The Literary Apprentice 2020: Unnatural Disasters

The Literary Apprentice 2020 UNNATURAL DISASTERS

The Literary Apprentice 2020: Unnatural Disasters Copyright remains with the individual authors.

All rights reserved. No part of this book may be reproduced or used in any manner without the express written permission of the copyright owner and the publisher of this book except for the use of brief quotations in critical articles and reviews.

Cover design by Anya Jayme Book design by Trisha Berida & Jia Limbaga A project of UP Writers Club

VI / The Literary Apprentice

Foreword

Given its focus on “unnatural disasters,” this latest installment of The Literary Apprentice is inescapably bleak. Life as we knew it took a turn for the worse in 2020—the crises recounted and appraised in Veronica Florendo’s clear-eyed introduction. And the year isn’t even over yet. In the aftermath of Typhoon Ulysses, we saw the murder of former National Democratic Front peace consultants Eugenia Magpantay and Agaton Topacio by state forces in Angono, Rizal; the desecration by the military of the remains of Lumad revolutionary Jevilyn Cullamat, killed in an encounter in Marihatag, Surigao del Sur; as well as the arrest of writer and peasant organizer Amanda Echanis with her month-old child, Randall Emmanuel, in Baggao, Cagayan.

As the COVID-19 global health emergency rages on, the suffering it inflicts is matched, far surpassed, by the violence of the state—out to kill Filipinos, it seems, by all available means, from its refusal to pursue systematic medical solutions to the pandemic, to its reckless red-tagging and brutal counterinsurgency campaign. There is nothing more unnatural and more disastrous than the suffering unleashed and enforced by the Duterte regime.

This world is exhausting the life out of us, and still, this volume is testament to the will to create. Fatigue is a slippery slope to resignation, and at times, not even that, when the work of survival is so consuming that there is no moment to spare, if only to acknowledge the unjust terms that define it.

To create at this time, as the authors in this LitApp have done, is to seize the moment otherwise relinquished to fatigue and turn it into something else. The gesture is, at the very least, a declaration that this—what we have, this world we’re in—is not it, this can’t be it. Dama ang panahon sa mga akda—nariyan ang lungkot, pagod, takot, gutom, at galit na dala ng matinding pagkabalisa sa mundong kinagisnan at patuloy na ginagalawan. Nariyan ang malikhaing pagsusuri sa karanasan at kapaligiran. There is an acute sense in these texts that all hands need to be on deck, that in this time of climate emergency, in this pandemic era of accumulation contingent on dispossession, we must do—in writing as in life—our share to sound the alarm, amplify protest, and labor toward realizing a more just and equitable world.

Foreword / VII

To contest prevailing narratives that reinforce the-world-as-is is one of the things we must do. The authors of the conditions under which many suffer are terrible writers—they wrote the Rice Liberalization Law that compromises our food sovereignty and legislates the hunger of our farmers; they wrote the Anti-Terror Law that curtails our freedoms and subjects our lives—and especially the lives of this regime’s critics—to perpetual danger; they spin narratives to naturalize the drug war and the militarization of communities; they perpetuate scripts that cast poverty as a choice and violence against women as acceptable. Some of our most prominent literary authors have even enabled, if not actively participated in, the crafting of these narratives. It is inspiring to look upon this offering of LitApp as a firm counter-narrative, a refutation of the stories we are told to accept things as they are. We have to imagine otherwise.

Conchitina Cruz Advisor

VIII / The Literary Apprentice

FOREWORD

Kontinuum at mga Kasalukuyan

Walang akda ang walang kasaysayan.

Mahalaga ang konsepto ng “continuum” o “kontinuum” sa pagsusulat at malikhaing produksiyon. Mapagkumbaba nitong inilulugar ang akda at ang may-akda sa isang mahabang kasaysayan ng pagluluwal ng lipunan. Hindi na argumento ngayon na basta lamang basahin ang isang akda at hayaan nang ang mambabasa ang magbigay-kahulugan. Hindi na katanggap-tanggap na hayaang mabuhay ang isang akda ayon sa nais ng mambabasa. Habang ginagawang sariling karanasan ng mambabasa ang isang akda, imperatibo na arukin ang kahulugan nito batay sa lugar nito sa kasaysayan. Tanging ang pagpapanagpo ng sariling karanasan sa pagbabasa at ang lalim at lawak ng kasysayan ng isang akda ang makapagluluwal ng buong-buong karanasan ng pagbabasa. Nasa sityo na ito ng pag-unawa at pagsusuri — na akto rin ng pagpapanagpo ng sarili bilang mambabasa at ng sarili bilang mamamayang may pinag-uugatang kasaysayan — ang matingkad na relasyon ng akda at ng kasaysayan.

Walang akda ang walang tradisyon.

Kailangang balik-balikan ang kontinuum upang higit na makilala at makilatis ang mga akda batay sa mga konteksto nito — mga tradisyong pampanitikan (pangkultura) at pampolitika. Sa isyung ito, makikita ang mga tula at prosa na nasa mga tradisyon ng realismo, realismong sosyal, modernismo, at protesta. Iba’t ibang antas ng pag-aakda sa lipunan ang makikita sa bawat akda, ngunit lahat ay nasa tradisyon ng pagsalunga sa mga ragasa ng pyudal na mga relasyon, ng kapitalistang (kawalang-)kaayusan, ng pekeng balita at disimpormasyon, at ng terorismo’t pasismo ng estado.

Foreword / IX

Walang akda ang walang tunggalian.

Sa pamagat pa lamang na “Unnatural Disasters” ng Literary Apprentice 2020, matalino at matapang nitong inilulugar ang mga akda sa mga konteksto ng mga kasalukuyang tunggalian — ang krisis pangkalusugan o pandemya, ang krisis ng naghihingalong naghaharing uri, at ang pandaigdigang krisis ng kapitalismo. May diin sa “mga kasalukuyan” bilang “mga konteksto” kung bakit tinaguriang “hindi natural na mga sakuna” ang nararanasan ng mamamayang Filipino at mga mamamayan ng ibang bansa. Iba ang kasalukuyan sa operasyon ng pantasya ng global na kapitalismo at iba rin ang kasalukuyan sa operasyon ng reyalidad ng mga mamamayan. Ang katawagang “mamamayan ng mundo” o “mamamayang global,” halimbawa, ay isang panlalansi ng global na sistema ng kapitalismo upang ariin (o gawing pagmamay-ari) tayong lahat bilang mga mamamayan ng isang mapangdaskol na sistema. At sa pagharap ng “global na mamamayan” sa “global na mga sakit at pasakit,” natatagpuan ng mamamayanmambabasa ang sarili sa lunan o tereyn ng tunggalian — lalong tumitingkad ang tunggalian kung kaya’t higit na natutukoy ang lisya’t mapaniil na mga sistema.

Ito ang kasalukuyang iniaakda ng mamamayan-manunulat, labas (at laban) sa karahasan ng kapitalismo at labas (at laban) sa pantasya ng pasistang pamahalaan. Mababasa ang ganitong mga kasalukuyan sa mga panulat na umuudyok sa mambabasa-mamamayan na mabuhay hindi para sa sarili lamang.

Habang ginagawang krimen ang pagtataguyod ng karapatang pantao, habang ginagawang adik sa kasinungalingan at disimpormasyon ang mamamayan, habang ginagawang bisyo ng mga tunay na kriminal ang pagmumura at pagpaslang, at habang isinusuklob sa mamamayan ang kulambo ng teroristang kapangyarihan, patuloy na sasalunga ang mamamayan, patuloy na magluluwal ng kaisahan, at patuloy na magsusupling ang mamamayan-manunulat ng mga akdang mapagtimbuwal at mapagpanibagong-hubog.

Dahil walang akda ang nabubuhay para sa sarili lamang.

Mykel Andrada Advisor

Table of Contents

INTRODUCTION

12

MGA TULA / POETRY Panambitan Pejay Padrigon

16

Anim na Oras, Ground Zero, Mga Sulat sa Dansalan Errol Merquita

17

Anthropocene Gospel Ma. Doreen Evita L. Garcia

22

Kung Papaano Pumaslang ng Isang Kalabaw Kane Blancaflor

24

Palay Paul John C. Padilla

26

Walang Nandoon Kundi ang Anghel Paul John C. Padilla

27

CAIRO: Mga Tula Arthur David San Juan

28

Babi Yar Rene Boy Abiva

31

Mass Hysteria Julia Jimenez

34

Maligayang Araw ng Kalayaan Donna Bernabe

35

GUHIT / ILLUSTRATION Good Time Not Long Time Jasper Gomez

37

MGA KATHA / PROSE El Niños on a Hot Leather Sofa Taleo Je Nanti

40

Estrella Dulo Emmanuel Barrameda

51

The Black Hole Carmel M. Ilustrisimo

56

Someday It Will Snow in Manila, Too Veronica Florendo

71

Blockade John Rey Dave Aquino

80

The End of Guilt and Silence Jewel Enrile

88

CONTRIBUTORS

94

EDITORIAL BOARD

100

MEMBERS OF UP WRITERS CLUB

101

12 / The Literary Apprentice

Introduction

The Literary Apprentice 2020 was first conceptualized in a coffee shop along Maginhawa, almost a year before the world stopped. The theme “Unnatural Disasters,� was intended to harken back to the time of Typhoon Yolanda and the devastation it had wrought, not merely because of the destructive effects of the storm but of the mismanagement that continues to haunt the people of Visayas to this day. As we currently live through COVID-19 and the disastrous effects of Typhoons Rolly and Ulysses, one can not help but to wonder the longevity of these events in public memory and its long-term effects. As Typhoon Yolanda was weaponized during the 2016 elections, in what ways will these narratives of disaster be co-opted? Will the officials that slept, pilfered funds, or covered Manila Bay in dolomite to hide their ineptitude ever be held accountable for the prolonged suffering of the Filipino people?

While government response to such natural disasters has no doubt exacerbated problems that could have been easily mitigated with ample preparation, the aftermath is a by-product of a failing system. A single deal between China and the Philippines for the construction of the Kaliwa Dam leads to massive deforestation of the Sierra Madre. An agreement to import rice from Vietnam threatens the entire nation’s food security and leads to widespread famine. The pandemic has still not let up, with many still struggling to get by. With the rampant exploitation of our natural resources fueled by the desire for profit greatly damaging habitats and the natural mechanisms that have protected the world, these disasters will continue to occur, with each being more devastating than the last.

The Literary Apprentice 2020 aims to examine events that appear disconnected on the surface but are merely manifestations of the same problem of exploitation and degradation across all life forms and ecosystems.

These seemingly singular events are driven by relationships, and as conflicts arise between species, social classes, and the land and seas, these disasters become more frequent and more devastating for those who have no means to defend themselves. The poor face the brunt of the devastation wrought by the greed of the rich: the global South is tasked to contend with the effects of the climate crisis and rely on charity from the same countries and big corporations that exacerbate its effects. The disenfranchised sink into hopelessness while

Introduction / 13

those in power commend their resilience, but if these recent disasters have proven anything, it is that there is a tipping point, and many are rising up to clamor to be heard.

In the Literary Apprentice 2020, the individual’s experiences are always viewed in relation to others. The unknowing kalabaw in Kane Blancaflor’s “Kung Papaano Pumaslang ng Isang Kalabaw” for example shows how the effects of a singular death trickles down to a vast range of wildlife While the animals unknowingly congregate around the death of a farmer, the reader can not help but wonder about its effects on the farmland that they care for.

Through the life of the protagonist Elias, Rey Alexander V. Palmares’ “El Niños on a Hot Leather Sofa” interrogates the cyclical nature of violence and politicking within haciendas that not only endangers the marginalized but even the land itself and its fertility. Many such pieces in the collection remove the individual from the center of the story to talk about the bigger systems of power in play, and voice out the desire for rethinking how we deal with our personal problems. For writers, it has become impossible to view anything as coincidental or even unique, and as these stories intersect, they begin to shape a narrative of dissent.

In a country that is currently suffering from super typhoons, earthquakes, an unresolved health crisis, continuous problems with internet accessibility, degradation and cooptation of our marine resources, extrajudicial killings, the loss of our mountain ranges, the dwindling rate of food security, and so much more, we are surrounded by disaster. It seems illogical for writers to write about anything else but disaster. It is only in naming the tenuous connections that coincide within this large system of state-constructed unnatural disasters that these problems can be identified and the traumas that haunt us can be validated and turned into a way to give strength to resist.

We are a nation that is still in the process of grieving deaths that we still do not fully understand. Amidst the chaos, however, we continue to live, to eat, to love, to struggle, and even to write. The Literary Apprentice 2020 does not aim to hold writing as the pinnacle of resistance but merely acknowledges it as one of the many outlets of expression that arises from the aftermath of disasters. We write because of our desire to document, to articulate, to understand, and, in the end, to confront what we must with certainty in order to prevent these unnatural disasters from happening again.

Veronica Florendo The Literary Apprentice 2020

14 / The Literary Apprentice

“In a country that is currently suffering from super typhoons, earthquakes, an unresolved health crisis, continuous problems with internet accessibility, degradation and cooptation of our marine resources, extrajudicial killings, the loss of our mountain ranges, the dwindling rate of food security, we are surrounded by disaster. It seems illogical for writers to write about anything else but disaster.�

The Literary Apprentice / 15

MGA TULA POETRY

Panambitan / Tatlong Tula / Anthropocene Gospel / Kung papaano pumaslang ng isang kalabaw / Palay / Walang nandoon kundi ang anghel / CAIRO: Mga Tula / Babi Yar / Mass Hysteria

16 / The Literary Apprentice

Panambitan Pejay Padrigon

Sinisilip kita sa mga mumunting butas na liwanag: mga sinumpang alitaptap na nagkalat sa hatinggabi.

Pinagmamasdan ang mga bumubulusok na biyaya: bolang apoy na umaakit ng hiling Sa uniberso kung saan tanaw kami ng iyong hintuturo; sinisilip mo rin ba kami na parang mga langgam?

Nag-uunahan sa mahuhulog na mga mĂşmo; pasan ang pantawid ng buhay sa panahon ng tag-ulan.

Sinisilip kita lagi Ama– sa sulok-sulokan ng aming tirahan kung saan ang mga alitaptap ay bilang na lamang ng aking mata na sa bawat kisap sumasabay rin ang paisa-isang patak sa bubungan Dito namin pagsasaluhan– Ang tinapay na tira ng iyong ginawang himala.

Mga Tula: Poetry / 17

Anim na Oras Errol Merquita

Alas nuybe ng umaga. Hinihila ni orak ang laruang kariton habang tinitingala ang mga higanteng tutubi sa kalawakan. Kinaladkad niya ang kapatid sa padian, akala niya’y babagsak ang mga ulap.

Alas onse ng tanghali. Maingat na tinupi-tupi ni Omie ang mga malong, kimon, at landap. Binibilang ang puhunan, tinago sa kasuluk-sulukang bahagi ng kaban upang magamit tuwing iftar. May malaking rido na naman, sabi ng kanyang pakiramdam.

Alas dose. Nakakabingi ang katahimikan ng lawa, parang may halimaw na iluluwa.

Ala una ng hapon. Sumigaw ang mga sundalo, sa loob ng anim na oras lisanin ang Banggolo. Nabitawan ni orak ang kapatid. At naiwan ni Omie ang puhunan.

Alas dos. Ang nabalot lang nila ay iilang piraso ng pater, kimon, tsinelas, ang Q’uran, bitbit ang takot ni bunso, mga pangamba ni ama at isang kalawakan ng ligalig.

Alas tres. Naiwan ang masjid, madrasah at ang pagkakakilanlan. Ang katibayan lang nila ay ang inistoryahan ng Meranao, ang pananalig ng mga pagari at kapwa taga lawa.

Alas kuwatro. Umulan ng galit ang kalawakan habang umaapaw ng pananakop sa talahiban at saka inangat nakaririmarim itim na watawat.

Alas singko. Sumigaw ang mga sundalo, lisanin ang buong ground-zero. Ito ang atas ng estado, mamayang gabi idedeklara ang martial law.

18 / The Literary Apprentice

Alas sais. Nagbibilang ang lahat sa dahas ng bawat minuto, habang pinapanood ang lupang kinalakhan sa isang parisukat na mundo, kumakapit ang lahat sa huling hininga ng araw.

Sumigaw ang mga sundalo. Hindi ito rido. Hindi ito pakiusap. Hindi ito pagsasanay.

____________________________________________________________ Orak - batang maliit / padian - palengke / Omie - Nanay / malong, kimon, landap - mga damit ng Meranao / iftar - salu-salung kainan kada lubog ng araw sa loob ng ramadan / rido - talamak na klase ng away magkakamag-anak / Banggolo - barangay sa ground zero / pater - pagkaing may kanin at pira-pirasong ulam / masjid - simbahan /madrasah - paaralan / pagari - kapatid / ground zero - ang sentro ng digmaan sa Marawi.

Mga Tula: Poetry / 19

Ground Zero Errol Merquita

Hindi bombang sumabog ang iyong narinig kundi mga paa ng pitongpunglibong taong tumatakas sa giyera. Hindi paang kinaladkad sa patag kundi iyak ng mga bata ang pumuno sa kalsada. Hindi daing ng mga paslit ang umaapaw sa bakwitan, kundi takot sa kanilang dibdib . Hindi takot ang iyong nadatnan kundi tahanang gumuho nang umulan ng punglo. Hindi tahanan ang nadurog kundi bituin at bagong buwan ng masjid. Hindi simbahan ang naglaho kundi ang kalilintad. Hindi kapayapaan ang winakasan kundi pagkakakilanlan. Hindi pangalan ang iniwanan sa daan kundi ang komunidad. Hindi dalawamput-apat na barangay ang dinurog ng giyera kundi isang bansa. Ngunit hindi isang bansa na nagdadalamhati ang iyong nabalitaan kundi mga bombang sumabog. Kahit tayo ay isang banwa at nagtatagpo ng mata sa mata, hindi natin nakikita ang mga nasa loob ng kadena. ____________________________________________________________ Ground zero ang sentro ng giyera sa Marawi / kalilintad - kapayapaan

20 / The Literary Apprentice

Mga Sulat sa Dansalan Errol Merquita

I. Itim na bandila Sittie.

Ganito namin nakilala ang ladron, winagayway sa ating daan habang ikaw ay tatlong buwan pa lang sa sinapupunan.

Mabilis pa sa ilog ng Rorogagus ang pagragasa ng takot na tumangay sa iyong pangalan, natagpuan sa aking paanan.

II. Hindi talang nahulog kundi punglo Ama. Hindi kaligtasan kundi pamamaalam sa kalaban, sa kaibigan at walang muwang.

Kailan ba namimili ang bala ng kanyang isasama sa lupang hinuhukay ng mga simarong nakikidigma.

Ngunit sa loob ng puti mong kumot Muhammed Ama, babalutin kita ng bagong buwan at tala.

III. Sana ay kasama ka nilang nagpapalipad ng saranggola, tumatalon sa ranaw at nagpapatugtog ng kulintang bunso Ansari.

Ngunit pinili mong sumama at humawak ng armas sa pangakong kami ay maiadya sa buhay na aba.

Ngunit mahal maningil ang ninakaw na kabataan.

Bunso, hindi namin kayang bayaran.

Mga Tula: Poetry / 21

IV. Kalilintad ang isa sa aking natutunan uztadz.

Kahit malabo ang kahulugan, itinuturo mo ito ng may tiwala at pagpapakumbaba.

Ngunit mahirap pala ito na salita, kung nasa sukdulan na ng pagtitiis ang pamilya kung kaya guro, pagkain muna, pagkain muna.

____________________________________________________________ Dansalan - lumang pangalan ng Marawi/Rorogagus- lugar sa Marawi kung saan dumadaan ang isang rumaragasang ilog/ranaw- lawa/kalilintadkapayapaan/uztadz- guro

22 / The Literary Apprentice

Anthropocene Gospel Ma. Doreen Evita L. Garcia

The collapse of the first tower by divine hand gave birth to Babels made of steel, billion-dollar babies poised for life on Mars.

What was once hallowed water is now littered with the bodies of fishermen, displaced even in death.

Self-proclaimed Noahs profit from minimalistic salvation: two by two by two by two customers conquer cramped spaces,

Mga Tula: Poetry / 23

their desperation sure to outlast the loaves and fishes.

No more rice is left for the multitude— the ground has grown accustomed to bullets and blooddrops.

As blue fires creep in technicolor Sodom and Gomorrah, pot-bellied sycophants continue their adulation of idols of intolerance and harvested organs.

24 / The Literary Apprentice

Kung Papaano Pumaslang ng Isang Kalabaw Kane Blancaflor

Tirik ang mata ng kalabaw sa gitna ng palayang inaagusan ng iriga.

Nakatanghod sa sulok ng bughaw na langit, kinukumutan kung ano pa ang nais niyang makita sa kalawakan. Kumakaluskos sa kaniyang mga binti ang mga damo’t palay na binigyang buhay ng hangin. Walang pakialam sa langaw at susong dapu nang dapo sa kaniyang katad na balat.

Payak ang pamumuhay ng kalabaw sa bukid. Tuwing umaga’y aararuhin ang lupang sasakahin, kakaway ang ilang mga alay-ay, dadating ang hapon at magpapahinga. Pagkatapos ay magtatampisaw sa malamig na putikan habang nginunguya ang damong ilang araw na lang ay mawawala na. Makikipaglaro sa nagsasayawang mga maya at saka ipipikit ang kaniyang mga mata’t nanamnamin ang hanging tahimik.

The Literary Apprentice / 25

Tirik ang araw ng hapon na iyon, pinunit ng isang putok ang katahimikan.

Nagsilabasan ang mga uod sa lupa, ang mga palaka’y nagtalunan papunta sa likuran niya, bumalik ang suso sa bao niya at natigil ang paglalaro ng mga maya. Pero ang mga langaw ay nagsaya, kiniskis ang kanilang dalawang palad.

Nagsimulang mamula ang iriga, dahan dahan ay lumapit ang kalabaw at dinilaan ang dugong kumalat sa lupa.

26 / The Literary Apprentice

Palay

Paul John C. Padilla

Malumanay ang pagdalisdis ng mga butil ng pawis, wari bang pinatatagal ng masasalat na mga kulubot sa iyong pisngi, waring tubig na naghahanap ng uka, ng daraanan nito patungo sa natutuyot na uma sa tag-init.

Malaya ang mga itong magpapatihulog sa grabidad upang maging pataba sa tabang ng tubig na nagpapalambot sa lupa.

Sa bawat mong pagtusok ng punla sa putik, tumatarak din ang sakit sa gulugod sa hindi mo na mabilang na pagyukod.

Buntong-hininga na lamang ang iyong iginagamot sa kislot ng hindi makamot na pagod.

At sa pagpalit ng mga buwan tungo sa pag-aani, ipinagpapalit mo ang mga bunga ng iyong pagod sa pera Upang may masaing. Dito mo maiisip na kung ang bawat butil ng palay ay ang bawat butil ng pawis mong nagtanim, Paano nilang naaatim bilhin ang isang kilong pawis sa karampot na kalansing?

Kung natitimbang lang sana ang mga hinaing.

Mga Tula: Poetry / 27

Walang Nandoon Kundi ang Anghel

Paul John C. Padilla

Walang buwan nang umulan ng mga bala sa kaniyang katawan kaya’t walang nakapagbigay ng babala maging ang kaniyang anino o asawang walong buwan nang abala sa pagdadala ng panganay ng kawatan— kumapit daw sa patalim saka nagtulak nang nagtulak ng mga maaaring maitulak. Kinapitan lang daw ng malas nang may ibang nagtalak.

(Ang sabi ay natagpuan na lang ang bangkay sa kariton na nakasandal sa isang nitso.)

Walang umambon na tulong doon.

Walang nandoon kundi ang anghel— ang pugot na rebultong pinagmamasdan lamang ang kay rami pang mga nitsong mapagsasandalan— walang nagagawa kundi ang umiling-iling.

28 / The Literary Apprentice

CAIRO: Mga Tula

Arthur David San Juan

Mga Tula: Poetry / 29

Luksong Baka Nakayuko mong idinidilig sa lupa ang butil ng tumatagaktak na pawis: ang mga paa bílang binhi, ang mga kamay wari’y sisidlan ng mga punlang itinatanim sa estante ng aninong umiigting; nalalanta sa ilalim ng alapaap.

Maghapong hapo sa pag-aabang sa sanggi ng lukso; karit ng lupong gagapas sa katawang baluktot ang pagtubò. Kalayaan sa pag-ani ng pasensiya sa dibdib: mananatiling hukod sa bigat ng nakaatas na trabaho kahit pa ngalay ay sagad sa buto.

30 / The Literary Apprentice

Cairo

“Kapag ang mga trumpeta’y humudyat sa lunsod, hindi ba’t manginginig sa takot ang mga tao? [...]”

— Amos 3:6 Naghahabulang mga behikulo ang pares ng mga paangkinukubkob ang laberintong eskinita.

Umuugong ang makina sa dibdib; lubos ang presyong manibela sa laman ng mga binti.

Tinatakasan ang sirena ng siyudad: putok ng metal, galugad ng unipormadong kamatayan.

Tinatahak ang palitadang lansangan ng lungsod. Bigkis ang kahabaan ng aspaltong ataul bílang himlayan ng katawan.

Mga Tula: Poetry / 31

Babi Yar

R.B. Abiva

Hala’t mukhang balak itayo ang isang dambuhalang monumento ng Fuhrer Rodrigo sa buong isla ng mga Negro.

Hindi ito gaya ng ulo ni Marcos sa Barangay Pugo na mula sa pinaghalo na buhangin at semento.

Sa buong ritwal at proseso, diniligan nila ng dugo ang lupa sa ilalim ni Degamo na sagana sa asukal at tubo.

Pinagpatung-patong nila ang mga buto gayundin ang mga bungo ng kinatay na homo, mga Hentilya’t ‘di Hudyo.

Isa kay Ayungon at Don Salvador Benedicto kay Escalante at Siaton ay dalawa kay Manjuyod ay lima kay Guihulngan ay labindalawa kay Kanlaon ay walo.

Inani sila ng mga anino bago silayan ang mundo ng bituwin sa sentro ng Sistemang Solar at Ariwanas na kay init at aliwalas sa napagmamasdang uniberso.

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Sa kabuuan, ang walumput tatlo ay katumbas na ito ng pitong kambing at aso sa dulang ni Emperor Hirohito at Atamans ng Moscow.

Ilan pa ba ang kukunin ng mga sicario? gayong ni ang planetang yari sa atomo ay umaalma, pumapalag, at aburido, palatandaan ang nangyari sa Basco kung saan nanginig ang lider nilang si Cayco nang gumuho ang mga bahay na bato.

Hala’t namnamin ang himig ng oratio, yakapin ang alingawngaw ng bandillo, at damputin sa lupa ang abo ng mga yumaong kordero.

Hayaang matangay-magising ang espasyo sa katotohanang lilikha-huhubog kay Juan Kristo, dito mapagtatanto ng laman at ispirito ang mohon na ibig ni Yevtushenko.

Hulyo 27, 2019 Lungsod Quezon, Maynila ____________________________________________________________ Mga Tala: Fuhrer - ranggo ni Hitler.

Negro - tumutukoy sa Isla Ng Negros o Negro.

Barangay Pugo - lugar sa La Union kung saan nakatirik ang rebulto ni Marcos.

Degamo - Gobernador ng Negros.

Ariwanas - tagalog ng Milky Way. Atamans - tawag sa supreme commander ng Cossacks, mga panupil ng Tsar sa mga nagwewelgang pesante at mangagawa.

Sicario - mga bayarang mamamatay-tao sa Latina Amerika.

Basco - sentro ng Batanes.

Cayco - Gobernador ng Batanes.

Bandillo - umalohokan.

Juan Kristo - radikal na Juan Dela Cruz.

Yevtushenko - isang makatang Ruso; may-akda ng Babi Yar na pumapatungkol sa bayan ng Kiev kung saan tinatayang 40,000 na hudyo ang pinatay ng Nazi noong panahon ng Holocaust.

Mga Tula: Poetry / 33

Ang tulang Babi Yar ay pagwawangis sa tula ng makatang Ruso na si Yevgeny Yevtushenko kung saan tinatayang 33,000 Hudyo ang minasaker ng Nazi-SS ni Hitler. Culling ang tawag sa prosesong o iyon bang “To select a group o to reduce or control the size of (something, such as a herd) by removal (as by hunting or slaughter) of especially weak or sick individuals”, o “Especially as being inferior or worthless.”

Kaugnay nito, ang lunan ng tula kong Babi Yar ay Pilipinas kung saan sunud-sunod ang serye ng mga pampulitikang pamamaslang, na maaari na ring matawag na culling. At ang tula kong ito’y bahagi nga ng isang epiko kung saan, sa loob ng proseso ng culling, ay isisilang si Juan Kristo. Ang prosesong ito, ang pagwawangis, ay ginawa na rin ni Andrei Voznesenski sa kanyang tulang I am Goya, kung saan, gaya ni Goya’y tutol si Voznesenski sa digmaan.

34 / The Literary Apprentice

Mass Hysteria Julia Jimenez

Screams are loudest when they pass unheard. Some drooled. Some laughed.

Some made it alive. We go blind. No, we do not want casualties or yellow tapes.

We want colors. We want delirium. We want lawlessness and dancing! We want the yearlong telenovela to kiss the dog-eared gospel of our love affairs. At this age we can no longer tell. One tongue licks the Messiah’s sandals. Another worships through the cigar of a murderer: which is the firework the gunshot, the commuter the fish out of water La Pietà and crime scene! We do not want another headline to eyeball our guts. We want the saints to take us. Please take us, take our children, our insides take the skyline for a bruise, the scaffolding for a death toll take the news report as a cat that brings us the dead to show us our nation still loves us!

Stray cats, stray bullets some were blessed some were vomiting some saw visions of the virgin for what is a rosary but a decorated noose and what are prayers but plastic bags caught by barbed wires when no god hears us saves us beats us why else do we forget the revolution is made out of streets and what is freedom if not handcuffed and grinning?

We want this order and disorderscra m bl ing in twosin threes and centaur legs plundering the people instead of unwrapping a salvage. Hungry country! touchedthreetimes and counting the stretchers are spatulas to the ambulance and we go blind as we wish yet we want to open we want to open to watch petals fall to the gutter our eyes! drawn to the heavens as we sing and dance to no one watching loving or helping us help us we can scream while no one hears us but maybe He does for He loves us! he loves us not.

Mga Tula: Poetry / 35

Maligayang Araw ng Kalayaan?

Donna Bernabe

ANG PAGPUNA SA GOBYERNO AY HINDI TERRORISMO. MALAYA NGA BA TAYO? OO NA, DDS AKO-D-ali D-aling S-inukuan ARAW NG KALAYAAN MALAYA NG B TLG? GUSTO KO NG DEMOKRASYA. WALANG ANUMANG BATAS ANG MAAARING IPASA na magbabawas sa malayang pananalita, WALANG MANG-AALIPIN KUNG WALANG PAAALIPIN. PULIS MAG-PAPASYA KUNG TERORISTA KA-PAYAG KA? Sure ba Kayo na hindi #PulisAngTerorista?

PULIS ANG PUMAPATAY PERO KAMI ANG TERORISTA? SINO ang TeRoRIsTA? Si Du8x-18=7x+12 ay 7x+9(x-2)=3x+8 ta ng CHINA.

36 / The Literary Apprentice

DUTERTE, TRAYDOR SA BAYAN TUNAY AT GANAP NA KALAYAAN! DUTERTE PASISTA TUNAY NA TERORISTA. MAÑANITANG INAALAY SA INYONG MGA PASISTA-TERROR BILL, MAMA MO MAY ARAW DIN KAYO!

____________________________________________________________ Lahat ng linya sa tulang ito ay galing sa mga party slogan mula sa Grand Mañanita noong ika-12 ng Hunyo, 2020 para sa pagdiriwang ng ika-122 Araw ng Kalayaan ng Pilipinas.

Guhit: Illustration / 37

Good Time Not Long Time Jasper Gomez

(Pen on paper, March 2020)

The Literary Apprentice / 39

MGA KATHA PROSE

El Ninos on a Hot Leather Sofa / Estrella Dulo / The Black Hole / Someday It Will Snow in Manila, Too / Blockade / The End of Guilt and Silence

40 / The Literary Apprentice

El Niños on a Hot Leather Sofa Taleo Je Nanti

Following the assassination of Jorge Eliecer Gaitan in 1948, the boarding houses surrounding Universidad Nacional de Bogota were torched. Among those displaced by the insurrection was the great writer Gabriel Garcia Marquez who saw the radical times as an opportunity for radical change, thereby abandoning his study of law and committing to a career as a journalist ultimately going on to be awarded the Nobel Prize in Literature thirty-four years later. I do not mind the slaughtering of a despot in 2019 but my home in urban Basretola is all I have known apart from Maragredo’s distant farmers’ summers that I revisit when I am drunk. I do not wish the former ill, but the latter did surprisingly well with each calamity. It is far grander in its centuries of prolonged suffering than its fleeting, immemorial flourishing.

On the verge of withdrawing from law school in pursuit of writing, I remember my formative years, the advices of Elias, and the sixteen hours before and after the rainy Sunday morning when I first drank stream water from my palm to impress a girl. Tatay came into the world in the valley town of Maragredo, immigrating to the blooming city of Basretola to marry the love of his life and bear four sons, one of whom died in childbirth at a time when doctors were still infallible. He built a home in the city but keeps his rice trading business in Maragredo which he controlled through the phlegmatic crackling of a two-way radio. At the other end of the buzzing line were indigent laborers 85-kilometers away, illiterate except for the three or four passwords in English which signal Tatay that it was safe to relay the day’s instructions. In the summers during the harvest and especially when the El Niños came, difficult decisions must be made and Tatay personally oversaw the frantic panicking by travelling to Maragredo. As my brothers and I pretended to be dreaming, Tatay made Spam and egg sandwiches at 5AM and loudly proclaimed outside

Mga Katha: Prose / 41

the sleeping room: “I wonder who wants to come along?”

Travels to Maragredo were aboard large and mostly outdated cuboid buses with names like warships and swords. Modernity in the provinces were heralded by the commercial radio but despite decades of documented progress, only one station was ever able to penetrate the ancient mountain ranges bordering Maragredo. As such, the brightly painted buses with upholstered benches only played locally concocted radionovelas. These stories dominated rural life before Japanese television sets and radioactive Chinese cellphones threw it all away. From the city at dawn, the Hiligaynon stories about politics of adultery morphed into more fantastic tales the longer the day goes and the further buses travel. Almost always, I was woken up by Karay-a anecdotes about an old mountain hermit and golden cows while my father distracts the shrewd conductors in hopes they forget to collect my bus fare by the time one can smell the sugar plantations through the tall, tall grass. I did not know of the kinds of stories the radios told by the time the beaches up north are brimming. Tatay has been there on several occasions to court girls in his youth.

He playfully refused to tell me of the stories and would instead talk about his past lovers just to see me defend my mother. I was 26 years old when I finally discovered that the radionovelas in northernmost Valuego are usually about an old beach hermit and golden fish.

Buses docked at the roadside of an emaciated flour mill where malnourished, sun-burnt journeymen are manning makeshift kiosks and huts.

For sale were several dozen matchboxes housing rare fighting spiders that are sleeping on alcohol-drenched cotton puffs. There were also assortages of bottled liquids in different shades of green that are ingested or rubbed on skin depending on palm readings. On red circular tables were Coca-Cola agents eating sludge-like soup made from cows’ penises while children with swollen stomachs stood by the concrete foundations selling half-matured duck eggs, browning American cigarettes, and prayer beads dedicated to Venerable Matt Talbot. In a corner was a basketball court with its powdered concrete and orange lead paint, crowded with perfumed dalagas admiring barefoot solteros, awaiting Bisaya recruiters from sugarcane camps deep in the Occidental. There were no tourists here except for the plantation owners on Saturdays, driven around in black bulletproof Lincoln Motor Navigators, bullying the traveling rice mills off the manure covered roads which were named after local flowers.

In the last days of the 20th century, the buses took me to the dewy pastures of Maragredo to watch Elias butcher a goat I had named Han-han in the previous summer. Half-asleep, the animal was led to an earthen mound where its throat is slashed to an audience of four old men and two children.

After Elias had cleaned his blade at a nearby stream, he returned to his patrons, holding out two marble white orbs. Elias then washed the slime from his hands, remarking if I didn’t like the taste of goat testicles, drinking from a stream was also acceptable as it mimicked the manliness of Robin Padilla.

“Who is Robin Padilla?” I asked.

42 / The Literary Apprentice

Elias laughed: “Oh, you cityfolk. Only know Steven Seagal and JeanClaude Van Damme.”

I didn’t know those people either. Kas Boknoy, a decade older than me, quickly grabbed and ate the other globe as Elias boomed: “So, who else here is a macho man like me?” To this day, I am not sure if it were perhaps lanzones or rambutan Elias drew from the cloth around his waist or indeed what the old man made out to be.

Regardless, I was amazed at the topless leathery farmhand walking barefoot in the grass with his worn pantaloons dripping blood and streamwater.

He radiated an aura of machismo which is how I believe he was able to seduce the second-generation of household help, and eventually birth a bastard child we have informally adopted into the farmstead by titling him ‘pakas’ which is slang for ‘cousin’, or just ‘kas’ for short. One must either ingest the testosterone from the testicles of young goats, or possess such talent of sleight of hand perfected by half a century of life as an alcoholic farmhand and sixty odd years cockfighting. There was a third option which was admittedly the only possible action I could take because I hated the taste of rum which they used to stop me from teating, knew nothing about farming, was only nine-years-old at the time, and prohibited from touching fighting chickens lest I never leave the gambler’s paradise of Maragredo.

At the dawn of the next day, we went back to Basretola to attend the school-sponsored cleanup where children and parents picked up colorful plastic waste in the fishing districts of the city. Nanay warned us that squatters had settled upstream and used the creek for every bodily function. She insisted we wear boots at least but Tatay said we had the blood of Clan Nanti and are therefore naturally resilient to disease and sickness. With this in mind, I knelt beside the stream and took a sip with my palm for Hannah to see as my father was proudly showing off Han-han for the potluck. The trip back to provincial Maragredo in the afternoon was canceled because I was unable to stand for nearly sixteen hours, let alone contain explosive diarrhea long enough to fall asleep. Tatay would eventually lose three toenails on each foot after about a decade of trying to treat the fungus with apple cider vinegar and a tincture he regularly traded for bottles of rum from adolescent mothers. Each time he stops by their stalls, Nanay would tell him off, saying: “Think of the children”.

There is nothing wrong with this, my father would say. It is just how things are. Only city children were affected by unbelievable things like Fetal Alcohol Syndrome; the aborigines here have already ingrained alcohol in their blood. Those who perish in the womb were impure and are believed to be the products of rape or prostitution deep in the city’s many warrens. Those who survived childbirth with thin lips and microcephalus wander away into the world and must learn to drink away the jeering of a world obsessed with beauty until the day they are granted redemption by charity TV shows. Then there were those who are born without these nonsensical deformities: bloodily coming into the world under bridges, in rice fields, empty passenger terminals,

Mga Katha: Prose / 43

and crowded passenger terminals with skin dark as whiskey and hair bubbly as beer.

Elias was different as he was not of the island. He was a secondgeneration farmhand at my grandfather’s estate, whisked away to Maragredo aboard a large convoy of trucks from the exhausted timberlands with his mother, whom Lola lovingly called Maldita Negra. In the decades that the two centenarians played their afternoon cards near the fishpens, Lola would be eased into the prospect of paying for Elias’s education. It was soon realized Elias is only good for butchering or lumberjacking when he hacked a public school classmate’s shoulder with a rusty blade as revenge for calling him Choco Gago. Unlike the natives depicted in theaters, he was gifted with the looks and bearing of a shadowy Spaniard racked with a sleeping disorder. The longer these gamblers and slaughterers stayed in Maragredo, the whiter their complexions become and by the time Elias exited provincial jail, people already referred to Kas Boknoy as Papa Tisoy. He signed this name when he traded ten years of servitude for twenty-five square meters of farmable land which led me to jokingly ask Elias: “It takes three whole generations to be as white as a haciendero?”

“One generation if you are a cat, two if you are Robin Padilla.”

In the span of twenty years, Elias’s granddaughter now works as my father’s secretary while Elias’s only son makes a living as a motorcycle driver, raising three boys from three different women. Kas Boknoy’s children are already set aside as chicken feeders, flower planters, and drivers. It was best to start chicken feeders and flower planters at the age of eight since they are closer to the ground and are strong enough to carry sacks of feed on their heads.

Designated drivers begin just as young because it is difficult to get motorists who live long enough as cirrhosis and bad debts take their toll. With the dust kicked up, vehicles must drive about thirty seconds apart to avoid rear-ending one another. Repeated travels of goats caused potholes that could immobilize pick-up trucks when typhoons came. The goats were punished in such a way that a dozen of them were roped into pulling the cars out of the mess they made because the stronger carabaos were set aside for the droughts a week from that time. Chromatic spiders work overnight on patches of the concrete roads which the Japanese invaders never finished. But even they are entirely helpless when it comes to hungry ants, gamblers, and wandering men who have lost everything. Sugarcanes and corn stalks made it impossible to foresee corners and all five senses had to be used in unison with passengers’ religious chanting. Since Elias did not believe in God, he drove my grandfather’s tractors in a trance, breathing and smacking his purple lips loudly, using only the sound of the chickens to guide his way. He taught the children to do the same until he went to join the insurgents in the early 2010’s and his jeepney was eventually petrified by rust.

There were no good drivers in the next generation. My uncles eventually affected the height requirement when an Aeta dwarf named Hershey crashed

44 / The Literary Apprentice

into the sugar fields when the droughts came again. In Hershey’s defense, there were no chickens to listen to for guidance as these were usually among the casualties during the worst El Niños. Employing a dwarf who laughed in another language to transport ten tonnes of sugar is proof of how much the land changes with the weather. The fields are either too hot or too wet and one must learn to get used to it. If it did not flood, then that only meant there was a drought and the soil always requires some type of screaming sacrifice, such as pestilence of pineapples or the magnificent loss of a sports team, to keep its beating heart from shriveling up or drowning. The people of Maragredo rallied to such causes and their quality was shown in the moments they kept their silence and worked until their bones were as loud as bullfrogs in the night, to later be seen pointing machetes and hurling exotic curses and racial insults against black and white images of a basketball game on a seventeen-year-old box television. Maragredo was perhaps founded in between these extremes and the culture evolved around genius practicality and slapstick madness like the stereotypical 80’s comedies featuring Robin Padilla.

It was normal for Maragredo to suffer two or three droughts in a year.

The first one simply dried the creeks and endangered the monitor lizards. The second one killed crops and eroded mountainsides. The third one caused most of the populace to begin an exodus on carabao-drawn carriages to the mayor’s house a dozen kilometers away. By the time they have prostrated themselves for money to cure their imaginary children, their makeshift carriages have already collapsed and the buffalo are then beaten into submission, forced to carry four grown men on its back on the trip home. On rare occasions where there was a fourth drought, exhausted carabaos purposely trampled the chickens and learned to drink from blood puddles. This could all be avoided if the hacienderos only gave the farmers money to purchase motorcycles. But that had never been the case. Some give away new radios to foresee droughts, others supply second-hand cellular phones with which to text Mayor Anselmo Nanti, and Tatay opted for canned goods and cheap soda. The hacienderos vehemently refused to give legal tender because “they will spend it on drugs.”

As the ‘Maldita Negras’ from the north begged for alms at urban stoplights, they carried with them unwashed children superstitiously believed by cityfolk to be drugged. In truth, they are inebriated. This is a fact known to people of Maragredo despite the dearth of traffic control: the island’s indigents never have money for drugs because everything goes to alcohol.

Because Elias is not from the island, he saw himself as the exception and claims he has not paid for a single shot of whiskey all his life. He simply walked in and found or made a friend by regaling them with stories until dawn, singing in English, tripping over the oyster shells which grow large with python droppings. By the time he had recovered from his hangovers, he had new stories of drinking rainwater distilled inside a balete tree, of shaving his white eyebrows and smoking with the lit tip in his mouth so the military headhunters wouldn’t find him in the dark, or of how he lost five fingers, one story for each missing digit, which were saved for Jack Daniels and exotic overseas wines.

Mga Katha: Prose / 45

Tatay believed God took his fingers away to prevent him from writing his stories which were all bribes in the guise of exaggerated instances of truths.

Considering Elias’s mutilated hand, I told my father: “Elias is still good with a knife. I know he can also be good with a pen if given the chance.”

“A writer’s story-telling is a surgeon’s scalpel, I don’t know much about his narratives but it can’t be better than a blunted saw.” Tatay chuckled. “Elias couldn’t even kill a child in his youth, now he’s taking revenge on goats and the government.”

To make up for not having eaten raw goat testicles, I studied law.

During this time, I learn that Robin Padilla was born only in 1969, contrary to Elias’s declarations of worshipping the actor in his childhood before the war. But it is acceptable for Elias to be misunderstood as all butchers have the right to be. “He is not a storyteller because he is always lying,” Tatay says. He does not know much about writing or reading. At best, he reads his conspiracy theory paperback novels on the bus rides to and from Maragredo. The most he may have written were template responses to condolences I prepared for him months after Elias’s death. Tatay believed that storytellers are only intimate with objective truth. However, telling stories is different from narrating facts, and something genuine is not required for stories because one needs only to be understood. The truth fights for itself while liars must always defend their lies. Storytellers are somewhere in between as they may conjure completely understandable fabrications. Writers must always speak clearly about cement bags the same as cats, and absent the cloudedness with which Elias declares his revelations in interpretative drunken zigzags with gout-stricken legs.

Storytellers do not have the privilege to be misunderstood but they are in no way bound to tell the truth. Simply put, lie clearly.

People from Maragredo lied all the time. This is why they appreciated gambling in the form of chess or chickens or motorcycle racing despite the fact that Robin Padilla has likely never played a game of chess in his life. They did not need to lie to finance their lifestyles. They took loans from Indians to be paid after the harvests, making excuses about sick children to get more. The creditors didn’t really care for Toto or Tata but they remembered the names of imaginary children when collecting—perhaps because literally everyone used the same pseudonyms. Eventually, they simply admitted the loans were for gambling but honesty was no grounds for pardon. When collectors come in the morning, they wake up chickens with their scent and they silence cannibal dogs with their eyes the same way they quiet apologetic, hungover farmers.

Lending was so lucrative that they were able to build an empire in Maragredo in the ’90s, eventually extending services to Chinese construction workers and cataractous barbers in the distant city of Basretola many years later. While teenage mothers wait at the deserted flour mill, Indians were punctually parking their scooters a kilometer ahead. As loading-trucks pass, laborers toss out paper envelopes including usurious interest. At fifty-seven years old, Elias had the idea of borrowing a motorcycle, wearing a turban, and parking two kilometers further. Elias pledged a life debt to my father who broke into the

46 / The Literary Apprentice

family mausoleum to take out an antique M1 carbine when Indians asked for Choco Gago on All Saint’s Day. As for myself, I believe that Elias actually stopped fixing fights a decade later because he was ultimately sympathetic to Maragredo.

“Rich people worry about money,” he said. “Poor people worry about food, water, and Indians.”

And because two of the only three people who knew how to play chess died of dysentery in 1985, Maragredo focused its passions on cockfighting.

They did not need to go through the dances of lying because the bookies are locals who have dropped out from marbled friar schools in Luzon. Waxed mestizos stood atop immoving scaffolds of prickly coconut lumber, collecting bets on wall-sized chalkboards in Roman numerals that farmers could not read. Unfamiliar with names, bookies christened gamblers after mythical gods.

When they lost their month’s earnings betting on mindless chickens, it is easier to consider what the barker says you owe as the better judgment of Jesus Christ—or maybe a long-gone relative exacting retribution through hazes of feathers and moths. It takes the political funding of the Don Ricaforte Public School for farmers to understand how cheating works. Most kept playing to avoid the Indians. It assuages the loss when they are called Lala (after Lalahon, the fire goddess) and Baba (after Magbabaya, chief deity and lover of betel nuts) because it gives farmers a sense of power as they pay with centavos they summon from the spaces in between cockpit’s mahogany floorboards.

It was also believed that cockfights themselves were more difficult to rig until they caught Elias cutting off the opponents’ chickens’ toes pre-fight, using superglue to stop the bleeding, and feeding the other chicken Lipovitan for extra pep. Up until a year ago, a tarpaulin streamer hung over the coliseum: “All the games here are rigged from shiny Manila tabletop all the way to the scratched table post.” No one remembers who put it up there and new management couldn’t get it down without upsetting the carnivorous pigeons. A large man with a large gun proposed shooting the ropes like Steven Seagal. This eventually started a fire that gutted the building and reminded people of Elias’ prophetic powers.

Don Ricaforte Public School would later be closed down as a police measure to avoid the summary executions of Tagalog cardsharps.

By the time he was sixty, rather than fixing fights, Elias made himself useful in more grounded work such as lumberjacking or butchering. He taught himself woodworking and cooking. For almost ten years, he labored on making houses in the day and cooked for one of the 287 barangay fiestas each night. In 2012, I woke my aunt at 3AM on Black Saturday, frightened of an unmoving cat, staring at my window. It turned out that it was actually the silhouette of empty cement bags that Elias stole and used as batter to make his signature crisp and crunchy festival chicken. When I returned a year later, Elias was missing five fingers. He wouldn’t even hear my apology because “only city boys mistake cement bags as cats” and “even Jean-Claude Van Damme knows that country cats sleep underneath chicken coops”.

Mga Katha: Prose / 47

In the summers, my father would instruct Elias to accompany the cityfolk to the creek past the bridge with train tracks. In a small clearing of razor-sharp weeds, the carabaos were sleeping and that was how we knew waters were shallow enough for little children. We eventually stopped going to the creek when cousin Eremeo Nanti and I almost drowned on two separate occasions. That’s why people didn’t swim in creeks or rivers even in the summertime. Instead, when hacienderos held Christmas parties, they boarded four or five trucks, flew past the city and went straight to black beaches down south where the same Karay-a is spoken in a different accent. My brothers and I would accompany the laborers and drank the same mixture of Coke and rum until we collapsed into urinated mud at 10AM. On the way home, women abducted stray dogs and errant coconuts to sow all over the central countryside with the best intentions. Some dogs found good homes, others were eaten by locals, a few drowned in creeks and their bloated bodies washed ashore to be eaten by locals, the rest are devoured instead by the indigent dogs that traveled like Hunnic hordes. Coconuts cannot grow in Maragredo but geckos inside the husks have quadrupled in population over the years such that people are now using the cellphones given to them to look for recipes online since Mayor Anselmo Nanti changed his number.

As for Eremeo Nanti, he avoided Maragredo altogether after the third near-drowning in an inland resort, claiming he saw the black figures of crocodiles in the mossy floor of the pool. When he returned from Manila and inherited the mayorship from his brother Eufemio, the first thing he did was to close down the resort. But he did not know the language and instead gave orders in Tagalog which only confused the assorted laborers who did not know of Robin Padilla. Elias volunteered to translate for him and, in heeding the old man’s advice, Eremeo Nanti unwittingly cursed himself in a language Elias invented but had somehow already taught the immigrants who were biting their toes in laughter.

It was important that these Christmas vacations be organized and the lust for water be satiated with salt and whiskey as to put out a fire. When the fifth wave of droughts came along and eradicated whatever was left of the vegetation, the nobles had already loaned as much as they could to farmhands.

By this time, Maragredo had eased up on the gambling with many farmers planting unopened whiskey bottles in barren fields in hopes that the taste or value of such would appreciate over the summer. During these moments, chickens were spared their gladiatoral fate and all things would spasm back into normalcy to the time before the immigrant caravans as farmers declare war on the hacienderos, take up arms, and begin an exodus to the mountains.

In March of 2016, during what would be a historical drought, insurgent activities peaked in thirty years and I messaged Kas Boknoy, asking about Elias’s health and whereabouts. He would not reply until midnight four days later, assuring me that it would be raining soon. The typhoons that came in June postponed my classes and I spent an extra week in Maragredo, fortunately witnessing the unceremonious return of Elias. Past the blind curve could be

48 / The Literary Apprentice

heard a tremendous sound like ensuing gunfire and clashings of swords. Elias leapt from the skeletal remains of a processional cart pulled along by three goats and plunged a bony hand into the wet earth, pulling out a Tanduay bottle caked in mud and rice grain husks. He sat down on a dilapidated leather sofa covered with cat hairs and rodent bones and gestured for me to do the same, telling me that the rats had already fled. This was the same sofa that Tatay bought from a Vietnamese con artist and violently condemned to destruction in Maragredo. But not everything exiled to Maragredo meets its death in the sun. Leather appreciated the heat and the sofa was reinvigorated during El Niños because holy fire rebuked anything that came near. City folk cannot sit until a small rainstorm comes. Hacienderos are wary of floods that compelled the rats to burst out of the leather. Noticing how sickly thin he was, I told him to sit on the other side of the sofa to avoid the glare. But it was fine, he said, because the sun is always on you when you ride carabaos who are just as leathery.

Rebels sent their messages to their families in the petals of mountain flowers that flourished in the droughts. Their wives and girlfriends outside of Maragredo, unaware, sold the flowers in the marketplaces where the markings were initially thought to be the act of vandals, later of forest spirits, and ultimately decoded by the military as the messages they are leading to a threeweek-long siege of a hidden cave network at the border of Heneral Martin’s estate and the municipality of Paclivar where the pomelos grow. Although I gave him no address, he claimed to have written me his stories for my novel in the same fashion and I am still waiting for my bouquet as of the 22nd of October in 2019.

He shows me his tongue with burn marks and his eyebrows with ingrown white hairs. He claimed to have grown three inches taller because the military eventually caught up with them and he was hung by a noose made of his own clothes and pretended to be dead for two days. He returned my grandfather’s carbine which I immediately drop, underestimating its weight thanks to Elias’s carefree movements. The machete on his hip had bloodstains which he said was a snake’s. He asked if I’m a lawyer yet and I told him no.

He asked about my ‘great book’ and I still said no. You have to finish one of them, he told me, and I said yes. Pointing to the election posters of 21-year old Eremeo Nanti, I asked him if he thinks the new mayor-to-be will give him a reprieve.

“Cityfolk,” Elias scoffed. “There is no such thing as a new mayor in Maregredo, it’s all Nantis and people who want to be Nantis.”

I replied: “You wouldn’t be so angry at the government if you just cooperated, you know. People here are starving because all they do is drink and gamble.”

“It is easy for you to say because you’re a tourist,” Elias said calmly while wiping the mud from the bottle. With his fingerless hand, he opens

Mga Katha: Prose / 49

the bottle and offers me the first sip. I told him that I’ve already sworn off drinking as I get up from the sofa.

He called to me as I was hailing a bus:

“You don’t know what kind of pain a man experiences that would drive him to want to lose his mind to alcohol every night. You don’t know how defeated a man must feel to value so much the victory in a hand of cards or to invoke a god for chickens stabbing each other.”

This was why green-eyed people from Sta. Felipa revere an active volcano as the entrance to heaven, the irritable nomads from Tamu-tamu refused to make eye contact, and the generations of Sangganaan boar herders hid under trees by the highway to pluck the blond hairs of sleeping passengers as a rite of passage. At one point, it was ritualistic but cityfolk, in the absence of their own culture, have referred to it as intoxicated hooliganism. To people like Elias, things must make sense. If they don’t, these mysteries compounded and contaminated the fertile land with fear and anxiety. It led the men and women to ignorant hibernation, only to be roused in fury against disconnected and meaningless things. Storytellers, I had come to learn, are also pathfinders, peacekeepers, and sages on top of being liars.

In January 2018, four men walked up from behind and pushed a halfdrunk Elias to the ground as he was opening my father’s store. Before the old man could unsheathe his machete, he was shot three times in the chest by a .38 caliber and the men made off with fifty-thousand pesos. Policemen eventually caught the robbers after a month, and we learn that one of the culprits was actually a distant relative of ours we forgot to title ‘Kas.’ They managed a prison break but were eventually gunned down during another robbery in Sta. Felipa, sixty-four kilometers away.

Elias’s wake lasted for ten days with as many as seventy people regularly spending nights. I visited twice and my father only once. There were twenty tables underneath a large tapestry of interwoven election tarpaulins. Each table spoke a different language and hosted a different card game. Outside, men were drinking loudly by the fishpond. By the time they had emptied the pens of fingerlings, someone had already dug up the dog buried earlier that day, stuck it onto a spit, and roasted it over a tire fire that was refuelled with squash seed peelings and marked cards. Underneath the balete tree, men were betting on spiders because they could not compel the chickens to fight at 2AM. The last of the chicken coops were already tenanted by drunk Aetas. Because of their sleeplessness, chickens would not begin their crowing until 11AM the next day. This delay resulted in the marketplace emptied of vegetables and meats, the plaza free of carabao manure for the first time since the floods in 2016. Buses missed their schedules because of the choirboys sleeping on the highway. While it was okay to eat exhumed dog corpses, Kas Boknoy suffered food poisoning when he drank from a pitcher of decomposed rat water after sending rowdy Indians away. For six hours on the eve of the burial, they were

50 / The Literary Apprentice

passing around broth from chicken boiled in lemongrass when the coliseum across the road caught fire. Burning pigeons fell onto gambling tables and set cards ablaze. One of the larger birds flew half a kilometer to crash into the towering billboard featuring faces of my uncles promoting chicken formula but it did not catch fire.

I went to Maragredo’s fiestas for the last time in February 2019, more so to visit Elias’s grave than partake of the many imitations of his festival chicken that have since sprung after his death. The roads still bear the ghost marches of the traitorous Spanish civil guard, the American Jesuits, and the Japanese fascists—but the Sangganaan boar herders hiding behind Americanbrought trees are now armed with the technology of tweezers. Not much has changed except for the new multi-million basketball stadium, the public restroom in the shape of a giant pineapple was more accurately repainted, and the tobacco-chewing children selling rosaries were significantly whiter than their forty-year-old grandfathers. I suppose in the next generation, they give birth to tractor drivers or priests that go on pilgrimages to Ireland and send relics of Venerable Matt Talbot. Stopping by the homestead, I did not bother to call on Kas Boknoy. It was the harvest season and he was probably busy making a seventh child. As white as his children have become, they all inherited Elias’s dark eyebags such that they always looked scheming and devilish. Maybe it’s the shape of their eyebrows’ shadows under the El Niño sun. Along the way, I find the leather sofa decayed. Its low wooden base is used as a chicken coop so that cats could not creep underneath. The little brown chicks stay there, protected, until they grow plump enough to fly out—only to be trampled by the thirsty buffalo.

Mga Katha: Prose / 51

Estrella Dulo Emmanuel Barrameda

Hindi ko talaga alam ang dadatnan naming buhay sa Estrella. Kahit pa ilang beses na akong nakapunta roon kapag may mga okasyon sa pamilya ni Mama.

Dahil kakaunti pa lang naman ang naipundar naming mga gamit, napagkasya na namin ito sa ilang kahon. Isinampa namin sa nirentahang sasakyan ng tiyuhin ko. Dulong barangay ito sa panig na iyon ng San Pedro. May “dulo� sa Estrella dahil nahahati ang barangay sa dalawa. Itaas at ibaba. Pero mas iyong mga sign board at ruta ng dyip ang talagang nagpangalan sa pagkakahati sa barangay na isang tumpok ng burol na may ilog sa ibaba. Estrella Tulay ang tawag sa ibaba dahil karamihan sa mga pumapasadang dyip ay hindi na tumutukad pataas. Sa tulay sa may arko ng barangay na lang sila nagbababa ng mga pasahero bago magmaniobra pabalik ng Bayan. Iyong mas madalas naming sasakyan ay iyong Estrella Dulo. Ito ‘yong umiikot at sumasampa hanggang sa may barangay hall bago magpapadausdos muli paluwas ng barangay. Kesyo sa taas, sa may barangay hall o sa baba sa paanan ng pasulong kalsada kami dumaan, wala kaming takas sa paglalakad ng humigit kumulang kalahating kilometro bago matunton ang bahay ni Auntie Bubo. Dahil mas madaling bumaba kaysa sa umakyat, mas pipiliin naming sumakay ng Dulo at bumaba sa may barangay hall. Kaya noong maglipat-bahay kami, doon namin ipinaparada ang sasakyan.

Doon na kami naghakot ng mga gamit papunta sa bago naming titirhhan.

Si Mama ang nagpasya sa lahat ng ito. Sa Estrella Dulo, sa pinauupahang kuwarto ng kapatid niya kami titira. Walang kakibo-kibo si Papa noon. O baka naisuko na rin niya ang lahat ng argumento sa pagpipilit na sa poder pa rin ni Lolo sa may Camp Crame kami tumira. Layo ang pinakapinupuna ni Papa sa pagtira sa Estrella. Kinakailangan kasing sumakay ng isang dyip at bumiyahe ng mahigit isang oras sa bus bago makapunta kay Lolo at sa iba niyang kamag-anak. Balwarte ni Mama ang San Pedro. Maliban kay Auntie Bubo may mga kapatid pa siya sa Magsaysay at sa Pacita. Ang pagbukod nila bilang mag-asawa at namin bilang pamilya ang pinakapinupunto ni Mama kay Papa kung bakit kailangan naming lumipat na sa Estrella. Ang inaasahan nga ni Mama noong umuwi siya galing ng Hong Kong ay may lupa na siyang

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madatnan at ang pagpapatayo na lang ng bahay ang poproblemahin. Pero nauwi pala sa hangin ang lahat ng pinapadala ni Mama. Kaya kahit pa siguro anong iargumento noon ni Papa, hinding hindi siya mananalo kay Mama. Ayon sa kuwento ni Mama, inaalok pa pala siya ng panibagong kontrata ng amo niya at pinangangakuan pang isasama sa paglipad sa Denmark, pero pikit-mata niya itong tinanggihan dahil kay Papa. Ang banta raw kasi sa kaniya ay kung hindi pa siya uuwi ay mabuting maghiwalay na lang sila. Nakasandal naman ang lahat ng banta ng pagpapauwi ni Papa sa bali-balitang magugunaw na raw ang mundo sa pagpapalit ng bagong milenyo. Iyon raw na Y2K o millennium bug ang tatapos sa sangkatauhan. Ano man raw ang mangyayari sa pagpapalitmilenyo ang mahalaga ay magkakasama pa rin kaming tatlo. Palagi nang ganito ang sagot ni Papa kay Mama sa tuwing maididiin siya sa mga pagtatalo nila hinggil sa panghihinayang sa kontrata palipad ng Denmark at sa lupang hindi dinatnan. Ilang taon pa kasi ang lilipas ay magiging bukambibig na rin ni Mama ang “Kung hindi mo lang ako pinauwi… edi sana may ganito at ganyan tayo…”

Iyon ang unang beses naming magsasama-sama sa iisang bubong. Nauna kong nakasama si Mama habang si Papa naman ang nagtatrabaho sa Saudi.

Noong umuwi si Papa at nakitira kami sa tiyahin niya sa Caloocan, si Mama naman ang lumuwas papuntang Hong Kong. Kaya naninibago siguro kaming lahat. Ako, sa konsepto ng pagkakaroon ng kumpletong set ng magulang. Sila, sa pagiging mag-asawa? Hindi ko alam. Pero kung tatantyahin ko ang mga taon mula ng ikasal sila hanggang sa pangingibambayan nila, itong pagtira namin sa Estrella ang talagang unang sabak namin sa pagiging pamilya. Kaya natural na lang siguro iyong mga sinusuong nilang away. Sa ngayon, kakaunti lang ang naalala ko sa maliliit nilang alitan. Basta’t ang alam ko ay palagi siyang may kinalaman sa pag-inom ni Papa at sa pagiging mabunganga ni Mama. May mga alitan sila na napapalampas ni Papa. Paano e, nasa balwarte siya ni Mama.

Isang manipis na plywood lang ang naghihiwalay sa kuwarto nila Auntie Bubo sa amin. Kaya sa hangga’t maaari ay pabulong sila palagi kung magtalo. Kaya kapag hindi na nakapagtitimpi si Papa ay napapadpad siya sa bahay ni Lolo.

Nagpapahangin. Pero bumabalik rin naman kinagabihan. Ako rin lang naman ang nakikinabang sa ganitong klase ng mga away nila noon. Kapag umuuwi kasi si Papa matapos ang kanilang away, sigurado na ring dadaan muna siya ng Jollibee sa Bayan para bumili ng pasalubong sa amin. Hindi rin naman pumapalya si Mama sa pagluluto ng masarap na ulam para madatnan ni Papa sa pag-uwi.

Honeymooning period pa rin siguro iyon. May natitira pang ipon si Mama. May wawaldasin pa. Kaya ang dali-dali lang magresolba ng mga problema ganoong makapal ang kanilang mga pitaka. Para makabawi nagbukas ng tindahan si Mama sa may tabing kalsada. Si Papa ang tumatao habang siya naman ay naglalako ng mga panindang Natasha, Wbrown, CorningWare at Tupperware sa mga kakilala. Sa pagsama-sama ko kay Papa sa pagbabantay ng tindahan mas makikilala ang mga kabarangay namin. May kani-kaniya silang paraan kung paano mangungutang ng mga paninda. May maligoy.

Kukuwentuhan muna si Papa ng kung ano-anong bagay na may kinalaman sa bibliya at relihiyon hanggang sa mauwi sa politika at sa huli ay tsaka

Mga Katha: Prose / 53

ibubunyag ang sadyang pangungutang ng kung ilang pakete ng kape at asukal.

May direct to the point, nakadukot na ang kamay sa plastik ng mga sitsirya, o kaya natalupan na ang saging bago sasabihing ilista na lang muna. May kanikaniya silang kaparaanan at bawat isa ay nagbabago ang approach depende sa kung gaano na kahaba ang listahan ng mga nautang. Mayroon nang nahihiya, mayroong garapal pa rin. Kapag kinsenas at katapusan, may magsisipagbayad ng mga nautang. Dahil bayad na sila, magsisimula na naman ng panibagong listahan kinaumagahan. Mayroong may mga pinangangalagaang dignidad na hindi harapang umuutang. Susuguin ang mga anak para makapanghiram ng sabon at pakete ng shampoo. Mayroon ding mga waldas, mababalitaan naming may bagong TV at component, nagpainom noong isang gabi, tapos makikiusap kung pwede munang umutang ng itlog na pang almusal. Panukat rin siguro iyong pagiging dulo ng Estrella sa layo ng baranggay sa pag-unlad.

Halos magkakahawig ang hitsura ng mga bahay. Umaangat lang iyong mga may kamag-anak na nasa ibang bansa. Kung kaya’t ang mga tindahang tulad noong sa amin ay talagang takbuhan ng mga nangangailangan. Paborito nilang bantay si Papa dahil madaling kausap may kasama pang kuwento. Kung si Mama ang nakatao, nilalangaw. Sukat ba namang sobrang hirap ang mga parokyanong makapangutang. Parang kukuha ng VISA sa dami ng kaniyang mga tanong. Kaya madalas ring maging sanhi ng diskusyon nilang mag-asawa ang marketing strategy sa pamamahala sa tindahan. The more the marrier ang estilo ni Papa. Papasaa’t pa’y makakapagbayad rin naman ang mga nanguntang.

Si Mama naman ay takot na malugi. Baka raw hindi makaikot ang ipinuhanan.

At siyempre pa mapapadpad at mapapadpad pa rin ang sagutan nila sa Hong Kong.

Maliban sa isyu ni Mama sa pagpapautang, wala naman siyang ibang mahihiling sa pagtatao ni Papa sa tindahan. Gumigising nang maaga si Papa.

Bago pa mag-alas sais, naiangat na niya ang duruwangan ng tindahan para sa mga magsisibili ng ipang-aalmusal. Bukas ang tindahan hanggang ala una para sa mga magsisipaghabol ng pampananghalian. Magsi-siesta siya hanggang alas tres bago muling magbukas hanggang alas otso ng gabi. Si Mama naman ang taya sa pamimili ng suplay. Noong maliit pa lang ang tindahan, sa palengke sa Bayan lang kami bumibili. Pero noong mas dumami na ang bumibili sa amin, doon na kami sa Ultra Mega sa Muntinlupa dumadayo. Dahil sa galing makisama ni Papa, madali siyang nakasundo ng mga taga-Estrella. Sabi nga ni Mama, kahit saan dalhin ang manginginom, hinding hindi siya mawawalan ng kainuman. Pero kahit pa 24/7 kung magpaikot ng tagay ang mga panadero sa kapit-tindahan namin, hindi kailanman tumikim ng alak si Papa habang nagbabantay ng tindahan. Pero ang kapalit naman noon ay ang mga ginabi niyang paglabas para sumagupa sa mga bote ng alak. Siyempre, away ang uuwian ni Papa. At dahil lasing, makakaligtaang plywood lang ang naghihiwalay sa amin sa mga tainga nila Auntie Bubo.

Isang beses, ipinatawag sila ng adviser ko para kunin ang card. Dito na rin isinumbong ang pagiging pasaway ko sa klase. KSP. Kulang sa pansin.

Hindi ko na maalala ang buong paliwanag ng titser ko. Pero ang pinakatumatak sa akin ay baka raw madalas ko silang nakikitang nag-aaway. Hindi ko alam

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(baka sila rin) kung paano nakarating ang titser ko sa ganung paliwanag. Ang alam ko lang, dadayo kami ng Manila Zoo sa pinakamalapit na Sabado noon.

Matagal rin silang nag-cease fire sa mga pagtatalo nila. Pasensyahan. Palaging may pasalubong na Jollibee galing sa Bayan. Madalas ring masarap ang ulam.

Hindi sila nakatanggi noong nagturo ako ng laruan sa palengke. Pero siyempre, hindi iyon magtatagal. Babalik at babalik pa rin sa kinagawian ng pag-inom at pagbubunganga.

Iyong pinakamatindi nilang away ay tungkol butiki. Bale, bumili ng pandesal si Papa at ipinalagay niya kay Mama sa lagayan ng plato na may siradura.

Kinaumagahan, nagising na lang kami sa sigaw ni Papa. Pinasok raw ng butiki ang supot ng pandesal. Parang end of the world ang sagutan nilang dalawa.

Umaatikabo. May upper hand ngayong si Papa dahil wala siyang tama ng alak.

Siyempre hindi naman magsusuko ng bandila si Mama. As usual magsisimula na naman siya sa pag-uungkat ng mga isinuko niyang mga pangarap sa Hong Kong. Doon lang siya unang beses na sasagutin ni Papa na, edi sana hindi ka na lang pala umuwi. Hindi ko narinig ang pamosong linya niyang at least magkakasama kaming tatlo. Mahabang mahabang sagutan pa iyon na alam kong pinakikinggan na sila sa kabilang panig ng plywood. Samantalang iyong butiki ay napapapalatak na lang sa kisame. Hindi lang kasi siguro iyon tungkol sa pandesal o sa butiking nakapasok sa plastik. Tingin ko, iyon na rin ang limitasyon ni Papa. Ang dulo ng maraming pagtitimpi patungkol sa pakikisama niya kay Mama sa balwarte nito. O baka mas tungkol iyon sa mga frustration niya sa pag-ookupa ni Mama sa trabaho niyang patakbuhin ang buhay naming tatlo. Samantalang si Mama, matagal na rin sigurong nasa Dulo niya. Nakailang balik na kaya napagod na rin. Iyon ang unang beses na pinapili nila ako kung kanino ako sasama. Kay Papa ba sa bahay ni Lolo o kay Mama doon sa Estrella.

Naiyak na ako noon. Sobrang hirap mamili. Dati naman taga-tanggap lang ako ng pasalubong na Jollibee mula sa Bayan at tagatikim ng masarap na niluto ni Mama, ngayon ako na ang tagapaghatol ng kahihinatnan ng pamilyang ito.

Wala ng neutral-neutral. Kahit alam ko sa sarili kong mas malapit ako kay Papa dahil siya ang mas nakasama ko noong nasa Hong Kong si Mama, hindi ko piniling sumama sa kaniya. Niyakap ko lang iyong naiimpake niyang bag.

Walang aalis. Sa Estrella lang kaming tatlo. Hindi tumuloy si Papa sa bahay ni Lolo. Sa Festival Mall sa Alabang kami naghapunan noong gabing iyon.

Noong una, natatakot pa rin ako sa tuwing may banta ng paghihiwalay nilang dalawa. Matindi ang stigma sa akin ng sistemang nagsasabi na mas ok pa rin ang pamilyang may isang pares ng tatay at nanay. Pero noong kinalaunan kapag sinasabi ni Mama na ako lang ang iniisip niya kung bakit hindi niya maiwan si Papa, natatawa na lang ako. Iniisip ko pa rin kung ano ang naging buhay ko kung natuluyan ang mga banta nila ng paghihiwalay. Parang walang wala naman kasi sa karakter nilang may kakayahang bumuo ng mga bagong pamilya.

MATATANGGAP NA LANG NAMIN na bahagi ang mga away nila sa arawan naming buhay sa Estrella. Kung titingnan nga iyong iba pang magaasawa sa baranggay, napaka-basic pa ng pagsasagutan ng mga magulang ko.

Malayong malayo sa ilang mag-aasawa roon na nauuwi na sa paghahatawan

Mga Katha: Prose / 55

at pagbabatuhan ng kung ano-anong gamit. Iyong iba nagkakatagaan pa. Ni hindi ko nga sila narinig na gumamit ng mga mura at masasakit na salita. Hindi lang talaga sila magkasundo, ganun lang. Hindi p’wedeng isuko ni Mama ang pagbubunganga, dahil hindi rin naman p’wedeng itigil ni Papa ang pag-inom.

Paikot-ikot lang. Palaging may dulo ang isa’t isa na kapag nararating na ay sumasabog. Sa huli ay napag-aralan na rin nilang wag sabayan ang galit ng isa’t isa. Nasa proseso sila noon ng pagtanggap na lang sa mga bagay na hindi na nila pwedeng baguhin sa isa’t isa. Dahil kung tutuusin, nagsisimula pa lang kaming mangarap at magsama-sama bilang iisang pamilya noong mga panahong iyon.

Ilang taon din silang hindi napirmis sa bansa. Dati ay hinuhusto lang nila sa mga padala-dalawang linggong pagbabakasyon ang kanilang pagsasama kaya ngayong isang buong taon ang ibinigay sa kanila, parang inip na inip sila kung paano uubusin ang mga oras.

Dalawang taon ang lilipas, dadating ang bagong milenyo. Nasa Luneta kami, magkakasama, magkakaakbay habang dumadalo ng gawain sa El Shaddai.

Tinitingala ko ang mga tala sa langit. Malalayo. Parang wala namang ipinag-iba sa ibang gabing tiningala ko ito. Tumuntong ang unang araw ng year 2000, wala na kami sa Estrella. Nalusaw na rin ang tindahan ni Mama dahil marami sa mga umutang ang hindi na nakapagbayad. Kinain na rin pati ang mga kinita niya sa pagtitinda ng mga damit, sapatos, kawali at sandok. Sa isang pick up truck na namin isinampa ang mga gamit namin at iba pang bagahe sa isang taong pagtira sa Estrella. Kapag may mga okasyon ay nakakadalaw pa rin kami sa Estrella.

Maraming naging pagabago sa lugar. Magkakaroon ng subdivision sa likod ng dating puwesto ng tindahan namin. Madadagdagan ang mga nagtatayugang bahay. Naroon pa rin ang ilang kakilala pero marami ng bagong mukha. Sa bago naming titirhang bahay sa Ligas, dadami pa rin ang katomaan ni Papa at mananatiling mabunganga si Mama. May mga panahong naaabot pa rin nila ang dulo ng bawat isa. Pero katatandaan na rin lang nila ang mga ganung sagutan. May mga panahong nagpapalipas pa rin ng sama ng loob si Papa sa Crame, minsan si Mama naman sa San Pedro. Pero nagpapatuloy pa rin kami.

Hindi naman nagunaw ang mundo noong pagpasok ng bagong milenyo, at magkasama pa rin kaming tatlo.

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The Black Hole Carmel M. Ilustrisimo

I. It was March, almost the end of the school year, and most kids in the senior batch of Prefecture 12 High School were just waiting to graduate. The late afternoon sun shone brightly; the low grumbling of the Black Hole was still distant. It was something they all had learned to live with, this minor, weekly disturbance; it was something they even appreciated. And so they played, in the football field or the basketball court, and they talked, in the hallways and in the ever-crowded canteen, and they held a meeting—at least, the student council kids did—in the basement room of the main building, with the window open and the sunlight streaming through and creating slanted shadows. They were all busy living their lives in the safest city in the world.

Chantal, the president, sat at the head of the long table. Flanking her were Laine, the treasurer, and Eric, the secretary. They were seniors like most of the kids in the council. Now that finals week was officially over, they only had to plan the graduation ball.

“Yes,” Chantal repeated, looking through the file Laine had passed to her. “We have more than enough money from the fund-raising projects but do we need that much for the ball? There are kids in the lower grades who come from Prefectures 1 to 5. I’d like to leave a little something behind for them.”

“I don’t mind,” Laine said. “We can always get the artsy kids to make the ball look grand.” Chantal smiled at her; she knew she could count on her best friend.

“I agree,” Eric said. “Besides, some of the kids aren’t even attending the ball. They’ll join their families on vacation.”

“So I guess that’s it for today, then,” Chantal said, closing the tablet.

“The rest we can do online. Laine, I trust you to do the calculations. Eric, write a list of what we’ll need—decorations, food, bands, everything. Maybe some

Mga Katha: Prose / 57

undergrads could perform? I guess that’s what we’ll talk about next meeting. As for the representatives, by tomorrow morning I’d like a more or less complete list of the ball’s attendees per batch.” She smiled. “See you all on Monday.”

They all went out. Eric waved goodbye and immediately headed to the library with Chester, the junior batch representative. Laine and Chantal walked to the canteen. “No news yet on the graduation awards?” asked Laine.

“Oh Laine, you’ll get an award for Math and Science. Don’t sweat it.”

Laine chuckled. “Doubt it. I was a terrible student until you stepped in.”

“Shut up. You were the one who shaped up. I just trusted you.”

“Yeah, when nobody else did.” Laine sighed, and there was silence.

Two years ago, Laine entered the school in the second month of the semester with a reputation of being a thief and a delinquent. She sassed teachers, started fights, and cut classes. Worse of all, she stole lunch money. Nobody thought she would graduate. Everybody thought that the Black Hole would catch up to her first.

Except for Chantal, who was the sophomore batch representative then.

She talked to Laine during detention hours, spent a few lunches away from friends to spend time with her, and noticed how quickly she memorized things.

How adept she was at numbers. She called up the Eden City Meteorological Society and asked if there were any available part-time jobs for high school students. A week later, Laine was working there after school, thoroughly enjoying the whole thing, and paying her debts in the process. That was also when the other kids in school started to like her.

Chantal was proud of Laine, immensely proud. Laine often told her that she had literally saved her life. But Chantal always brushed it aside. It was expected of leaders, and she had always wanted to be a good one. Just like her father.

“Eric will definitely win the Literary Prize, no doubt about it,” Laine added, as they sat on a table together. The food stalls were closed, but the students could still occupy the seats. “But I’m pretty sure he’ll only be a salutatorian this year. You’ll be the valedictorian.”

Chantal blushed. “I don’t want to hope.”

“Channie, I may be good in math and Eric might be the best in English but you’re great at both! Your mom would be so proud.”

“She will,” Chantal said in a small voice. “She always has been.” Her single mother, Jessie, had sacrificed everything for her, earning next to nothing in the laundry shop she worked in and taking whatever odd jobs she could

58 / The Literary Apprentice

find just so Chantal could keep up with her middle-class peers. She deserves a valedictory award, Chantal thought. She deserves the whole world.

The Black Hole then grumbled, and it was a little louder this time.

Chantal and Laine looked at the darkening sky, the swirls of black dust that came from the whirling Black Hole in the middle of Eden City, now hungry for the week’s thirty. No more, no less, as the mayor always said. For justice prioritized the innocent.

Then something blocked the brightness and cast a shadow on them, the figure of a boy a head taller than them, all muscles and limbs. He was buff enough to be athletic, but he lacked any discipline. He was their age, but would not graduate this year because of his low grades and terrible conduct. He was the bully of the batch, but he was also the son of Lieutenant Colonel Martin, the city’s military police chief and right-hand man to Mayor Franco Salazar.

Joseph Martin gave them a menacing glare. Laine glared back, even though Chantal noticed her shaking hand gripping her arm tightly. Chantal was calm. “What do you want, Joseph?” she asked in an even voice, although she knew exactly what he wanted and had promised herself to never give in.

“Take back your statement to the principal,” he ordered. “Tell him that the drugs were from someone else, a junior, a grade-schooler, it doesn’t matter!

Let me graduate or you’ll pay.”

“You dug your own grave, Joseph,” Chantal sighed. She stood up.

Joseph blocked her with his arm.

“I’m giving you one last chance,” he threatened her. “You know who my father is.”

“I imagine he must be very pleased,” Chantal replied sarcastically. She gently pushed his arm away and walked towards the gate, a trembling Laine clutching her arm.

“You’ll be sorry for this, Chantal!” Joseph hollered from behind, but neither girl paid attention to him as they walked towards the school gate.

“You’ll pay!” he added.

Mga Katha: Prose / 59

II.

“This week’s thirty include ten drug pushers and users, six rapists, four thieves, five propaganda peddlers, and five suspected members of the Underground Laboratory,” went the news from the screen attached to Jessie’s simple unit in Prefecture 7. All houses had a screen installed on one wall, as well as a special filter through which the dangerous hail and dust and radiation of the Black Hole’s emissions were trapped in nights such as this.

Jessie stirred the bowl of soup and hummed. The news meant nothing to her. Her drug use was a thing of the past, and she had thankfully stopped before Franco became mayor and signed the Decree. Now, her whole life revolved around Chantal, her only family, who had just arrived home and was reading a book in the sala.

“According to a recent survey, 85% of Eden City citizens feel safe under Mayor Franco Salazar’s leadership. Preparations for this year’s feast are ongoing as it will also mark his tenth year in office.” A pause. “This comes after last December’s findings that not only has Eden City the lowest crime rate in the Republic, it has also been considered the safest city in the world for nine consecutive years.”

Chantal closed the book she was reading and placed it on the coffee table. She walked to the kitchen. “Need help, Mom?”

“It’s okay, darling.”

“I’ll set the table,” Chantal offered. She opened the cabinet and took out their mugs, plates, and utensils. She had just finished when her mother placed a bowl of steaming chicken soup on the table. Then, rice was served.

Chantal waited until her mother was comfortably settled before she asked the question that had been bugging her all day.

“Dad messaged me yesterday,” she said. “He wants to take me out on a graduation trip. If it’s alright with you…”

Jessie closed her eyes.

“Mom,” Chantal softened her voice. She sighed. “I love him too, you know.”

Jessie opened her eyes and looked at her daughter. “I know. I know.

And yes.”

“He doesn’t say anything bad about you,” Chantal went on. “Honest.

He talks about you as much as you talk about him. In other words...he doesn’t.”

60 / The Literary Apprentice

“You’re right, darling.” Jessie managed a small smile. “Besides, the past is past.”

For all sixteen years of Chantal’s life, Jessie fought hard not to let anything that happened between her and Franco affect their daughter. She tried not to be selfish, and in fact, she had no choice but to let her see her father. For all of Franco’s faults, he loved Chantal, and he saw her twice a month. He bought her things and took her to places, and he often told her how proud he was of her. His child support money came every month without fail. Through it all though, he would never admit to the public that Chantal was his daughter, that he ever had a past with a drug addict from the slums of Prefecture 1.

And yet, Chantal thought the world of him.

The doorbell rang.

“Papa?” Chantal asked, running to the window. “Papa!” she exclaimed, upon opening the curtains and seeing the police van parked outside.

Jessie glanced at the calendar. It was Friday, the Black Hole day. Franco’s next visit wasn’t scheduled until next Saturday. What on earth does he need? she wondered, trying not to be so irritated. Sometimes bad memories came in uncontrollable waves, and this was one such night. The last thing she wanted was to see Franco before she slept.

But, then again, she thought, if it made Chantal happy, so be it.

Chantal ran to the door and flung it open, not caring whether it was past curfew or not. Then she stopped at the doorway. Two military police officers were walking towards their unit, weapons in hand, and cuffs. Behind them followed a familiar face, one Chantal rarely saw personally but was plastered all over the city alongside her father’s, that of Lieutenant Colonel Conrad Martin.

The mayor himself was nowhere in sight.

Chantal counted to three. Then she lifted her head and said, in the same calm voice she had used with his son earlier that day, “Lieutenant Colonel, is there any matter?”

“We’ve come here for matters regarding the safety of the city,” he stated coldly. He refused to look at her.

Jessie came up behind Chantal and put her arm around her shoulders.

“If it’s about me,” she said sharply, “or if it’s something Franco said about me, let me deal with it. Alone. Without involving my daughter.”

The Lieutenant Colonel said nothing.

The Literary Apprentice / 61

“You can ask Chantal, or our neighbors, anybody who knows me. I haven’t touched drugs in seventeen years!” Jessie insisted. She was starting to panic.

Sensing this, Chantal turned to her and kissed her on the cheek. Then she looked at the men again.

“My mother’s right,” Chantal said. “My mother’s innocent.”

“But you clearly aren’t, Chantal.” The Lieutenant Colonel opened his tablet, and the holographic screen that emerged from it showed a picture of a sachet of meth in her school locker. “My son Joseph showed me this.”

“No,” Chantal started. But she felt herself going limp, and everything that happened next was a blur. Cold metal was clasped around her wrists as her mother begged and cried. Along the way, Chantal could see Joseph’s triumphant smirk in her mind, his voice repeating: “You’ll pay!”

No, she told herself, squeezed in the backseat between the two officers, as the van drove through the still and sleeping city, with all its frozen holograms and flickering neon lights and shut windows.

No, she kept thinking, as they drove through the darkening haze of the Black Hole that was craving for its weekly fill.

III.

“Knock it off!” Laine groaned. She swung her legs to the side of the bed and pulled herself up to a sitting position. Meanwhile, her little foster siblings jumped off her bed and chased each other around the unit, aiming imaginary guns at each other and yelling, “Down! Down! Into the Black Hole you go, you criminal!”

“Darlings, it’s bedtime.” Their foster mother, Melanie, appeared at the doorway, clad in her nightgown. “You can play tomorrow.”

“No fair, I tagged you first!”

“Did not!”

“Did too!”

“Did not!”

“Francis, Emmi, Evan, will you just keep your mouths shut and go to bed! You’ll wake up the neighbors!” Laine groaned. “You woke me up!”

She loved her foster parents, but for all their big hearts, they were terrible disciplinarians.

The three children fell quiet and turned to Laine, whose hair was in

62 / The Literary Apprentice

disarray, whose eyes showed the unmatched rage of disturbed slumber. “To bed!” she repeated, in a louder, sharper voice, her finger pointed at the door.

The six-year-old twins, Emmi and Evan, quickly scampered past Melanie out the door and down the hallway. Only eight-year-old Francis dared to match Laine’s glare of terror but almost immediately followed his siblings to their room.

Melanie sighed of relief and closed the door behind her. “Laine, sorry to disturb you further, but since you’re awake, I might as well take the chance to talk to you.” Her voice was gentle, as always.

“About what?” Laine frowned. She was graduating from high school; she was almost eighteen years old. She was almost a legal adult. She’d been with Melanie and Warren since she was fifteen and came to love them like family. Before that, however, she had spent an entire childhood being tossed aside from foster family to foster family. A sourness rose to her throat; she knew what was going to happen again.

Sensing something, Melanie quickly shook her head. “Of course you’re welcome to stay here, Laine, for as long as you like. You’re family,” she reassured her. “And besides, the kids need a role model.”

Ah, a babysitter, Laine thought. Francis, Emmi, and Evan were adopted a year after her when she was already “easy to handle” and doing well in school.

The addition of three small children immediately turned the not-exactlysizeable unit upside-down and sped up the bonding process between Laine and her foster parents, who knew they had to keep the children under control to be able to get some proper sleep.

Not that it had been working.

“I’m talking about college,” Melanie said, going straight to the heart of the matter. She sat at the foot of Laine’s bed, and Laine drew her knees to her chest to give her foster mother some space. “If you graduate salutatorian or even first honorable mention, you’re eligible for a huge scholarship in any national university. So we’re not worried about tuition and boarding, to be honest. It’s the additional expenses...the laboratory tools, for instance. The excursions to the Fortress, if you decide to take Meteorology at the Eden City Technical College. However—”

“That’s what Professor Seton wants me to do,” Laine said, referring to her boss at the Eden City Meteorological Society, where she worked twice a week after school. It was supposed to be just a part-time job to pay her debts but she ended up enjoying so much, she stuck through. And grumpy old Professor Harlan Seton liked her too, though he would never admit it. He wrote all her recommendation letters.

“But Mom, I honestly enjoy learning about the Black Hole,” Laine

Mga Katha: Prose / 63

tried to explain.

“I understand, my dear. But you won’t earn much in the Meteorological Society. You know that. Listen, Warren and I are more than willing to pay extra to send you to a big university where you can take up something more lucrative, like bioengineering or aeronautics. Somewhere you can earn what you’re worth. We’d hate to see all that rare intelligence wasted.”

Laine stared at her. “Rare intelligence” was one of the phrases she still had a hard time believing applied to her.

“I’ll think about it,” Laine said. Although she thought, guiltily inside, Not a chance.

“Where are your friends going?” Melanie shifted the topic a bit.

“Chantal?”

“Chantal’s deadset on Political Science,” Laine replied. “Not sure where, though. But she’s aiming for the biggest universities in the country.”

“Good for her,” Melanie said. “Anyway, it’s getting late. Think about what I said. You can always volunteer at the Meteorological Society. You don’t have to make it your full-time job.”

“I will.” I’m not convinced.

“Goodnight, Laine.”

“Goodnight.”

Melanie closed the door behind her. Laine turned to her side and watched the fine grains of black dust swirling inside the crystal ball sitting on her bedside desk—a miniature Black Hole made from the real Black Hole’s particles, unlike other miniatures sold in tourist shops all over the city. This was part of a birthday gift from Harlan Seton and her co-workers at the Meteorological Society. It was also her induction to a very important secret— one that might land her in trouble.

Growing up, Laine agreed with everybody else that the Black Hole was the main source of the city’s pride. It used to be a destructive force that attacked without warning, destroying homes and leaving human skeletons in its path, until Franco Salazar came up with the idea of giving it a small, consistent diet and signed the Decree. Almost immediately, criminals were rounded up, petty crime rates went down, and city lights lit up the streets at night. The economy finally thrived and Eden City became a tourist spot, the envy of the Republic. Laine had watched it all, growing up, how the city sprung from the ashes and skyscrapers were built at a dazzling speed. All of a sudden, they had flying cars and bullet trains and a fancy subway system. It didn’t matter that the

64 / The Literary Apprentice

military police could barge indoors as they please, or if they snatched people who were outdoors a minute past curfew. It didn’t matter that some of the kids in the orphanage started disappearing one by one. Some sacrifices had to be made for the betterment of all, Laine was told, and so she didn’t mourn them.

At least, she tried not to.

In speeches, whenever detractors questioned him, the mayor only repeated the same, sensible thing: “Justice should prioritize the innocent.”

And for the longest time, Laine believed him.

They blindfolded her the day her mind changed. One of her fellow interns touched her shoulder from behind; and another led her by hand to a secret room hidden under the laboratory. When they removed the cloth, she blinked at the brightness and looked around her. She was confused. By all appearances, she was in yet another laboratory—syringes and vials here, holographic screens there, as well miniature black holes swirling in transparent glass cases on one shelf. But there was something else, filling the walls and silently regarding them with their eyes—pictures and pictures of various people in lab coats.

“No,” Laine breathed out.

“Yes.” Professor Seton’s voice was firm. “It was the Decree that led us to this,” he said, and he sat her down and explained everything. How their research laboratories across the city were accused as fronts for drug cartels.

How they were defunded and worse, criminalized. How their colleagues fought back and started disappearing. And, lastly, how the rest of them conceded, forming the Underground Laboratory which Laine was now part of.

IV.

The elevator doors parted and Chantal stepped out, the officers surrounding her.

The first thing Chantal noticed about the Fortress was how wide it was, how empty. Their footsteps echoed down the long, dull halls. The walls were spotlessly white; the ceiling was lined with fluorescent lamps. Chantal had expected something more sinister: a stone interior with flickering yellow light bulbs. However, everything was pristine.

Then she noticed the prisoners.

Both sides of the hall had cell doors, each with a small rectangular window of its own, barred with thick steel rods. Through the windows, Chantal could see the prisoners, one in each cell. There they screamed, banged on the doors, shook the metal bars, begged for mercy—those who weren’t in

Mga Katha: Prose / 65

a drugged or drunken stupor, at least. Most were either half-naked or shabbily dressed. Criminals, Chantal thought, shuddering.

“Cell number 30,” Lieutenant Colonel Martin broke into her thoughts.

The door swung open in front of her.

Chantal entered. It was just as she had expected—pristine and spotlessly white like the rest of the prison. There was a neatly made bed with white pillows and covers. There was a vent in the ceiling, like all the rooms in all of the buildings in the city. Chantal imagined that the vents were stronger here, since they were right by the Black Hole’s outer rings. There were no windows in this room but the one on the cell door. The walls, surprisingly, were made of some hard material, probably stone or marble, but they too were white and clear of any dust or spider webs. She wondered how long she needed to stay there, but she was glad that she would live in good conditions.

Before the officers left she managed to ask a question: “When will I be interrogated?”

Lieutenant Colonel Martin laughed. “What interrogation?”

The door slammed on her face.

Chantal blinked.

And then, only then, did she accept that something was horribly, horribly wrong.

She rushed to the cell door, pounding it with full force, until her hands were bruised. She shook the metal bars. She screamed her throat sore. “I’m innocent! This is all a misunderstanding! I’ve done nothing wrong!”

It was useless, she realized soon, collapsing in a fit of tears. Almost everyone else was screaming or crying or both. Nobody heard them; nobody would hear her. “But I’ve done nothing wrong,” she whispered. Her father wouldn’t let her be thrown in the Black Hole, right? Why was she so scared?

She was his daughter, and more importantly, she was innocent. The Lieutenant Colonel was probably just being mean to her, just scaring her, right? Right?

Revenge for picking on his son. That must be it. She couldn’t die. Not without a trial or questioning of some sort. That would be…unjust.

“I haven’t done anything wrong,” she repeated aloud.

She tried to gather herself. She sat, fists clenched on her lap, and counted to ten. She took deep breaths and listened hard. The sound of footsteps, and she would rush to the door and make herself known. Explain to whoever was there that this was all a sick, cruel twist of fate. They could not kill her. They should not kill her. She was, in the end, the mayor’s daughter—

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...and Jessie Esson’s. A drug addict who grew up in the slums of Prefecture 1.

Chantal wiped her eyes, suddenly understanding. She was nobody special. She was just human, as human as the prisoners in the twenty-nine other cells. As human as her parents.

She thought hard, her arms wrapped around her knees and her head leaning on the wall. What was that song her mother used to sing to her when she was little? An old song, about a hundred years old, though it was recently revived by a popular singer. A children’s song, one with lyrics that conjured up whimsical images of rainbows and fairies and pink elephants. Chantal was hearing it again, hearing it in her mother’s lovely warm voice. “Hear the laughter running through the love parade,” Jessie would sing to her little girl as she yawned and closed her eyes. This was before Franco became mayor, before the Decree, and so the Black Hole stormed violently outside, rattling the door and the roof nearly off their hinges. “Candy kisses and a sunny day, dear Chantal. See the roses raining on the love parade,” her mother continued, kissing her softly on the forehead, and the weather outside ceased to matter.

The lyric went “dear Jessie” but Chantal’s mother replaced it with her name whenever she sang it. Decades ago, it was a song Jessie’s own mother-— Chantal’s grandmother—sang as a lullaby before abandoning Jessie with her abusive drunkard father. Then Jessie was rescued at the age of eight and sent to live at the Eden City Children’s Home, where she met and befriended and grew up with Franco Salazar.

Chantal grew up hearing all about it. How hard it was in the Children’s Home, how the orphans were scolded and beaten all the time. After being released from the institution at the age of eighteen, Franco became a runner for the military police while Jessie got involved in drugs. Franco rose to politics, Jessie was left with a child. “Yet you gave meaning and love to my empty and colorless life,” she always reminded Chantal, and they would fall into a tight embrace.

Now only Chantal could embrace herself. The Black Hole, and its familiar hungry growl filling her ears and drawing tears to her eyes, was just outside the walls of the Fortress. “What will happen to you, Mom?” she whispered. “What will happen to you after Dad kills me?”

V.

Perhaps because they were the only children in the copter, Chantal was cuffed next to a young boy, a skinny child of nine or ten years, with big, old eyes and loose, ragged clothes. The whir of the Black Hole was louder than ever; its fleshy, rotten odor filled her nostrils no matter how hard she pressed her free hand over it. Tears streamed silently down her face. She watched as the officers

Mga Katha: Prose / 67

threw the helpless criminals like sacks of rice off the copter. The officers’ faces were composed, annoyed even, oblivious to the terror in the voices of the people they manhandled into the chute. Those who were unconscious or nearly so were lucky, until they woke up spinning out of control down the vortex. Those who weren’t drugged or drunk picked up a good fight against the officers but easily lost. They were all overpowered.

My father does this every week, Chantal thought. There’s no way he could not know. How can he stomach it?

The little boy beside her suddenly burst into tears. “I don’t want to go!”

Chantal turned to him, squeezing his free hand with hers. “A few seconds of pain,” she choked through her tears. “Then it’ll be all over.”

“My little sister is sick,” the child whimpered. “And I left her all alone.

I shouldn’t have stolen that wallet! I shouldn’t have! It’s all my fault.”

“None of this is your fault.”

“I’m a criminal,” sobbed the child. “I know I deserve this. But I don’t want to die.”

The door to their compartment opened, and a military police officer stepped in. “Quick,” Chantal told the child, “say your name, age, and prefecture number.”

“Huh?”

“Just do it,” Chantal said firmly. “And look into his eyes as you do it.”

She was glaring at the officer.

The officer regarded them with the same blankness of expression.

However, a rush of pride went through Chantal’s shaken body as the boy recited in front of him: “Kenny, age ten, Prefecture 2.”

The officer hesitated. Then he uncuffed Kenny and dragged him away by the arm.

“Keep reciting it, Kenny!” Chantal hollered over the noise. “Say it again and again. No matter what they do to you, no matter what happens to you, say it!”

“Kenny, age ten, Prefecture 2!” Kenny screamed, his eyes shut tight.

He was lifted off his feet, and he floated above the opened chute. “Kenny, age ten, Prefecture 2!”

“Louder!” Chantal screamed, her own hand uncuffed, her own arms

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being dragged, the next one to be thrown. “Louder, Kenny! Let them remember whom they’re doing this to!”

“Kenny, age ten, Prefecture 2!” the boy wailed. “Kenny, age ten—”

And just like that, he was gone.

It was Chantal’s turn. Her eyes were filled with tears, but she managed to look at the officer holding her. He was young. So young, he could almost be a boy. He wasn’t much taller than her. In fact, he seemed to be barely out of adolescence. And so Chantal looked straight into his eyes, searching for some vulnerability, banking on what little hope she had for humanity at that point.

“Chantal Esson Salazar,” she said. The officer stared back without flinching.

“Age sixteen, Prefecture 7,” Chantal finished. “Make of it what you will.” Then she closed her eyes, and without waiting for the young officer to throw her, she jumped.

She was the last criminal of the week. The young officer watched wordlessly until the darkness swallowed her with one gigantic belch.

The Black Hole was satisfied. Almost immediately, dark clouds lightened and slowly parted, giving way for the gentle rays of the rising sun to shed its light over the whole city. Morning had come.

VI.

His name was Dennis. He was the top graduate of his military school batch, and was due for promotion despite being only twenty years old. That meant more power and a bigger salary. It meant more danger for him too, because his consistently stellar performance at executions would land him assignments in lower prefectures. The dangerous ones, the ones closest to the Black Hole. The ones with the most “criminals.”

It was a job, and an important one at that. It kept the city safe for those who truly deserved it, those who didn’t do any crimes. Those who respected the mayor and his rules. It was a job and he was used to it, and so after the executions, he decided to go straight to his pod at the officers’ sleeping lounge near the top floor of the Fortress. He saluted Lieutenant Martin on the way.

He looked down at the city as he rode up the glass elevator—the wide streets without litter, the maze of steel bridges, the children chasing each other in the vast, tended flower parks, the enormous posters bearing the mayor’s face alongside Lieutenant Martin’s, underneath which were the words, indecipherable from this distance: Eden City: Security and Prosperity. High above, flying cars darted through the amazing blueness of the sky, which bore no trace of hail or dust from the now-tamed and satisfied Black Hole. It was the start of a new day.

Mga Katha: Prose / 69

Something had changed, though, Dennis knew. But he wasn’t sure what.

He was so deep in his thoughts that the elevator dinged and he found himself at the rooftop. Might as well get a shake, he decided. He was starting to sweat. There was a small cafe selling overpriced food at the top of the Fortress, where higher-ranking officers hung out. From time to time, though, Dennis treated himself there.

No less than Mayor Franco Salazar turned around when Dennis stepped out of the elevator and into the rooftop. The mayor was leaning over the barrier. He turned around briefly to acknowledge Dennis, but the young officer almost did not recognize him. Gone was the intense, fearless face the mayor showed the entire city and a nation full of detractors and destabilizers.

There was, instead, an unreadable pain in his eyes, a vulnerability.

But it did not last. He blinked, Dennis quickly saluted, and the mayor resumed looking down at his city before Dennis headed for his shake.

The cafe was crowded and people were taking over each other, not caring if they were heard.

“One of the criminals…”

“...the teenage girl, I thought she looked familiar.”

“She’s classmates with Martin’s son.”

“So it’s true. The mayor has a child with a drug addict.”

“You mean had.”

“Keep quiet, will you!”

“He knows. I think he knows that we all know.”

Dennis ordered his shake and found a place between two friends.

“Gotten your invitation yet?” one asked.

“What invitation?” Dennis asked.

“From the lieutenant,” said the friend. “His son’s graduating.” She chuckled, then lowered her voice. “Finally.”

Dennis immediately checked his tablet. There it was, an invitation to a graduation ceremony at Prefecture 12 High School. Sure enough, among the page-long list of graduates was Lieutenant Martin’s son Joseph. Under valedictorian read Eric Glassmont, and under salutatorian read Laine King.

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Dennis went through all the names, but Chantal Esson’s wasn’t one of them.

It was almost as if she never studied there, almost as if she had never lived nor died.

VII.

For four years, Eric’s only wish was that his father would attend his graduation. And his father gave him—and his four older brothers before him— one condition: “You must graduate top of your class.” Alec, Bert, Charlie, and Darren had fulfilled the condition with flying colors. But ever since Chantal Esson enrolled in the same school as Eric, being top of the class became a running bet instead of a sure win. Every semester, it was either Chantal or Eric, and rarely both. When it was both, Eric was okay. When it was him, his father did not mind. But when it was Chantal, then came the swift raps of a wooden ruler that left bloody red lines on his palms.

“I’m staying home if you lose to that drug addict’s bastard,” Eric’s father spat out to him. Then Saturday morning arrived, and emails were sent to the parents of the graduating batch. For the first time in Eric’s seventeen years, his father said he was proud of him.

Now, standing in front of the whole school, with his parents and four brothers waiting eagerly in the front row of the auditorium, Eric cleared his throat and prepared himself for the speech he had rehearsed in his mind millions of times. He had always been a better writer than a speaker, and now wasn’t an exception. He looked at the faces of his batchmates, at Laine, who was unable to look up at him, and at the rest of the student council, some of whom were on the verge of tears. Then his gaze landed on Joseph Martin.

Now, thought Eric, and he looked straight ahead as he began speaking.

“This is a valedictory speech,” he said. “And so I’m going to speak about the rightful valedictorian of the Class of 2096, Chantal Esson.

“Chantal was a born leader, a diligent student, a kind friend.

Unfortunately, she was thrown into the Black Hole for something she didn’t do.”

No, Eric’s father mouthed from his seat, darting him warning looks.

Eric ignored him. Knowing fully well that he would receive another beating back home, he moved on. Soon he was lost in his memories, deeply caught up in an impassioned speech on privilege and power, on breaking the illusion of safety that he himself, until recently, believed in.

He had no regrets. He didn’t care if he would lose his scholarship or be disowned by his family. He didn’t really fear the wrath of the lieutenant, the threat of the Black Hole. He had said what had to be said.

Because justice prioritized the innocent.

Mga Katha: Prose / 71

Someday It Will Snow in Manila, Too

Veronica Florendo

My mother calls one night to tell me that it is snowing in Houston. My tito, whose house we spent most of our time in when we were in America, said that snow rarely reached this part of Texas—the last record of snowfall happened nearly thirty years ago. From the corner of the video I see my brother staring out at the window, his head propped up by a stack of pillows so he can see. I cannot recall the last time I saw him awake. It’s been almost two weeks since the doctors decided to keep him in a painkiller-induced haze.

I remember how much my brother and I wanted to see snow. We would lie down on his hospital bed and talk about it for hours. My brother wasn’t allowed to do many things growing up. He bruised too easily. It was only after a routine blood test that we found out that it was because of the cancer.

All we had was our imaginary world, a web of stories I built so he could go wherever he wanted. Bundled up in scarves and sweaters, we would pet polar bears, snowboard off cliffs, and steal carrots from the kitchen to make snowmen. I would tape stalks of kangkong to my forehead and pretend I was a reindeer as I pulled on the crank at the bottom of the hospital bed. The bed would rise and fall like a sleigh and my brother would laugh, holding on to his IV as if they were Santa’s reins. On nights when his joints would hurt from the cold, we would burrow under his warm fleece blanket and pretend we were stuck in an igloo, waiting for the snowstorm to end.

Three minutes into the call, I am clutching my phone as my mother and I both struggle to not burst out into tears. She zooms in on his face and his eyes are filled with awe, a hint of a smile on his face underneath the oxygen mask. My mother presses the phone to his ear and I say his name. He does not respond.

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On the days I miss him more than usual, I go back to our igloo. But instead of snow, I dream about doing taxes. I dream about him blushing and turning away whenever he talks about the girl he met at a soirée in high school.

I dream about him dancing with his grandchildren even when his hips start to give out. Sometimes, before the next round of drugs would be loaded up into my brother’s system, my lolo would do the same thing. He would grab my brother by the hand and drag him out of bed to dance along the heavily-sanitized floor, which would always end with them bursting into a fit of giggles until my brother forgets the pain. I dream about me laughing behind the camera.

Years later, I am still stuck in the snowstorm, a flurry of what-ifs slamming into me with a force so strong that it forces me to keep my eyes shut. I pray that the storm does not pass.

———————

A year after the snow in Houston, I am clutching an envelope of my lolo’s documents as sweat drips down from my forehead. I have been in line for hours in a crowded office filled with glass partitions, making the summer heat all the more unbearable. My lola was stuck in an equally cramped waiting room, clutching her shawl and praying the rosary. My stomach filled with instant cup noodles and stale vending machine coffee threatened to turn itself out from the inside from worry. The woman in front of me was staring at her screen and refreshing her chat boxes with fervor. The man behind me was telling his family over the phone that this time he would get the money for sure.

In August 2020, the executive committee of the country’s top health insurance company managed to embezzle billions of pesos in the middle of a pandemic. The Interim Reimbursement Mechanism or IRM, was designed to allow the company to provide around twenty-seven billion pesos to select hospitals and health care institutions as a means of support during the pandemic. Most of the beneficiaries, however, had little to no COVID-19 patients, while government hospitals, overbooked and understaffed, clamored for support.

The room smelled of the sun and soiled diapers. Most of the hospital’s patients came from far-flung provinces, carrying nothing but the clothes on their back in the hopes of getting treatment. Every patient here was critical, and we were all willing to beg. I filled out all the paperwork, wrote a lengthy essay on why my lolo deserved financial support more than the other applicants—a prerequisite of the form that never sat right with me—and ended up getting only one-eighth of his procedure covered.

The insurance agent who entertained me always kept her tone pleasant,

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even when she explained that this was the best the company could do. It was his third confinement of the year, she explained, her face covered by the mist that had formed on the glass partition. I bent closer to hear her, and the cool wind coming from the small hole in the window felt like the sting of rejection. There was only so much his insurance could cover, the woman reiterated.

The company also shouldered the fifteen billion pesos worth of taxes that was meant to be paid by these hospitals while simultaneously claiming an inability to support patients drowning in hundreds of thousands of debt. With that much money, I wonder how many patients that could have covered, how many lives were forfeited for someone’s greed.

I wonder if they know that the mansions these high-ranking officials erect are filled with the ghosts of the people that they have denied life, more haunted than the hospital itself.

———————

My friend says he is worried about his hamster who has not eaten properly in days. Through a bunch of veterinary websites and a makeshift check-up, we find out that she has developed a tumor on her right leg. It seems like everyone is getting cancer nowadays.

Rodents, tiny creatures that they are, are surprisingly susceptible to cancer. Despite this, there are no veterinarians that specialize in small animals in Metro Manila. My friend applies antiseptic on her wounds, keeps her in a warm area, and waits for her to die.

———————

When my brother’s treatment stopped working, the doctors said that our best bet for his survival was to go seek professional help abroad. After a month of persistent badgering, we managed to scrounge up enough money from various loans taken from banks and relatives with wealth to spare to prove that we could afford treatment. This seemed to be the primary concern of American hospitals: how much one could afford, not how much one needed medical care. By November, my brother was finally admitted into MD Anderson, in Houston, Texas. Before my brother’s flight I hugged him as tight as I could in the car, unwilling to let go of his frail body, his ribs jutting out against mine. I didn’t know that would be the last time I would be able to do so. I watched my brother, wrapped tightly in his fleece blanket that covered his wheelchair, enter the departures terminal. I waved goodbye, a smile plastered on my face, holding in the tears that threatened to spill out in case he looked back.

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I was expected to follow after my final examinations to take care of him. During class, I would wander around the mall beside my school and think about what I would give him for Christmas, maybe one of his favorite NERF guns or a LEGO Star Wars set he was yet to receive. Now that he was getting the treatment he needed, all I wanted was to pinch the cheeks that had filled up again during his time in Houston. I was excited to once again feel his warmth.

Weeks later, when the doctors found out that the cancer cells proliferated and already metastasized most of his body, my brother decided to go to sleep, fully knowing he would never wake up. By then, it was a waiting game of when his body would give up on him. Every day, my tito and I would appeal to expedite our US visas, where we would sit listless in a coffee shop a few blocks away from the embassy. My phone, constantly hooked up to a power bank, would display his supine frame beside a respirator thrice his size.

Sometimes, my parents would flit about in the background, folding the same sweater for the third time in an hour, or staring at the fog outside as Americans geared up for colder weather. My hands grew numb from cradling the phone in my palms, unwilling to look away.

What hurts more than the inevitability of death is the waiting. After every failed attempt at the embassy, I would go back home and sit in our igloo, waiting for him to return. I feel my fingers stiffen again; I wonder how close they are to shattering.

With my arms wrapped around my knees, I rock myself back and forth, trying to make the bad thoughts go away. But the nightmares never end. My mind forces itself to go through every fight, every unrestrained giggle, every cry of pain, every confession left unsaid. It dissects itself and leaves out the anaesthesia, poking and prodding in places I never knew existed, places that I had forced myself to forget. I bite my lip until the metallic taste of blood seeps into my mouth.

Every experience is tainted with regret, every small misunderstanding implodes into self-loathing. I dig my fingers into my knees until I feel my nails puncture the shallow layer of skin, the minimum level of protection against the outside world. Yet in this igloo, all I want is to run away from myself. With my back against the igloo, I slam my head on the wall of ice and watch as splinters collect around my feet. I revel in the pain until I collapse, curled up on the hard floor.

In the end, no matter how long I stay by the entrance, I am only met with frigid air and the isolating darkness of the night.

———————

Mga Katha: Prose / 75

One night while I was sleeping outside my lolo’s ICU room after his operation, I woke up to the sound of wailing. Wala na si Papa, a woman’s cries reverberated through the hall. Wala na. I sat up on the wooden bench, trying to figure out where the sound was coming from. My father tells me to go back to sleep.

It is then that I see the body heading towards the elevator. The tires squeak as they struggle to move despite the massive weight placed on the cart, with family members pulling against the man’s limbs to deny death. The woman, whose cries have not let up, seems familiar, even in her grief-stricken state.

Two days prior, my lola and I had struck up a conversation with her.

From what I gleaned using my fumbling knowledge of Ilocano, the entire family commuted all the way from Ilocos Norte for this operation. Despite being a fairly routine heart procedure, it was one that could only be done in Manila. It took them a week of sleeping on worn cardboard outside the hospital lobby before they were guaranteed a slot.

The sole provider for their family, the man, her husband, had just come home from his construction job in the Middle East. His employers refused to pay for healthcare. After loaning hundreds of thousands of pesos, the hospital agrees to operate on the man. The doctors tell his family that he is doing better and that he could be discharged any day now. My lola and I congratulate her as we cradle our stale vending machine coffee in our hands, hoping that someday we can say the same for my lolo. And yet in the middle of the night, her husband’s heart just stops.

With the air stale from the floor’s central air-conditioning, as the woman sobs and gasps for air, we drown with her.

Screams are different when they come from someone else’s mouth.

It was almost midnight when I watched my brother die over Facebook Messenger. I didn’t even know I was screaming. My friends, who had offered to keep me company in our otherwise empty house, barged into my parents’ room and found me curled up on the floor, eyes glued to the still figure of my brother broadcasted on the screen. Days later, at a funeral parlor in Houston, my parents told me that I was screaming even after the nurses had taken away the body. Now that I am in front of his casket, I can not bring myself to speak.

———————

Antidepressants are known to induce headaches, vomiting, and other symptoms—the most important being the worsening feeling of wanting to die. It’s funny how what can cure me can also be what causes my death.

Chemotherapy was just like that. It did not just stop at the cancer cells. It was a

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weapon of mass destruction, killing anything in sight. While it helped him get strong, they eventually made him forget how to walk—my brother who had loved to catch the sun more than anything. It helped curb the pain, but it took away everything else.

I had been depressed since I was fifteen years old, but after the loss of my brother, all that was left was a mind-numbing emptiness. I was back in Houston, holding my brother’s urn close to my chest, staring at the TV and processing nothing. The ceramic is cold against my skin, goosebumps materialize on my arms despite being wrapped in a heavy fleece blanket. I am stuck in a constant state of disbelief.

Once I came back from Houston, I was lucky enough to be cared for by my friends. My best friend, who drove all the way from Makati to stuff piles of winter wear in my small maleta before my flight, made it a point to check up on me. My friends in the block helped me get through the days I would just shut down during class, and tried their best to take my mind off of it, even just for a little while.

But in the end, the bad thoughts never left.

My close friend from the block would instinctively latch on to my wrist, feeling for scabs. I had always found it calming to scratch my skin until it bled, no matter the object. He would stroke my wrists as gently as he could, touch feather-like in the hopes I wouldn’t notice. It was one of the reasons I took to wearing jackets in college, guilty and afraid of an impulse I could not control.

I never notice what I have done until it’s over. It was as if I was seven again, listening to my parents and my doctor talk about my health as I played with building blocks strewn around the clinic floor. Then comes the betrayal, the sudden sting of the needle pressed into my forearm. Before I can even respond it is over. They go back to talking, I play with the cotton swab and stare at the blood. The doctor hands me a lollipop and pretends it never happened.

I felt my friend’s hands tremble. His mouth was moving but I couldn’t make out the words. All I felt were the vibrations rattling my eardrums, a buzzing that refused to yield, no matter how many earbuds I shoved in, silencing the world but never the world inside me. I am slamming my fists on the igloo, slivers of ice breaking off and melting into puddles by my feet. I feel it climbing up to my torso now, but the ice never fully shatters. Though the entrance is right there, I can not bring myself to leave.

I stare at him, panic filling me to the brim but never quite reaching my eyes, not knowing what to do. My lips are pressed together tightly; I bite the right side of my gums until it bleeds. I am incapable of understanding why I can not reach out to him, why I am stuck in place.

There is no word for snow in my language. There is no word for how

Mga Katha: Prose / 77

I feel. All I have are these memories swirling inside of me, buried in the parts I am too scared to touch. I do not know what will happen if I try to unearth everything I have repressed. I doubt I would be able to survive it. Instead, I keep it bottled inside and let it wreak havoc within, swirling up my organs, rupturing my vessels, as my mouth barely stops myself from puking my guts out, for everyone to see.

I am going to drown.

———————

Two years after my brother had passed, I attended a birthday party where all the children were bald. My mother and I are standing under a small canopy, eating ice cream. We are positioned beside the children stuck in wheelchairs. Their heads jerk towards the stage filled with dancing mascots, though it falls back on their shoulders almost immediately. The children’s screams are barely heard against the high-pitched remix of popular children’s songs, with a loud syncopated beat meshed into the chaos.

We had come to support a friend of my mother’s initiative to entertain the children stuck in cancer wards and undergoing treatment. Her son had the same strain of cancer as my brother, and affectionately called him Kuya, even if they had never met. He runs around the stage, laughing with his fellow sick friends, and I can’t help but picture my brother playing with them. My nostalgia is interrupted by a nasal voice coming from the megaphone, and I am suddenly filled with rage.

I am now resisting the urge to lob my half-eaten ice cream bar in the direction of a certain senator’s head. He is smug—after all, he does this quite often. Charity events are always a good PR stunt. He presents a fat check, and the organization of his choice will do the rest. All he has to do is show up, plaster his face on every giveaway, and make sure everything is visible to the millions tuning in on live television. The senator poses beside a child and his mother. Once the flash is off, he promptly turns away. I follow the footsteps of every scorned, internet-savvy millennial and immediately complain about the event to my followers on Twitter.

———————

The horrible thing about the world is that for every reason you are thankful for being alive, there are a hundred more reasons to hate it. As much as I try to be kind, I am filled with nothing but resentment. I reject every selfmade businessman, every family member of a political dynasty, every nurse that has told me that this will not hurt at all, every self-help book that has told

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me that things will get better because they are wrong because they profit off of our existence because they say yoga will help me forget but my arms only strain against being stretched too far apart because they deny the significance of pain as if it is inevitable that we suffer because injustice can not be solved by changing one’s mindset because it’s been years for me and centuries for everyone else and it has never gotten better and I am so fucking tired of waiting. I am tired of the way the world works.

After decades of rapid technological development, the simplest problems are still practically unsolvable. Assisted by medical devices, diagnosis is much faster, more costly, and invaluable in providing one with many options on the way they die. There are still no cures, only vaccines that inhibit risk.

They teach our bodies to withstand what the world refuses to heal.

When we came back to the Philippines, the priest who presided over his burial rites called my brother a saint. Sainthood is, by definition, a title rewarded for one exhibiting their closeness to God. With Jesus as the standard, it has become a measure of how well one suffers. People’s saint-like quality banks heavily on their resilience. It is a denial of the systems that bring about so much pain. I was tired of the preaching, the reassurance without action, the acceptance of things we should never have to accept.

I started bird watching on Sundays. They would circle around the altar and peck at the host, without a clue of how sacred the bread that they were eating was. A trail of breadcrumbs littered the aisle. Eventually, I stopped going altogether.

———————

In Anne Boyer’s The Undying, she writes: “Just as no one is born outside of history, no one dies a natural death” (280). Death, much like life, has been unfairly allocated. My death has been engineered by the rich and powerful.

In the end, it was the cold that got him. His body, unable to acclimatize to an unexpected Texan winter due to the chemotherapy wrecking his entire immune system, collapsed on itself. I lie awake thinking that he would have been alive right now if things had turned out differently, if the world had been a tad more forgiving. I know he would. I have no one and everyone to blame.

I am accustomed to taking night shifts at the hospital. Conscious of every faint twitch, of every softened yelp of pain, I stare at my patient intently, my hand hovering above the nurse’s switch. I watch their chest rise and fall.

Their breathing is relaxed even when their faces are convulsed in pain.

On most days, I feel myself wasting away, every minute death of each

Mga Katha: Prose / 79

cell that leaves my body is an ache so debilitating I have forgotten how to move. In the dark, I hear the pulse of my heart beat more acutely. It is faint but I hear its steady thrum, resisting against my ribcage, pounding on the igloo’s walls.

Seconds before I drift off to sleep, they are still breathing.

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Blockade

John Rey Dave Aquino

I.

Bagaman inaabangan niya pa rin ang pagbabalik ng huni ng mga palaka’t kuliglig sa gabi, nasanay na si Javier sa katahimikan ng bukid. Tanging ang mahinang simoy ng hangin ang naririnig niya habang naglalakad sa pilapil ng lambak ng bukirin. Kailan lang tumahimik ang bukid at alam niyang mapanlinlang ang katahimikang tulad nito. Sinabihan na siya ni Pacita na huwag nang lumabas.

Bukas na lang, sabi ng kanyang asawa, at baka makasalubong ka pa ng mga sundalo sa bukid, pero ayaw niyang dumating si Miguel kinabukasan na talong at gabi lang ang nakahain. May mga kasamang kaibigan ang anak, mga lakingsiyudad, at ayaw niyang dumating sila na parang hindi nila pinaghandaan.

Gusto niyang makapaghanda ng sapat para sa anak, lalo na ang paborito niyang adobo, pero mahirap maghanap ng karne sa kanilang bayan. Kakaunti at mabilis maubos ang mga ibinebenta sa palengke; kahit gaano kaaga siyang pumunta roon ay hindi niya naaabutan ang mga karne sa meat section. Hindi niya naman maatim na katayin ang mga alagang manok dahil nakatay na nila ang anim sa dating sampung manok. Mayroon silang gulay sa likod-bahay— kamote, gabi, kamatis, sayote—pero hindi sapat iyon para sa anak niya at mga bisita nila, kaya niya naisipang pumunta sa palaisdaan at manghuli ng isda.

May kalayuan ang palaisdaang pupuntahan niya at wala pa siya sa kalahati ng daan. Itinutok niya sa pilapil ang flashlight niyang mahina na ang ilaw dahil paubos na ang baterya. Malamlam naman ang liwanag ng kalahating buwan habang may mga bahagi ang langit na walang bituin dahil natatakpan ng ulap. Pero tama lang ang liwanag na ito para hindi siya makita sa palaisdaan ni Lakay Sinyo; sigurado siyang magagalit ang matandang may-ari ng palaisdaan kung sakaling malaman na manghuhuli siya ng isda sa palaisdaan nito. Ayaw niyang mapaaway nang wala sa oras. Hiniling niyang sana’y mahimbing na ang matanda sa kubo nito sa kabilang dulo ng palaisdaan.

Tumingin siya ulit sa kalahating buwang nakatago sa mala-usok na

Mga Katha: Prose / 81

ulap. Salamat Apo, bulong niya. Binilisan niya nang kaunti ang paglakad.

Wala siyang ibang naririnig kundi ang sariling hininga at ang pagtapak niya sa pilapil. Kumikindat na ang ilaw ng flashlight niya kaya pinatay na niya ito at nagtiwala na lang sa liwanag ng buwan. Nasa bandang dulo na siya ng bukirin at malapit na sa palaisdaan kung saan talahiban ang katabi ng pilapil. Sa kabilang dulo naman ay nakatayo sa ilalim ng puno ng mangga ang maliit na kubong pahingahan ng mga nagsasaka kapag pananghalian, katabi ng duyang nakasabit sa pinakamababang sanga.

Doon din tumatambay ang mga sundalo para bantayan, sa kung ano mang dahilang sila lang ang nakaaalam, ang mga magsasakang nagtatrabaho sa bukid. Minsan apat, minsan lima. Laging alerto ang mga sundalong nagbabantay sa kanila. Puro matitigas ang mukha nila at palaging katabi o kayakap ang malalaki nilang baril sa kubo. Pusturang pustura ang mga sundalo dahil tila hindi nalulukot ang patig nilang uniporme at palaging makintab ang mga baril at sapatos nila. Tahimik lang sila tuwing nag-uusap-usap sa kubo pero hindi gaanong pinakikialaman ang mga magsasaka maliban kung may bagong mukha.

Nang minsang isama ni Lakay Ime ang pamangkin niya para tumulong sa bukid, noon unang narinig ni Javier ang boses ng isa sa mga sundalo. “Dito ka muna, ading. Kakausapin ka lang namin saglit,” ang sinabi ng sundalo.

Kahit mukhang ayaw ni Lakay Ime, pinaiwan niya ang pamangkin sa kubo at nagsimulang magtrabaho. Lahat sila ay paminsan-minsang sumusulyap sa kubo, upang siguruhing naroon pa ang binata. Nang matapos siyang kausapin ng mga sundalo, pinakawalan na siya ng mga ito.

“Anong sinabi ng mga sundalo sa ‘yo?” agad na tinanong ni Lakay Ime.

“Tinanong po nila kung rebelde ba ako.” Wala nang nagulat sa sinabi ng binata.

Iba naman ang ginagawa ng mga sundalo sa gabi. Nakita ni Javier ang mga ito nang minsang umuwi siya nang gabi, bago pa magpataw ng curfew.

Nag-iinuman ang mga sundalo sa kanilang pinagkakampuhang gusali sa eskwelahan ng barangay. Hindi na nila suot ang mga patig na uniporme maliban sa pantalon; T-shirt o sando na lamang ang suot nilang pang-itaas. Nakaupo ang mga sundalong nakita niya sa harap ng ilang bote ng alak. Malakas ang tawanan at usapan ng mga sundalo, labas ang lahat ng ngipin, mas masigla ang mukha dahil may alak sila sa gabi. Panatag si Javier na hindi niya masasalubong ang mga sundalo. Sigurado siyang nag-iinuman ang mga sundalo sa eskwelahan.

Hindi niya inaasahang marinig ang pamilyar na tunog na umalingawngaw sa tulong ng mga bundok na pumapalibot sa bukid. Dalawang beses pa niya itong narinig bago niya napagtantong putok ng baril ang narinig niya, pero nakadapa na siya bago pa niya makilala ang tunog.

Wala nang ulap sa mukha ng kalahating buwan. Mas maliwanag na ang

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paligid, pero hindi niya makita kung nasaan ang mga sundalo. Hindi niya alam kung malapit ba ang mga ito o malayo, kung sa harap ba niya o sa kaliwa nanggaling ang putok, kung nakita ba siya ng mga ito o hindi, kung sa isip lang ba niya narinig ang tunog. Pero sigurado siyang hindi guni-guni ang tunog; ilang dekada na niyang naririnig ang tunog sa mga bundok at palayan ng La Torre. Gumapang siya nang pasulong at nagtago sa mga talahib sa gilid ng bukid. Hindi na niya pinansin ang kati ng matatalas na dahon ng talahib.

Sa paggapang niya, napansin niya ang paggalaw ng kung anumang bagay sa harapan niya. Tiningnan niya ito at nakilala ang hugis ng palaka, kasama ang madulas at mala-putik na balat nito. Nagkatitigan sila ng palaka nang matagal hanggang sa kumokak ito, at iyon ang unang beses na narinig ni Javier ang kokak ng palaka sa loob ng ilang buwan. Alam niyang hindi na siya makararating sa palaisdaan, kaya dinakma niya ang palaka para ilagay sa dala niyang fishnet at maiuwi, pero maliksi ang palaka at nakailag sa kamay niya.

Sinubukan niya ulit itong dakmain pero nakatalon na ang palaka palayo.

Iniangat na lang niya ang ulo at tumingin sa paligid. Walang sundalo kahit saan. Naisip niyang baka nagpaputok lang ang mga sundalo sa eskwelahan bilang katuwaan. Tumayo na siya at nagmamadaling bumalik sa bahay. Hindi na niya binuksan pa ulit ang flashlight niya dahil kabisado naman niya ang pilapil.

II.

Nang lumagpas ang bus na sinasakyan nina Miguel sa malaking arko ng WELCOME TO LA TORRE sa bungad ng kinalakhan niyang bayan, hinawi niya ang kurtina sa bintana para pagmasdan ang malawak na sakahan ng La Torre. Panahon pa lamang ng pag-aararo kaya wala pa ang mga nakayukong tangkay ng palay dahil sa mabibigat na butil ng bigas. Naroon ang mga magsasaka kasama ang kanilang mga kalabaw at araro habang sinunsundan ang mala-ahas na ruta sa kanilang bukid.

Dahan-dahang huminto ang bus, may isang kilometro mula sa arko sa bungad ng La Torre. Mayrooong mahabang pila ng iba pang sasakyan sa harapan ng bus, iba pang bus, mga van at kotse, ilang truck. Nakita ni Miguel sa windshield ang dulo ng pila. May checkpoint ang mga sundalo para sa lahat ng sasakyang pumapasok sa ili. Mabagal ang pag-abante ng pila ng mga sasakyan.

Sa balikat ni Miguel, nakapatong ang ulo ng tulog na si Carly. Tinapik siya ng binata at bumulong, “Malapit na tayo. Gising na muna.� Iniangat ni Carly ang ulo at tumingin sa bintana ng bus. Tumayo si Miguel sa upuan gisingin ang kaibigang nakaupo sa likod nila, ngunit gising na gising si Kael habang nakapasak ang earphones sa tainga.

Sumenyas si Miguel na alisin ng kaibigan ang earphones. “Kael, okay

Mga Katha: Prose / 83

ka lang?”

“Oo naman.” Ngumiti si Kael ngunit halatang kabado dahil iba ang kanyang ngiti.

“Malapit na tayo. Tandaan mo lang ‘yung mga pinag-usapan natin.”

Umupo ulit si Miguel. Nakatulala si Carly sa labas, mukhang kabado rin. Hinawakan niya ang kamay ng katabi. “Ikaw, okay ka lang?” Tumango lang si Carly. “Malapit na tayo,” bulong ni Miguel bilang paninigurado.

Sobrang bagal ng pag-usad ng pila kaya inabot ng halos isang oras bago makarating ang bus nina Miguel sa unahan ng pila. Malaki ang mga barikadang bakal na harang sa kalsada, mayroong malaking tarpaulin kung saan CHECKPOINT lang ang nakasulat kasama ang logo ng militar. Maraming sundalo sa paligid, higit trenta, suot ang patig na uniporme at hawak ang malalaking baril. May dalawa ring malaking trak na nakaparada sa gilid kung saan mukhang nagpapahinga ang mga sundalo. Maliban sa mga nasa trak, matitigas ang mukha at matatalim ang tingin ng mga sundalong nagbabantay sa barikada.

Sinundan ni Miguel ang ginawang checkpoint ng mga sundalo sa sasakyang nauna sa kanila. Pinalabas ang drayber at kinausap ng isa, samantalang may apat na sundalong sumilip sa loob, binuksan ang sliding door ng van, tiningnan ang lahat ng pasahero nito, nagtanong ng hindi niya marinig na tanong. Nakalabas na ang drayber at kinakausap ng isa pang sundalo sa gilid ng sasakyan. Napansin ni Miguel ang malalaking kumpas ng kamay ng drayber na tila nanliliit sa titig ng sundalong kausap.

Matapos ang checkpoint, pinayagan nang makapasok sa bayan ang van. Susunod na ang kanilang bus sa inspeksyon. Umabante ang bus ng ilang metro ngunit huminto rin, sunod sa kumpas ng kamay ng isang sundalo sa barikada. Nasa bandang hulihan sila nakaupo kaya hindi marinig ni Miguel ang pag-uusap ng drayber na nakadungaw sa bintana at ng sundalong nasa labas.

Ngunit hindi nagtagal ay pumasok ang isa pang sundalo sa pintuan ng bus.

Hindi niya ito matitigan habang naglalakad ang sundalo sa pagitan ng mga upuan. Nakasukbit ang mahaba nitong baril sa balikat. May isa pang sundalong pumasok pero tumayo lang sa harapan. Wala siyang ekspresyon.

Marahang naglakad ang sundalo sa kahabaan ng bus. Isa-isa nitong tiningnan ang bawat pasahero ng punong bus. Tinitingnan din nito ang maliit na espasyo sa ibabaw ng kanilang ulo na kinalalagyan ng mga backpack at iba pang gamit. Saka lamang nagsimulang uminit ang tainga ni Miguel kasabay ng pagbilis ng kanyang pulso. Nasa hulihan sila ng bus kaya matagal bago sila marating ng sundalo. Maya’t maya siyang sumusulyap sa sundalong tila may hinahanap sa mga pasahero. Sinubukan ni Miguel na payapain ang sarili sa pagtingin sa labas ng bintana. Hindi niya makuhang tingnan ang sundalo.

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Samantala, nakababa na ang drayber at binuksan ang compartment ng mga bagahe habang nakabantay ang mga sundalo. Pinanood ni Miguel ang mga nangyayari sa bintana. Nang mabuksan ang lalagyan ng mga bagahe, lumapit ang sundalo, nilapitan at tila may hinanap din—na pansin sa galaw ng mata at kunot ng noo—at may itinuro sa loob ng compartment. May sinabi ang drayber at umakyat sa bus.

“Sino daw po ang may-ari ng sako sa bagahe?” tanong ng drayber sa mga pasahero.

Nagtaas ng kamay ang isa sa mga pasahero, isang matandang lalaki.

“Gusto raw ho kayong kausapin,” sabi ng drayber.

“Bakit daw?”

“Tara na po,” ang biglang sabi ng sundalo na nasa loob ng bus. Nasa tabi na ito ng matandang lalaki at hawak ang braso nito. Kahit hindi nasagot ang tanong niya, napilitang sumunod ang matanda at bumaba sila ng bus.

Itinuon ni Miguel ang atensyon sa mga mangyayari sa labas ng bus. May inilabas ang mga sundalo na sako mula sa compartment. Malinaw na bigas ang laman ng sako. Nakaharap na ang matanda sa isa sa mga sundalo at matigas ang mukha ng sundalo habang nagsasalita. Halata namang mukhang walang alam ang matanda sa mga nangyayari. Nakapalibot sa kanya ang mga sundalong may hawak na baril, inilabas mula sa bagahe ang dala niyang sako ng bigas, at, kahit hindi marinig ni Miguel ang usapan, alam niyang sinasabihan ng sundalo ang matanda na hindi maaaring ipasok sa La Torre ang sako niya.

Nakaramdam ng awa si Miguel para sa matanda. Hindi naman niya kailangang magdala ng bigas sa La Torre dahil malawak ang bukirin ng bayan para sa palay. Sigurado si Miguel na alam ng matandang lalaki ang nangyayari sa La Torre kaya tinangka niyang magpasok ng bigas para sa mga kapamilya sa bayan. Marahil ay nagpupustura itong bibisita lang siya sa kanyang mga kamaganakan at nagdala ng sako ng bigas.

Nagsimulang magpaliwanag ang matandang pasahero, pero umiiling na agad ang sundalong kausap niya. Sumenyas ang sundalo sa isa sa mga kasamahan niya. Binuhat ng dalawang sundalo ang sako ng bigas at dinala sa kanilang trak. Naiwan ang matanda na mukhang nagpapaliwanag pa rin, nagmamakaawa, habang nakatayo lang ang drayber sa gilid. May sinabi ang sundalo at, matapos ang tila mahabang pag-iisip, tumango ang matanda.

Umakyat naman ang drayber sa bus at pinaandar ang makina ng sasakyan.

“Bakit umakyat na ‘yung drayber? Maiiwan ba siya?” biglang tanong ni Carly. Nakatingin din siya sa labas ng bintana at nakakunot ang noo. Tumango lang si Miguel. Umabante ang bus at naiwan sa checkpoint ang matandang lalaki na kausap pa rin ang sundalo.

Mga Katha: Prose / 85

Nang makarating ang bus sa maliit na palengke ng La Toree kung saan nagbababa ng pasahero ang lahat ng bus na dumaraan sa bayan, dumungaw ulit si Miguel sa bintana. Madali niyang nahanap ang ama na nakaupo sa motor ng kanyang tricycle. Nang tumayo na siya’t kinuha ang bag sa compartment sa kanilang ulunan, agad niyang kinapa niya ang dalawang kilo ng bigas na ibinilin sa kanya ng mga magulang. Naramdaman niya ang halos magkakadikit na butil ng bigas sa kabilang panig ng balat ng bag at huminga ulit siya nang malalim.

Nakarating na sila ng La Torre.

III.

Kanina pa nag-aalala si Pacita. Nariyang nakaupo siya sa labas ng kanilang dampang gawa sa pinagtagpi-tagping kahoy at yero, kasama ang mga alagang aso ng asawa. Mamaya’y lalakarin niya ang pilapil na dinaraanan mula sa kanilang dampa sa gitna ng palayan papunta sa kalsada. Titingin siya sa laod kung saan papalubog na ang araw, sa direksyon ng ili. Doon siya tatayo ng ilang minuto bago bumalik muli sa dampa para gumawa ng kahit ano, pero hindi niya mapipigilang lakarin muli ang pilapil hanggang sa sementado pero sirang kalsada para hintayin ang kanyang mag-ama.

Nagsimula nang dumilim at tumahimik ang paligid; nanginginain ang dilim ng mga palayan, puno, at bahay. Naaninag ni Pacita ang gasera ng kanilang pinakamalapit na kapitbahay sa kabilang bahagi ng kalsada, sa gitna rin ng palayan. Wala pa ring kuryente, sa isip ni Pacita. Ilang araw na ring brownout sa kanilang bayan. Ayon sa mga nanggagaling sa ili, mayroon daw inaayos na kung anong makina at walang nakakaalam kung kailan babalik ang kuryente.

Tumingin si Pacita sa kanyang lumang relo, alas 6:09, na mas lalong dumagdag sa kanyang pagkabagabag. Halos apat na oras na mula nang umalis si Javier para salubungin ang kanilang anak na nanggaling pa sa Baguio. Isang oras na lang bago ang curfew, inisip ni Pacita, isang oras na lang at siguradong huhulihin sila ng mga naka-patig na sundalo sa mga checkpoint palabas ng ili.

“Naghihigpit daw sa seguridad ang militar,” ayon kay Javier nang minsang umuwi ito galing sa ili matapos magpakiskis ng palay. “Nakakalat ang batalyon nila ngayon sa buong probinsya. Puro checkpoint, inspeksyon.”

Sa kabilang bahagi ng makitid na kalsada, nakita niyang may naglalakad sa pilapil, mula sa kanilang kapitbahay. Nang makarating ito sa kalsada, nakilala niya si Mang Geron na dala-dala ang maliit na kaldero. “Gabi na, Pacita, bakit nandito ka sa kalsada?” bati ng nakatatanda sa kanya.

“Hinihintay ko lang si Javier, Manong. Kayo po, saan kayo lalakad?”

Mukhang nagdalawang-isip pa ang matanda bago sumagot. “A, wala na

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ulit kaming bigas, ading. Heto nga’t manghihiram ulit sana ako sa inyo, kung mayroon pa? Said na iyong huling sako namin,” balisa’t nahihiyang tugon ng matanda. “Kung mayroon lang naman, ading.”

Tumango si Pacita. Mayroon pa sigurong kalahating salop ng bigas sa kanilang huling sako, pero huli na nga rin naman ito. Ilang linggo na rin nilang tinitipid iyong sako, lalo pa’t inutang lang din nila ito sa may-ari ng lupang sinasaka nila, si Sir Castro. Sa pagkakarinig ni Pacita, hindi pinautang ng matandang maylupa sina Lakay Geron dahil hindi rin naman daw sila makakapagbayad.

“Sige po, Manong. Hintayin niyo na lang po ako dito,” ang sinabi ni Pacita. Kinuha niya ang kaldero at nilakad ulit ang pilapil pauwi sa kanilang bahay. Binuksan niya ang dram na pinaglalagakan nila ng sako ng bigas.

Nagpasalamat siya sa langit pagkakita niya ng laman ng sako. Mali ang tantya niya; siguro’y dalawang salop pa ang naroon. Gamit ang lumang lata ng gatas, naglagay siya ng bigas sa kaldero ni Lakay Geron.

“Ito ho, Manong.” Iniabot niya ang kaldero sa matanda nang makabalik sa kalsada. “Pasensya na ho, iyan muna ang maipapahiram namin.”

Tiningnan ng matanda ang laman ng kaldero at mukhang nagulat.

“Maraming salamat, Pacita. Marami naman na ito, makaraos lang kami sa mga susunod na araw,” pasasalamat niya. Mas masigla na nang kaunti ang boses ng matanda.

Ngumiti si Pacita. “‘Wag kayong mag-alala, Manong. Matatapos din ito. Kung kailangan niyo pa ho ng bigas, ‘wag kayong mag-atubiling lumapit sa amin.”

Nagpasalamat ulit ang matanda bago umuwi. Naiwang naghihintay si Pacita. Naalala niya ulit ang usapan nila ng asawa. “Bakit nga raw hindi sila nagpapapasok ng pagkain dito sa La Torre?”

“Baka raw ibinibigay natin sa mga rebelde.”

Kinabukasan na ang piyesta ng bayan ng La Torre. Iniisip ni Pacita kung paano kaya mangyayari ang selebrasyon kung may problema sa pagkain.

Apat na buwan na mula nang itayo ang mga checkpoint sa limang entrada ng bayan. Isang buwan matapos noon, ipinagbawal ng militar ang pagpapasok ng pagkain sa kanilang bayan. Nakaraos ang mga residente sa kanilang barangay dahil mga magsasaka sila’t may imbak na bigas. May tanim silang kamatis, okra, gabi at kangkong sa likodbahay. Maaari rin namang mamingwit ng isda sa mga palaisdaan at sa ilog. Sa ili naman, may suplay ang mga bigasan at grocery, na siyang pinagmumulan ng ibinebenta sa mga sari-sari sa mga barangay. Pero masyadong mahaba ang tatlong buwan at paubos na ang huling sako nina Pacita mula sa nakaraang anihan. Kaya nang magpaalam si Miguel na uuwi sa kanila ay sinabihan nila agad ang anak na mag-uwi ng bigas.

Mga Katha: Prose / 87

Pero paano kung napigil si Miguel sa checkpoint? Tumindi ang pagaalala ni Pacita. May kasama pa ang mga anak, dalawang kaibigan mula sa kolehiyo. Paano kung pinababa sila ng bus ng mga sundalo? Paano kung dinala sila sa kampo ng mga sundalo? Paano kung kinukuwestiyon na sila sa isang madilim na kwarto? Paano kung pilit sila ngayong pinaaamin sa pagiging rebelde?

Naalala ni Pacita ang balitang narinig niya noong isang linggo lamang.

May mga sumukong rebelde raw sa kasunod na bayan ng Mainit. Halos isandaang kalalakihan daw ang nagbaba ng armas at pinangakuan ng mga militar ng trabaho at pabahay. Nangilabot si Pacita nang ikuwento sa kanya ng mga nakarinig din ng balita kung sino ang mga sumuko. Kilala nila ang ilan sa mga sinabing sumukong rebelde: si Bugsot na lasenggo’t basagulero, si Carlos na walang trabaho’t tambay, si Emilio na dating pulis pero natanggal sa pwesto dahil sa pangongotong.

Isa rin sa mga sumuko si Oliver, anak ng kanyang pinsan, samantalang sa pagkakaalam niya’y kauuwi lang ng binata galing Qatar. Sa kwento, kumatok daw ang mga sundalo sa kanilang bagong gawang bahay at inimbitahan si Oliver sa kampo ng militar. May limang araw itong hindi umuwi, at noong nakaraang linggo nga’y sumuko raw bilang rebelde.

Tiningnan ni Pacita ang lumang relo, pero hindi na niya maaninag ang oras; tuluyan nang lumubog ang araw. Binuksan niya ang flashlight na nakastrap sa noo at saka nakita ang oras. Alas 7:00. Nilakad na muli niya ang pilapil pabalik sa bahay upang sindihan ang mga gasera, mga garapong nilagyan ng gaas at mahahaba’t makakapal na piraso telang nagsisilbing mitsa na parang kandila. Nang masindihan na niya ang huling gasera, sinimulan niya na ring ilagay sa mesa ang hapunang inihanda niya. Kalalapag pa lamang niya ng kaldero sa mesa nang marinig niya ang makina ng paparating na tricycle. Agad siyang lumabas at iniwan ang gasera sa gitna ng mesa.

“Inang!”

Naroon na si Miguel, at malaki ang ngiting niyapos siya ng bunsong anak. Niyakap niya rin ang anak, at tuluyang lumuwag kahit kaunti ang kanyang dibdib. Hindi siya kinuha ng mga sundalo, hindi pinigil sa checkpoint, hindi tinatanong kung rebelde ba siya. Dumating na ang anak niya.

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The End of Guilt and Silence

Jewel Enrile

As a kid, I had that stubborn habit of picking at itchy scabs, even after being told off by every adult that I should let it be so it could heal. My grandmother would swat at my hands whenever she caught me. She’d order me to lather my legs with lotion and ask me, in a threatening tone, if I wanted ugly scars to mar my skin. I ignored her like I ignored the warnings from running in the streets that got me the wounds in the first place. I chose, instead, to indulge my curiosity at interrupting the healing flesh and see it red and sore. Now, at nineteen years old, with patches of childhood scars on my body, I wonder if that habit ever died. I wonder, if as some estranged friends, teachers, and family members have accused me of doing, I choose to do the same thing with the wounds nobody sees; if I keep picking at my scabs and letting the hurt come to life again, hindering me from healing. I wonder, unsure, but the guilt has already formed in the pit of my stomach.

After all, why would I ruminate about my rape?

I should forget it. I should move on, as I was told several times, among being called a slut or interrogating how my five-year-old self could let it happen. I should let my experience empower me and drive me to be resilient like I did with all the other adversities I’ve faced: being raised around physical abuse, then later in a single-parent household struggling to make ends meet. That’s what I wrote in personal essays for scholarships, speeches during awarding ceremonies, and posts on social media. I proclaimed every extenuating circumstance as one of those encouraging narratives of ambition and resilience: if I could do this, so can you!

Except for one.

———————

Mga Katha: Prose / 89

I remember the first person I told. It was my classmate in third grade, the girl who sat in front of me. It was during our break time, so many of our classmates were standing around while eating as we chose to stay in our seats, passing notes. The ceiling fan creaked in a tired orbit. We shared secrets. That day, I chose the biggest one to tell. I remember scribbling the word “rape” down clearly, as if it was at par to kissing a boy on the cheek at a birthday party or sneaking out of the house to buy candy slipped from the change by the kitchen table, or that Marie over there is truly, insufferably papansin. I wrote it with the knowledge it was something forbidden. I just thought that it was a good enough secret to share. I remember her looking back at me in disbelief.

The next day, when her mother came to school with our third-grade adviser in tow to confront me, I don’t know where the sobs came from. I remember the hands on my back and the concern in their voices. In the girls’ bathroom, I looked at the blurry, cracked mirror, confused at my own swollen eyes and red nose. I didn’t understand how and why what I wrote was wrong, but I felt it. I wish I could say I realized the complete immorality of it when my teacher added a lesson on child abuse before the third grade ended. Back then, I could only comprehend so much.

I speak of childhood memories when I talk of anything before I was nine years old. I always wondered why it was so. It dawned on me that my childhood had ended then.

———————

“Look at all of your successes,” one therapist said. She listed down everything from my scholarship to my boyfriend, from the fact I was breathing to the roof over my head. “Remember these!” Be grateful. There’s always been an undertone of me being undeserving of all of it. For someone who went through something catastrophic, I could have ended up much worse. That seemed enough. Be grateful. Another told me to find humility and forgiveness within my heart. A litany of gratitude escapes my lips during the times I try to drown out feelings of wanting to jump from balconies. Just be grateful.

I was diagnosed in 2018 with post-traumatic stress disorder and major depressive disorder. My rape had happened from 2005 to 2008, and I was assaulted in 2012. In between those years was a mix of quiet suffering through emotional turmoil, denial, shame and guilt, and grasping at straws to keep me stable and sane.

Teachers continued to find out, either from self-harm scars or some other behavior my younger self must have exhibited for them to pick up something wrong. Before going into high school, one of my teachers made me promise her to succeed and to protect myself by wearing long sleeves and pajamas. I tried. For some time, I was afraid to go outside in shorts or anything

90 / The Literary Apprentice

sleeveless, especially at night. It was drilled to me, even without prodding or confession, just something all girls before puberty learned: no man could be trusted. I was warned about routines and being preyed on out of nowhere by someone predicting where I was or what I was doing, and I shut myself in my house.

Another teacher in high school was angry at the fact that it had happened to me, but there must have been blame and impatience that she bit back whenever I underperformed in her classes, or simply failed tests and homework. She told me to make friends, focus on academics, and just try.

When I told a few friends, my rape became the subject of a high school rumor mill. My family members’ first reaction to my self-harm scars were pag-iinarte. My rape was answered with a question if I wanted close family members to go to jail after so much struggle living their lives. The reaction to my confession about hallucinations of deep voices, as well as my overall misery, was that I could get over it. I was surrounded by the idea of suicidal thoughts and depression dismissed as pretentiousness, hypersensitivity, or plain pessimism. The message was clear to me: I was responsible for everything. I should put aside my trauma, or I was going to continuously disappoint.

So, I became productive. I detached myself from my reality and feelings.

I focused on what was needed to get to another day. There was no time to dwell on anything. Arguments slipped past me. I ignored my insecurities whenever I felt like an outcast. I didn’t blink an eye when we lost our apartment and slept with family friends for a couple of months. I ignored whatever sadness there was sinking into my chest. Instead, I made sure that every day in class was a chance for me to get better grades for the scholarship and schools I was eyeing for senior high school. I was determined to keep things in control.

I passed my entrance exams and was granted a full scholarship. I didn’t scream or jump up in the air, but I remember closing my eyes with a big beam on my face, clutching my phone, satisfied that what I did was enough. I screenshotted and posted confirmation emails and the signing of contracts on social media. I brought up with teachers in class, letting their approving nods and congratulations wash over me. Then, when the time came to maintain the said scholarship, and focus on getting to college, it was the same routine. I fell asleep next to open textbooks, buying reviewers, spent hours studying online, felt like it was a sin to take a break or to simply sit in silence. I knew I couldn’t keep it up for long, though. Sooner or later - though I didn’t know how, or when and where - I was bound to break.

It happened out of nowhere. It was at night. I remember lying down in my bed. I must have seen, read, or recalled something, because the next thing I knew, the pain was surging through my chest. I was twisting my body on the mattress, coming nose-to-nose with the wall. I had already been dismissed, blamed, or became the subject of disgust every time I came forward about what had happened to me, but nothing could have prepared me for the flood

Mga Katha: Prose / 91

of revulsion that rose from my chest when I started to fully realize my rape.

I retched in the bathroom, my eyes welling with tears, my nose stinging from the smell of bleach. I froze in a ball on the damp, tiled floor and struggled to take a breath. I started to think about the huge, blank gaps in my memory, the nightmares that came every day, the overwhelming sadness that stranded me to my bed every other week. I thought of people interrogating me as to what I was wearing, if I could tell them explicit details of what happened, why didn’t I tell anyone, why didn’t I know how to tell or how to scream, and how it even happened. I was wracked with anger and shame. Everything I’ve blocked myself off from feeling came crashing down.

That was my introduction to severe panic attacks I’d suffer from - not regularly, but too often for my taste. I learned to avoid any form of media that tackled rape since then. I veered away from the adaptation of Thirteen Reasons Why, a Netflix show that had graphic depictions of rape and suicide, and I muted any mention of a Filipino film that centered around a false rape accusation made by a child online. I was sickened at gratuitous portrayals and the use of it as a plot device, while also avoiding possible triggers, and it felt wrong, still, to identify as someone who has suffered through the same thing.

Before watching the limited series Unbelievable on Netflix last month, I had only read one book that involved trauma and rape: We Were the Mulvaneys,

by Joyce Carol Oates. I read it with irrational guilt at acknowledging something I’ve hidden away. It was the same feeling I got playing Unbelievable, which was based on a Pulitzer-prize winning essay on a serial rapist in Colorado and his victims. One went for years without being believed and was even charged for filing a false report.

It was surprising to feel comforted at seeing something so familiar and yet so hidden within me. My pain wasn’t something isolated anymore. I felt seen, with the depictions of confusion, emptiness and being probed and poked by so many people demanding details of my rape. I didn’t expect to tear up seeing women relentless in fighting for justice and victims seeing the perpetrator gets arrested in court.

I never had that closure. I probably never will.

I thought of how much I wanted to defy the shame drilled into me.

I thought of my continuous loss every time I was overcome by anxiety or depressive episodes. I thought of never knowing what it’s like to trust people completely. I thought of loneliness. I thought of the number of victims still out there.

I started to write.

———————

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Writing is second nature. I loved to read and write ever since my early childhood, consuming everything from comic books to fiction, poetry, and vague journal entries. It was my form of escape. To use it now as a medium to tell the story I’ve been evading is a different experience.

Writing this, I still go back and forth with myself, starting and stopping between sentences. Am I just not exploiting the adversities I faced? Aren’t I just wallowing in my misery; picking at my scabs again? It’s this strange feeling of knowing I’m not, but the thoughts persist in my head. I’ve spent too much time being dictated by other people when, how and when to tell what the truth is.

I’m catching up on the years of resentment and anger I wasn’t allowed to feel. I wasn’t even allowed to be a victim. At the age of five years old, it felt like I was deemed the perpetrator of my own rape. I had gotten so used to feeling ashamed and taking responsibility for everything that had happened to me that I forgot that all of it happened when I was a helpless child. My anger was not valid, nor was my sadness, nor were my cries for help, nor is the enduring horror I still experience to this day. Aside from being conditioned to stay silent, my rape was not part of the narrative people expected from me. The adversities I have faced were heard if I could spin it into something inspiring, or used it as a stepping stone towards any sort of personal gain to prop me up as a story to tell. But if it was to show any kind of vulnerability, or of what trauma can do and how it can slowly erode every single feeling of self-worth and happiness, no one wants to hear that truth. No one wants to hear that story. The cycle of blame, denial, and shame continues. I wonder: how many kids grow up haunted? How many adults still live with the horror?

How many people don’t speak up?

I don’t think that childhood habit persisted to this day. On the contrary, I’ve been ignoring the presence of my wounds in the first place. I’m learning to heal them. I woke up to this disaster, one that I had ignored from ever taking place, and I’m finally acknowledging how long I’ve lived with it. I’m picking up the pieces of the chaos, examining them, trying to make sense of whatever that is left. I’ve made the first few steps into getting in touch with different therapists the past year and getting medication. I look for other survivors’ stories. I’m opening up, slowly. I discussed my PTSD and sexual abuse as inspiration for my outputs in an Art class. I no longer want the shame. I no longer want silence.

I couldn’t tell my story for the longest time. I’m only beginning to. I’ll keep waking up to unpredictable days. I’ll keep trying to do what I love. I’ll keep coping with the days I’ll be a wreck. My trauma will always be this weight I’d have to carry around, but I live for the days it seems lighter.

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CONTRIBUTORS MGA MAY-AKDA

Mga May-Akda: Contributors / 95

R.B. ABIVA

Si R.B. Abiva ay nagsusulat sa wikang Ilokano at Filipino, siya rin ay tagasalin, editor, musikero, pintor, at iskultor. Siya ang awtor ng Tuligsa at iba pang mga tula (2018), Agaw Agimat (2019), Poelitika:Mga Tula (2019), Kapatiran ng Bakal at Apoy (2020), at Paltiing: Mga Piling Tulang Prosa (2020). Writing Fellow siya ng 58th UPNWW (Tula), 11th Palihang Rogelio Sicat (Maikling Kuwento), 6th Cordillera Creative Writing Workshop (Tula), at 9th PasnaanJeremias A. Calixto Ilokano Writers Workshop (Daniw). Ang kanyang mga malikhaing akda ay nalathala na rin sa iba’t ibang magasin, pahayagan, at antolohiya. Ang SANIATA PRIZE 2019 (Ikalawang Gantimpala) ang pinakahuli niyang nasungkit na pagkilala. Sa ngayon ay kumukuha siya ng M.A. Malikhaing Pagsulat sa Unibersidad ng Pilipinas. Noong nakaraang taon ay kanyang itinatag ang Samahang Lazaro Francisco sa lalawigan ng Nueva Ecija.

Kasapi siya ng CAP, KATAGA, at GUMIL-Filipinas. Sa kasalukuyan, siya ang literary editor ng SINAG, Opisyal Na Pahayagan Ng College of Social Sciences and Philosophy sa Unibersidad ng Pilipinas- Diliman.

JOHN REY DAVE AQUINO

Si John Rey Dave Aquino ay nagsisimulang manunulat mula sa Bayombong, Nueva Vizcaya. Nagtapos siya ng BA Language and Literature sa Unibersidad ng Pilipinas Baguio. Bilang estudyante, tatlong taon siyang nagsilbing patnugot ng Outcrop, opisyal na pahayagan ng mga mag-aaral sa UPB. Natanggap siyang fellow para sa maikling kuwento sa Ingles sa ika-17 Ateneo National Writers Workshop (2019). Kasalukuyan niyang hinihintay na matapos ang panganib ng COVID-19 bilang unemployed bum.

EMMANUEL T. BARRAMEDA

Si Emmanuel T. Barrameda ay kuwentista mula sa lalawigang isla ng Catanduanes. Naging fellow siya ng Ikapitong Palihang Rogelio Sicat, 13th Ateneo National Writers’ Workshop, at 6th Saringsing Bicol Writers’ Workshop.

Ang kaniyang mga akda ay kinilala ng Don Carlos Palanca Memorial Award for Literature, Saranggola Blog Award, National Historical Institute of the Philippines at Kabulig Writers Prize. Siya ang isa sa mga nagtatag ng Bilog Writers’ Circle, organisasyon ng mga nagsisimulang manunulat sa Catanduanes.

Kasalukuyan din siyang kasapi ng Kabulig, Inc, at Parasurat Bikolnon, Inc. at Kataga, Samahan ng mga Manunulat sa Pilipinas, Inc. Nakapaglathala na siya ng dalawang aklat Balager, mga personal na sanaysay at P’wera Bisita, mga maikling kuwento na kinilalang Best Book in Filipino Fiction sa 38th National Book Awards. Ang iba pa niyang mga akda ay mababasa sa Kataga, Liwayway Magazine, Sapantaha at Wagi/Sawi ng UP Press, Visprint, Ani, ang opisyal na kalipunan ng mga akda ng Cultural Center of the Philippines at Entrada ng Center for Creative Writing ng PUP.

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MARIA DONNA DANE

Maria Donna Dane does not have a lot to say about herself. She is an English literature scholar who mostly writes in English prose. Being Filipino, it is unnatural that writing Filipino poetry felt unnatural to her, but it was naturally necessary.

KANE BLANCAFLOR

Si Kane L. Blancaflor ay kasalukuyang estudyante ng BA Philippine Studies sa UP Diliman kung saan siya ay miyembro ng UP Writers Club at Alay Sining KAL. Hilig niya ang pagtutula at pagkukuwento patungkol sa mga halimaw, pag-aakla, sangkabaklaan, araw-araw na pakikipagsapalaran ng isang kabataan, at pagsusulat ng muntikatha (microfiction) sa kaniyang Twitter account na @ putimbulak. Umiikot ang araw niya ngayong panahon ng kwarantin sa paulitulit na pagbuklat ng libro, pagsusulat ng kung anu-ano, panaka-nakang pagguhit at walang humpay na pag-iskrol sa kaniyang telepono.

JEWEL ENRILE

Jewel Enrile is a Broadcast Media Arts and Studies student from UP Diliman.

Having grown up with stories, she continues to write her own. Some of her poems, essays, and stories are made into zines or contributed to Girl Up Philippines’ online zine Chika-Chika. She currently resides in Quezon City.

VERONICA FLORENDO

Veronica Florendo is a BA Comparative Literature student from UP Diliman.

She is currently preoccupied with her annual rewatch of Fullmetal Alchemist: Brotherhood and pretending that she will be able to read all the unread books by her bedside table before the year ends.

MA. DOREEN EVITA L. GARCIA

Ma. Doreen Evita L. Garcia is a Cum Laude graduate of Literature from the University of Santo Tomas Faculty of Arts and Letters. During her stay at the university, she joined writing workshops to further hone her craft. Among these workshops are the 4th Thomasian Undergraduate Writers’ Workshop sponsored by the UST Center for Creative Writing and Literary Studies, and the 11th-13th Creative Writing Workshops sponsored by The Varsitarian. In 2017, she flew to France to briefly study at the Université Catholique de Lille.

Then, in 2019, she became a fellow at the UST National Writers Workshop led by the UST Center for Creative Writing and Literary Studies. She has already been published by Hong Kong-based Voice & Verse Poetry Magazine (2019) and UP Likhaan (2019).

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JASPER GOMEZ

Jasper Gomez is an IT professional and artist. He received a bachelor’s degree in computer science from Ateneo de Naga University in 2010. He uses his free time to create illustrations using colored pencils and pen. He has participated in several pop up art fairs and organized one in his hometown, Naga City, in 2017.

His areas of interests include science fiction, astronomy, music, pop culture, social and political issues specifically LGBTQIA+ matters. He currently posts his works on Instagram (@jasperjaygomez) and Facebook (@ jaspergomezart).

CARMEL ILUSTRISIMO

Carmel Ilustrisimo is a writer of fiction, plays, and personal essays. She graduated from Ateneo de Manila University in 2017 and is currently taking her MA in Creative Writing at the University of Santo Tomas. Her favorite genres are historical fiction and dystopian fiction. Aside from writing, Carmel enjoys improv theatre and fan video editing. She also has a blog (TheLemracReviews) where she reviews and ranks a variety of things, including plays and films. Her musical idol is Madonna.

JULIA JIMENEZ

Julia Jimenez is a student of BA Comparative Literature in UP Diliman, as well as an active member of the UP Writers Club. When she’s not flirting with the moon, she may or may not enjoy writing poetry. She currently lives in Quezon City with cats that count as additional family members.

ERROL MERQUITA

Errol Merquita was born and raised in Los Amigos Davao City. He received fellowship grants in local and national writers’ workshops; Ateneo de Davao, Mindanao State University-IIT, De La Salle University, University of the Philippines-ICW, UP-Cebu, UP-Tacloban and UP-Baguio. He is a recipient of Carlos Palanca Memorial Awards (2011, 2015, 2017) for Cebuano fiction and poetry for children in Filipino. He is a recipient of the University of the Philippines Chancellor’s Medal for Culture and Arts (2002) and Most Distinguished Alumnus Award (UP Mindanao , 2016). His works appeared in Philippine Graphic, NCCA-Ubod series, IYAS Anthology, Best of Dagmay, Davao Harvest, Mindanao Harvest and Kabisdak among others. Professionally, he served as program coordinator in various UN agencies. He is currently managing rehabilitation and recovery projects in the Islamic City of Marawi under an INGO.

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PAUL JOHN C. PADILLA

Si Paul John C. Padilla ay kasapi ng Bilog Writers’ Circle, samahan ng mga nagsisimulang manunulat sa isla-probinsiya ng Catanduanes. Naging fellow siya ng 9th Saringsing Bicol Writers’ Workshop noong 2019 para sa tula. Ang ilan sa kaniyang mga akda ay mababasa sa Talinghaga ng Lupa ng Gantala Press; Montage, kalipunan ng mga akdang pampanitikan ng The Varsitarian, Unibersidad ng Santo Tomas; Habi (Zine 2) ng Titik Poetry, at Lakbay: Mga Tulang Lagalag. Kinilala rin ang kaniyang mga tula ng Kaboronyogan kan mga Artistang Bikolano (KAB), at Pagsirang, Inc. Siya ay kasalukuyang nagtuturo sa Paaralang Panaguyod ng Virac.

PEJAY PADRIGON

Pejay Padrigon is a senior high school teacher at Nabua National High School. He received his bachelor’s degree in Philosophy from Holy Rosary Minor Seminary and MA in Education Major in Guidance and Counseling from University of Nueva Caceres. His children stories Anino ni Nino (2018) and Payong ni Ayong (2019) were awarded second prize and first honorable mention in Kabulig Writers Prize respectively. In 2019, his poem Pangalagkalag was published in Ani 40 by Cultural Center of the Philippines (CCP).

He is an active member of Parasurat Bikolnon Inc. – a non-government organization that advocates Bicol literature, arts, and culture.

TALEO JE NANTI

To conclude his catastrophic attempts at songwriting and poetry in his youth, Taleo settled into a bland but rather lucrative ghostwriting career for clickbaity early-2010’s search engine optimization freelancers. This has always been the struggle for the writer. The stories that pay well are the ones comparing different brands of washing machines and the rehashed monthly instructionals for starting a kiosk on Amazon. Following recent events, he’s changed plans.

He’s now taking another swing at writing literature—and vows to one day write a story with a washing machine Amazon retailer as the protagonist. He currently works as a writer for marketing in an outsourcing company, writing articles on Filipino culture, local history, and the occasional “Top 5 Best Ways To Protect Yourself From Hackers”. He hopes to one day pursue a doctorate in English and literature.

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ARTHUR DAVID SAN JUAN

Si Arthur David San Juan ay mula sa Antipolo. Kasapi siya ng Angono 3/7 Poetry Society at Hulagway Writers Group. Inilimbag ang kanyang mga akda sa Bulatlat, Bulgar Tabloid, Manila Today, Katitikan Journal, Novice Magazine, Kasingkasing Press Magazine, at Abandoned Library Press International Journal. Itinampok ang kanyang mga tula sa Carlos “Totong” Francisco II’s REVIVAL Exhibit sa Robinsons Galleria at Ekphrasis Exhibit ng Blanco Family Museum sa Angono, Rizal. May-akda ng librong “Sikreto sa Loob ng Kwarto” (2019), siya rin ay patnugot at kontribyutor sa “NGALAN: Antolohiyang SaMaFil” (2020).

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THE LITERARY APPRENTICE 2020

EDITORIAL BOARD Associate Editor Veronica Florendo Editor in English Myrtle Antioquia Editors in Filipino Anna Cruz Edmar Lingatong Cover Artist Anya Jayme Layout Artists Trisha Berida Jia Limbaga Auditors Cal Lim Rosanna Montemayor Miranda Villanueva

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UP WRITERS CLUB

MEMBERS ‘19-‘20 Lakan Uhay Alegre BA Comparative Literature Major in Philippine Literature and English Translation Grace Kelly Ang BA Comparative Literature Myrtle Joy Antioquia BA Comparative Literature Chelsea Denise Aquino BA Anthropology Franz Edric Bangalan MA Anglo-American Literature Cate Ashley Belarmino BA Creative Writing Beatrice Grace Berida BFA Visual Communication Ma. Donna Dane Bernabe BA English Studies Kane Blancaflor BA Malikhaing Pagsulat sa Filipino Mary Angelou Nicole Cabugao BA Creative Writing

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Maria Michelle Cadiz BS Biology Nina Cadiz BA Comparative Literature Kalila Nicole Camilon Certificate in Fine Arts - Studio Arts Aimee Cando Claud Caringal BA Sociology Anna Lourdes Cruz BSE SpEd-PE Dominique Nadine Cruz BS Chemistry Bridgette Nicole Diaz BA Sociology Jewel Enrile BA BMAS Angela Gabrielle Fabunan MA Creative Writing Veronica Danielle Florendo BA Comparative Literature Gabrielle Frances Gallardo BA Creative Writing Michelle Therese Garcia BFA Painting Joyce Gonzales Austin Keith Hernandez BS Business Administration Paula Mae Jatulan BS Geology

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Anya Patricia Jayme BS Sports Science Julia Jimenez BA Comparative Literature Margarita Labrador BA Comparative Literature Angeli Francesca Lacson BA Comparative Literature Hunny Laurente BA Comparative Literature Cal Lim Jia Limbaga Edmar Lingatong BA Comparative Literature Roland Linus Maliwat BA Creative Writing Julienne Maui Mangawang MA Creative Writing Peniel Jabez Monsanto BA Creative Writing Rosanna Montemayor BA Comparative Literature Joy Nicolas BA Comparative Literature Kin Justin Reig BA Political Science Rae Andrea Camille Rosas BA English Studies (Literature) Shanaia Roxas BA Creative Writing

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Rayji De Guia BA Creative Writing Nicole Louise Serrano BA Comparative Literature Mary Jacqueline Simpas BA Comparative Literature Therese Marie Ungson BA Comparative Literature Clark Angelo Urzo BS Physics Bradford Pierre Uy BA Political Science Chenie Villaluz Miranda Villanueva BA Creative Writing Mikee Yoo BA Comparative Literature