“You’ve got to finish school somehow,” I mumbled.
She gave a knowing laugh. “That’s all that matters to them, isn’t it? Get good grades. Finish school. Be courteous. I work so hard and I just want what’s best for you. How hard is it to be what I want you to be? It’s like they don’t understand that we’re human and that we have problems, too. ” She fell silent and pressed her head against my shoulder. I could feel her heart beating.
“Let’s run away, Pablo,” she murmured. “Somewhere far, far away, where they can’t catch up to us.”
“It won’t work out,” I whispered. “We’ll argue. Probably starve to death while arguing.”
“It doesn’t matter.” She looked at me, and for a moment I half-believed she was sincere. “I just want to go to a place where I don’t have to hear them anymore.”
“That will never happen,” I said. “Their words stick. Like glue. Or nails. You close your eyes and you can hear them all over again.”
She shrugged. “I know.”
We fell asleep watching TV on the sofa. When I woke up again, the rooster was crowing and Mike was walking through the front door, which I had forgotten to lock. He winked as he saw me. “You people all right?” he asked.
I rubbed my eyes. “Never better.”
He held out a paper bag that smelled like fresh, hot bread. “Got breakfast.”
“Damn,” I said, my mouth watering. “We don’t have hotdogs.”
He shrugged. “Oh well.”
So we ate the small, round sweet-bread with margarine and sugar, which was just as good. Mike told us my aunt had been letting her tongue loose all over town. She’d stayed over at a neighbour’s house, but he thought it wasn’t very safe to stick around and wait for her to come home. “That’s not fair,” I said. “My dad owns this house.” Even though it made me want to puke to talk like that, it was the truth. My aunt really needed to get knocked down a peg or two.
“Well,” Mike said, chewing thoughtfully. “Nothing you can do. Maybe you both can go to the mall or something.”
“This early?” Rachel Ann said, which surprised me, because I never knew her to turn down a trip to the mall for anything.
Mike rubbed his jaw. “If I wasn’t busy today, I could take you guys somewhere but—here, Pablo, maybe you can visit your father’s old uncle. He’s been coming by here once in a while.”
“Who?” I started to ask, and then suddenly I remembered. “Old Ciskong?”
“That’s the name! It’s just an excuse, mind. Probably won’t get into trouble for it and it’ll get you both out of town for at least a day, if not more.”
“Probably,” Rachel Ann grumbled. She wiped a speck of margarine off her lip. “Where does this Ciskong live?”
Mike scratched his cheek. “Down south somewhere, past Camalig. Little village or barangay. I’m not sure. Sakud? Sakul?”
Rachel Ann rolled her eyes. “Great. Send us off to the middle of nowhere, won’t you?”
I patted her head. “I don’t know. It could be worth a trip, don’t you think? I’m sure people will know when we get there.”
For what it’s worth, I wasn’t being totally stupid about it. Before we headed down to the jeep terminal I went to the ’net café and punched in Sakud and Sakul and any other combination I could think of. None of them worked. By then it was almost noon and I knew if my aunt hadn’t found us yet she probably would very soon, so I dragged Rachel Ann out of sending a very nasty email to Mark and boarded the next jeepney to Camalig. She was frowning the whole time. I was all smiles. Looking back on it now, I don’t know why. If I had known what waited for me at the end of that road, I would have never even gone at all. I would have taken my bag and the drug-store soda and my best friend’s hand and high-tailed it back to Manila as fast as I could.
Chapter Four
* * *
* * *
It rained while we were in the jeepney, which made it better for me since I was stuck uncomfortably between a woman with armpits that smelled like week-old socks and a man petting his rooster. Not that there was anything wrong with the rooster, but it felt pretty weird having to stare at it. Rachel Ann, for her part, was wedged in a corner beside a man with a child on his lap and a man in a dress. No kidding; he didn’t even bother to shave.
I stuck my arm and my chin through the window, ignoring the torrent. Wet with water is always better than wet with sweat. No one in the jeepney really spoke to each other, other than the usual banter accompanied with the exchange of fares. “Bayad! Bayad daw!” Once in a while someone would call out and tap the steel roof with a finger and the jeepney would stop and they’d clamber out, newspaper or umbrella in hand, and run down the road so fast it seemed as if the rain gobbled them up.
We jumped off some nondescript road the driver pointed out to me. It was still raining pretty hard, so we hid under the tin roof overlooking a small store. Rachel Ann got us some packaged cakes and more soda for me. She had ice-cold bottled water for herself.
I glanced at it from the corner of my eye. “You know, that’s probably recycled tap.”
She glared at me. “I’m sorry. I like to watch my calorie intake nowadays.”
“Care to explain what you mean?” I asked, sipping the straw.
“That crap is full of sugar.”
I pointed at the half-eaten cake in her hands. “So’s that.”
Her eyes became dangerously close to popping out of her head, so I decided to let it go. I returned the glass bottle to the shop owner and leaned over the wooden counter. “How do I get to Sakud?” I asked.
He furrowed his brow. “Sakud? Never heard of it.”
“Sakul, maybe? I don’t know if it’s a town or a village or…”
He thought about that for a minute. Behind him, a small TV with bunny ears droned from the top of the refrigerator. You could see some game show host dancing with a handful of half-naked girls through the static. “Sakul,” he finally said, scratching his belly. “Yeah, I think I know. You should ask the tricycles down the road. Just over that way. Think it’s just a small farming community, or something.”
“Thanks.” Because he was so helpful, I went ahead and bought a few smokes. I lit one and tucked the rest in the back pocket of my jeans. Rachel Ann stared at me when I got back to her.
“You really shouldn’t have that in your mouth,” she said. “That’s not good for you.”
I blew smoke under the dripping gutter and coughed. “Could’ve said that about Mark.”
“Oh. Oh really. You pig, you’re just that out of ideas now, aren’t you?”
I sniffed. “You’re seriously still thinking about him?”
“I’m not. You’re the one who seems incapable of not bringing him up.”
“You looked pretty bummed back at the café. Did he email you or anything?”
“He didn’t,” she said. She started playing with the empty cake packet. “He doesn’t check his email that often, anyway.”
“Bet you wish you took your phone now, huh?”
“Pablo, go screw a turkey or something. I’m sick of your shit. What did the guy say? Where do we have to go?”
“A tricycle, he’s guessing.”
She frowned. “He’s not sure?”
“He’s sure the drivers might know something.”
She groaned. “That’s ridiculous! What if we get lost? You and me are gonna get pegged for city folk a mile away. What the hell are we doing here, anyway? Do you even know this man we’re visiting?”
“To be honest—no.”
“Jesus Christ, Pablo! This isn’t how we hide from our parents. Face it—we’re in trouble either way. We should just get back home and take it.”
“That’s not…” I pulled at the cigarette with my fingers and gave her a serious look. “I just want to visit this guy, ok? We’re not gonna get lost. Trust me.”
“I do trust you, Pablo,” she said. I wondered at that. Was she just joking around again? Turning the conversation
around so it would bite me in the ass later? I smirked at her. By then the rain had dwindled into droplets not fit to shower a rooster. I motioned to her and walked out underneath the grey-blue sky.
Only one man knew how to get to Sakul, apparently, and we had to wait at least an hour for him to get back from his last trip. When we told him where we wanted to go, he scratched his neck and asked for fifty pesos up front. I didn’t like his tone, but I figured there was no way I was about to turn back now. The memory of my father’s vicious words had lit a kind of white, hot rage within me. If someone had come up and told me that the way out stood on the other side of a deep chasm, I’d have jumped without another word.
The nice thing was that it was still raining and we had to share the tricycle with no one. Rachel Ann sat in the very corner of the plastic-covered seat while I took the other end, my foot planted on the step outside. The taste of steel and wet earth clung to the roof of my tongue. The ride was smooth for the first fifteen minutes or so—we just sped down the highway, past forested hills and hectares of rice paddies. Afterwards we took a turn and suddenly there was no road—the only thing that stopped us from rolling back was the revving, heaving motorcycle, its engine struggling up the rocky slope.
We reached the end of a narrower road and the driver pointed. “This is the best I can do,” he said, wiping sweat and rain off his face with a white towel. “You’ll have to walk the rest of the way.”
Then he left us, and I glanced at Rachel Ann and grinned, and she had that look on her face again. We crossed a dirt path that had deep tire tracks from the last unfortunate tricycle that tried to go further than our wise driver did. Rachel Ann got mud in her socks, but before she could start getting madder at me, the sun came out. We kept on walking, passing more rice paddies and bamboo fences, but we saw no houses or people in sight.
“So we just wait till we find someone who’ll point us to Ciskong?” she asked.
“Mmm hmm.” I looked her up and down. “You shouldn’t have dressed so—so—”
“Oh, bite me.”
We were quiet for a good while after that, except for the panting; it was quite an uphill climb. Finally, she did open her mouth. “I miss my dad,” she said. I had no words for her, so I pretended I didn’t hear, but she started walking behind me and continued complaining as if she didn’t care. “I miss how he used to smile at me all the time, ask me how my day went. I miss how we’d go places, just me and him.”
“Hey, at least your dad smiled at you all the time.” I pretended to wipe the mud off my runners.
She touched my shoulder. “Pablo—”
“Ah, yes, it sucks your parents got mad at you and that your dad may or may not be cheating on your mom, but you know what, Rachel Ann? That’s water under the bridge. At least your parents have time for you. Every summer you’re off running to Boracay or Palawan or—or something, taking all those pictures and smiling all the damn time. You don’t have to sit around like I do waiting for either of them to stop being busy making money just so they can pay attention to you, and when they do, it’s to point out all your little mistakes just so you can get mad and they can say you’re out of control.”
I didn’t know where that came from. I just stood there as all of that gushed out, and by the time I realized I was done Rachel Ann was staring at me like she’d never stared at me before. I got angry. I wanted to throw something and smash it to the ground.
“That’s not fair, Pablo,” she said. “Your parents give you everything. And surely you remember them spending time with you.”
“Rachel Ann, if you shit on rice, it doesn’t matter if you’re just nibbling the corners, the damn meal is ruined. Every time I remember being happy with them I also remember feeling that I’m not good enough. No matter what I do, it’s not good enough.”
We were silent again. I stopped a few minutes later to remove my damp socks and stuff them into my pocket. Rachel Ann stood nearby, her mouth clamped shut. I instantly felt sorry I let myself get carried away. “Look…” I said. “You and your parents, you’ll be fine. You’ll come home, they’ll forgive you. Eventually they’ll probably forgive me, too.”
She started to say something, but I never got to hear what it was. Someone came around the path and she turned to him instead, calling out. “Hello! Can you help us? We’re trying to find some guy, and…”
The figure was a young man, probably a year or two older than us—tall, brown, and clad in a straw hat and simple farmer’s clothes. He wore a cool expression on his smooth-shaven face. He turned to me first, and then he regarded the suddenly-blubbering Rachel Ann, as if just noticing that she was there.
“We’re looking for Old Ciskong,” I offered, using the dialect. I pushed her aside and nodded at him. “I’m his great-nephew.”
“Ciskong,” the young man repeated. He narrowed his eyes. A lock of hair fell across his forehead while he thought this through. Maybe I’d been spending too much time with Rachel Ann, or maybe I was a girl in a past life, but I could swear I heard her swoon. “Come with me,” the young man finally said. His voice was deep and husky. “He’ll be in the fields at this hour, but I suppose you can wait at his place.” He gestured to us. He was quiet the rest of the walk back and it was only when we got to Ciskong’s hut that I realized he’d spoken in Tagalog.
No animals greeted us in the yard. I didn’t like dogs, if my irritation at that drooling moron my aunt owned back in Daraga was any indication, but I expected one (or God forbid four) at least. Not even the shadow of a hen crossed the yard. Our guide went up to the door and tapped it. It swung open and he beckoned for us to follow him inside.
The floor and the walls were made of bamboo. The chairs were bamboo, too, and so low that when I sat in one my butt sank sight unseen and my legs kind of threw themselves upward. “So how long until Ciskong comes home, usually?” I asked, the silence fraying my nerves.
Our guide shrugged and ran a finger over the small TV close to the window. Rachel Ann appeared beside me then, having had trouble with removing her shoes by the doorway. She squeezed my arm and nodded at him. “I’m Rachel Ann,” she said. “By the way.”
He didn’t smile. He just nodded. “Enrique,” he said. He stared at her. It was the kind of blank stare made by someone who didn’t look like he’d been around people for very long.
No one was looking at me, but I said, “And I’m Pablo.” They didn’t seem to hear. I sighed. Call me paranoid, but I could see where this relationship was heading and I didn’t like it one bit.
Lovesick. I know the word all too well. First she starts fluttering her eyelids, gasping and hanging on to his every word, and then she’ll start flirting back and become oblivious to all else. Back when she first met Mark about two months ago, not long after he was transferred to our school—well, let’s just say it was like watching a cat that knows you have a can of tuna in your hands. It’s despicable. The worst part is that she knows how shameless she’s acting, but she’ll be damned if she does anything to stop it.
And to be honest, you’d think I knew everything she was capable of, but this guy Enrique seemed to be a new personal high score of sorts. I’d never seen her work so fast before. The clock had barely moved when I realized that she’d left my side and was sitting beside him, having coerced some sort of conversation out of him. It involved—of all things—water buffalos. Apparently he took care of them. Probably not very well, if the bored look on his face was anything to go by. I felt sorry for him and eventually suggested that he could leave us alone if he was busy. He took it like someone had poured hot water on him and left for the back door—assuming there was one. Maybe he just went to the kitchen and jumped through a window.
“Now why’d you do that?” Rachel Ann asked.
I bent closer to the TV to turn the volume up. “Because you’re like some pig in heat.”
“Excuse me!” she retorted. “Is that how you talk to girls?”
“You’re not a girl, you’re a roll of tape. You�
�d stick to anything with hair.”
“That doesn’t even make sense!”
“Aren’t you supposed to be pining for Mark? You know, the wonder guy? Your boyfriend?”
“He’s not my boyfriend,” she said. “We broke up.”
“Not formally.” Not that I particularly cared about her affairs, but I hated having to be her wet rag. Having to pry her loose between two guys (one who seemed to have a ton of issues) was something I was not looking forward to. “You told him you wanted to take some time off, or some shit. He didn’t look like he took that to mean that you broke up with him.”
She looked at me. “Now, Pablo, since when did you start caring about Mark’s feelings?”
“I don’t,” I said. “But when they get hurt he’s bound to lay it on the nearest sop and for some reason I get the feeling it’ll be me. And I don’t know if you’ve noticed, but he runs with a pack.”
She laughed, which was unfair, because I couldn’t see what was so funny. “So what is it about this guy?”
“What about him?” she asked. “He’s nice. I didn’t expect that.”
“Umm, what?” Was it just me who noticed the radiating waves of irksomeness? And she complained all the time that I could be more of a gentleman. I started to say something about that when I noticed she wasn’t even listening to me at all. She was just sitting there with her knees drawn up under her, playing with her hair.
Mang Ciskong arrived so silently that by the time I noticed he was there, he’d already crossed half the living room and was staring at us with that wide, yellow smile of his. “Julio’s boy, is it?” he asked. “I knew you would come.”
“You knew? What do you mean by that?”
He turned to Rachel Ann. “And you are his friend? Well, you’re welcome, too.” He licked his lips. “But I’ve forgotten my manners. You would both be starving by now—it’s past lunch! Enrique? Where’s that boy got to, now? Enrique!”
Birthplace Page 5
