Lessons from the Fire, Pt. 3

We lived at the 7th unit, sandwiched between the 6th that is occupied by senior university students and the 8th that is occupied by the caretaker, a retired government worker and his  wife who seldom goes out of the house. We have been living in the unit for the last nine years. At first the apartment was just for my siblings, myself and my father who works in the city on weekdays. I was unmarried and pregnant, and it was expected that pretty soon my boyfriend would have to move in with us.

When our first son was born, Keith and I took over management of the house. We had to because our little family is the one already occupying most of the space. With a nanny and a kid whose space requirement is good enough for 10 people, taking over was the most logical thing for us to do. When it happened, nesting began. Pictures on the wall started appearing. Books started accumulating. Tools that are too many they should be inside a shed, started piling up in the little corner of our living room, right underneath the stairwell. I started accumulating my own things for the kitchen—a second hand oven, a waffle-maker, a blender and a cheapo mixer that my nanny used to ice our first son’s 7th birthday cake. When our son left toddlerhood, Keith and I found ourselves with just enough time to take on another interest. Our son was starting to enjoy being on his own more than being with us and the entertainment that comes with it. With new interests came the accumulation of cameras, then the art materials that came after we took an art class in the summer of 2012.

At some point, when the second son was born, Keith found himself some thousands of pesos away from buying what could have been the family's first Volkswagen beetle. He settled for a bike instead. Six weeks after I gave birth I found myself buying my very first mountain bike. It was a hard tail, red and white that is one size too big for me, but I rode it anyway. Then the riding got too comfortable albeit complicated. We realized we couldn't go riding the whole weekend and clean it in time to use for commuting to work the next day. There was no way but to hoard and our house found itself with more bikes that it can can store, some had to be kept outside, by the window, secured by chaining it to other bikes. The bigger ones were unofficially parked in the caretaker’s garage, along with his blue-green beetle that has seen better days. Our caretaker only offered his garage because he was so worried our bikes would get stolen. He has his own real-ugly-bike, way uglier than the ugly ones we had, but he treasured it so much that he knew exactly how it would feel to lose something that is logistically important.

Then the fire came. On February 28. The caretaker wasn’t there; he went to the other island to visit his family, bringing along his wife and things they would need for a weekend trip. He left his blue-green beetle and locked their unit. Meanwhile, everyone in our house was taking their afternoon nap—my sister coming home from a night duty as a nurse, my son resting from his fourth periodic exam and my husband, falling asleep beside our son. He was awaken by the sound of the water overflowing from the bathroom tub. Everything after that was just a blurry memory of him rushing to rouse my sister, turning off the main switch, dragging my bike with him but found it chained and calmly walking out the compound blanketed in thick brown smoke. Then minutes after, they found themselves by corner fruit stand, watching in horror as the red angry flames eat our history away. My son, clutching the pillow he slept on—the only thing he was able to bring out of the burning house, too young to comprehend, knew the fate of his iPad.

“What am I going to do now, my iPad is gone. My iPad is gone.”

Then that night he asked his aunt, “What will happen to Nanay [mother] now? Where will she sleep when she comes back? What will happen to us now?”  

The image of his childhood home burning was too vivid it kept on running over and over again, on repeat, in his mind. The next day, he came down with a fever. On their way home coming from the drugstore, he asked to be brought to the compound. He said he just wants to see it again. He said when they left the scene yesterday the house was still standing. Little did he know it will be the last he could come close to it. 

It was midday and there was nobody there when they reached the site. With a burning fever, he got out of the car, with him an unopened can of four-seasons juice he was supposed to take with his medicines. He stopped by the charred gate, securely locked by a new set of chains. He stared at the driveway, now quiet and peaceful with everything inside burned to pieces. In absence of the violent aftermath of the conflagration, that very midday where he stood by the gate could just be any hot, tropical midday with everyone napping inside their respective units. 

The blackness of the charred walls and the beams, windows, doors that were turned to charcoal were enough to tell him it was time to go. I wish I knew what went on his mind as he stared at the driveway where he first learned to walk. All the eight years of his memories in what he considered home summarized into black soot and gray ashes.


After what seemed to be five minutes of forever, he briefly said, "Let's go," and got in the car.
He never spoke about the house again after that.

It was too painful that the pain refused to be felt. It took several days for the numbness to fade and for hurt to sink in. I wanted to say sorry for being absent because maybe if I was there it would have never happened. In the parallel universe where I chose to forego my chances to leave, life goes on and we are still living in the house that we learned to love despite the rat infestation, the obnoxious cockroaches and the holes on the roof that seem to just magically appear during thunderstorms in the middle of the night—the kind that refuse to show themselves up when the caretaker comes to check for maintenance. 

In that parallel universe, Keith will continue working on his bike project and it will be completed, he will hand it to me and we will try how perfectly assembled it was, biking to the Cinematheque to watch a European movie or to the nearby biergarten for a radler fix. In the parallel universe, I will continue to worry about the Minolta x700 that is close to its end; worry where to get it fixed and worry if we will ever find another one that we will love as much. I will continue hoarding the books and Keith will beg me to stop buying until we get ourselves a bigger shelf or move to a bigger house.

But parallel universe exists in another universe that we would never see in our lifetime and things like this happens because it has to.

When the pain was gone and all that was left was emptiness, I requested Keith to visit the site. Maybe he could get a piece of what’s left of his drafting table. We could pour clear resin over it and make it a centerpiece for our new house. I wanted him to visit and scour the place for answers.


“We should just consider it gone,” he said calmly.

And I guess just need to move on.

Lessons from the Fire: Pt. 2

There's a picture of a burning house on my screen. 

I look closer and count the windows; one window, one unit. 

One, 

two,

three,

four,

five,

six,

seven. 

I can’t find the eighth. 

There is too much smoke.

I can't tell the eight from the seventh.

I count again. 

the last unit in my count has the most smoke and the most blaze. 

Maybe i got the counting wrong. 

Maybe it is eighth that has the most smoke. 

I stand up and move away from the computer then look at the picture again from two meters away.

It is the eighth for sure...

Oh my god. 

nothing looks better. none of them will look better. 

not the sixth, not the seventh, not the eighth. 

Maybe it is not happening.
I count again. I can’t tell anymore. 

Everything is wrapped in smoke. 

Lessons from the Fire. Pt. 1

I clean the walls of the house. 

It has been months since and the specks of golden oil have taken over the gloss that used to be enamel. 

I wipe it with a dripping sponge, soaked in warm water with bleach and detergent. 

I scrub and scrub. I carelessly scrub away the kid’s doodle. 

It is a doodle of endless spirals in blue crayon. 

In mid-action, I thought: Maybe I shouldn’t. 

The dirty foamy water is dripping from my hands clutching the wet sponge, to the ends of my elbows, and finally to the red floor that has been coated with wax. 

The water droplet glistens on the shiny red floor like a piece of broken glass.

I go back to scrubbing. 

Maybe I should let it be. 

I take the dry rag and wipe the suds off the wall. 

The oil is gone, the creamy paint is now creamier and the blue doodle is now a dull, toned down version of the kid’s excited scrawls.

Feels like the old times. only much much colder.

Malate.

very late at night.

alone, buying coffee and cigarettes at a 24/7 mom and pop store.

I have advance mathematics exam the next day that I was sure i'd fail.

though i've studied for two straight weeks. in advance.

so i drowned myself in cheap coffee and misery.

and from the wrought iron balcony

I watched the sun rise.

carabao-ing the jeepney

"Please move! i need space for one more! there is space for one more, i see it!" the jeepney dispatcher barked at the weary passengers.

So i barked back, "Am i gonna be charged 1-peso promo fare for this or what?"

the dispatcher forced a smile and said that nobody's paying one peso. there is still more room.

in this place where public transport remains to be the main mode of transportation of the working class, there is always more room for the 25th potential passenger of the 20-seater jeepney. never hang by the rear side of the jeepney. never mind if they had to take the scaffold seat called "extension", never mind if it is a lady carrying 5 bags of groceries and a child infant. there is always room for more somehow. and somebody's gonna volunteer to hold that infant child for another, all the time.

what is quite amusing though is that the passengers seem like it. they seem to welcome every more passenger that tries to get in, despite the apparent passenger overloading. i know, what were they thinking, right?

the dispatcher barks and like choreographed dancers, the seated passengers moves all-together in the same direction, squeezing their bodies into tiny balls along with their 10,000 kilos worth of groceries, making room for one more. and then another, and then another. and when there's none left, another would volunteer to her lap.

"let me take your child while you hold on to the rear rails of the jeepney."

WHAT? shit, no. why would a parent even do that?

and he does hands over his child. to a stranger. who then happily takes on her role as part time sitter-in-the-jeepney while others happily pitches in cooing the child who appears quite confused of all the attention she's suddenly getting, and for being on the lap of a stranger.

but in the months i have been here, riding through this chaotic choreography, everyday, for five days, 4 weeks in a month, 12 months in a year, i tried to make sense of all the bumping and the squeezing and the accommodating that every one seemed to be happily obliging themselves with, every one except me.

you see,  in small communities people do help each other. because you see, in a community that has not had the paranoia that are cars and overspeeding, filling the jeepney to the brim is treated more like public service than business.

"Come, come, Inday. We have room for you! Don't wait for the next one or you're not gonna make it before dark!" says an over-concerned citizen to a student checking if there was still space. and the girl gets on the jeepney. a swing to the left, a swing to the right, a bark from the dispatcher and magically a space wide enough to accommodate 1 roberto's queen siopao appears, and off we go.

It's the same thing, the way they treated bikers and biking. if you're utilitarian (meaning non-fred speed, helmentless, non-cleated, non-stravafied, and definitely non-MAMIL), people don't give you shit. even if you are a girl. because bikes and work and farming are as normal, as necessary as shitting. you don't come to the toilet lycra'd and helmented. you bike and you work. or walk. bikes gets you everywhere and every one knows that. when they get to their farms they don't go bragging it all to facebook that they BIKED to work, because duh, it's as normal as shitting, y'know.

so jeeps. jeeps are treated like carabaos, the beast of burden. it seems that people in the country have not divorced themselves from the idea that a piece of metal junk like the jeepneys are nothing but motorized carabaos and carabaos are safe animals to ride on. y'know, like you just jump onto the back of the carabao and off you go. then you see a mate and you ask him to hop along and then off you two go, on the back of the carabao. and then you invite some more and off you all go until you feel that it's already cramped and you have to stop inviting people in, OR that the carabao suddenly grunted, a sign that he's had enough of the weight and you can stop telling people "come hop right in." yes, that's our jeepneys. And yes, they do grunt. the engines grunt when the load's too much. and people do not seem to mind, not even the driver because y'know, he has to get these people to where they're going.

so jeepneys. in the rurals. never dangerous. more like beast of burden carabaos always happy to serve its boss.