In April Nights Past

Chapter 01

It was on the summer holiday before my senior year in high school began, on a crisp summer day in 1993, when I arrived at my grandparents’ house in the province. That was the summer I met Shami Alonzo.
March was on its final run and no rain was within sight, just a warm dry spell brought on by the habagat - the southwest monsoon - as it blew steadily across the country. Yet in spite of the miserable heat and the stuffy air, I had never felt so alive: I was a sixteen year-old with an entire summer that stretched unexplored before him. At that age, two months lasted like an eternity full of opportunities. And an eternity lasted for very long time in the provincia.

After lunchtime as I was in my room getting ready to organize my goals for the summer, I heard a tentative knock on my door before it creaked open.  “Anak, may I come in?” My mother asked from where she stood.
“Sure, come in,” I replied.
I closed the notebook I was going to use and prepared myself for whatever it was she had to say. She had called me Anak, as opposed to 'John Alden Sebrino' when she was mad at me so I knew this was a truce.
She had just spent a good part of the morning to berate me for not arising early enough then another extra hour so she could blame me for her inability to accomplish anything at all that morning. It only took her a minute to shake me awake; I had no idea why it took her three hours to get over that. I had wanted so much to point that out earlier on but I didn’t want to risk the first week of my summer vacation.
She came over and sat on my bed pushing some of my clothes out of the way as she did so. I had never been a messy person to begin with but the household help or kasambahay - as we call them now - had been away since the first week of the month for their summer holiday and at the rate things were going I had already started to wonder how we were going to survive until they got back.
“I just received a letter from your grandparents,” she said. “They were asking for you. Your cousins miss you too.”
I listened in attentive silence and waited.
“Your father and I have talked it over and we have decided to let you stay with them for the summer. To let you get in touch with your roots...”
So there it was, I was being banished by my mother to the provincia in the guise of filial devotion meant to be beneficial for me. Of course she did not ask how I felt about this – my opinion hardly came into consideration when it concerned my well-being. All I knew was that when she started talking about my need to get in touch with my roots – whatever it entailed – she was having her bursts of inspiration again. If only it wasn’t too seldom for my benefit.
This is perhaps the reason why they had not brought the subject up on a summer vacation outside the country right after the classes ended. Usually they had one destination in mind every year. I was always amazed at how they came up with ideas like that. But then again, my parents may have been the only ones left, I think, who followed the old ways of a husband and wife, an ideal that already got lost a hundred years back. I never heard her boss him around. I never heard my dad raise his voice either. He didn’t have to. No wonder they got along so well. Quite unsurprisingly she didn’t extend the same treatment to me. But all of those were really nothing more than superficial observation, things that someone my age didn’t have to worry about yet.
Now, I had gone along with her idea of a summer holiday, without the usual ‘healthy’ skulking any sane teenager would have raised, only because I was somewhat already tired with urban living. I mean Manila is a grand place, close to magical in fact, but when you get to spend all your waking moments stuck in front of the red traffic lights with nothing else to see except the inept traffic personnel who seemed more concerned with the issuance of tickets for their daily cut, you will realize you’re really not missing anything after all. And after a particularly long year of seeing the same stupid faces and phony smiles day after day at school I was determined to get away from it all.
Besides, I was sixteen - I needed a break.
And so I packed everything I felt I would need, fifty percent of which unfortunately did not pass my mother’s luggage inspection – I was left with five shirts and other odds and ends of clothing. I did not complain of course even when she said I couldn’t bring my air gun and stereo since I already felt tired just visualizing myself lugging them around anyway - I'm somewhat lazy to boot which gives my mother no end of concern. But that's a different story entirely. What mattered then was that I was, in fact, going away. I was doing mental cartwheels of happiness when she said I couldn’t bring my Game Boy at which point I had to put my feet down to hold my ground. Of course I was prepared to bring them up again in a heartbeat but there was no need since she relented anyway.

Only when I had already boarded the plane bound for the Island of Samar did it ever occur to me that maybe, my parents just wanted to get rid of me so they could go to Disneyland or somewhere fantastic without my execrable presence. I know that sounds utterly childish but I was convinced it had to be one of those irksome reasons that make one feel as though even his own parents were just ganging up on him along with the rest of the world. No, they were no longer in the mood to give me a sibling, if that’s what you’re thinking. End of discussion.