Shirley Siaton

Published January 2000, Estudyante Network Magazine, Philippines.

A glance at Lizard, a collection of six short stories by Banana Yoshimoto.

Organized Madness

“I dropped a bowl and broke it, which upset me so much that I burst into tears. Then I decided to sit down and read a comic, which made laugh hysterically. I was a total mess.”

Aren’t we all?

The words were taken from the yuppie-angst narrative of Chikako, the lead character in “Blood and Water,” one of the six short stories which made up the collection entitled Lizard, written by a young Japanese author named Banana Yoshimoto.

Born Yoshimoto Maiko on July 24, 1964, the writer who now had a pop-sounding fruity pectin-filled name hails from Tokyo and has had eleven novels and seven essays published in her native country. Four of her books have been translated into English: Kitchen, N.P., Lizard and Amrita.

Among the four books, Lizard was the only one that was not a full-length novel. I was able to get a copy of it a few years ago through a pen-pal from Metro Manila, who found me a paperback one. The only Yoshimoto novel then available in Iloilo City (I looked everywhere for the whole summer of 1997 and 1998) was a hardcover Lizard, which cost about P 400 and was badly damaged to begin with.

Lizard, translated as Tokage in Nihonggo, takes its title from one of the stories. The other five stories are Newlywed, Helix, Dreaming of Kimchee, Blood and Water, and A Strange Tale from Down by the River.

As a whole, the setting was in a busy city, presumably Tokyo, and the characters were mostly young urbanites who have commonplace jobs. As against common belief that Japanese stories involve samurai committing kamikaze, there was no such thing in Lizard. In fact, the stories could have taken place in any big city, except for the fact that Yoshimoto’s pen infuse the stories with a spirituality and a mental rebellion that only the exotic Japanese could concoct.

Newlywed is about a young newly-married man’s journey in a train. Aboard the commuter system and already past his stop towards home, he meets a mysterious woman who raises questions about his relationship with his wife. It was only then that he had come to accept the he would never fully understand the woman he married.

Lizard, the title story, is about the relationship of a young child psychologist and an aerobics-instructress-turned-acupuncture-whiz. The latter is Lizard, a woman whose life was once blighted by blindness and carried around enough emotional baggage that could only be slowly unloaded when she healed people through her magic touch. She and the psychologist share a very strong bond: Loneliness amidst working with people every day.

Helix is another short relationship story, about how love and hate and contempt could merge into one when a man and a woman know each other so well that words were meant to disguise and not express feelings. Narrated the male writer character: “I had the unusual sensation of having grasped her entire personality in that single expression.” They both had to take another step forward.

Dreaming of Kimchee (kimchee is a Korean delicacy, pickles smothered with cabbage and garlic) presents a rather unusual perspective of extramarital affairs. This time, the mistress narrates the story, from how she felt exempt from the fact that married man do not leave their wives for their mistresses to why she was not feeling any guilt at her position. In the end, the guy left his wife for her.

A Strange Tale from Down by the River is a study in contrasts. The woman in the story (later known as Akemi) started out as wildly erotic bisexual. She confesses: “It was when I came down with a liver infection that I had to quit going to the sex parties.” Later, she meets a rich young man with no ambition but falls for him–at the funeral of the guy’s own father. When she lives with him at a riverside apartment preparing for their wedding, ghosts of her past begin to catch up. In the end, what mattered was true contentment that only hope could give.

Blood and Water is my personal favorite among all the six stories. It is a love story on the surface. This is the only story where the names of both main characters were disclosed; the other stories do not mention the name of some of its characters. In this particular story, Chikako leaves the Esoteric Buddhism (a religious sect) settlement where she had been raised by her parents and starts a faster, modern life in Tokyo. There she meets Akira, a strange young man who could make amulets that had healing powers, and eventually falls in love with him. “When he was at home, Akira was just an ordinary guy, a little wimpy, in fact.” No other love story had a wimp for a hero–and by the heroine’s admittance, at that. The tale throbs with sadness and foreboding, a realization that even the most powerful emotions could not bind people together forever.

Although the characters are not acquainted and no common plot binds them to each other, they all share an honesty that only Yoshimoto could offer with her pen. Through the author’s first-person narratives, each of the people address a significant crossroad in his or her life in a brutally straight way. They all address our very own quirks, our secret thoughts, our humanity’s darkest side – and they show how we could go through this and come out relatively unscathed but marked for life. The characters speak to the reader in a neat and straight manner, aware of the madness that had at one point or another touched their lives. The book is about accepting the past, savoring the present and having hope in the future.

Yoshimoto uses male-female relationships as a take-off point for all of her stories, since these associations often have the most dimensions and flaws. However, there is no significant love and hate in the story. No one expresses love by French-kissing on the streets nor drinking poison just to be together with their beloved. No one even gets angry enough to throw things around or hurt others. The people here are not novel – they are people we meet everyday but never really have the chance to get to know better. People who fear and hope for the same things we do, albeit always in a different way.

Read Yoshimoto for her honesty and courage. Honesty to express her true humanity and not her “image-oriented” façade, and courage to accept that she does so.

And so, Chikako further contemplates: “I am my own home, and this is where I belong, and the things keep going forward, endlessly, just as the blue of the sky dawn soon turns into a bright sunrise, each with its own beauty. That kind of thing.”

A tribute to coffee, above anything else, and submitted as a piece to compete for a spot on being one of the 70 delegates to the Ayala Young Leaders Congress 2000.

Coffee Break

I love coffee.

This is a simple declaration of fact. I am not saying that I love coffee as a last resort to resurrect a dying showbiz career as an endorser for this amphetamine-loaded brew. Neither am I saying this to earn the favor of all my fellow coffee-drinkers to perhaps strengthen my bid for public office in the very near future.

Let’s face it: I’ll never have a blast running around in circles with gossip-mongering talk show hosts, in pathetic, dramatic display of half-truths. Secondly, if I do happen to possess the credentials (whatever they may be) and machinery to run for office, I cannot afford to miss the live PBA games in lieu of all those conscience-draining campaigns, anointment-seeking selection processes, and hyped-up privilege speeches made to crush the other aspirants for the position.

I would rather watch Marlou Aquino dunk any day.

My bookshelf at home houses a stack of chronologically-arranged comic book fanzines. An issue of HERO Magazine features an alternative comic entitled Too-Much-Coffee Man, who is embodied by a diminutive guy with a mug-shaped hat wading in a mug-shaped pool filled to the brim with (duh!) coffee.

A picture of sheer paradise.

I started drinking coffee when I was ten years old. It is the beverage at home that never runs out – “serbe tubig.” We have the instant powder at our disposal.

Granules do not have that much publicity to merit our attention – and subsequent preference. Imported brands and the brewed versions are out of the question; my tuition and other fees come first. All that, plus the baht pulling down the peso value.

Some people tell me that coffee stunted my growth. That if I wasn’t such a frappe fan, I would have made it past five feet by now.

I am a one-drink woman. I would cherish coffee, have a mug, and hold it close to my heart. ‘Til next cup do us part.

Which is more than can be said for those who make vows of this sort in Church. Not with a drink, but with another person.

Three’s a crowd. But why do some people opt for a third party? For the excitement, maybe, of doing something forbidden. Or to satisfy all sorts of needs that the initial partner could not.

Making vows is not as uni-dimensional as making yourself a cup of coffee. If you no longer like the brew or it has gone cold, you could either add something to it or throw the liquid to the welcoming kitchen drain. Marriage is not a trial-and-error run to come up with the perfect coffee blend – it must be the perfect coffee blend.

I love coffee because it wakes me up.

There is that slight biting sensation that warms the chest as the coffee slithers into one’s being. Then one’s eyes get just a little bit lighter. The drooping shoulders wriggle to a more upright position; the sensation that you can make it a little further hits.

This, for me, is an enlightening experience.

We need to drink a proverbial cup of coffee. We need a good dose of the truth floating around us, like Too-Much-Coffee Man’s brew. Let us take the mug from our heads and scoop the truth out for a drink. This is the youth and education both in and out of the classroom. At this very point of our young lives, the truths are floating all around, waiting to be known and imparted to others. Education is a bottomless draught of coffee.

Coffee, at its best when steaming hot, leaves a burning mark on the tongue. The thing with burns is that though they hurt and leave unsightly marks, they almost never fail to wake one up. The truth may never always be welcome, sometimes painful, but it must always be known. It is to the mind as coffee is to the body.

Thus, to this writer, life is a journey chock-full of literal and proverbial coffee breaks.

Published 15 August 1997, The Philippine Star, Philippines.

Living against the odds.

Who Cares?

I live this strange little
existence – I don’t even know
what it’s supposed to be.
Strangled, laden with
shattered stuff:
fragments of a heart once beating
and pumping tangy blood.

I breathe this so-called air of life
that kills me with each
proverbial toke -
when I would have wanted the
glamour of cigarette smoke.

I roam the cruel streets
that scream of my
generation’s apathy.
And bleed with red and sunny-yellow
and acetylene-white.
Words, their wisdom
long lost.

I love this wisp
of a being ready
to be snapped in two.
He’s the one who
means so much;
enough that I just have to
go on.
Living.

Published 1997, The Accounts: August-October 1997 Magazine, University of the Philippines in the Visayas, Philippines.

Written while watching fishing boats and barges, after a mosquito-laden night.

The Voyage

Cutting through waves
A swath of foam;
Green-gray curdles
Trail underfoot.

A raft of makeshift hopes,
Adrift for days
And aimless:
Steered blindly on.

Beyond the mist,
Cobbles and rock-bits
Make a swarthy testament
Of lands beyond.

Published 3 May 1997, The Philippine Star, Philippines.

A memory left untreasured, unremembered.

Stone

Stolen from the aria
Of crashing forest waters,
Ripped like a body’s heart;
A-bleeding
A stone.

Stories of war shattered
Long since;
Dead hearts wielding
World War II’s disease
Inside.

From a trouser pocket
(roaches’ mealy meat)
With a PBA cut-out sked
The stone was taken
From past distant.

Journeyed leagues
Countless hours and interminable sunsets.
A grandson
Who watched Power Rangers;
His legacy.

Put in carelessly
A faux Bulls shorts pocket,
Rodman, ninety-one
And bet jolen dozens
Lost all
The once-mossy rock along.

Left the asphalt byway
To watch Gordon’s Gin,
Left a legacy
Trampled, rolling:
It bounced away.
The stone.

Published 19 July 1997, The Philippine Star, Philippines.

The ever-changing soul, um, sole.

Shoes

The soles antediluvian
of my hollow being sustain
with silent patience, or patient silence,
the blunt end
of your insecurities and neuroses.

Have you ever thought
of the beatings I get
from cruel concrete pavements
and wooden floors that reek
of lemon-scented dye wax?

The stat book of all the
fouls I received against debris and rocks
had long since been deluged
by both defensive and offensive kinds,
even the technicals.
Sadly, I drew no shots, just bruises from impact
that left me more empty than ever.
And pained.

I endure the stench
of your human inadequacies;
take time out to absorb
the wetness that streaks from your flesh
like tears. Sweat.

There are the clumps of gum:
the sugary sweetness chewed out;
dog waste, even the toffee candy from Brunei
that you didn’t like.
You were too enraptured with the sights ahead
to look down once in a while
at the path you tread.

Times came that you outgrew me
or gave me away to less-classy promdi relatives
or I was just too worn
to show off anymore.

Your tootsies’ humble sheath,
I am at your bidding and discretion.

Once I was a pair of boots with spurs,
then suede pumps, and docksiders.
Now – for now – I’m a Nike Air.

Published 13 November 1998, The Philippine Star, Philippines.

Unrequited and pained.

Other

I was the one
Who looked at you from way across the room
The one who felt your pain
And never gave it back
I cared not
If you can’t even see
Just by spirit
Be with me

I was the girl
Who felt your touch
On her flesh
That gentleness from someone so strong
I cried not
If you love her
Just go on
Walking past

I was the other
You look right through
I was part of you
That shudder in the hall
That whisper into the moonless sky
That gaze on your back as you walk towards her
That one
Loving you

Published 1999, The Accounts: Initial Public Offerings 1999 (Literary Folio), University of the Philippines in the Visayas, Philippines.

A “religious war,” indeed. Sunday-morning sacrifices and struggles.

Jihad

..another Sunday morning…

reckoning
has come
my mama tells me
that I am a heretic
that I’d rather wear
my unwashed denim cut-offs
than kiss the feet
of elevated saints

Sunday morn
is a struggle
when I’d rather keep my eyes
closed
and chat to a campy dream-conscription
lamenting
in Freudian skerries
than dress in white
stained twice too many
by unexpected flows
‘neath the pulpit

a ratty blanket
too dirty to be washed
is a shield
of futility against salvation
(it ain’t free, no)
that sells itself
by stealing slumber and cuckoo projections
and Chinese soap operas
right before teen show reruns

endlessly
I search for weapons
but there is no fighting
a blast
of the cold shower
or the threat of cutting off my
fiat sustenance

the beads I gather
and I head for the final stop
glossed lips moving
in silent feverish whispers
of supplication

Published 12 April 1997, The Philippine Star, Philippines.

Letting go is more like it.

Graduation Day

It dawns like a day
Of impending doom:
I stand on the cracked second-floor corridor
And stare at the rusty bars
Of the three-decade-old balcony.

A guttural prayer escapes my chapped lips
For I forgot the balm
(forgot to shoplift)
So I bite my dry lower lip
In supplication to a higher power.

My uniform is worn down,
The collar is blackish-brown;
Mama forgot to wash it (again):
The mahjong table takes up
Her laundry hours.

A footfall draws me to reality.
It was him:
A lanky boy of burnt-red skin
And a voice that sometimes squeaks
When he shouts to be fed
During basketball.

Dressed in scuffed brown-leather shoes
And a half-open shirtjack,
He reeks of a citrusy scent
That costs sixty-five pesos
A bottle.

He stops by my monobloc
And asks if he could copy our last assignment:
Ten multi-colored graphs in Calculus;
I say no
(I don’t know why).

He shrugs and, whistling, walks away
Like everybody had in my
Four years spent in a
Tomb of things
I’d want to forget.

(And so
The toga tassel is turned
From back-left
to front right)

Yet will always remember.

Published 24 October 1997, The Philippine Star, Philippines.

For unwed teenage mothers who had the courage not to abort.

Fudge

I. Dribbling dribbling
against the hardcourt
of your upper-lip stubble
in dark brown streaks
and streaky white.

II. Rivulets of hot fudge
sundae toppings
dispensed as
circular tracks or loose Afro braids
into fragile plastic cups
taking the generous swell of
a beer belly.

III. Or my own
rounded stomach
(I so desperately try to conceal)
with the two-month life
you had spilled
into it
the way your choco fixes
lose themselves
to your voracious
appetite.

IV. And greed.

Published 18 September 1998, The Philippine Star, Philippines.

The passage of cruel time.

Foodcourt

He sits
on the mocha-brown wood
and watches
the angst-ridden crowd
sweep by
like the dust
he used to sweep
when the back
still held.

(There is no end to them.)

He stays
unperturbed
in their midst
and hungers
for what he now cooks
(squid balls)

but can no longer afford
to sink
his (long-gone) teeth
into.

Published 2000, The Accounts: Initial Public Offerings 2000 (Literary Folio), University of the Philippines in the Visayas, Philippines.

Subversive romance in the new millennium.

Disruption

a trilogy on unnamed sensations

Stave first: Lost

Brainfreeze
is all there is to it.
Nothingness
in my line of vision.

Stave second: Taken

You live in my head
Like cancer
You disrupt my system
As Y2K would
A system non-compliant
At millennium turn

You live in my head
Like a dream
You make me waken
In the dead of night
Breathless, empty, wanting
In the guileless dark

You live in my head
Like an echo
You speak without yielding
As the unwelcome does
An unwanted temptation
Taking me by storm

Stave third: Sightings

I am blind
I cannot see behind the mask
I pull over my own eyes
Like a curtain
My mask
My disguise

I am blind
I am bound
By my own darkness
My own unforgiving soul
My own expectations
My pride

I am blind
And I am safe
In this void
Where I remain
Untouched
Untouchable

~exerint omnes~

Published 1999, The Accounts: Initial Public Offerings 1999 (Literary Folio), University of the Philippines in the Visayas, Philippines.

A fat girl on thinner, prettier girls, her own body and sexuality.

A Fat Girl Thing

hanging over
a hunk of ham, of flesh
a slice of the delicatessen
in my fever dreams

slices, and chunks
ripples of sinfully sweet
saccharine and corn
dripping and my senses
climax
unbearably

I but pinch my sides
bruised by the too-tight denims
that cut between the cheeks of my
meandering butt

it always hurts like hell
again, and again

as I look at the emaciated
hoochie mamas
with their belly-tanks,
their platform shoes that do not crack
from the burden,
the silver crosses caressing their firm breasts

my hands find the hardening tips
hanging over a draping middle
to squeeze, and squeeze

Published 1999, The Accounts: Initial Public Offerings 1999 (Literary Folio), University of the Philippines in the Visayas, Philippines.

A love story between the perfect killer and the perfect girl.

Dancing in the Rain

..they were the same as night and day…

Prologue

Morning came with a bitch wind–the kind that carried dirt and muck that stuck on the skin and never washed out. The wind screamed for blood and pain.

Adam Delgado shivered. Dammit, but it was cold. And the coach wanted them to start putting in more practice hours now for the citywide inter-collegiate tournament opening game next week.

He walked to the door of the main building’s basement. It was only nine. The prized player’s first class started at ten and now he was most probably in his lair, practicing those magic dribbles that brought tears to the eyes of the rival coaches.

As team captain, it was Adam’s job to secure the gear and inform the prized player about the practice.

God only knows what possessed him to turn down the position of captain. I came only as the second choice.

The door had been left unlocked. Adam stepped inside the basement, which housed an extensive collection of old school appliances and relatively new sports equipment. He walked into the smaller room, once a huge storage closet for old paints, tools, and chemicals. This was the prized player’s bedroom.

There was nothing in it except a bare wooden cot and an equally drab three-legged table.

The team helped him load back the equipment only last night. Knowing him, he wouldn’t move out of this place – it’s his lion’s den, after all.

Adam had gone into the basement to get equipment many times before and knew that the prized player had some stuff around, like dartboards, target posters and sketches of some wild, exotic birds. They were all gone. Nothing was draped on the makeshift clothesline.

He stood there and assessed this new information. Then, Adam retrieved two new basketballs from the storage racks and kicked the basement door closed. He had better tell the coach that Aragon had gone AWOL.

Interlude One

Dawn.

He gingerly lowered his lanky, sun-burnt body onto the lopsided stone bench. His muscles, if he ever had any worth showing, ached.

Pain contorted his dark face. Not an audible sound escaped his lips. He never liked sounds.

The campus was still cloaked in darkness. He looked around. He had been running for more than an hour, but the sky still resembled a blue-black canopy strewn with darker masses of clouds. Not a ray of sunlight breached his limited view of the horizon. The air was thick and heavy, and sullied by city dust. Rain was coming. He felt a remote perverse satisfaction.

“Aragon?”

A female voice had said his family name. People knew him by that name. Aragon. A name full of history, bloodshed, and pain. His place of birth was far enough away, but he could still recollect the smells of gunpowder, the crisp click of a gun’s hammer, the echo of death cries. They all came with the Aragon heritage.

His well-trained eyes made out her silhouette. The lighting in the campus was sparse, and the few functional lampposts badly needed a replacement of bulbs.

“Jerann.” As always, she was dressed in a white shirt and her baggy jeans. Her hair was black, thick, and wispy – the humid wind played with its unruly strands. She carried her black duffel schoolbag, the size of which dwarfed her petite frame.

He felt his chest tighten, his heartbeat accelerate. “What are you doing here? How did you get in the campus?”

He watched her place the bag on the concrete pavement and take a seat beside him on the stone bench. Her deep-set eyes flickered in the darkness. “I had to see you,” she replied simply.

“How did you get in?” he pressed. He lived on campus, in the main building’s basement. He had first lodged in a boardinghouse, but he hated the noise and the activity. He wanted to be by himself. The coach had allowed him to hole up in the storage room, where the sports teams kept all their equipment. The older man could not refuse the simple request of his prized player.

“The fence is only about seven feet, max.” There was a smile in her voice. “Sleep wouldn’t come, as always, and I figured you would be here.”

“Yes. I couldn’t sleep either. And, as always, the best option is to run.”

He opened his arms and she snuggled into them. Once upon a time, she had told him how much she loved the way his bones cut into her flesh. She pressed her face to his chest, not minding his sweat-soaked shirt.

“You should eat more,” she said out of the blue.

“Really?”

“Uh-huh. I don’t know where you get the strength to jump so high into the air – and dunk a basketball, even.” She giggled, but it seemed like a broken and distant whimper to his ears. Her breath whispered through the worn material of his shirt. “Don’t you know that some people call you ‘Human Bamboo’?”

“I know.”

They both lapsed into silence. In the darkness, she reached for his hands. He felt her delicate skin brush against his scarred and callused palms. Even though they were much, much closer than people expected them to be, he had never once stopped marveling at how he and Jerann appeared to be so different from each other.

She was the epitome of charm and intelligence. Those who knew her liked her. She always had that ready smile and the time to listen to anyone’s problems. Nearly everyone in school believed that sleeping wasn’t on her busy schedule, that Jerann Castelo would rather stay up talking to someone in her trademark high-octane and witty manner, organizing events that went beyond the ordinary student’s academic concerns.

He was popular in another fashion – the star basketball player who never gave away much about himself. The name Aragon struck fear in the varsity teams of colleges all over the region. Ever since his freshman year, he had brought the university an unprecedented steady stream of basketball championships.

However, he had not been raised to become an athletic achiever. His training had aimed to accomplish more serious ends. Deadly serious ends.

During his first year in the university, he and his blockmates went on a class trip up the mountains. While everyone lugged bags of canned goods and other packaged foods, he just brought clothes and minimal camping equipment.

Evening at their campsite, the teacher asked: “Where’s the dinner you’re supposed to bring for yourself?”

“It’s right behind you, sir.” He threw his hunting knife, the blade whizzing a mere inch above his professor’s head.

A wild chicken, an ilahas, squawked and crashed to the ground in rapid succession. He then had an entire roasted chicken for his dinner, served hot. No one shared his impromptu meal, or spoke to him for the rest of the trip. The teacher gave him a grade of 1.0.

After that, everyone dealt with him very cautiously. No one would dare to test his temper. He liked it that way.

Only Jerann had dared break through that wall between him and the rest of the world. During a school disco, she had asked him to dance, locating him amongst the shadows of the auditorium. He had been standing at a corner, nearly undetectable by the senses. He was fond of honing his stealth skills, but she had made him realize his abilities that time were rather rusty.

Jerann Castelo, one of the most popular girls in school, was actually standing right there and asking him to dance with her. The varicolored strobe lights of the darkened building had accentuated the spark of recklessness in her eyes.

He had been very flustered. “I don’t know how to–”

“Aragon, if you turn me down, I will kill you.”

She was the first girl to speak his language. That very moment, he fell in love with her.

Interlude Two

That was seven months ago.

Nobody knew anything about what went on between them, except perhaps Lexie, Jerann’s loyal friend. It just didn’t make sense to tell anyone.

“The first time I saw you, you were practicing alone in the court,” Jerann was now saying. “You were wearing this exact same shirt. It was kind of new then.”

He smiled in the darkness. Only very few had seen him smile.

She felt the slight chuckle rumbling through his chest. “What the hell are you so amused about?”

“You.” He pulled her closer. Jerann’s small frame fitted his embrace perfectly, snugly. “Why do you always have to be so perfect? You remember, know, and do almost everything.”

Her breathing seemed to stop. It took moments before she could answer. “I was raised to be like that. I’m the only child. No one could make up for my mistakes, should I have any. That was my first lesson in life.” She paused, as if gathering momentum. “When I was little, they had my tutor slap my hands when I couldn’t spell a word correctly. Or sometimes they wouldn’t let me have dinner unless I could recite an entire declamation speech without any mistakes. Then I got good at all of it. Then better. By the time I was twelve, there was no more need for such discipline. I delivered everything they wanted.”

The words had a bitter edge. He could taste them in his own heart.

“It gets exhausting. I’m doing a great job at it, though. There are so many people expecting so many things. And I had to do those things. I feel guilty when I couldn’t. Sometimes it’s like digging your own grave. But you feel the need to do it anyway.” Her voice now sounded raspy and strained. “And, at some point, the need becomes a want. It becomes a part of you.”

The first few raindrops fell. He felt them on his arm. Then he realized they weren’t from the sky. The droplets were her tears. In all the time he had known Jerann, this was the first time he had seen her cry.

The Aragon rage bubbled inside of him. It was a part of him, his lifeblood. Although he had vowed never to take a human life again, he would change that for her. He would kill someone to spare her from the hurt. But there was no one entirely responsible for that sort of torment. Just like no one had to pay for his past, except perhaps he himself.

“I’m sorry…” His voice trailed off, and he felt lame and helpless. “I shouldn’t have said–”

“It’s not your fault. Sometimes you just couldn’t help remembering things like that.” She bravely swallowed back her sobs. He gently wiped her tears away, careful so his calluses would not scratch her smooth face. “I had it coming. I had it coming all these years.”

He waited for her to calm down. She could so easily collect herself, and he loved her all the more for it. “I was raised to be the best, too, you know. And I became the best.”

Jerann’s tear-stained face had a look that showed the struggle to comprehend his words.

“When I was in high school, I was known as Cain in the underground. My father chose that name for me. I was born with a twin brother, but it seems like my cord was around his neck when we were cut out…I choked him to death in our mother’s womb.”

“I didn’t know…” She was groping for words.

“There are four of us. All boys. I’m the youngest, but I could outshoot all my brothers. I was faster and stronger. All the high schools offered everything from bribes to scholarship packages to my parents so I would go their place, just so they could get all the basketball titles, even a Palarong Pambansa medal. My father then said that the mantle of the Eagle-Eye had to be passed down – he had hit fifty and it was about time. All my uncles – all the Aragon clan – wanted me to take it. I was thirteen. The Eagle-Eye tattoo meant..the world.”

“That explains the eagle mark on your chest.” Jerann placed her hand over his heart. “It’s more than just a tattoo.”

“It is a memento of my past. I belong to the most powerful vigilante family in Mindanao. The Aragons have been around since the 1700s. We were loyal to no one, except our own blood and kin. That’s how we had roots. The Eagle-Eye is the best of the present Aragon generation. He was entrusted to carry out the most dangerous missions.” He said everything without any pride. Then again, there was nothing to be proud of.

A series of frozen frames flashed in his memory. He drew in a sharp breath. “My initiation rite was to kill a priest who sexually abused a younger cousin of mine, his sakristan. It was three-thirty in the morning…the priest was walking to Church to prepare for the misa de gallo. I got him with one shot, right between the eyes. Christmas of 1993, I became the seventh-generation Eagle-Eye. That’s when I got the tattoo. ‘You will be Cain now,’ my father said.”

“There are 27 others on my list; two of them were very young, like five or six years old. They were the children of a druglord. They saw me shoot their father. Leave no witnesses. That was in the rules.”

“You are a killer.” Her voice was toneless. Not angry, afraid or accusing, just clear and audible. He knew she would never look at him with the same eyes again, ever.

“Yes. I’m sorry.” He suddenly realized that she had not broken out of his embrace. “I left Surallah thinking I could somehow lose that part of me. I bargained for four years so there’s time to think about it. No matter how hard you try, that side of you stays right where it is. If you try to get rid of it somehow, it will eat you up alive. You could shed your skin, but not your blood. You wouldn’t have the strength to survive.”

He felt her back heaving. Before he could say anything, she turned up to look at his face. Her cat’s eyes were glazed with unshed tears, but he could see the clarity behind the sheen. The clarity that his pain was hers, too. “I love you, Nick. Nothing can change that.

Nick. His Christian name was Nicholas, but no one called him that. It was always Aragon to everybody else. Only Jerann called him by his first name. She was the only person who accepted Nicholas for himself.

“There’s nothing to be sorry about, Nicholas Aragon.” This time, her voice rang with certainty and strength. “You may be a killer, you may be the most feared vigilante in the whole world, but I love you for what you are. I found in you a part of myself that I thought I would never find in another person, much less someone my age. Don’t you know how good it feels to finally hear you talk about your past?” Her right hand left his chest and settled on her own belly. “And I love you for being the father of this child.”

He felt all the air leave his lungs. Then a sudden glow began to form in the pit of his stomach. It was a warmth he had known only when he met Jerann. “You are…” His voice trailed off.

“Yes. For maybe six weeks now. A doctor who doesn’t know my family confirmed it yesterday afternoon. That’s why I had to see you. I could no longer keep this a secret.” She clutched at his arm. Her face, so beautiful to him, was a study of mixed emotions. “I had to tell you.”

“I’m going to be a father,” he said slowly, as if tasting the word.

“And I’m going to have this baby. Our child.”

This time, the first real drops of rain fell down on them. A droplet fell on his lips. He tasted sweetness and coolness. It bore none of the acid and rage of the tainted air. A bolt of lightning streaked across the sky, followed by a muffled rumble of thunder.

By silent mutual agreement, neither of them suggested to take shelter in the nearby classrooms, which were left unlocked all the time.

Ever so vibrant, Jerann jumped to her feet and spread out her arms, turning up her face to the incoming downpour.

Nicholas realized that he was still absorbing her news. Then his head cleared, as if someone had vacuumed away all the cobwebs of time. He stood up as well, slightly amused at the fact that his six-two frame towered above her.

“Jerann…” He caught her small hands. “I love you. And we will have this child. That’s a vow.” He placed her palms over his heart, on the very same spot where his body bore the Eagle-Eye brand. “An Aragon vow.”

“Let’s do this right. For the first time in our lives, we will not do the perfect thing.” She reached up and touched his face, a face that had looked Death in the eye and never crumbled. “We will do the right thing.”

“Who ever said we were different?” he replied, more to himself than to her.

“If they only knew.” Jerann’s smile gleamed with shared secrets.
The rain fell harder now. It came down in sheets. It roared, but it wasn’t angry. It came down with the force of a youth’s passion.

He fixed his gaze on Jerann.

She was looking straight back at him, the way she had the night of the school disco. The night when she unwittingly opened the door to his heart’s freedom.

Right here in the rain, we will be free.

For the first time in his life, Nicholas Aragon took a girl in his arms and slow-danced in the downpour. There were no sounds except the crash of falling water on concrete, earth and galvanized iron.

Somewhere inside them played the music. It had a new tune.

Epilogue

Alexandra Magullado worked for the campus publication, and it had been her habit for the past two years to drop by the newspaper office every morning to check on the mail and the writing assignments.

A note was tacked to the door corkboard when she arrived. The familiar roundish script read:

My dearest Lexie: I’ve held on for years to what I thought I am. But I learned I was beginning to become the puppet of my own expectations. This time, however, Pinocchio already has body fluids and a DNA helix. The fairy would have no use, too, considering. “Real?” Hah! This is as real as it gets. And there’s always the time, that moment of decision, when you just want to shout “Leave me the hell alone!” to the world. I just did that. Goodbye. Take care. And always smile.

She stared at the signature. Like her best friend’s personality, it had an inimitable flourish.

For a long time, Alexandra’s attention was directed at the unlit space of the office, her brain trying to cope with the news.

There’s nothing else to do but hope and pray for the best.

She composed herself, went through the publication’s memo slips on the assignment board, and headed for her next class. Along the way, she stopped by a waste can and purposefully tore the letter to tiny shreds. There was a smile on her face as she watched the pieces fall, confetti-like, into the assortment of trash.

“Be happy, Jeri,” Alexandra whispered into the cold air. “I’ll miss you.”