WHAT HE DID IN HIS TIME
DRAFTPERSONAL
We reached the unfinished stretch of road outside the city, where it narrowed from four lanes to two. My brother turned into an unnamed eskinita and parked his owner-type jeep about a hundred meters from the main street. Behind a stand of cogon grass stood a makeshift kubo, roofed with patched, rusty GI sheets. The hut was built from scraps of plywood and discarded cardboard. We walked a few paces down a man-made path, the feel of trash creeping under our skin in the cold January air. Fallen red-brown aratiles fruits dotted the firm, sturdy ground.
Two men stood up listlessly when they saw us approaching. It was already past ten that morning. A bottle of Ginebra and a single glass sat on the bench between them. The old man drained what remained in one gulp. His companion rose awkwardly and walked away. The old man swayed as he stood, the deep lines on his face betraying his longings.
“I see you’d rather live like a rat than sober up,” my brother said as we closed the remaining distance.
I took out a two-hundred-peso bill and handed it to him. His hands trembled as he clasped it. “You found me,” he said. He smelled of dirt, dust, alcohol, sweat, and stale breath. His face was sunburnt red, his hair completely gray, and he stooped.
“Come,” he said. “I’ll show you where I sleep.”
He led us to a discarded folding bed inside his hut. “This is temporary,” he said. “I’ll build a better kubo when materials become available.”
My brother inspected the hut. “This is private property, Tatay. You can’t squat here.” He stepped in and out, poking at the walls. “Why did you leave Poy’s place? He said you dismantled the refrigerator he was fixing. Did you sell the parts? You stayed there for free because he’s my friend, and you robbed him in return.”
“Poy’s place was too far from the mall,” the old man said. “I couldn’t always walk that distance. I sold the parts for pocket money. It wasn’t even much. I’ll pay him back.”
“I’m sure you will,” my brother sneered. “You never let people down.”
“I used it to buy cigarettes to sell to the tricycle drivers,” the old man said. “Too many people are already barking for passengers. I can’t compete with the young ones.”
“You should stop drinking,” I said.
“It’s just one shot to wake me up,” he said, avoiding my eyes.
“Tatay, look for another place,” my brother said. “People are calling me. It’s embarrassing.” He checked his watch. “Let’s go, Ate.”
We left as quickly as we had come. As we turned our backs, Tatay called after us, “I have coffee… come visit me again sometime.”
The Last Time I Saw Him
I told Inay, “He sleeps on a worn, dilapidated folding bed. His hut is propped behind the cogon, with aratiles shading him from the sun. Malamok. He has scratches on his face and arms.”
She used to scoff and say he deserved his fate. But today, she said, “You and your brothers should buy him one of those ready-made nipa huts from Lipa. Put him on that lot Bunso bought. At least nobody will demolish a hut there, unless, of course, it’s Bunso himself who gets pissed off by your father’s antics. All your father could steal there are fallen mangoes. God help him if he gets to those fruits before the usual pickers. If he keeps squatting, he’ll only give you more problems. Better put him in a permanent place.”
“Just let him live in this house again,” my brother said.
Inay snapped, “I’m too old to clean his vomit off the floor. When he mortgaged this house, he didn’t care what would happen to us. Only the devil knows how he spent the money. Fifteen years, that’s how long we labored to get this house back. This is my house now. Mine alone. He’s not welcome here anymore.”
I turned to my brother. “Why not let him live in your house instead? Put him in one corner. You have space.”
“Put yourself in my shoes,” he said. “He throws things and curses when he’s drunk. Remember how he walked naked on the street? The landlady was scandalized. He didn’t even have the decency to lock himself in the boarding house we rented for him. I can’t allow my daughters to see him naked and always drunk. Poy’s junk house along the highway was the perfect place for him. If he crossed the street naked, he could get run over by cars. Only scrap vendors went there; no one would see his exhibitionism."
My brother grew angry, “But he chose to live among real trash now, hasn’t he? Let him live that life. Rent another place for him? I can’t even pay the amortization of my own house on time. I’m five months in arrears!” He was usually the family joker, but tonight, he was turning red, the veins in his neck protruding as he spoke. He finished a glass of water, kissed my mother’s hand, and left in a hurry.
Where He Was
Around Christmas time, I attended the wake of my friend’s father. In her eulogy, she wept and said in broken speech, “I brought my children to the hospital to visit Papa. My three-year-old asked him, ‘Lolo, how do you pee?’ Papa was amused and tried to whisper, ‘Through a tube, apo.’ He said he was sorry because he couldn’t be there for me anymore. He left me this house. He wanted to be buried near my mother’s tomb.”
My friend showed me their family album. So many happy pictures: reunions, beach outings, Luneta, Baguio, airports, restaurants. Stolen shots of her father playing with them, eating with them, making funny faces, carrying them on his shoulders, sitting them on his lap, cradling them, kissing them, hugging them, shaking their hands, giving gifts, pressing his cheek to theirs.
Back home, only a faded, unframed wedding photo of Inay and Tatay, a few cozy scenes of family bonding, but no, Tatay isn't in any of those pictures. Ninety-nine percent of the time, we didn’t know where he was. Even a ghost has apparitions; my father was not even a shadow.
I learned about his misadventures through Inay’s interrogations whenever he finally showed up. Apparently, he had been swindling appliance dealers, smuggling imported goods, pimping women, winning bids with fixers, not exactly in this order, and never on a grand scale. From midnight until dawn, he would curse his way through his excuses.
Once, four bulky men knocked on our door looking for him. Later, we realized they had probably come to “salvage” him. Something about pocketing money meant for company goods. He wasn’t at home.
They threatened us. If we didn’t tell them where Tatay was, they said, they would get him at all costs. My mother wasn’t afraid at all. She said she didn’t care what they did to him—they could chop his body to pieces for all she cared.
Sometimes, I imagined a different kind of father: an underground goon in a suit, who took care of his family and attended weddings and funerals, like in The Godfather. But Tatay was unromantically flawed, reckless with money. If he came home at all, if he earned anything at all, his earnings were already history.
Once, he came home with a fake driver’s license. He got a job driving a ten-wheeler truck and then left for Saudi Arabia. We never even checked. It was the same for us anyway. Abroad or not, he was simply not there.
Some memories linger because they were traumatic. My parents’ booming voices spat bitter words. Inay nagged about barely making ends meet, about his illegitimate daughter.
“Now you have the gall to mortgage the house? I won’t sign it, you devil! You should die!”
“I’ve already forged it. You’re too late,” he shot back. “That banker was a crook anyway. What can you do?” He cursed the neighbors, too.
We cringed under our bedsheets, shaking. My mother hurled a figurine at him. It shattered. My father kicked the television, sending it crashing toward the door.
My five-year-old brother ran out, brandishing a broom at him. “Stop!” he wailed.
Tatay walked out of the house and was gone forever.
We didn’t miss him at all.
As It Were
In September last year, he suddenly showed up at the gate, looking like a beggar. Mother shooed him away as if he were a pesky fly. Upstairs, I could hear them talking.
“Could I at least use the toilet?” he asked.
“Use the toilet at Jollibee,” Mother shot back.
I closed the door of my room.
“Give me water, please,” were his last words.
“This is not the water district,” Inay shot back. “Get it from a fountain. Leave!” Mother shouted.
Nothing followed. He was gone.
Lately, he often loiters at the City Mall's open parking space, helping shoppers park their vehicles. With tips, he buys cigarettes and gin. If many are generous, he can buy snacks.
Sometimes, when I see him, I give him a hundred, fifty, or twenty. He frequents my brother's office, asking for food money. My brother tells him to eat at the company canteen, and he’ll pay. But Tatay brings other street guys with him, and my brother ends up paying not for one, but sometimes for two or three stray souls. Finally, my brother stops him from eating at the canteen.
The other brother, working abroad, lets Tatay stay on a lot near his house. But Tatay gets bored.“It’s better to live on the street than on that hill. At least here, I can talk with people, not with trees.”
My sister and I often gather old clothes and give them to Tatay, right on the street. But the next day, those garments are worn by some other street guy outside the mall. Tatay has turned into a taong-grasa. I often avoid him, but I also crane my neck, curious about where he bathes, where he relieves himself, and how he protects himself from the rain. Sober, Tatay barks for passengers; drunk, he crouches on his hunches on the sidewalk.
My brother’s officemates rib him about Tatay’s habit of lying naked on the road when drunk. He thanks them—at least they aren’t judging him. Everyone becomes immune to the question, “Why won’t you let him live in your house? He’s your father, after all.”
After visiting Tatay, I later see him on the sidewalk staring at a tabloid on a magazine stall. He slowly walks away, wiping his face with his shirt. I fear that if he sees me, I will be obligated to give him money again. So I run to the next street corner.
Should I visit him once every week, give him a regular fifty or a hundred for food? But would he not spend it on alcohol, as he always does? Should I buy him a real, waterproof tent? But would he not sell it or give it away, as he has done with other things?
It is rush hour. The road is filled with pedestrians. A bent, old woman begs the street vendor selling peanuts, “Pang-almusal lang, Ineng…”
The owner replies, “Here’s ten pesos, Nanay. Bili po kayo ng pandesal.”
A child crosses the street, pushing a cart half-filled with dalandan. A jogger comes by and buys three plastics of fruit from the child. As he runs away, he waves and shouts, “Keep the change, kid! Happy New Year!”
I cross to the other side and bump into a Badjao girl selling beads. She falls from the impact, and every bead she carries in her skirt, every stone and every shell, instantly rolls and scatters down the road. Conscious that the lights will soon turn green, I run on.
A tricycle driver helps the shocked girl up. He leads her to the safe side of the street, then runs back and picks up the scattered beads. The lights turn green, a driver yells at him, but he keeps picking up the beads and gives them back to the girl. I am frozen as I follow his movements. The Badjao girl shouts her thanks: “Salamat, kuya.”
I go inside the convenience store. On impulse, I pick instant noodles, biscuits, and canned tuna, pay for them, and rush back out intending to give the groceries to the girl. But by the time I come out, both she and the driver have gone.
I walk back to where I saw Tatay. Now I want to give him the groceries instead.
The store owner tells me, “Try the pancitan; he often goes there.”
The waitress at the turo-turo says, “He didn’t come here today. I don’t know when he’ll come again.”
I ask, “Could you give these groceries to him? Tell him it’s from his daughter.”
“This could just get lost here. Just bring it to him yourself. You certainly look like him. I didn’t know he had a daughter, though he mentioned a son working abroad.”
I am embarrassed at having to admit to a stranger that I am my father’s daughter. I take the groceries home and keep them in the cupboard. As long as he does not show up at my mother’s gate, Tatay is conveniently out of the way again.
Soon, the cold winds of January and February are over. In March, the cogon turns brown and grows short. The clearing gets overdrawn with smog. The ground cracks in the hot winds of April. In May, the aratiles wither, and their fruits remain bitter until November.
Tatay’s hut gets plastered with smoke, grease, and wind-blown scum. Its wooden posts become highways for ants. In August, the storms blow the roof away. And by December, who knows if that clearing outside the city won’t be quarantined with signs of road-widening?
I keep fighting the thought that I was happy to see it fully cleared of squatters.
