A Thousand Little Deaths

by Vicky Pinpin-Feinstein

  I woke up much earlier than usual on the day I left the Philippines for the first time. I had been too excited to sleep the night before. I woke up early and got myself dressed with plenty of time to spare. Not having anything else to do, I folded the pleats of my batik-inspired printed skirt carefully, even though these were not creased. I adjusted the straps of the sleeveless top of the same fabric. I was wearing an outfit of muted browns, white, and beige cotton fabric; one that I had chosen especially for the occasion. I thought it was stylish enough even if I was not much into fashion. I also wanted it to have an ethnic flair about it. I walked again, the third time I think, towards the mirror attached to the door of the armoire in my bedroom to have another look. It was a very hot day. I was glad I chose this summer dress. I’d be comfortable in it, I thought, only to realize later once airborne that the plane’s air conditioning would be blasting away during the long ten-hour flight to the other end of the Pacific, and I was chilly throughout the flight.

  I glanced down towards my suitcase on the floor. I opened it and surveyed its contents, making sure I had everything I needed. I opened my purse for the nth time to check my passport, plane ticket, and my American dollars. Then I walked downstairs, suitcase in hand. Tatang saw me as I was descending the stairs. He immediately got up from where he was seated by the dining table, the place where he usually sorted through his mail and papers related to his trucking business. “Let your brother carry that,” he said. “It is too heavy for you.” He looked towards my brother, K.

  “Take the luggage from your sister; it’s too heavy for her,” he ordered my brother. “And by the way, you are coming with us,” he continued talking to him in Kapampangan.

  K. pranced up the short, varnished steps and took the suitcase from me. He took it to the car where Tang’s driver, Ely, was fiddling with the engine, checking things out.

  “Are you ready?” Tang asked me. He was dressed in casual dark-colored slacks, a striped golf shirt, and shiny black leather shoes. Taking out his comb from his back trouser pocket, he slid its fine teeth through his hair. Tatang has always been fastidious about his appearance. Then, he announced, “Tara, mako tana. Maranon pa pero pota matrapic tamu.” (Lets’ go. We’d better leave now. It is still quite early but we might get caught in traffic otherwise.)

  As soon as he said this, part of me wanted to stay, even though I was really excited to leave. Looking at my watch, I found that we had roughly six and a half hours before my flight. Knowing father, who knew Manila traffic well, having commuted between Manila and San Fernando for years, he would definitely want us to leave early. Besides, he was just that kind of guy, who was never late for anything. Anyway, I was too fidgety myself at this time to worry about it; I too wanted us to be early in arriving at the airport.

  The drive should take us about two hours but with all the traffic, it would probably take us about three and a half hours. I’d still have about three hours before my first international flight, which would stop over in Tokyo and then fly on to Honolulu, arriving there early in the morning. Tatang tried to lighten up the growing tension in the car by making conversation about this or that. I could tell that he was nervous too. Maybe he was worried about his nineteen-year-old daughter taking her first trip overseas, I reasoned. Fair enough. I certainly would be too.

  America seemed like such a far-away place. It was a place we had conjured in our minds as the ‘land of milk and honey’ though we were also exposed to the excesses in its culture particularly on drugs and other things that we saw on TV. In the view of conservative Filipino parents, it was a place where bad things could happen to their children. I was thinking these thoughts and trying to come up with ways to tell Tatang not to worry about me. I even thought to say, “Tang, don’t you worry. I won’t go to parties, will not talk to men who are strangers, etc., etc.” But then I told myself, maybe I shouldn’t or he’d just worry more. So I kept quiet in the back seat. Instead, I took out the rosary from my purse. Grandma had given it to me a few days ago as a parting gift. She specifically said it was blessed by our parish priest, and was sure it would protect me from all harm. My deeply, deeply Catholic family, I thought. I loved them, but this whole talk about religion could sometimes be pretty stifling. I thanked her graciously, and said I would always remember her when I used the rosary. Besides, I told Grandma, it is not as if I will not be back.

  We made it to the airport, just as I predicted, with plenty of time to spare. Tang appeared nervous as we got out of the car and he was helping me carry my luggage towards the check-in entrance. Seeing his worried look, I said, in a happier tone than I truly felt, “Tang, don’t worry. Everything’s going to be alright.”

  I didn’t want to tell him what was really bothering me. Despite my excitement about the opportunity to go abroad, there was a strong fear gripping me at that moment, particularly as we saw the machine-gun toting guards at the airport’s entrance. I was afraid that when they saw my name, they would not allow me to leave the country. We had heard about Filipinos prohibited from leaving, as the government wanted to keep an eye on them, as we were still under martial law at the time. My heart was pounding by the time I lined up at the Philippine Airlines check-in counter. I felt uneasy that at any minute, a soldier would grab me roughly and say, “No, ma’am, you’re not allowed to board that plane.” Tang and my brother, K., were standing next to me while I was waiting for my turn at the check-in counter, making light conversation. Little did I know that the fear I had was also my father’s. Many years later, my sister, C. intimated how nervous Tang was about that trip to the airport. He was so worried that I would not be allowed to leave the country. He told her that only after I was able to check in without any incident and proceeded to the gate and said goodbye did he feel relief. He said that as much as he did not want me to go to a foreign land by myself, he was also glad that I was out of the Philippines because, like me, he worried constantly about my safety.

  As I sat in the window seat for the flight to Tokyo, my anxiety continued. I clutched the rosary tightly in my hand. I did not want the chains attaching the beads to break so I loosened my grip. My palms had become sweaty. Finally, the pilot announced that we were ready to take off. This is it. Several minutes later, as we reached cruising altitude and the land below faded, and all I could see from my airplane seat as I looked out were clouds, I breathed a heavy sigh. I was safe. I had made it out. Ten hours later, the plane touched down at the Honolulu International Airport. Disembarking from the plane, I looked around me, the morning sun ablaze over the hills; skies clear, blue and dotted with white like huge cotton balls. I felt the urge to kiss the ground but for the fact that I did not want strange looks sent my way from fellow passengers. As I walked down the tarmac, the iconic Hawaiian palms I have seen in many pictures swayed in the light breeze. As a bus picked us up at the tarmac to take us to the terminal, I still could not believe I was here. On that pleasant April morning in 1979 at the Honolulu airport, I experienced the most happiness I had genuinely felt in years since I was fifteen. It was a feeling I will never forget.

  A few days later, as the workshops at Burns Hall winded down for the day and I was walking down East-West Center Road with the university on one side and the East-West Center on the other, the serene Japanese garden next to Jefferson Hall beckoned me to sit and watch the koi in the pond. I plopped down on the soft green grass and watch the sun’s afternoon rays speckled the trees’ foliage. I enjoyed the silence the garden brought and felt lighter, as if a burden had been lifted. I was floating once again, but this time, conscious of the bliss I felt, and not because my mind shut itself off to ward away horror. Later, I learned to take this memory out and relive it in times when I was reeling from the destruction wrought by the ugly re-emerging heads of my personal monsters.

  The Personal And The Political

  I returned to the Philippines after I completed my fellowship at the East-West Center. The fellowship was part of a scholarship and cultural exchange program and the U.S.
Government issued special category visas called J-1 to foreign scholars in these exchanges, which required them to return to their home country once the fellowship expires. Before leaving the U.S., I explored opportunities to consider graduate school as I discovered that I was beginning to enjoy the institutional culture of academic research found in America.

  Back in Manila, I went about applying to graduate school to American institutions. In between, I secured a job working at a research and consulting outfit and on evenings and weekends, I taught undergraduate courses at a local university. As if these were not enough, I enrolled in a couple of graduate courses at the University of the Philippines. I surmised that I needed to calm the tempest roaring inside me and the distractions were useful in my not paying attention to it. Yet, I was not entirely successful in warding it off.

  One day, I was sitting on a bench under an acacia tree next to a government building, eating lunch with my American friend, J., who was in Manila doing field study for his doctoral degree. As we ate our sandwiches, the tree’s pink blossoms fell down on us. Then we started talking about career plans after graduate school. I told him that I was waiting to hear about my applications to graduate school scholarships in the U.S. I also told him that if I failed to be awarded a scholarship, it would be okay and that it did not really matter. “Why,” he asked curiously. He insisted that I deserved to get it, that I work hard and have good, solid academic credentials. Then he saw how sad I became.

  “What’s wrong?” he asked.

  “I don’t know,” I began. At first I was reluctant to tell him more. But after prodding me further, I told him, “Maybe because I don’t think I am going to live long.”

  “Jesus! Why do you say that?” He looked at me with a total lack of understanding like I was insane.

  “I can’t believe what I am hearing from you. Gosh, you are young, smart, pretty, and the world is ready for the likes of you. Why the hell would you say or worse, think that you are going to die soon,” he asked, seemingly angry with me. “Are you sick?” he asked.

  “No, not as far as I know,” I replied.

  “Then why?” he continued.

  “I don’t know. I just do. I feel it,” I replied and left it at that.

  The thoughts of death at that time in my life were persistent. It was understandable to me but not fully comprehensible. I didn’t expect that the thought of dying young would cling to me for so long; it impressed me that it was occupying every nook and cranny of my brain.

  It was Kumander Dante, who once said, “Freedom from prison is temporary and senseless as long as we continuously live under a shadow of fear and anxiety.”

  He understood. He lived it too. Everyone who has ever experienced the terror of political incarceration knows. Some time ago, I was reading something C.S. Lewis wrote which offered me some understanding on the fear and anxiety that have permanently domiciled within me. He said,

  “It is easy to say you believe a rope to be strong and sound as long as you are using it to cord a box. But suppose you had to hang by that rope over a precipice. Wouldn’t you discover how much you really trusted it?”

  At that stage in my life, the political detention I suffered had come down to a basic choice: life or death. If I chose life, it was one that was controlled by those who enslaved me. If I chose death, then I have given up. I could not detect any shade of gray in a life led under such constant surveillance. Even as I myself did not suffer physical torture, the uncertainty of not knowing whether I was going to experience just that at some point was enough to put me in a tangled web of psychological maladies.

  Then I asked myself, how much do I trust Marcos and his men to do the right thing? How much did I really trust them not to send me back into detention? Not much was my answer.

  For a moment, let us suppose that Marcos’ supporters and critics of the left would claim that Marcos was truly a great leader. They would further argue that it was the left who was responsible for the mayhem and violence in the 1970s. Let’s also suppose that the foreign media and scholars did not write about the atrocities committed under martial law, a period described by one local journalist as “marked by incredible carnage.” Finally, let’s suppose that Amnesty International did not investigate or report on the atrocities perpetuated by both sides.

  For a fifteen-year-old girl, do these suppositions render her story untrue? Were the fear, the anxiety, and the constant threat of danger and safety all imagined? Why would she suffer so much when countless others had endured far worst? These are the questions I asked myself over and over again. Their possible answers would affect me like a contagious disease. It didn’t matter if I was a student, a worker, a wife, or a mother, or whether I was living in the Philippines, or even when I left to live in the United States. It haunted me for decades, not knowingly on my part, but nevertheless, I was always aware of its presence. Not until I reached my forties did this painful odyssey end, and only because an illness finally paved a way out.

  Despite the credible evidence and extensive stories of abuse during martial law told by historians, scholars, as well as its victims, I believe that there will be those in the Philippines who will willfully maintain that this dreadful political chapter never happened. They will be zealous in this belief because they saw Marcos as a good man and one who could not have committed such brutality (though there were enough bloody corpses, had they cared to look) and blatant disregard for civil society. They are entitled to this belief.

  But so are those whose view of Marcos and his administration is one in which corruption, abuse of power, disregard for poverty, and entrenched cronyism weakened the country. They too are entitled to think this way. The two opposing sides are coupled, not in solidarity, but in mano a mano moves designed to repel one another. Moves, whose victims are ordinary civilians; they are those who have suffered and whose lives have not improved. Marcos is long gone and Imelda’s attempts to rewrite history have become muted over the years. But the dirty ways of politics have stayed and remain entrenched in president after president post-Marcos. Filipinos I have spoken to about these issues go even further in saying that the political waters, if anything, have gotten more muddied. While the country’s neighbors have taken advantage of the so-called ‘Asian century’ to lift their peoples out of poverty and generally improve their lot, the Philippines continues to lag behind.

  As I relegated the political twists and turns of the country to the background when I left for America, time and again, I found myself having to deal with the unexpected consequences of incarceration, or more precisely, the trauma, which seemed to dog me when I least expected it. There is no doubt in my mind that its pernicious effects had taken up permanent residence in my psyche until I learned to deal with them. After I was released, I did not know how long I was going to live under such uncertainty and it left me with a defeated spirit. How could it not? The devices employed by Marcos’ rule under martial law rarely stopped rapping at my door. Regularly making my presence known at the camp demarcated the physical and social spaces I inhabited. Each visit to the camp guaranteed the success of these devices in breaking one’s spirit. Then there were the boundaries I imposed upon myself—where I should not go, who I should not associate with, why I must ignore my desire to write, why I must reject a career as a lawyer, a journalist or a writer—all intended to keep me away from trouble. Is it any wonder then that my spirit felt shattered in more ways than I could count? Or, perhaps, I was the type who was susceptible to having her spirit weakened, despite the absence of the physical horror and the brutal treatment of the body. As I look back at it now, I am sad at the mere contemplation about what my spirit could have been like had I not experienced what I did. My heart feels heavy at the thought that I experienced it when I was so young and vulnerable. It was an age I understood to be a transition—the completion of my years as a little girl and on the cusp of discovering the many and varied pathways to adulthood. Instead, this transition screeched to a grounding halt because I had become so
lely focused on staying alive, or at least, in keeping myself away from prison walls.

  After 1973, I began to believe that it was wrong for me to feel the way I did because I had only suffered psychological wounds, whereas thousands of Filipinos endured both the physical and psychological wounds inflicted by the brutal trial of martial law. I convinced myself that it was wrong for me to suffer as much as they did because, after all, I was fortunate enough to make it home that Christmas, while others languished behind bars for years.

  I did not fully understand the debilitating effect the camp ritual had on me until years later. Its effect was not on my radar until illness revealed it. In January 2004, I was diagnosed with thyroid cancer. After the surgery, and while commencing cancer treatment, I saw my cancer doctor every four weeks for a period of almost two years. Before every visit to his office, I had to convince myself that I was going to be okay, but still, I was anxious, and many times, panicked. My body found a way to deal with what was bottled up inside. My body shook; the shaking was distressing, not to mention, embarrassing. If I was walking, I needed to sit down, if only to press my hands against my thighs to keep them from shaking so hard that I looked epileptic. My heart beat wildly inside my chest. I took to carrying a small hand towel or a handkerchief with me whenever I went in order to wipe my abnormally sweaty palms. At the back of my mind, I sensed these physical manifestations were not unfamiliar to me, though I was too focused on the cancer at the time to give them serious contemplation. Also, I was once again preoccupied with dying, and with it, the thought of leaving my two young sons behind. I believed then that I would suffer a similar fate as my mother, who died of cancer when she was forty-four years old, leaving behind many young children, the youngest of which was only four. My mother died only two years after I had been released from prison. So the panic and anxiety disorder that my doctor diagnosed, I mistakenly thought were simply manifestations of my worry about the disease and the untimely death of my mother. My doctor also complained that my blood pressure was always high. I had not been prone to hypertension until then. I prided myself in being healthy except for the migraines that I regularly suffered. I watched my diet and exercise was a regular part of my routine.