“Fetch me a rag, a laundry brush, soap, and some water,” he said. “This is no miracle.”
Junior went away and returned with what the priest asked for. He took them from my son’s hands without a word, knelt on the floor, poured water, sprinkled a large quantity of detergent, and began to scrub the Blessed Virgin’s face away. I lowered my head in shame, placing my faith in the Lady’s provenance, even as my heart thundered.
For over half an hour, Father Bernal was the only moving being in the congested bakery. The crowd outside had made their way within, furtively exchanging glances and hushed conversations that all revolved around the same concern: why was the priest defiling the Virgin’s face?
Then he finally stood up from where he knelt, laundry brush in one hand, the edge of his wet cassock in the other. He stared unseeing at all of us.
“I can’t remove it,” he began to speak. “It can’t be—”
“It’s a miracle!” someone shouted. Junior let loose a cheer, and the succeeding wave of sound drowned the rest of the priest’s words.
The same afternoon, Father Bernal returned with a number of workmen, accompanied by Mayor Esteban and his aides. The mayor took me aside and explained that the town would pay for the cost of a new floor for the bakery.
When his words finally made sense to me, I gave in to the anger that welled from deep inside me, saying things I never should have said, the worst reserved for the priest who coldly ignored me. Instead, he instructed the workmen.
Helplessly, I watched them assault the face of the Blessed Virgin with crowbars and hammers, held back from violence by my eldest children, the weeping kitchen staff, and one of the mayor’s aides.
“But you saw her for yourself,” I shouted at the mayor. “How can you do this?”
“I’m sorry,” he replied, never meeting my eyes.
When the workmen finished pouring in fresh cement, the priest once again dismissed the crowd that watched everything that happened.
“There,” he said to me, just before leaving. “That’s the end of this matter.”
But it wasn’t.
A week later, Amor and Junior repeated their early morning summons. I rushed downstairs, with Benjamin clutching at my side in confusion.
“She’s back,” Amor said, in between sobs.
I followed Junior to portion of the floor where the new cement had been poured.
There on the new cement slab, her dark blurry eyes tinged with sorrow, was the face of the Blessed Virgin.
WORD OF THE miracle’s return spread, and in a matter of hours, the bakery was filled with people. The next days brought even more of the devoted and the curious from different parts of town, all wanting to see the face with their own eyes. By the second week, travelers from the nearest townships started to come, bearing gifts of flowers in the name of the Blessed Virgin. A newspaper reported the miracle in the provincial capital, and within the following month, buses, jeepneys, and trucks, bearing more people, arrived. Within the year, the entire nation knew about the miracle, forcing the immediate refurbishment and improvement of the small airport eight towns away, to help manage the flow of the faithful, for my personal miracle had ceased to be mine, shared instead with everyone who loved the Blessed Virgin as much as I did, as well as with those who only wanted to stand at the edges of her glory and perhaps, by the simple act of pious observation, be transformed.
Throughout this time, Father Bernal, who began as a vociferous critic of the miracle, eventually restrained himself to denouncing the miracle only in private, electing to affect a meticulous pursed-lipped silence, when anyone asked him about the face in public.
Along with the faithful came the skeptics, those who refused to accept the evidence of their senses. They came to look and offered theories on how the face came to be. The accusations of a hoax were painful to hear, but the community gathered around me and supported me through the worst.
But I welcomed everyone who came, be they faithful, skeptical or curious. Junior and I converted a small area, adjacent to the bakery entrance, to a place where people could leave their gifts for the Blessed Virgin. At the end of the day, we would clear out all the flowers, prayer cards, photographs, ribbons, and medals, and send them to the parish church, where they were received without comment by clergy. In the third month, when a visitor offered a gift of money, I was hesitant at first, until she told me that the bakery that housed the miracle should be maintained. I was persuaded by those around me to accept the gift, and I confess that it alleviated some of my concerns about the future.
The bank, three of whose pious board members came to visit, forgave our earlier loan and made a gift of the property, drawing up plans to build a branch across the street from my bakery.
When someone suggested that we charge visitors a few pesos for the opportunity to view the face, I agreed only on the condition that admission for all the native townspeople remain free—after all, we held the miracle in common. Over time, the bakery itself was moved to a small building next door, its original location devoted only to the miracle.
Amor, Junior, and all my children grew up in the presence of the face and the many people who visit, their everyday needs paid for by donations and gifts. In time, they all went to university in the national capital, and from there pursued their own lives, only on occasion, like the other pilgrims, visiting me.
It was only Amor who stayed by my side through all the years, marrying a baker in another town but making him move to ours. She and her husband took over the bakery, while I watched my grandchild grow.
I enjoy his company immensely. His young mind is full of questions, questions that only science and faith can satisfy.
He will learn to treasure both, for our entire future was saved by both.
His mother, Amor, is already teaching him about faith, and close proximity to the Blessed Virgin’s miraculous face has already instilled in this little boy a powerful foundation of belief.
One day, I will teach him the other side of the equation. I will show him the remaining glass vials and measuring tools of his great-grandfather. I will show him how science is transformative, how everything in the universe is the result of action and reaction, of acting out of the need to live, to survive.
Because while it was the faith of my mother that sustained us all through the years, it was the science of my father that provided the oxidizing chemicals that affect the alkaline nature of cement—which, when applied after paint, not only removes the paint but leaves behind a permanent beautiful blurriness.
SUNBOY
JERRY LOVES THE sun, fucking loves it like no one’s business. Mornings, he stays by the window in the living room, tracking the sun over the course of hours, adjusting his position on the floor incrementally, minute by minute, like a beatific sunflower in slow motion. Lunchtime finds him in the kitchen where the kitchen jalousies convert the sunlight into blurred gems of muted colors splayed on the floor and walls, transforming the metal cookware into magical artifacts. Afternoons, he begins to cry. At first, just moisture in his eyes, as he watches the sun go lower and lower from his vantage point in the garage, then as the fading brilliance turns into shades of orange, he mutters to himself, exactly what who knows. Sunboy sits on his wheelchair amid the skeletal remains of Dad’s Ford Fiera, he mourns the dissolution of his solar empire, his agitated mumblings rising in volume as he weeps inconsolably. Mama and I gave up trying to comfort him at sunset, surrendered a long time ago when we realized that there was really nothing we could do, nothing we could say to persuade him that it was only temporary, that there would always be another dawn, another day to look forward to, that the sun would be back, back in the fucking sky for him to love and adore all over again. We just leave him alone, switching on the garage fluorescent when it becomes too dark for us to see him, and wait for him to come back into the house. Sunboy rolls in, a zombie on a secondhand wheelchair, head bowed low, snot running down his nose, his face muddied by the track of tears. He joins us at t
he dining table and eats his food quietly, for even sun lovers know they need something in their stomachs—at least in that regard, Jerry never gives us problems. When dinner is done, he waits for me to carry him to his bedroom. There were times when I didn’t want to pick up his skinny frame, just a bag of bones, but it became routine and because it became routine it became somewhat okay to do. Besides, he’d grown too big for Mama, and there’s really just me.
Jerry isn’t afraid of the dark, doesn’t give a shit if the lights are on or off. He just sits there, whispering whatever it is he says to himself to get him through the night. It’s like some kind of punishment for him, for failing to keep the sun alive with his love. Having stubbed my toes more times than I care to remember carrying him into his room, I pause at the entrance, shift his head from one shoulder to another and turn the lights on. If the sun suddenly really vanished, Jerry’s room would provide untold generations that followed with a shrine of memory. Posters cover the wall, each one of them of the sun, from high resolution photos from spacecraft to artist’s renditions, all of them blazing, shining, and impossible to ignore. Mama got him sun-themed bed sheets, the crappy kiddie kind that has Mr. Sun with a fucking smile. Jerry adores them and refuses to have them changed. We had a small problem with that until I came up with the obvious solution and got him another set, so Mama or I can change his beddings while he communes with his superheated friend in the sky.
When I set him down, he turns his face toward me.
“I’m going to die tonight,” he says. Or, “Goodbye, goodbye.” Or, “The sun needs me.” Or some shit like that. Once, just once, I wish he’d say something like, “Thanks for carrying me, kuya.” Or, “I’m sorry I fucked up your life and Mama’s too.” Or, “Hey, this is the last time you’ll have to do anything for me because, you know what? I’m cured! I’m normal! I can wipe my own ass from this moment on.” I wish.
Tonight Sunboy just says, “I’m going after the sun.”
And I say, “Right.” Then, “I’ll be back to brush your teeth.”
And I go back downstairs to watch some TV. Mama’s there, of course, with a small pot of tea for us. She’s sitting where she always sits, on the couch next to Dad’s big chair. It’s become mine, no big deal for me, but a big deal for her. Sometime after Dad died, I sit down on the couch to watch a video, something stupid I don’t rightly remember. Mama comes out of the kitchen, her mouth open wide enough to catch flies, and insists I take the big chair. So I do, and that’s where I sit. I’m not Dad, of course. I can’t take his place, obviously, but it calms Mama having someone sitting in the big chair, and my ass is the only bet.
We watch in silence, with me changing channels every few seconds. Mama doesn’t mind. She’s just there because I’m there. Sometimes I wish she’d just go upstairs, go to Jerry, but I think if I need a break, so does she. She’s okay just reading a book, the same book I know she’s read a thousand times, some crappy melodrama about a rich oil family in Texas or some such. The cover has a man in a suit with a cowboy hat and an idiotic smile. Once in a while, she looks up and smiles at me. I never look at her directly, but I can see her from the corner of my eye. I know she knows I know she’s looking at me, but I can never bring myself to look at her, or, worse, smile back. It’s fucked up, I know, but I just can’t. I suspect that if I do, the next thing I know we’ll be sipping coffee and talking about feelings or some shit like that. She’ll apologize for everything: for Sunboy, for Deadman, for not having a job, for not having enough money to get a caretaker, for pulling me out of college to become an asswiper, for knowing only eight recipes: adobo, menudo, fried chicken, afritada, humba, sinigang na baboy, sinigang na hipon, and sinigang sa miso, for the shittiness of our lives. Or worse, she avoids talking about anything of importance and tells some stupid story of her youth in Puerto Princesa, how one of her classmates in grade school was named Alice Panti, or what food she and Dad had when they spent a week in Hongkong, conceiving me. No, I prefer the dissonant snatches of TV dialogue and advertisements. There’s no point in talking about something that cannot be changed. After a while, I get up to brush Jerry’s teeth. Mama catches my eye, as I make my way around her, past the wheelchair parked at the base of the stairs, and the look on her face, both sad and proud, is just fucked up.
There are three things related to Sunboy’s bathroom time that I despise, and brushing his teeth is one of them. He’s sitting on his bed, looking at the bathroom door, his head down like always, when I get there.
“Colgate time,” I tell him.
He nods and stretches his arms out, so I can carry him into the bathroom. Sitting on the toilet, he opens his mouth as wide as possible, and I get to work with the toothbrush, scrubbing the remnants of afritada away. His eyes are closed, and I force his head down, not wanting to relive another choking-on-toothpaste episode. He struggles, spraying minty froth over himself and me, but that’s okay, I’m still wearing the same shirt I put on this morning. I make him rinse and spit and wait while I clean up the tiled floor, which is just a matter of emptying a pail of water to make everything go away.
“Need to piss?” I ask him.
Sunboy shakes his head, but I make him piss anyway, holding him by the armpits while we both wait for the piss to come. This, another one of my top three most-reviled bathroom routines, takes anywhere from a few seconds to several minutes. Tonight he’s fast, thank you, God.
“I’m going after the sun,” he tells me again, as I trap him under his Mr. Sun bedsheets.
“You do that,” I tell him, making sure his arms are tucked in.
“Okay,” he says, and closes his eyes.
In my room, I light my first cigarette of the day and blow smoke out of the window. I know Mama hates it when I smoke, but she’s never said anything to me about it. Outside, the world is not quite dark; patches of light from streetlamps and cars interrupt what should be absolute darkness.
I imagine my brother miraculously standing by himself, dressed in a bright orange costume emblazoned with Mr. Sun’s face, going off on a quest to bring the object of his obsession back into the sky.
And I see myself waving goodbye.
THE FORTUNE-TELLER’S BEAUTIFUL DAUGHTER
ONCE, IN A village named Los Posadas, lived a fortune-teller of small skill. His real name was Maximo Diokno, but he insisted that everyone call him ‘Janus the Twin-Faced’. This was because he firmly believed that his art required a degree of distance, dignity, and mystery, and his birth name would simply not do. As Janus the Twin-Faced, he told fortunes every time the town held a fiesta—and these were numerous, as the village observed almost all of the religious festivals and saints’ days on the implacable church calendar. In an act of syncretism that marked the Spanish conquerors’ method of conversion, the church permitted all sorts of folkloric and pagan interpretations of faith, for as long as the saints, the Virgin, and God were venerated. And so it was that the villagers wholeheartedly accepted Maximo’s choice of identity, inspired by a merchant’s mention of a faraway pantheon that had nothing to do with the islands or its people.
Now while Janus the Twin-Faced believed he could glean intimations of the future from the lines of someone’s palms (and persuaded them to believe what he believed), he was not quite so successful in divining his own future, such as the arrival of his daughter, Mira. She came into his life in a basket, bundled in an embroidered shawl, abandoned by her mother on the fortune-teller’s doorstep. Immediately upon seeing the infant’s visage, Janus the Twin-Faced recognized his contribution to her features, read and tore up the note that accompanied her, and began to work her into his act—first, as a means of gaining sympathy (for what father of an infant would speak anything but the truth?); then later, as his assistant, barker, and collector of payments.
“One day, you will also tell fortunes,” he’d tell Mira, unable to truly see any other future for her or him but the repetitive cycle of festivals. But this flaw did not prevent him from dreaming. “Then there’ll be bot
h of us earning, and when we have enough, we can go to Manila, where we’ll be rich.”
“Yes, Father,” Mira would reply, though in her heart she was uncertain. By the time she was ten years old, she knew all of her father’s tricks of the trade—how Janus the Twin-Faced would listen first to gossip at the marketplace or at the funeral parlor, memorizing scraps for later use; how he’d ask leading questions and reveal the obvious answers, while his fingers danced; how he’d begin with generalities and read facial reactions, so when he spoke, he spoke true, and whoever he was reading would be astounded; and how he feigned the presence of spirits with carefully positioned candlelight, smoke, and an uneven table that tipped when he lifted his leg this way or that.
It struck the fortune-teller’s daughter that what her father was doing was taking advantage of the credulous people—the same people from their town and the villages nearby, who came time and time again, listening to him say the same thing, with new querents a rarity. And when she was thirteen, she told him just that.
“I never tell a lie,” her father told her. “People hear what they want to hear.”
“But you cannot really see the future,” she said.
“I can see enough, so people see what they will,” Janus the Twin-Faced replied. “That is what matters. Now go and get ready. We have querents this afternoon.”
What the fortune-teller did not see were two things: the future, and the fact that his daughter was blossoming into a beautiful young woman.
Of the second, he did not notice that young men began to surround her like a cloud of flies, vying for her attention. She did her best to ignore all these men, who, not so long ago, were just boys to her. But now, with newly-growing moustaches and thinly corded arms, they proved an unwelcome distraction to her.
Of the first, Janus the Twin-Faced did not even have time to consider the irony of things, when his foot got caught on the flooring of their house, causing him to fall, head first, against the wooden chest that held his fortune-telling paraphernalia. He died instantly.
How to Traverse Terra Incognita Page 15
