The Invisible Invincible Ones

MAIA GAPUD

How did it feel? Well, it was the strangest thing. One day, I woke up, and the world was suddenly in black and white. It was like going through the looking glass, and on the other side, the world was toned down, calm, muffled.

Yes, that’s why they call it the Silence. It insulated me from the outside world.

Though I was bombarded with images on my TV screen, it all felt so far away. I watched the news and saw people lining up outside hospitals; The doctors armored from head to toe in their PPE; Politicians raging and rambling on and on for hours; People stranded, jailed, sleeping on cardboard waiting for a way to get back home. I heard their cries and the desperation in their voices. Every single moment to them was a matter of life or death.

But I was untouched and watching from a distance, on safer shores. My own little island, where the tides were perpetually stilled.

Oh, I’ve been out of my apartment, of course—to the grocery store and nearby talipapa. But each time I stepped out onto the gray pavement, I felt it. Everyone in masks, heads down to check their phones. “No one can ever touch you, nor you them,” the Silence seemed to say to me. As long as I didn’t interfere with the outside world, it would leave me be.

Sometimes, I thought I was hearing ghosts. Shadowy voices calling out to me, begging me to step back into their side. “You have to see this,” or “Don’t you remember?” or “Please know that I love you.”

But they always left me alone eventually.

Dreams are more vivid than real life, if I’m being honest. I once had a dream that the woman I loved was dying. In the dream, I could feel the full weight of myself sitting beside her bed—ashamed of how much space I was taking up—could smell the sweat and taste the salty beads of tears rolling down my face. I grasped her cold, bony hands in mine firmly, desperate to keep them warm, but I could feel her escaping me. I squeezed harder, feeling her flesh and sinews in each finger. The sound of her faltering breaths swelled in the air like the last notes of a melancholic ballad, the type of song that starts out sweet and sultry and euphoric, but whose echoes could haunt you forever. A dull beep replaced the sound, droning on...

When I jolted awake, I couldn’t even remember her face or name. The Silence washed over me, prodding me to go back to sleep.

Days molded together and I barely had to think about what to do next. My routine was laid out for me. I busied myself, poring over one task to the next. I prepared my meals mechanically—the taste didn’t matter anyway—and spent hours keeping my small home spotless.

I spent a year of my life without crying once. Not for the faceless names, nor their tragedies.

Even when my uncle died, I didn’t cry. It’s been years since I’ve seen him, after all. He’d been in the hospital for barely a week. Another five years and he would’ve lived to be a hundred.

I tried to think of a happy memory with him, but when I couldn’t, I realized that it was for the better. His photos were all over Facebook, with people writing lengthy dedications and letters as if he’d be able to read them. Not a word from them before this, but suddenly everyone knew him, had spoken to him, had loved him.

Ironic, isn’t it, that someone will fill a space even more once he disappears?

Since I attended his wake virtually, I didn’t have to see any tears up close. You see, the Silence protected me from the performance of grief—the cries, the wallowing, the heaviness of it, that unrelenting weight on your chest that comes from having to carry it along with everyone else. I was spared from it all. I’d long forgotten about the song that haunted me in my dreams.

Even the ghosts disappeared in time.

The room was quiet. The silence hung over us like a dark cloud, heavy in the air, and I felt like crying again. I rubbed my mother’s rosary between my fingers—the smooth, cool pearls always had a way of grounding me even when it was years since I’d set foot in a church. I sat at the edge of my seat. “Pa?” I whispered, more to myself than him. On the other side of the screen— on the other side of the world, physically, but also in another sense—he was staring out beyond the webcam, his eyes blank and unflinching.

It had been three months since I’d last seen him, that first day after he was integrated into the Silence. The doctors had explained the procedure to both of us, just one little pinch to the back of his head and the chip would be up and running in no time.

He would be part of the first batch in the country. The program had been successful here in the States, and slots were filling up fast as Filipinos who could afford it were eager to wash away their grief.

I’d agreed that it was his choice to make. There was no chance of me booking a flight to Manila in the middle of a lockdown, so I couldn’t have stopped him if I’d wanted to. He didn’t even hesitate.

That first day, they asked me to talk to him through video call to make sure he didn’t remember me.

I opened the email from the hospital, which contained the patient’s name, ID number, date of integration, next of kin, and the online call link, along with a digital pamphlet. This was how I was going to be visiting him from now on. From the other side of the world, and the other side of a screen.

“—Pa?” I surprised myself with how worried I sounded. I thought I’d be able to handle it, but I was immediately struck by how much older he looked than when I saw him through the call two weeks before. The emptiness in his eyes sent a chill down my spine, and I felt my stomach drop.

He stared out blankly at something behind the webcam and didn’t respond to my voice. For a few minutes, I sat there watching him, and the more I did, the more unrecognizable he seemed to me.

“Excuse me, Ma’am,” said the doctor on the other line, “We know this must be difficult for you,” he said slowly, trying to sound reassuring. “But, we need you

to talk to him. Please check the reminders we sent you.”

My chest tightened, so I took a deep breath and cleared my throat. “Pa, I’m here,” I said, forcing myself to keep a calm and steady voice. I felt the tears welling up behind my eyes when he finally turned his head toward the sound of my voice. There he was, sitting like a wax figure–even the way he moved had made it feel like he wasn’t moving at all.

He looked directly at my image on the screen, but I could tell that he definitely didn’t recognize me. I saw the research assistant behind him taking notes and inspecting his expressions. After what felt like too long a pause, the assistant nodded toward me, nudging me to keep talking.

I glanced at the pamphlet again. It explained that the purpose of the checkup was to see if he still remembered me, and if he didn’t, it was a sign that he could no longer feel the pain associated with the most emotional of his memories. There was a whole paragraph on the complexities of memory, and another explaining informed consent. I’d read about all of this beforehand, but nothing could have prepared me for the actual session.

“Pa, I know we talked about this, but–” A wave of loneliness suddenly washed over me, icy cold and unrelenting. “It’s hard to see you like this.”

“Ma’am, we’re going to need you to bring up a memory,” said the doctor. He tried to guide me through it like a normal conversation, and he told me to act like I was talking to my father.

I spent a few minutes talking about the last time I visited my parents in Manila. “Do you remember how many sinigang mix sachets I packed in my suitcase before I left?” I thought this one would at least make me chuckle, but seeing him not respond to this broke me. I started sobbing. “I promised to visit you–why can’t you just come back?—Pa, please, please—” I heard myself muttering incomprehensibly, begging him to come back, eyes peeled at the screen and desperate for some kind of sign that he could hear me under the godforsaken Silence.

The doctor tried to console me, but all I could think about was how cruel they were to pretend that this was helping anyone. It felt like I was being forced to grieve my father a hundred times over while he sat there in front of me, and I hated them for it. As I sobbed through the rest of the session, all I could feel was hatred for the emptied out eyes of whatever it was that was left of my father.

Three months later, and here I was, back to visit him through video call. I was allowed to check in on him like this, just to see that his body wasn’t atrophying and that the facility was taking good care of him. It took me too long to face him, but this time, I was ready. I sat and told him stories—retelling tales of my childhood and the vacations we took, of my cousins and his brothers, and of all the life and color and noise that escaped him like water through empty hands. I tried to tell him that there was hope, but I realized I was also searching for it myself in my words.

“He can’t hear you,” my husband said in a sigh more exasperated than he let on. I could tell he didn’t want to sound harsh. Over the years, I’d tried so many times to convince him to let my father stay with us, but he told me that that just wasn’t how things were done around here.

He always said it was a cultural thing–but how he could be okay with abandoning his parents was beyond me. I loved him, but my husband had never set foot on Philippine soil, had never been interested in his own roots. I knew he thought my father was cowardly for his choice, but I’d never judged him for his own.

“Do you have any idea how hard it’s been on him?” I said to him countless times during our arguments.

When I first moved here half a decade ago, I still thought that I could visit them and come home whenever I wanted. But the chaos of life got in the

way, I guess. The years passed by so quickly. Until the year no one could have imagined came, and everything changed in what seemed like one crashing instant.

Didn’t you say you talked to others like me? And how well are they compared to everyone else, those who are plagued with their fears and their misfortunes, and those of their families and their dying loved ones? How much blood has been spilled on your side, yet I stand here before you and see no red.

I live on this island of stillness and mercy. In solitude and in peace. What I used to see as the world, is now but shadows.

I never imagined that I would have to watch my mother’s last breaths through video call, with the nurse holding up the phone to her and no one else by her side; in my hands, I clutched the small screen, watching my mother die and knowing my father was on the other side of the call.

Between the two of us, who is the one disappearing, and who is the one continuing to live?

There are days when I find myself shaking and wanting to scream, and I think I can understand why my father did what he did.

But I could never bear that silence.