Bangko

By Allegra Macatangay Illustration by Anna De Silva

The mango tree just outside Jonathan’s window probably won’t grow any taller.

Jonathan sits in front of his desk, its edge hitting the bottom glass border perfectly. His house is dimly lit and so is the outside he stares into the soft grey skies behind the tree he remembers naming “Bangko” in lieu of the difficulty of saying “mango” as a child. No bird chirps. Reminiscing in silence, he smiles.

As a child of the 60’s, Jonathan dreamt of becoming a farmer unlike other kids. At about six years old, under the white-patched blues, he playfully planted mango seeds beside their house. A few mornings later, amid his heavy snores, his mother lightly tapped his shoulders to tell him a sprout grew. His feet shuffled in excitement as he wore his rubber slippers by the doorstep to step out for a look.

His mother helped him with Bangko. At times, Jonathan cried to his mom when he thought he watered Bangko a

little bit too much for fear of it drowning, or when he forgot to do so at sundowns because he catnapped on the couch a little too long. Even with school, he had his afternoons and weekend mornings for Bangko to measure against his knee, his hip, and then eventually to his waist. He worried when it had to deal with the unapologetic typhoons, the alternating weather, but remained patient until Bangko levelled with his shoulders, the freckle on his left cheek, then beyond the longest strand of hair he could possibly pull into a straight line from his scalp.

Then the time came when Bangko teared up with yellow fruits. They dangled from their wooden strings until they ripened and started dropping one by one. The mangoes became the centrepiece of their dining table, arranged in ribboned baskets, shared with neighbors sometimes unintentionally as the branches crept and hovered over fences.

Jonathan also bore fruits, finally earning an accountancy diploma under his arm. He had wanted to be a farmer but at his mom’s behest, had enrolled in the course which he dutifully accomplished. But despite this, the call of the farm —of the earth—was too strong to resist.

A farm in Rizal welcomed him and his lean-built body. The farm hands were men in their thirties, forties and fifties. Some were employed with their fathers in their old washed jeans crammed in knee-high rubber boots. Mang Ruben, a man in his mid-forties, was the leader of this rough group and always had a sack of grain or dried plants over his shoulder. With his guidance, Jonathan worked from day to noon, washing himself with the rays of the sun that entered the holes of his straw hat. And despite wearing slippers, the calloused soles of his feet mingled with the rough lands.

One afternoon, Jonathan took a break beside Mang Ruben, sat up on a small dusty wooden porch of one of

the two huts near the muds and the human-towering stalks. The older man munched on a biscuit, its plastic sachet still loaded with flakes which were raining upon his knee, and on the ground, a mug of coffee with its mouth chipped. Behind him were his sack of grain and his mud-covered boots. He nodded to Jonathan then his eyes travelled somewhere into the tree-lined red horizons, and his attention to his afterwork meal disappeared.

“Our trader said we need to lower our price,” Mang Ruben said lowly, and Jonathan felt sorrow layered beneath his words. “We have to lower the price or else, I’m afraid we’ll have to find other traders. I wish I could wait. That will take a week, then another, and another; I have to pay some debts! So do the others!” He added chuckling, “What’s worse is Mendoza’s also thinking about selling the land. My wife heard when she was cooking there. There’s nowhere else for us to go, no in betweens.”

The young man kept his lips in a straight line and there was a silence between them. He didn’t know where to look so he found himself looking at the horizon. He knew very little, only the details about the Mendoza’s owning the land they tended and Mang Ruben’s wife working for them. He turned his head to look at Mang Ruben only to find him already looking at him with eyes as tender as the fading flames of the sun. “Why do this to yourself?” the older man asked. “You come in here so young yet not so young. I joined here younger than you did but only because I had no choice. You have one. You graduated college!” His crooked lips curled upward as he rested a palm on Jonathan’s back. “It’s hard finding a future here,” he sighed. “They’ll eat you here alive.”

“But I want this,” Jonathan muttered slowly, the first time in a while they heard his voice.

“You can make it out there,” Mang Ruben said, calm.

“And when you do, see if you still want to come back. If fortunate enough, I’d still be here.”

Jonathan came home feeling like he left parts of himself in the farm, on the porch, in the bed of red. He picked up a few fruits of Bangko along his way to the doorstep, as if finding a way to complete himself.

He left the farm a month later, concluded with hugs and the tightest one from Mang Ruben who whispered to him, “Make it out there.” Luckily for Jonathan, it didn’t take long for him to be behind cubicles as a part of the accounting team of a real estate company his uncle was a manager of. From time to time, his uncle would show up above the low divider in his office, giving him advice and even urging him to get a master’s degree in business administration which he did.

In just a few years, he became the senior accounting manager of the same company, moving up the ranks as fast as a stone skipping on the sea. He went to business parties with baskets of Bangko’s fruits as gifts. His position allowed him to look into the in’s and out’s of the company with contracts spinned on his desk, signed for land conversions of previous farms to land franchise, one after another.

Then one day it was that farm in Rizal —yet another area to soon be engulfed by the shadows of skyscrapers. As required by his position, he had to step foot on the land he had tilled before and which his company had its eyes on. As someone trusted by the board his uncle belonged to, he was asked to give simple feedback.

Bedded on the lumps were crops similar to the ones he used to pick. He passed several farmers but he couldn’t see anyone he knew, until he met a slanted figure. Like before, Mang Ruben spotted him with a smile that looked familiar but didn’t feel familiar to Jonathan. Now, it was a trigger of guilt, piercing past the flesh and bringing back memories of the old man’s words. Mang Ruben was up his feet shakily, bones reeling inside his narrow body as he watched Jonathan come closer. Jonathan approached with leather-covered feet but his calloused soles could recall the same earth, the same smell of water to tend the soil. Mang Ruben wrapped a hand sagging with skin around his wrist. It was warm, still.

“You’ve grown!” was his joyful utterance. “Into a fine, fine man I see,” The gray-haired farmer took a long look. “A face I’m glad to be refreshed.” He laughed and continued, “You’ve made it out there. None of us could.” It wasn’t hard to grasp —why no one could. Mang Ruben’s flimsy weight tried to pull him so he could meet other people, but he didn’t move. Instead, he gave him a forced nod, a smile, and then he hurried back home.

The mango tree parallel to Jonathan’s window hides its fruits in its leaves, yellows peeking through the greens, their shapes reminding him of the seed he planted. It’s difficult to formulate feedback to the board especially when the land in question was fitting. He wasn’t given much time either with his phone ringing in his hand —a call from his uncle. He answered it. “So, how was it?” his uncle asked. “Well,” Jonathan sighs, “it’s great—wide.” The other line anticipates for more and Jonathan feels it, hears it from the calculated breaths and the stretched pause. “Anything else?” asks his uncle.

“Very wide but I don’t think it’s what we’re looking for.” Jonathan hears his chest pumping. “It’s in the middle of nowhere. Public vehicles don’t even reach here. Its neighbors are old small houses so far from each other. The roads aren’t even lit at night.”

His uncle could be heard rather taken aback and arguing with him.

He continues, “It’s not what we’re looking for.”