How to Traverse Terra Incognita

by Dean Francis Alfar

  fragment of a video recorded by VB-cam 4-B3 in the quarters of Dr. Jocelyn Montemayor; Montemayor is sitting on her bed, legs drawn to her chest, her arms wrapped around her head. There is blood visible on portions of her face, she is shouting at the door where voices and the sound of rhythmic of pounding are heard.

  MONTEMAYOR: I want to go Let me go I want to go My name is Jocelyn Montemayor! My name is Joy I want to go I want to go

  final audio of C1F Arsemo Gonzales

  GONZALES:

  Anya

  PACKING FOR THE MOON

  SAM’S EYES ARE closed, her small frame propped up against three pillows.

  “Sam?” I knock softly at her door. “Are you sleeping already?”

  Her eyes bolt open, and her face breaks into a smile. “Dad,” she laughs. “If I were asleep, then you’d have woken me up.”

  I nod in agreement and sit on her bed. “You have to, soon. Big day tomorrow.”

  “I know,” she answers, expelling a sigh. “But I get a story, right?” She blinks her brown eyes once, twice.

  “No need for the puppy dog look, Sam,” I tell her, while rolling my eyes. “You get all the stories you want.”

  “Maybe just one for tonight, Dad,” she says, stifling a yawn. “I’m kind of tired.”

  “Okay, let me get the book.” For the past six months, since her seventh birthday, we’ve been making our way through Stories from around the World, the hefty hardcover that I ordered online for her. “Now, where were we?”

  “China,” she says. “We read the Lantern story and the Fishy story—and the one with about the Wall. That was cool.”

  I find our place in the book. “Well,” I say, looking at the illustration. “We could try another country.”

  “No, no,” she says. “Let’s finish China. What’s the title of the next one?”

  “‘The Princess and the Moon.’” I show her the painting of a princess and what looks like a firework-powered rocket ship.

  “Looks good.” She shifts position on the bed, squinting her eyes like she does when she’s concentrating—my cue to get started.

  One of the things I love doing for Sam most is telling her stories. I clear my throat and begin to read, giving voice to the petulant princess who demanded, from her father, a trip to the moon. I speak for the imperial advisors, who tell her that the trip was impossible, that many many things would be needed, and that the moon was no place for a young girl, much more the princess of the empire. I tell Sam how the princess stamped her feet and held her breath until everyone gave way, and how the rocket ship was built, with firecrackers for propulsion—pausing to show her the illustration again (which makes her laugh and say “I get it, Dad”). I enumerate all the things that were needed to keep the princess safe and secure, well-fed and well-clothed, as well as entertained: crates full of marvelous mechanical soldiers armed to the teeth with various miniature weapons; silver trays and covered gold serving dishes of fruit, vegetables, and dainty sugary treats; teakwood chests filled with formal clothes in case the moon was cold, as well as an astounding number of parasols, fans, and handkerchiefs in case the moon was untowardly warm; plus an exhaustive list of the princess’ s favorite entertainers, in case the moon turned out to be boring, including acrobats, singers, falconers, storytellers, and the Chief Vizier’s little boy who played go very well (he knew enough to always lose). But with everything piled into the small rocket ship, there simply was no room for the princess. Her father, finally showing some backbone, canceled the trip, and that was the end of that.

  Sam crinkles her nose. “What a silly girl.”

  “Why?” I ask, returning the book to the bottom of her night table.

  “Well, she took too many things with her,” Sam says with conviction. “I’d take only what was really important. Let’s make a list, Dad. You know, of really important things to take. You make one and I make one.”

  “We will when we get back from the hospital, okay?”

  “Okay.” She mock-frowns before breaking into a smile. “I love you, Dad.”

  “I love you, Sam.” I kiss her three times, once on each side of her face and once on her forehead. I look at my little fighter of a daughter and wish her the best dreams on earth.

  OUR PROJECTED OVERNIGHT stay at the hospital extends to four days, when her doctors order more tests, to two weeks when all of the tests say that the cancer has returned, to three months when they determine that it is only a matter of time.

  She will get better. Because she’s Sam. Because she’s my daughter. Because I believe she will. She’s a fighter, my little fighter. She’s tougher than any kid I know. I know she will make it. There is no doubt in my mind. There can be no doubt.

  The last time I see Sam, her breathing is slow, and she cannot open her eyes. I sit next to her and tell her every story I can remember, all her favorites as well as the ones she didn’t really like.

  I talk and do the voices of peasant boys and princesses and talking horses and everyone lets me, until hospital protocol requires them to take her away from me.

  I cannot stop. I do not want to stop.

  I drown instead, when the heaviness becomes too much, too real, too soon.

  THE HOUSE FEELS empty. My heart insists that she’s watching TV in the den, or reading a book upstairs, or brushing her teeth in the bathroom.

  I sleep on the couch. I sleep for days. Until sleep retreats completely.

  I climb the stairs and stand at the door of her bedroom. My hand on the doorknob is shaking. Let her be inside. Let her be in bed, with her feet snug and warm under the comforter. Let her be sleeping. Or awake. Let her be.

  She’s not inside.

  I don’t know how long I sit on her bed, feeling the hollowness inside me expand. I bury my face in her pillows.

  I see the big book at the bottom of her night table and pick it up.

  There is a piece of paper sticking out, in the section of China, at the end of “The Princess and the Moon.”

  It’s a list. I only manage to read the first few items before my eyes become useless.

  IMPORTANT THINGS TO PACK FOR THE MOON

  1. Dad

  2. Air

  3. Spacesuits

  WHEN TRAVELING WITH CHILDREN, BE SENSITIVE TO THEIR NEEDS

  BRUHITA

  BACK IN THE summer of ’82, my best friend in Moonwalk Village was this kid named JP. JP was eleven, a full two years older than me, and that alone would have made him cool. But he also had a spare bike, a redundant gift from his father, who endlessly drove a truck in Saudi Arabia. The afternoon that he casually offered me use of his extra BMX, I decided that we’d be friends for life. I never stopped to ask him why he chose me; only much later did I realize that, with the small number of kids in the sprawling village of mostly empty lots, he really didn’t have much of a choice.

  Neither JP nor I wanted to stay home. One thing our mothers shared in common was talking about the news in hushed tones, as if they didn’t want us to hear them. All the adult talk was boring anyway and went over our heads. I knew that they were glad that Martial Law had been lifted by President Marcos the previous year, but exactly what that meant—and why they continued to speak in whispers—I didn’t know or care about.

  We’d bike around the subdivision all afternoon, exhilarating in the freedom from school, negotiating the sparsely populated streets named for famous astronauts: the potholed gauntlet of Armstrong stretching across four blocks of vacant lots, the giant speed bump at the crest of Collins near the Clubhouse, and the loose mounds of gravel and sand where Gagarin petered out into more undeveloped land. We’d speed up like maniacs, oblivious of sweat and grime, perform wheelies, and pretend we were Evel Knievel at Snake River Canyon. Bruises from falls were shrugged off, whatever small pains abandoned in anticipation of the next stunt, the next downward slope, the thrill of youth doing reckless things simply because they could be done.

  Our biking circuit always ended at Shepard, where Bruhita lived.
It was JP who christened the strange girl that. It was something only someone like him could come up with; JP was like that. He had a nickname for practically every kid in the neighborhood, myself included—tingting, a thin sliver of a wooden broom.

  The girl was new, because we only noticed her standing in front of the lone house at the end of Shepard around the beginning of summer. Until we saw her there, JP and I thought it was an empty house, like some of the ones in the sparsely occupied village. I remember overhearing my mother, treasurer of the village association, describing its location as malas, the victim of unfortunate geographical positioning. Everyone seemed to think that any house at a dead end had no choice but to welcome troubles that came up the street. But JP and I had decided that the reason it seemed unoccupied for so long was because it was haunted. And Bruhita looked like the type of girl who’d live in one.

  She was strange not only because she lived in a haunted house but because she looked strange. From our fleeting guerilla sorties, JP and I agreed on the following things: that her left eye was bigger than the other, that her hair was unnaturally black, wiry, and wild, that the dress she wore was always dirty, and that she must be some sort of witch’s unnatural spawn. Put together, these assumptions were enough evidence for JP to pronounce her a bruha’s daughter, Bruhita. I didn’t really think she was, of course, but the nickname was apt, so it stuck.

  Just before heading home, JP and I would take in the stretch of Shepard, all the way to the dead end, and, if Bruhita was there—she usually was—we’d ride up to her as close as we dared and shout out “Bruhita!” then “Pangit!” for calling her ugly seemed right, before biking away as fast as we could pedal. One time, I even shouted “Regla! Regla!” because the brown stains on her skirt looked like menstrual blood, not that JP or I even knew exactly what menses looked like. Part of the routine for us was hoping that she’d react, that she’d do something, say anything, but she never did.

  Exposure to the sun turned JP and me into a pair of negritos, riding around the village as soon as we were done with lunch. We took our darkened skin as proud badges of summer. We knew that the rainy season was coming, along with the inevitability of school starting all over again, and so we squeezed in as much as we could do. Even when light rain began to fall toward evening, I’d often arrive home just in time for dinner, when my long-suffering mother would offer thanks to Jesus, Mary, and Joseph for my daily failure to crack open my skull. I was more concerned with catching the latest episode of Voltes V, the Japanese robot cartoon that would later be removed from the airwaves by the President, because he decided it encouraged violence in children.

  The last afternoon we went biking, we found ourselves caught in the first real storm of the new season. It had been drizzling all day, but JP and I went out anyway, unafraid of getting a little wet. The streets were slick, which upped the degree of difficulty of our regular course, much to our delight. We zigzagged madly, compensating for the lessened traction, ignoring the rumblings of the darkened sky and the growing wind, unaware that a fallen tree had shorted out the village’s electricity earlier.

  It was at Gagarin where powerful surges of wind, unfettered by any houses, whipped up gravel and stones in our direction, just as the sky burst into thick and heavy rain. I heard JP cry out nearby, but I couldn’t turn to look, my eyes stinging from the dual assault of sand and rain. I managed to stop awkwardly, catching myself from completely falling as I felt the bike twist away from me. The sound of torrents of rain crashing down drowned my voice, as I called for JP. The harsh downpour obscured my vision, and for a moment I was lost in confusion. I stumbled across JP, his face down on the rocky ground. I knelt down and lifted his head, calling his name, and saw only a large gash across his face, the relentless rain barely giving the wound a chance to bleed.

  The next thing I knew, I was running. I’d left JP behind, and I was looking for help. On foot, in semi-darkness, in a storm, I couldn’t recognize anything. Everything seemed different on a bike. Everything seemed an impossible distance away. Thoughts fought for supremacy in my head, with panic and guilt as their ringmaster: we shouldn’t have gone out, I shouldn’t have gone out—JP is dead, JP isn’t dead, JP needs help, I need help—I left him behind. I ignored the pain in my left foot, afraid to add to my litany of woes. What mattered was that I got help. The nearest house, the nearest house would have someone who could help, help me, help JP. After what seemed like a long time, the rocks and grass under my sneakers gave way to concrete. I wasn’t sure in which direction I was heading until I saw the shape of a house through the heavy curtains of rain.

  I half-limped, half-raced toward the porch of the darkened house and pressed the doorbell, shifting to knocking and calling for help when I realized that there was a power outage. When no one came to answer the door, after all my efforts, I let loose the tears that had welled up in my eyes and sat with my back to the door, my face in my hands. It was the thought of JP lying alone, exposed in the rain, bleeding, dying, that made me stand up and resume my pounding at the door. I was so hoarse that I was unable to say anything when the door suddenly opened.

  It was Bruhita. Which meant this was her house, which meant that I was on Shepard, which meant that the nearest other houses were at least six blocks of empty lots away.

  A full head taller than me, she held a candle in one hand, the other cupping it against the wind. She kept her face down, her unkempt hair a riotous explosion emanating from her head. I fought back the urge to run and stood in front of her helplessly.

  “Help, please.” That was all I could muster.

  She held the candle away and gestured for me to enter her house. Wiping my face with wet hands I followed her inside. The back of her skirt looked soaked in dark fluid. Blood, my mind told me. Regla.

  I stopped walking.

  “My friend is hurt, on Gagarin. He—he fell.” My voice started rising. “Is there someone here with you? Can I use your phone?” I was trembling.

  She looked down at the floor before answering me, her voice low and so soft that I strained to hear her. “There is no one here but me,” she said. “There is no phone.”

  I felt my heart drop as I contemplated running several blocks down to another house. I was startled by a sudden flash of lightning and the crash of thunder. When I looked up, she was very close to where I stood, her head still down. I took a step back, telling myself to remain calm, as wind whistled through the house, causing her candle’s flame to dance.

  “Kilala kita,” she said, raising her face.

  Up close, I could not help but stare at her larger left eye. The skin around it looked like it was stretched to its limit, threatening to spit out the eyeball. In the flickering candlelight, she looked like she’d been beaten up. I wanted to run but felt frozen in place by her declaration, held fast by embarrassment and fear.

  “You ride bicycles,” she said.

  “Oo,” I managed to nod. Yes. Yes, it was us. It was me.

  Behind her words, I imagined an accusation. Behind mine was shame.

  In the moment of silence that followed, standing there dripping water onto her floor, I realized more about myself than I ever had in my life.

  “Gagarin Street is not too far,” she said suddenly. “We should go help your friend. Papa’s umbrellas are somewhere around here. He had many made.”

  I found myself nodding my head, grateful for any help. In retrospect I should have insisted on going somewhere else. I didn’t even think of what we were going to do or even what we could do for him when we got there. JP simply needed help.

  Armed with a pair of old umbrellas she produced from a creaking cabinet, she and I traced the closest path to Gagarin. We stopped only when it became necessary to struggle against the wind, which threatened to wrench away our meager protection. I remember there were words printed in bold letters on both umbrellas, because I fought to keep mine in my hands: ‘Ibagsak ang Diktador!’ We shivered as we negotiated mud and flooded potholes, blinded almost completel
y by rain and the approach of evening.

  I could barely control my trembling, when we came across the bike JP lent me. From there I started shouting his name. Despite the crashing rain, she found JP’s bike, and I found JP.

  He had turned to one side, covering his face with one hand, but he was conscious. I felt a wave of relief wash over me.

  “JP, it’s me, it’s Tingting,” I told him. “You’re going to be all right.”

  Bruhita and I struggled to take JP back to the house, his arms around our shoulders, as we shared his weight between us, while simultaneously holding on the umbrellas at odd angles that did nothing to shield us from the rain. Around us, the storm continued unabated, but I had ceased to care about it, concentrating on getting JP to safety.

  We were just about to turn the corner into Shepard, when flickering lights and an insistent blare of horns announced the arrival of a car. I recognized my mother’s Volkswagen as it came to a halt near us. A flurry of umbrellas bloomed, when my mother and JP’s mother got out of the car, their angry and tearful voices rising above the wind and rain.

  I knew that we were safe then, even if unimaginable punishments awaited JP and me. What mattered was that it was all over. I looked at Bruhita, as the furious and relieved women approached.

  I tilted my head so I could see her better. Her face was half-obscured by JP’s head.

  “Thank you,” I told her.

  She gave the only shy smile I ever saw from her.

  “What’s your—” I began to ask her, interrupted by the sound of my name.

  It was my mother, brandishing my father’s old golf umbrella, reaching out to me. I looked down as I heard her thank Jesus, Mary, and Joseph for our safety, steeling myself for the rebuke that would follow.

  I felt all of JP’s weight on my body, as his mother shrieked, seeing what had happened to her son’s face. In the commotion of embraces, words, and umbrellas that followed, I did not notice that Bruhita was gone.