Birthplace

by K. S. Villoso

  Birthplace

  K. S. Villoso

  World Tree Publishing

  Birthplace is a work of fiction. Names, characters, places and incidents are products of the author's imagination or are used fictitiously. Any resemblance to actual events or locals or persons, living or dead, is entirely coincidental.

  Copyright © 2016 K. S. Villoso

  All rights reserved.

  ISBN-10: 0-9981012-0-6

  ISBN-13: 978-0-9981012-0-0

  Published in the United States of America by World Tree Publishing.

  First Edition: October 2016

  1 2 3 4 5 6 7 8 9 WTEP B1642

  To Eirene, Who proved that dragons can be slayed with a baby in the crook of your arm.

  Chapter One

  * * *

  * * *

  My English teacher told us that names always mean something. Names, he had said, are layered; they show hidden angles about a person, like how smart Maximillius’ parents expect him to be or how hammered Ginebra’s parents were the night she was born. Once in a while, they even reflect a higher purpose in life. That afternoon, I had been looking through the window watching a sparrow hop about the strawberry tree with this glazed look on my face, so you can imagine my surprise when he called my name. You see, teachers don’t usually call me. They’ve all but given up on the idea that I could possibly care about anything going on in that classroom.

  I remember glancing up, wondering if I was in trouble, preparing to jump through the window if I was. He had walked the length of the classroom and pointed at me with a chalk. “His name, for example. It means “Saint Paul”. Now who was Saint Paul, class, and what did he do for us? He was a good Christian who defied…”

  His words had been all I could think of when I graffiti’d his car later that afternoon. Me, a saint? Had he been spiking his morning coffee? Surely, that inch-thick folder at the principal’s desk—complete with my name in bold letters on the front—couldn’t possibly contain such a word. He had been new to the school, but not knowing wasn’t an excuse. That’s like saying you didn’t know the bus was going to run you over, even though you were in the middle of the intersection and it was pulling a 70. But I suppose his innocent comment must’ve struck a nerve in me, because the last thing I remember doing was drawing an enormous raised middle finger on his windshield. He had been lucky; I could’ve slashed his tires.

  I always figured myself to be a good son. I used to sweep the floors and pick up my toys before my parents got home. I always answered them as politely as I could, using the appropriate words of respect: “Opo, father. Opo, mother.” Heck, I aced kindergarten.

  Those memories now remained just that—memories from a time long gone. I had been in high school for four years, and I came home one day to see my mother standing at the doorway with a letter from the school in her hands. I could spot the logo a block away. I bent down to kiss her and she didn’t kiss me back.

  “I already called your father.” Her words felt like a punch to my gut.

  “He didn’t have to know,” I said.

  “After what you did, you should know better than to talk back.” She waved the letter at me. “Oh, Pablo, Pablo! What were you thinking? So close to graduation, and you pull this kind of thing on us? What would our family say?”

  I wanted to tell her that she should stop caring about what our family said, but she might slap me, and I didn’t want that kind of drama so early in the evening. So I gave her the kind of nod that could mean anything and went towards my room. It was really small—one bed, a desk right beside it, and nothing else. A picture of me as a six-year-old, laughing while sitting on my dad’s shoulders, greeted me from the desk. I picked it up and stared at it for a long time.

  As I stood there, holding the picture frame in my hands, I heard the sound of a new email message coming from my computer. I had left it running this morning. Normally, my mom would’ve turned it off by now and not let me hear the end of it, but the letter from the school must’ve distracted her. More out of habit than anything else, I reached over and turned on the monitor.

  I scrolled over to my email account and opened it up. The message, as I figured, was from my dad. My finger hovered over the mouse button. The title had way too many exclamation points for it to contain anything but his usual rambling incoherence. What good would it do me if I read what he had to say?

  I glanced at the picture again, and then I clicked. I think that maybe I was hoping I would be wrong, that he actually had kind, encouraging words to say. Or maybe I just couldn’t bear not knowing. If it came from anyone else, I could’ve easily ignored it. Check box, delete. But this was my father. I needed to know.

  I don’t understand why you continue to disappoint me. I had hoped that by now, you would be old enough to learn some responsibility.

  The message more or less fell apart after that. He began calling me all sorts of names for wasting my life away and told me that a young man with so much potential shouldn’t be sliding down the grade ladder faster than a greased monkey on a flag-pole. He talked about college, and old age, and that if I never graduated I would never find a job to help my mom when she was old. He didn’t care about himself, he said, but my mom, because if I continued this way he was certainly going to die. My actions were going to kill him. He used to tell me the same thing if I didn’t clean my room or forgot to pick stuff up from the floor.

  I scrolled down the e-mail. The last sentence caught my eye. I read it once, and then twice, just to be sure. My ears began to burn. I closed the letter and wished that I could undo those last few minutes. I wished myself far, far away.

  Once I was able to gather my thoughts together and take a deep breath, I decided that the biggest dilemma, of course, was that the letter had thrown a wrench in my perfectly good weekend plans. For instance, I had been planning to make myself a hot chocolate, take a nap, and then play some video games into the night. Now I couldn’t do anything at all because his letter demanded that I spend the rest of the day sulking.

  I opened my email account again to read the letter a second time and the plan turned to vengeful sulking. Just because my life wasn’t going in the direction he planned doesn’t mean I wasn’t in perfect control of it. Grades don’t matter if you’re passing, something which I happen to be very good at even when I have a thousand more important things to do. And he could afford to send me to college, so what was he going on worrying about that for? It’s not like I had planned on flunking every entrance exam in the country. I may have motivation issues, but for God’s sake, I’m not stupid.

  He had even insulted my ex-girlfriend. Did he actually call her a dolled-up bimbo who was only interested in me because I had a parent working abroad? Where in God’s name did that come from? She actually got good grades, which I thought he cared about. Okay, maybe he didn’t say bimbo, and she hadn’t been as nice as she could’ve been to him over the phone, but she was my girlfriend at that time and the least he could do was respect my choice. What if I had wanted to marry her? I didn’t, but what if I had wanted to? What was he going to do about it? Disown his only son?

  That thought actually proved tempting for quite a bit. “Goodbye, Dad. Thank you for everything, but you know what? It’s just not working out. It’s okay, though. We can still be friends.” And then that was it. No more nitpicking the way I kept my hair or my choice of company or what I decided to do in my spare time. I’d be free. Unfortunately, I was still in high school and didn’t really know how to find a job that didn’t involve selling bottles in a cart. So I did the only sensible thing there was to do: I tried to hack his email account.

  It took me about half an hour to get through the first security question. It was silly of me not to get it right away, because the question wanted his last
name, and how was I supposed to know he was referring to the English version of it? Santos, I kept writing. Santos, santos, and I even gave him the benefit of the doubt and tried various ways he could have made a typo. Like, you know. Stantos. Or Sabtpd. Before the server could kick me out I finally stopped to think, and wrote Saint. And what do you know—it punched through.

  I walked out of my room, praising my ingenious efforts. That kind of brain exercise needed a reward and I found an unopened bag of shrimp crisps that fit the bill. I lounged about the sofa and ate it in front of the TV. Life was good, even with the boring lineup of Friday soap operas. I finished sucking bits of MSG-flavoured powder from my fingers and returned to the computer. That was when I started cursing. There was a second question. How could I have missed that?

  I took a seat. I read through the question and bit my lip. Okay. It sounded simple enough. “Where was my father born?” it was asking. I paused, thinking, and wrote down the name of my hometown in Daraga.

  “Authentication failed.”

  I told myself to calm down. Of course I was wrong. My father wasn’t even from Daraga. I went on the internet and pulled out a map of the province. How hard could this be? It was simply a process of elimination, and in due time I could be shuffling through his inbox and figuring out how serious he was with his threats or if he was bluffing. It was starting to kill me, not knowing, and I was sure that if I just left this alone the worrying would drive me insane.

  By the end of the hour the server had locked out the account because I was an idiot and they were going to give me 24 hours to get my act together before I could try again. Jesus. Even the goddamned computer was starting to sound like my dad. I pulled the plug because I couldn’t bear to look at the monitor any more and slammed the door shut.

  “Mom!” I called out. “Mom!”

  There was no answer, so I knew she was hiding from me.

  “MOM!” I bellowed.

  She was probably still mad at me. It took a long time before I heard her utterly demure reply. “WHAT?”

  “Where’s Grandpa born?”

  “Guinobatan!”

  “No, not your dad! The other one! The father of the man you married!”

  “How should I know?”

  “How could you marry a man and not know where his father was born?”

  I got her there. She was quiet for a whole minute. I even timed it.

  “Pablo,” she finally said, peering through the window from the kitchen, “is this really the right time for this? Or, I don’t know, less busy people you could be bothering?”

  “What in God’s name are you busy with in there?”

  “I’m working.”

  “In the kitchen?”

  “It’s the only place in this house you can’t disturb me from.”

  I laughed. “Proved you wrong there, haven’t I?”

  “Pablo.”

  “What?”

  “Get out!” And she threw a ladle at me. It hit me on the face.

  You would think that if my father had such high standards he could’ve married a less violent woman.

  There’s this dream I keep having. Instead of the boarding house next door, there’s a yard with a kennel. I am coming home from school. I look into the kennel and a black dog with folded ears and an oval snout barks at me. Each time I pass by he gets thinner and thinner until he is skeleton-gaunt. Before the dream ends I realize there’s an empty bowl beside him and that I haven’t been feeding him.

  Sometimes, he dies, and I wake up sweating and in near-tears, which is strange because I’ve never had a dog in my life that I can remember.

  Sometimes, I see the bars of the kennel in front of me. And my father stands there outside, his mouth set in that firm, disapproving frown, and I try to tell him that I try my best but it’s not possible because every time I open my mouth I can only pant and bark.

  I used to tell myself it’s all his fault. That’s how these things usually go, don’t they? I was too young when he left (just because I was already at the edge of puberty then doesn’t mean I was ready). A boy needed his father by his side. I think I gave a teacher that whole story once when I was younger, after flunking a test on multiplication. I even added a tear or two. Predictably, she started crying with me, and agreed that it was difficult to see the point of getting 99% on a test if there was no father around to brag to. Couldn’t I try, though? For her, for my mother, for myself?

  But it got boring blaming him, especially with the truth that I’m just lazy. That I hate listening in class and all that pretentious bullshit about how getting grades somehow means you’re better than the guy next to you. Also, I heard somewhere that alcohol kills brain cells, which makes so much sense. I really should drink less. Just because every party down the street invites you to join them doesn’t mean you have to agree each time. What’s worse than a beer gut at sixteen? You tell me, because my last girlfriend wouldn’t. She just left.

  I went back to school that Monday and it was all gloom and eye-crust. I’d spent most of the weekend trying to open my dad’s email account from five different computers, trying out variations of every town and village I could see on the map. Call me obsessed, but once I set my mind to something, I’d feel like such a failure if I stopped. Oh yeah, big surprise there; but bear with me for a moment. The difference is that I would think it this time. I really needed to know what he was planning for me. Also, I really wanted to forward a picture of some fat man in a dress doing things to a goat to all his contacts. If that doesn’t get him, well—I don’t know what will.

  Rachel Ann was standing outside the school gates as I came up the rocky path. She was surrounded by about three or four boys (one might have been a bystander), and none of them looked cheerful (except maybe the bystander, but he had one of those faces). I recognized the tall one as her latest boyfriend. They had started going out a few weeks ago and it was all I could do not to puke every time I had to watch them make fluttery eyes or play tongue-tag with each other. The worst part about having a girl best friend is when she describes her new flame to you—and believe me, she is going to want to discuss him. You feel like you’re stuck between a rock and a giant poster of some muscular, naked man.

  Oh, Pablo, he kisses so well.

  Oh Pablo, his eyes are so dreamy and he uses conditioner so his hair is so smooth.

  Oh Pablo, he is so romantic.

  Her boyfriend didn’t look very romantic now. He was pissed about something. I couldn’t tell what, exactly, but I could surmise. Rachel Ann had been my best friend since she first upended a plate of spaghetti on my head in third grade. I don’t remember why she’d done it—I’d assumed over the years it was her basic personality, although she still insists it was because I called her fat. I can’t recall, but knowing me, I must have.

  “Will you stop being a bitch?” Mark yelled, reaching out to grab her wrist.

  “Don’t you dare do that!” she warned, just as I came within sight of them. He said something unintelligible and reached out to slap her.

  You’d think I was going to step in, right, like some knight in shining armour? And ruin such perfectly good entertainment? Are you kidding me?

  Mark’s goons started forward just as Mark reached out and she doubled back and kneed him in the balls. Just like that. I couldn’t feel sorry for the guy. He’d gone out with her long enough—he should know that the safest way to be around that girl was to wear a jockstrap and have health insurance on hand. One of his friends came up to her and she smacked him with her book-bag.

  I didn’t even have time for popcorn. Mark and his friends fled before any real bleeding happened and she was left standing there alone, panting. She saw me for the first time and frowned. “Thanks for the help.”

  “You’re welcome,” I said. I picked up her scattered books from the ground. She glared at me while I handed them to her, one at a time.

  “So where were you?” she asked, dusting her skirt. “I tried calling you all weekend. Your phone’s
off and your mom wouldn’t give me a straight answer.”

  “Oh, here and there,” I replied.

  “Did you finish that book report?”

  I smiled at her.

  She sighed. “You didn’t finish that book report.”

  “You always did know me best.”

  “Pablo, that’s ridiculous. That’s nearly a third of our term mark. Ms. Agnes is going to kill you.”

  “You know, you keep saying that and yet for some reason I remain alive.”

  “You’re a step away from failing. Everyone thinks you’re going to have to repeat Fourth Year. That’s staying in high school while everyone goes off to college, and what’ll your dad say, then?”

  “My dad says a lot of things.” It’s true. Once I fell in a sewage gutter, came home, and overheard him saying I wasn’t his son. I wouldn’t be surprised if he still claims he bought me from the circus.

  “Oh, Pablo. He works so hard—can’t you at least give him something to be happy about?”

  “What’s there not to be happy about? He’s in Canada, an entire damn ocean away, and he doesn’t have to see my ugly mug all the time. Do you want a soda? I want a soda. I’ll pay.”

  We bought sodas from the cafeteria and sat on the corner benches sipping them from ice bags with straws. Rachel Ann could be so clueless for such a remarkably intelligent girl. For example, she claims to be half-Chinese because her skin is pale, but I know it’s because she locks herself up in their apartment and complains about the slightest sunburn. And the mystery behind her eyes is simple. You spend as much time reading in the dark as that girl does and you’d end up squinting too.