Riverrun

by Danton Remoto

  The living room of the house spilled over into the kitchen. The house only had two tiny rooms, but it was enough for us. The owner of the apartment we had been renting in Project 4 wrote to us (in pink stationery with the letterhead “Dr. Antonina Raquiza, Ph.D.”) to say that she’d raise the monthly rent to five thousand. If we couldn’t agree to her new terms, we’d have two months to leave. Mama glared at the letter, then said something obscene about our landlady’s father. A day later, she began poring over the ads, looking for cheaper rent in the suburbs. Papa’s monthly remittances from his engineer’s job in Saudi Arabia would not be enough if the landlady raised the rent, since he was also sending some nephews and nieces to school. Noblesse oblige is how you call it, but it was actually more oblige than noblesse. And that was how we moved to Antipolo.

  It was a long, hot summer. The days were dull and endless, a desert that stretched into infinity. During the afternoons, the heat fell on your skin like a whip. The water in the village water tank began drying up a week after we moved in, so our housemaid Ludy and I had to fetch water from the community faucet in the street corner. Even though I hated studying in summer, this time, I actually looked forward to the first day of summer classes at the university.

  But since Ludy also went home to Albay that summer (to look for a boyfriend and dance in the baile), I did the chores myself. Mama left the house every day for her piano tutorials. I did the laundry and fixed lunch. In the afternoons, I gathered the laundry so easily dried by the oppressive heat up here in the hills. I folded the clothes, then sorted them while watching old Nida Blanca and Nestor de Villa cha-cha-chas on TV. Sometimes, I would read the stories of Estrella Alfon (Ay, Magnificence!), or sketch faces and places on my drawing pad.

  Then in the blue hour before dusk, I would pick up our red plastic pail and walk five houses away to the street corner to fetch water.

  I would line up before the wooden carts full of drums, pails, and recycled gasoline containers. I carried only a pail, but I was too timid to elbow my way to the head of the line. The short, stocky men nudged each other’s ribs and exchanged stories: “Pare, Vodka Banana did it again in her latest penetration movie, Only a Wall Between Us.” The women gossiped about their movie idols: “Sharon’s legs are like a washerwoman’s paddle,” said one, whose varicose veins strained on her legs like netting.

  After a long wait, I finally reached the fire hydrant. From its open mouth gushed water whose pressure was so strong that it swirled round and round my pail, the foam spilling on the dry earth. Then, I walked back to the house where I carefully poured the water into the drum. Then back to the street corner. Again.

  On my way back, darkness had already settled on the hills. The chickens would be roosting on the branches of the star-apple trees, and the cicadas would begin their eternal buzzing. When I reached the street corner again, a young man was standing at the head of the line. He wasn’t there when I left earlier. He must have asked his housemaid to stand in for him, and returned only when it was time to fill his drum.

  Dusk slept on his rumpled hair. Smooth, nut-brown skin. Eyes round as marbles. He wore a maroon T-shirt silk-screened with Mapua College of Engineering. Cut-off denims on long legs, then a pair of blue rubber slippers.

  When he saw me at the end of the line, he walked to me and said: “Uy, pare, you can go ahead, since you only have this pail.” Cool, deep voice. “Thank you,” I said. Then I smiled at him and followed him to the fire hydrant. I kept on looking surreptitiously at his legs. When he looked at me, I would shift my attention to the water beginning to fill my pail, swirling round and round, until it flowed over the lips. I thanked him again, and then gave him my name. He mumbled his name. I smiled, and then walked away. I walked away because I was afraid that any moment now, I would tell Richard I liked him not only because he was considerate, but also because he had such well-muscled legs and clean toenails.

  That summer, the Bermuda grass in our lawn turned brown. We had hoped for a friendly neighborhood similar to the one in Project 4, but we were disappointed. A young childless couple lived in the house on the left. Both were working, holding down two jobs each like everybody else. We only saw them at Sunday Mass. On the right lived an elderly couple with an only child, a teenage daughter named Maribel, who liked to bike around the village in midriff shirts and very abbreviated shorts. Her father was a big man with the face of a bulldog, his voice booming across the yard when he barked, err, spoke.

  The minibus station in Cubao slouched on the street right after EDSA. It was housed in a big, abandoned garage. On the hard, earthen floor, the spilled oil looked like lost, black continents on a map.

  That summer, I enrolled in two courses: Business Statistics and Financial Accounting. I took up Business Management in the Jesuit university because my father said it would make us rich. And so I signed up for the course, although the only thing I wanted to do in the world was to write and to draw. Pencil to paper, lines shaping sentences, forming faces. Or watercolor to paper, letting the paper soak up the rainbow of colors, forming oceans, skies, the infinity of blue.

  But I had to go to business school. And so I left the house at one o’clock in the afternoon, after lunch, preferring to take the minibus rather than risk my life in those jeepneys whose drivers think they are Mad Max. More mad than Max, actually.

  During the first week of classes, I was still adjusting to the hassle of commuting from house to school to house again. It was much easier in Project 4. I would just hop aboard any Cubao-bound jeepney, get off behind Queen’s Supermart, and then walk all the way home.

  But here, I would have to wait for the minibus to fill up with passengers before we could leave. The street would be choked with hawkers selling everything: freshly-sliced squash and okra good for pinakbet, red apples from New Zealand, jeans with fake brand names sewn on the back, tabloids with their headlines in red ink blown up to 72 points Times Roman (“Boa Constrictor in Dept. Store/ Dressing Room Swallows/ Up Female Customers”). Food stalls offered everything, from cow’s entrails floating in lemon-spiked congee to day-old chicks smothered in orange flour, then fried to a crisp brown. And in the air, a cumulus of black exhaust fumes while the Marcoses bled the country dry. Him with his dictatorial decrees; her, with her diamonds and tears.

  Oh, how I wish I could just flee from all of this. There is nothing here, really, in this city and in this country except a big, black hole that sucked you in and drowned you in its thick ooze of oil. I wish I could go away, but to where? I just fixed my eyes on my textbook, even if I could not read by the faint light of the minibus. I was doing this one night and when I raised my face, Richard was just coming in. His white shirt was tucked in his baggy jeans. His shirt revealed the curve of his chest. He carried a T-square in one hand and two thick books in the other. His wide forehead was furrowed. Must have had a bad day, I thought, moving to the right side of my seat so I could see him better. I wanted him to sit beside me, I wanted to feel the warmth of his hand against mine, I wanted to comfort him. But a man with halitosis sat beside me instead.

  The driver finally came. The engine sputtered and roared, then crawled slowly out of the narrow street. Near the street corner, the air became smokier, loud with the cries of hawkers vending barbecued chicken’s blood, barbecued chicken’s entrails (IUD), barbecued chicken’s feet (Adidas), and barbecued chicken’s head (Helmet).

  The shrill sound of a policeman’s whistle rose above the vendors’ cries. At whistle’s cry, the hawkers picked up their wares, then scattered madly in all directions, the charcoal embers glowing eerily in the dark.

  I was sitting in our front yard, admiring my mother’s orchids, whose saplings she had asked from friends and which she had nurtured with uncommon care, now fully grown, the leaves shiny with the texture of skin, and the flowers mottled with magenta and amber, the petals opening themselves layer upon layer to the dying afternoon sun.

  But as the petals opened, I felt myself entering a forest of limbs. Hair like seaweed
s embraced those limbs. The thighs of the men were smooth like river stones. The V-shapes of their bodies glistened with sweat. Leaves like eyes covered their crotches. But under these leaves lay breathing things.

  I bolted upright with a start. I looked at the clock. The luminous hands pointed to almost midnight. My back was beaded with sweat, and in the room there was only unbearable heat. I remained motionless for a while, as my dream slipped away, and I was alone, again.

  I stepped out of the room and headed for the kitchen. I turned the light on and made myself a cup of rice coffee—toasted rice turned into coffee.

  Cup in hand, I opened the front door. My skin brushed against the dry, brittle air. I sat down on the stairs. The cement was cold. To my left, the skeletal branches of the neighbor’s alibangbang tree cut the moon into many fragments.

  I first smelled rather than heard the oncoming rain. The sound seemed to come from far away. The sound grew louder and louder by the second. I left the cup on the stair landing, stood up, and then ran barefoot in the yard. The whole house, the whole yard, the whole village was tense, waiting.

  And then it came, puncturing holes in the night sky, rattling on the roofs, pelting the branches and the leaves: Agua de mayo! The first rains of May!

  In the darkness, the rain’s fingers caressed my hair and my face. It began licking my eyelids, earlobes, and lips. I opened my mouth and let the rain’s tongue roam inside me, while its fingers traveled downward, on my inner arm and my chest. Its lips went around my nipples and navel, laving my warm, innermost spaces.

  Like sunlight, heat rose from the earth, musky heat that entered my soles, warmed my body, and then broke out of the pores of my skin. It was brief but it pierced me beautifully, suddenly.

  I knew now what I would do. I would soap myself in the bathroom, rinse my skin clean, change into fresh clothes that smell good and are crisp to touch. Then I would look for my sheets of Oslo paper in my drawer. I would run my fingers on my sketches of Richard. The rumpled hair and the dark, melancholy eyes. How can I tell him that there is nothing else in the world I want than to be with him? Ludy said that Richard would soon join his mother, who was working as a nurse in the States. Many departures, few arrivals. But now, I have him: He is here, contained in the purity of my ache.

  I would turn the lights off, plunging the house in darkness. Then I would turn myself over to the arms of sleep. Outside, the leaves would still be moist and breathing.

  City Lights

  ANNA CLASPED HER hands on the smooth Formica tabletop, raised her face, and said: “I want to kill myself.”

  Anna stood at four feet and 10 inches tall, and she had the fragile air of a baby. She was a Humanities major who vowed to write the Great Filipino Children’s Story. Nothing reminded me of Anna’s Spanish blood, except her temper: When it exploded, it sent sparks in the air, like the sharp movements of a flamenco dancer.

  And now, she wanted to kill herself. I smoked on, unbelieving. A long line of students stretched before the greasy food counter of the university’s cafeteria. Others sat and tittered with their after-lunch gossip. The voices fell over us, like a net.

  “So, you’ve finally joined them?”

  “Who’s them?”

  After clearing my throat, I answered: “Those artistes suddenly filled with angst after reading Sylvia Plath. Do not forget the ‘e’ in artiste.” I knocked my cigarette ashes onto the tray. “Or Anne Sexton—”

  “I’m sorry, but I don’t belong to them.” Her face flamed.

  “All right, I’m sorry, Anna.”

  The blades of the electric fan sliced through the haze of smoke and steam.

  “I—” she began again, “I want to tell you something.”

  “Here?”

  “Later. I’ve class at 2:30. Psych 21.”

  “I’ll hitch with you then?”

  “Didn’t bring the car.”

  “Let’s take public, okay?”

  “Okay. See you then.”

  “Pare, do you drink?” my classmate, Chito, asked me as we were walking down the stairs of Bellarmine Building. He was wearing moccasins the color of old mahogany. We had just finished our quiz on the pre-revolutionary Filipino writers in Spanish.

  “Un poco,” I answered, pleased with myself.

  He smiled. I wished I had a face like that—clear, smooth skin; moustache carefully trimmed; lips like two delicate half-moons. That, and a muscular body, too. But Chito was just a friend; he never turned me on.“Quieres a beber?”

  “Si, señor. Okay, after that, no more,” I said, raising my hands. “I’m running out of textbook phrases. Where?”

  “Where else but the Blue Box?”

  “Okay.”

  The bulbs on the ceiling seemed to ripen as the night wore on. The art-deco lamp threw shadows on the soft bones of Chito’s face. His hair was black waves tumbling down his head. He drank San Miguel Beer as if there were no classes the morning after, or as if he were drowning something, his bitten fingernails gripping each frosted bottle. All the while, he droned on and on about the war movies he had seen since he was a kid, Papillon and Platoon and Apocalypse Now, and the movies of Sylvester Stallone and Arnold Schwarzenegger. I kept up with his talk although I was beginning to get bored. Instead, I wanted to tell him why Barbara Streisand could only be photographed from one angle, or why Roberta Flack’s “The First Time Ever I Saw Your Face” made me weep, or why I would always be in love with John Lennon (man, the mind, that quirky mind!), but would my macho friend even give me the time of day?

  He insisted on paying, although, I had suggested we split the bill. “It’s on me. I invited you out—and I drank twice as fast as you did.” He groped for his Calvin Klein wallet, called the waiter, and handed him a crisp five hundred-peso bill. After the waiter had gone, Chito showed me a picture of Minnie, his girlfriend. Of Chinese-Spanish-Filipino blood, Minnie had eyes that seemed to glow from a light inside her.

  After dropping me off at the corner of Aurora and Katipunan, Chito’s blue BMW zoomed away, leaving grains of dust in its wake.

  Now, Anna and I were standing in the same corner, waiting for a jeepney that would take us to Cubao. From there, she would take a cab to Blue Ridge. It seemed she really wanted company, for she could have taken a cab direct to Blue Ridge, but did not. I wanted to visit the bookstore in Cubao before going back to our apartment in Project 4.

  I hailed a new jeepney whose miniature stainless-steel horses galloped on the hood. Inside, a flood of psychedelic lights. The B-52’s “There’s a Moon in the Sky (Called the Moon)” bombarded us while we entered the jeepney. We picked our way through a forest of knees. We sat behind the driver. Around his neck coiled a towel that used to be white.

  Anna whispered: “I want to tell you something.”

  “Here?”

  “Yes. I—I don’t know why I should tell you this, but I’ve to get this out of me.”

  I waited. On the jeepney’s dashboard, a portrait of the Blessed Virgin Mary, with a garland of fresh sampaguita buds. Beside her, a decal of a woman whose overripe body spilled out of her bikini.

  I waited. Then Anna said, “I had my baby aborted. Four years ago.”

  I was silent, trying to grope for the pack of Marlboro in my pocket.

  “I’m not making it up,” she said in a soft, painful voice.

  “Why?” I knew it was a dumb question, but I had to speak: My throat was turning dry.

  Silence.

  But when she spoke again, the words flowed on and on. “I fell in love with Edwin, who was already married. I was only 16. But Mama found out… I fought to keep the baby. But Papa—he hit me. Many times. They forced me to—”

  Anna’s fingernails dug into my arm.

  “They forced me, and now, I’m afraid I won’t be able to bear a child again.”

  “Yes, Anna, I understand,” was all I could say. I wished we were somewhere else. The elderly woman across me, hair stiff with spray net and hands on her rosary beads, glared at u
s. An old man bared his teeth white as a dog’s, and gave us a lewd grin.

  Anna’s head was bowed so low I could see the fine hair on the slope of her neck.

  In silence, we got off in front of Stella Maris College. I flagged down a Golden Taxicab for Anna, mentally taking down its plate number. I wanted to comfort her, to offer her crumbs of words. But all I did was wave goodbye. Inside the cab, sitting upright in that straight posture I would always associate with her, Anna’s eyes seemed hidden by mist.

  After her cab had turned left toward P. Tuazon, I walked on, dragging my green rubber shoes in the direction of the bookstore. Neon signs blinked their lies. Jeepneys farted their monoxide fumes.

  And in the night sky drifted the sad moon.

  Papa drove me to Anna’s house for the Christmas party in our old, long car complete with tailfins. He gave me two tall bottles of Davidoff Cool Water for Christmas because I told him it was the perfume I wanted. One was eau de toilette; the other was an aftershave. I told him I only asked for one, but he said that was all right, since they were on sale: buy-one-take-one.

  Now, on the way to Blue Ridge, Papa was unusually quiet. His silent moments were rare, and they scared me.

  “Pa,” I began, “what will you give me for my graduation? I want something that moves.”

  “Bah, if you graduate with honors, I’ll give this car to you! I’ll even have it repainted and accessorized. Just for you. But if you merely graduate, well, perhaps a bicycle.”

  I frowned at this attempt at humor. I wanted to tell him I did not want a gas-guzzler of a car, but I just smiled. Finally, I had passed Algebra last semester, after taking it for the second time. I was taking Statistics that semester. If I got at least a flat B, I thought, I would make it to Honorable Mention.

  “We’re here. No. 7 Hilltop Road, no?” He turned on the overhead light.