The Long List Anthology Volume 5

by David Steffen

  The words make his body twinge all over, but he doesn’t change the channel. He recalls how she tried to grab his arm, how he pushed her aside and asked her: Do you want to die?

  Later that night, back at the station, his captain had clapped him on the shoulder for a job well done. He kept looking at the image of the Virgin Mary behind the shoulder of his superior. Her eyes were downcast, and her mouth was a small, sad curve. He wondered what she was looking at.

  He felt proud; he felt like vomiting.

  You’re wrong, he thinks at the TV. Your brother was not innocent. He was a drug user and a drug dealer, and he deserved to die.

  The news report goes on to tally the number of reported extrajudicial killings that month. Nanay, watching with JM while stringing some beads onto rosaries to sell at church on Sunday, moves her glasses higher up her nose. “That wasn’t far from here.”

  “No,” he agrees.

  “I will pray,” Nanay says, “For your safety. They fight back, don’t they? It’s so scary.”

  He does not tell her that her prayers might be petitioning for the wrong soul; that the Virgin’s image in his mind is now locked forever on a body just beyond his vision, lying at his feet.

  • • • •

  Babygirl and Adriana become fast friends. They spend the underworld-equivalent-of-day playing in the garden, tending to plants, having dance-offs, singing duets. Babygirl has a beautiful voice and often sings about love, in English. Some people want it all, but I don’t want nothing at all, she croons, holding an imaginary mic. One time Babygirl braids Adriana’s hair all over, securing it with a pack of clear elastics they found in Mebuyen’s kitchen. They often walk by the river, sometimes wading in it, sometimes keeping to the bank and drawing in the soft soil with twigs.

  “Where does the river flow to?” they ask.

  “The next place,” Mebuyen answers. They look at each other and shrug.

  Mebuyen mashes rice in a bowl and pours milk over it, but this tells her nothing. She boils bananas in a pot and empties the grayish water onto a plot of soil in her garden, but there isn’t anything to read in the soaked compost. Finally, after a lot of grumbling, she decides to visit the world of men. She sends her emissary, a little maya bird, to let her brother know she will be ascending. She makes sure to add that because it is so rare for her to do so, and her knees are particularly creaky these days, he may perhaps wish to meet her halfway.

  He greets her at Carriedo Station in Manila, wearing a nice button-down polo and maong jeans. Lumabat looks older, but his skin is much nicer than hers, which makes her a little jealous. Mebuyen has not come up in what men might describe as a decade, so she feels proud of her sleeveless shirt and khaki shorts, which make her look like any other manang. She notices everyone holding a small, rectangular skinny box, and glaring at it, their thumbs pounding away.

  “Those? Those are cellphones,” Lumabat says. “Oh, they call them smartphones these days.”

  “Phones? But they aren’t talking at all?”

  “They’re texting. Or surfing the web. You know, Facebook?”

  Mebuyen is mystified, but does not try to understand. The world gets stranger each time she visits.

  Over lunch at Ma Mon Luk, she explains her quandary. “They’re different. You know how I haven’t had a visitor in a while, that men these days aren’t beholden to our magic? But suddenly, there they are, by my river … they’re older, they’re not infants, but somehow they are still innocent.” She pours soy sauce into her mami, brooding. “The river cannot wash their stains away. It runs clear, not dark. They aren’t moving on to the next place. What have you observed?”

  Lumabat chews through a giant siomai. Although neither of them will admit it, the strange textures of mortal food are rather delightful. “Their dreams are very brutal,” he says. “All red and black, very vivid. Very loud. They float up to me, as violent almost as the journey I took to the heavens—it’s mesmerizing.” He takes a sip of 7-Up. “And the sky is full of smoke, though whether that’s from the traffic or gunshots, it’s hard to say.”

  She frowns at him. He sighs. “All right, all right. Let’s wait until the sun goes down, and I’ll show you. But I warn you, it’s not very pleasant.”

  They pass the afternoon walking through the tiangge at 168, and Mebuyen palms a pair of pearl necklaces that she thinks Babygirl and Adriana might like. She has nothing to pay with, so she merely takes their essence and memory, humming to herself. Lumabat buys a metal keychain in the shape of a kampilan.

  As dark approaches, Lumabat takes her hand, and they walk past Divisoria, drifting up to the corrugated rooftops of Barangay 19. They land on the steel and rust, and wait. Mebuyen feels a change in the air. The city is growing electric, and when she opens her mouth to breathe in, she tastes fear.

  Scene A: A masked person on a motorbike rides into a subdivision. Outside his house, a man sits on a plastic chair, smoking a cigarette and rubbing circles around his exposed belly. The masked person stops in front of the man, and the man stands in alarm. The masked person trains a handgun on this man and shoots once, twice. The man falls, hand still on his belly now covered in blood. The masked person tosses a sign by the body: Drug pusher ako. Two children playing one street over scurry for their houses, not even screaming, just running, running as fast as they can.

  Scene B: A woman is yelling at her man, who laughs at her while taking down the laundry, in the narrow crevasse between their house and the neighbors’. Two men storm in, wearing masks, yelling a name. The man raises his hands. Says, “Don’t shoot!” They tell him he’s on their list, they ask him to deny it. He turns, counter-clockwise, towards his woman. He takes a step, they scream at him not to run, he doesn’t run, a gun goes off. The woman drops to her knees, as if she has been struck, but no—it’s only his blood, as she pulls him onto her lap, as she wails like something being slaughtered.

  Scene C: A boy is holding a wooden carton with cigarettes and mints and packets of Granny Goose chips. He is no longer selling. He is on his way home. He walks with his head down, his slippers slapping the asphalt. When he sees the policemen waiting for him he freezes to the spot. The police approach him. They handcuff him; one seizes his arms, the other grabs the scruff of his shirt. They proceed down four streets, to an alleyway that smells of garbage and shit. The boy cries the whole time. The boy says please. The boy asks why. The first policeman, more heavyset, puts a gun in the boy’s hand and tells him to run. He does not run. Instead, he falls to his knees. The first man gestures to the second man, who shakes his head, slightly. The first man raises his gun and fires, and the boy collapses. They leave something next to his broken body before they depart—a small bag with white powder.

  “Why are their lives so cheap?” Mebuyen is trembling; the words are spoken into her fists, balled at her mouth.

  Lumabat is quiet.

  “I think I’ve seen enough,” Mebuyen says. Lumabat nods. He holds her elbow, gently, as they find their way back to Carriedo Station, the streets now mostly empty.

  Mebuyen inhales. She smells the salt off the backs of men who have worked for decades only to die like small animals, and children who go to sleep at night barely expecting tomorrow. She smells the desperation in a grandmother’s twined fingers, praying for her grandchildren to return, to survive. The tang of a woman afraid of what she might find when she goes home, an acidity that spikes in her armpits and the nape of her neck.

  There are too many of them, like grains of rice. It’s more than her breasts can nurse and her heart can hold.

  “It’s good to see you, manong,” she says, patting Lumabat’s cheek, a small sign of affection that is unusual for them.

  He returns the gesture, says, “Would that I could intercede. But alas—it is no longer my time.”

  He returns to his sky, and she sinks down to her world. She does not go to her house immediately. Instead, she stands in the river for a long time, wondering when she stopped knowing how to cry.

>   • • • •

  The boy turns up the next day. He starts his story almost as soon as she sees him—after he stops gawking at her. He tells it in a breathless rush as she takes him to her hut. She doesn’t have the heart to tell him she already knows.

  He finishes with, “I wanted to be a policeman, ma’am. I wanted it so badly. Since I knew I couldn’t become a ninja like Naruto, it was my one and only goal. I was going to protect everyone. I was going to be astig, and fight the bad guys, and wear a cool uniform. I studied so hard for it. Honor student po ako.” He gulps, swipes at his eyes. “I still want it, even if I know I can’t ever be. Even if that happened. That’s crazy, isn’t it? I’m crazy. My head’s broken.”

  “No, it’s not,” Mebuyen says gruffly. She palms the top of his skull, whole beneath her hand, and kisses his salty forehead.

  • • • •

  JM cannot face his mother. She might see the welt under his eye where he was struck by Sir Marco. She might ask him why his boss would do such a thing, and he would have no answer. My hands shook. I didn’t say no, but I didn’t fire my gun, either. It felt wrong. It was wrong. I think it was wrong. She calls to him from where she is ironing his shirts, asks him how his day went. He says he’s tired, that he’s going to take a bath.

  Seated on his narrow bed, he tries to look at nothing. Instead he finds his eye drawn, again and again, to the diploma hanging on his wall. The Philippine National Police Academy hereby confers upon Juan Miguel G. Pulag the degree of Bachelor of Science in Public Safety, with Secondary Honors. The gothic font, sharp letters spelling out his name, always made him proud. It told a grand story, of a boy from a barrio and his mother, her hands raw from washing clothes, yes, you’re familiar with that story, it moves your heart on Sundays or in the right Globe Telecom ad, it’s a story of inspiration. Because he made it. Against all odds, against the estranged and womanizing father, the so-so grades in elementary, the looming garbage mountain that formed the backdrop of JM’s childhood—he finished high school, he finished his training, he became a policeman, like he always wanted to. How Nanay wept on graduation day, her lips quivering as she fastened the medallion to his shirt. And, a few weeks later, with his first professional fee, how he had treated her to a meal at Aristocrat, even going so far as to order overpriced Coke from the menu.

  As he looks at the certificate, a stain appears at the corner and creeps across, slow and inexorable, like the trickles of blood beneath his victims. Not his victims—the victims. He is not victimizing anyone. He’s upholding justice. He’s carrying out the orders of his president. They’re supposed to eliminate every last one of them; he understands this, so he is mystified by the pain in his gut, the way he blinks repeatedly because there is no stain, that’s impossible. He stands and walks over to the certificate. The parchment is clean, dull cream protected by the cheap frame from National Bookstore.

  He turns to the mirror on the opposite side of the room and touches the puffed skin beneath his eye.

  “Sir,” he says aloud. “Sir, there are other ways to do this.”

  He doesn’t sound convinced, even to himself.

  Over dinner, Nanay comments on his eye—of course she notices it beneath the band-aid. He tells her some overly rushed commuter struck him with his elbow in the LRT. She nods, because she cannot fathom him lying to her.

  • • • •

  The boy’s name is Romuel. He’s a bit makulit, but painfully earnest. Mebuyen overhears him and Babygirl telling each other dirty jokes, and rolls her eyes. They chase each other around the river, holding Adriana’s hands as they splash in the water. They swing her between them on counts of one-two-three-wheeeee!

  Romuel is invested in the mystery of his death—in what it could mean. He wonders whether it can change things, and it shifts the peace of their days. Aren’t people talking about it on Facebook? Twitter? Insta? Won’t someone have to pay? Babygirl is empathetic. Adriana is fascinated. “Because it can’t just keep happening,” Romuel pronounces. He’s drawing a gun in the soil with a stick, three dead bodies next to it: a girl, a boy, a woman. Self-portrait of a slaughter. He is not afraid to think about it. “It has to stop somehow. I think. If I was strong and old I would stop it.”

  “How?”

  “I don’t know. I would definitely do something. Especially if I was a policeman.” He shades in the pools of blood.

  “But the police killed us,” Adriana mutters. She pokes more holes into her sketch-body with a finger.

  “I know that! Stupid girl!” Romuel springs to his feet, throws his stick down, scuffs his own drawing with his foot. Adriana bursts into tears. Romuel walks away.

  Babygirl wraps her arms around Adriana and rocks her. “Let’s not fight. None of us are wrong. We’re not wrong.”

  Romuel walks ten paces, turns around, walks back, scratching the side of his face. He apologizes to Adriana. Offers to draw her SpongeBob.

  Mebuyen watches all this from a short distance away, sucking on her cheeks. She pats one of her breasts absent-mindedly, and thinks about human pain. Does anything make it worth it? Do they gain something, from feeling the world, feeling everything as if it were fresh and raw?

  • • • •

  The little maya bird roots around in her hair before delivering Lumabat’s message: Is there a boy named Romuel with you now? He’s all over the news. They’re asking for justice. They’re speaking his name, on the streets, on the web. They’re chanting his name.

  Mebuyen closes her eyes. She mouths their names; tries not to think of the countless others she has let go of, will let go.

  • • • •

  It’s Romuel who asks, over dinner one night, “Why can’t we move on?”

  Mebuyen figured this time would come. She doesn’t admit that some part of her was hoping she might never be asked. The other two put down their utensils, and look expectant. Mebuyen stands and beckons, warns them not to let go of each other. They link hands, and with the steely determination of an old woman who has felt fury and sorrow in endless cycles for eternity, Mebuyen walks from her world into that of dreamers. She rips right into the darkness so that it bleeds rainbow ribbons around them. She knows who she is searching for. When she finds him, he is curled up into himself, already shivering.

  • • • •

  Juan Miguel Pulag wakes up in a dirty alleyway. An old, flabby woman in a duster, with monstrously frizzy hair, is staring him down. There’s a greenish tint to her skin, and he cannot help but notice that her breasts are enormous. He knows this is inappropriate, but that’s just a tangential thought; he’s mostly preoccupied with the three figures behind her. A little girl in a SpongeBob Squarepants sando; a beautiful drag queen in what could be a prom dress; and a boy with an impish smile, though the mischief doesn’t reach his eyes. There’s regret, instead. And a growing ember of what might be rage.

  JM’s eyes move slowly from one to the other. His chest spasms.

  He scrambles to his feet, tries to run. The little girl scurries and blocks his path. Her blood all over her grandmother’s shirt. He remembers her name, and vomits into the shit-smelling concrete.

  “I don’t think this is only your fault,” the old woman says, “But you have to apologize, just the same. Then the river will start flowing again.”

  “Oh, is he the one who did it? Sayang. He’s cute pa naman.” The drag queen walks up to him, inspecting his face, and he backs against the wall, sweating. Are we pigs, that you can treat us like this?

  “The entirety of this is bigger than him, and carried by many, of course. But he’s one of the few I can get through to.” The old woman comes closer, and he screams, unable to help himself.

  “Stay back!” he shouts. “I’m police! I’m trained! I don’t want to hurt you!”

  “Then don’t,” she says curtly. “I don’t wish you harm, either.”

  “We’re trying to do the right thing,” he stammers. He can feel every drop of sweat sliding down his back. He is trying to r
ecite a Hail Mary and not lose his mind at the same time. “We’re trying to clean up the Philippines. They’re wrong, they’re hurting our society, I want—I want my future children to be safe.”

  He pulls his gun out. She gazes at it warily. “Put that down.”

  He raises it.

  “Manang Em!” The boy steps in front of the old woman, his arms spread out. He glares at JM. “You will not hurt her.” His eyes are a mirror: that’s definitely rage, burning in them, but grounded in the unshakeable knowledge that what he’s doing is right. He looks so much like a boy JM recognizes that his finger trembles where it’s hooked against the trigger.

  “I’ll be all right, Romuel,” the old woman says. “He can’t hurt me.” The boy moves aside, but stays close to her. Protecting her. As a man should.

  Romuel. Romuel de Vera. Romuel de Vera, seventeen years old, an honor student. He wanted to be a policeman. His parents loved him very much. How do you sleep at night knowing you killed an innocent? Hashtag Stop the Killings. Hashtag Justice for Romuel.

  JM retches into his closed mouth. He swallows.

  “I don’t see how the mountains of bodies is cleanup,” the old woman says. “I don’t see how nightmares is your reward for something good. Where is your mercy? Where is your sense of doing what’s right—what one human would do? I am not human, and even I know.”

  In her eyes he can see beyond himself, to some space where there is a small boy who wants to be a policeman, wants his mom to stop scrubbing her hands raw, wants his dad to see what a fucking fool he was for leaving them, wants to do the right thing, always. There are other ways to do this. But how can it be wrong, when everyone else is doing it? How did he become this? The boy next to her is the boy from his memories, and the boy next to her is dead.