to leave behind to their partners who might automatically forfeit such right to inheritance just because their union is not legal. Susan said, right. There’s this lesbian in the neighborhood, and she was pointing right at the window, like she was just nearby (she was), and if she dies the surviving partners will surely quarrel over her property. At the time she didn’t say the lesbian was an aunt; I only got to know that after the accident, when Mhang told me. I imagined then that she was some generic tomboy with a penis hanging on her forehead to have the nerve to take on two “wives” with whom she was not legally married. But that was Takut-Takut, slum enclave where anything goes; nothing that spells survival is not allowed, including drug pushing, theft and prostitution.

Now Mhang tells me that no quarrel over property happened. In the first place, much of the property belonged to the Tausug partner; the other partner, a Sama woman, did not bother to make any claims; she just went back home to her family, also just in the neighborhood. The Sama partner had been telling the tomboy lover to keep away from the other woman; they are Sama, not Tausug, meaning, to love above one’s class invites punishment and so on, but the dyke wanted to keep them both and especially the more well-off Tausug partner. So there. She was shot down, as promised.

A couple of months back, boarding at our modest headquarters at Takut-Takut, girls would be by. They wanted to join Tumba Lata, they said. Why so? we asked. They just want to; can’t we call them Tumba Lata Girls, they said? Then gradeschool gays would join a spelling test and ask can’t we organize them as well? They will call their group Batu Lakit (hard rock) and they were bright and talented, too. We were pleased, of course. I say, how nice. If that happens I would be able to bring my seven-year old nephew here and he can join your group, where he is now no gay life thrives. It turned out that was not a good thing to say and they asked, Is he talented?   

One girl said that his own father asked her to join Tumba Lata, because he wants for her to be a tomboy while she is still finishing high school. He didn’t want me to be a girl, because girls mix with boys and get pregnant before they could do anything good in life.

Smart dad she’s got, I wanted to commend her for her luck. What does he take us for, a freezer?