Heaven On Fire

Eleven: Loren's Memory

My mother was, in her need, irresistible. As a child, I had seen her effect on men. When she had to attend on our PTA meetings, husbands volunteered to escort her on my classroom. She was known as one of the pretty mothers in our neighborhood; no man who met her could help but smile. When she asked a question, their beating hearts give in.

But still, it had only ever been my late father who stretched her laughter out into the rooms of the house and made it okay, somehow.

By tacking on extra hours here and there and skipping lunches, both of them had managed to come home early from work every Thursday when we were little. But whereas the weekends were family time, they called that day "Mama and Papa time". Kuya and I thought of it as good-kid time. It meant no peeps out of us as we stay quiet on the sala, while we used papa's garage area then sparsely filled den as our playroom. I would watched Hannah Montana on TV5 every Sunday.

Mama would start preparing us around one.

"Bath time," she sang, as if she were saying we could go out to play. And in the beginning that was how it felt. All three of us would rush up to our rooms and put on bathrobes. We would meet in the hallway - Kuya first then me - and my mother would take us by the hands and lead us into our yellow bathroom.

Back then she talked to us about mythology, which she had studied in school. She liked to tell us stories about Dian Masalanta and Diwata. She bought us illustrated books on the classic Philippine mythological deities, which gave us nightmares. She had gotten her master's in Anthropology - having fought tooth and nail with Lola Vicky to go so far in school - and still held on to vague ideas of teaching Filipino heritages when two of us were old enough to be left on our own.

Those bath times blur together, as do all the anitos and encantos, but what I remember most is watching things hit my mother while I looked at her, how the life she had wanted and the loss of it reached her in waves. As her second baby, I thought it was me who finished all those dreams definitely of what she wanted to be.

My mother would lift kuya Jessie out of the tub first, dry him, and listen to his chatter of wanted to play his matchbox. Then she would get me out of the tub and tough I tried to be quiet the warm water made my brother and me drunk and we talked to my mother about everything that mattered to us. For kuya, how he was afraid to approach his crush and how boys would teased me or how another family down the block had a puppy and why couldn't we have one too. She would listen seriously as if she were mentally noting the points of our agenda on a steno pad to which she would later refer.

"Well, first things first," she summed up. "Ibig sabihin niyan ay kailangan niyong matulog para mas mabilis lumaki!"

She and I would tuck Jessie in together. I stood by the bed as she kissed my brother on his forehead and brushed back his hair from his face. I think competition started there for me. Who get the better kiss, the longer time after the bath with Mama.

Luckily, I always won this. When I look back now I see that my mother had become - and very quickly after papa died and we moved with our Lola Nanette in Taguig from our house in Pasig - lonely. While Kuya was busy playing outside till five in the afternoon, I became her closest friend.

I was too little to know what she was really saying to me, but Ioved to be hushed to sleep by the soft lullaby of her words.

What she said to a five-year-old about Alunsina: "A virgin goddess who gave up her divinity and left." About H. Otley Beyer: "The guy who spend his life for the Philippines, Loren. But many still doubting his life's work. Lea Salonga: "She's a shining star, but I wish she talk English lesser when on crowd. People thinks she's an arrogant." Our neighbors: "Hilig chumismis, dudugyot naman nung mga anak nila."

"Kilala mo ba kung sino si José Rizal?" she asked me absently isang araw. Di ko nasagot. By then I'd learned to hush when she brought me into my room. My brother's and my time was in the bathroom as we were being toweled off. Jessie and I could talk about anything then. In my bedroom it was Mama's time. Jessie fall asleep easily.

She took the towel and draped it over the spindle knob of my four-poster bed. "Imaginin mo si Tito Arnold mo, yung buhok niyang hati. Ewan ko ba dun kung bakit ganun ang gupit niya." she said. She opened the drawer of the dresser and handed me my underpants. She always doled out my clothes piecemeal, not wanting to pressure me. She understood my needs early. If I was aware I would have to tie laces I would not have been able to put my feet into socks.

"Nag-iisa lang siya nung araw na bibitayin na siya pero napapalibutan siya ng isandaang Guardia Civil kaya wala siyang takas. Hindi niya nakalimutang ilagay sa huli niyang tula yung chicks niya na si Josephine Bracken. Namatay siyang hindi nasisilayan ang kasarinlan ng Pilipinas."

She went to the drawer to get my undershirt and absent-mindedly put it over my head instead of leaving it to me. Once my mother launched I could take advantage of it - be the baby again. I never protested and claimed to be the apple of the eye. I don't want to be unfair at least. Those afternoons were about listening to my mysterious mama.

She pulled back the tough-cord SM bedspread, and I scooted over to the far side along the wall. She always checked her watch then and afterward she would say, "Sige na nga. Tatabihan na kita," and take off her pink slippers and slip in between the sheets with me.

For both of us it was about getting lost. She got lost in her story. I got lost in her talk.

She would tell me about Bathala, Magayon of Albay, or Tungkung Langit and Alunsina, and I would listen to her until I fell asleep. Sometimes my parent's laughter in the room beside me or the sounds of their late-afternoon lovemaking would wake me up. I would lie there in half-sleep, listening. I liked to pretend that I was in the warm hold of a pirate ship from one my papa read to us, and that all of us were on the ocean and the waves were rolling gently up against the sides of the ship. The laughter, the small sounds of soft moaning, would usher me back to sleep.

Gerard Bautista | Baustistaalarcon