"I had been living within your space my whole life, but the distance that separated us might as well have been the whole world."
-Xena Tote
It rained the day he left. The screaming prior to the storm had been basked in sunlight but when our family really shattered, when the hope in their eyes died along with the hope in his, when my father had looked at his own blood look to him and point the way out of his home, the sun had withdrawn behind the clouds and called upon darkness to cover for him.
I realize that I do not know what he drove on his way out.
I was in another country when this major event happened. I can only speak of the portrait of the destruction based on my brother's observation over the phone. My tears stained a foreign bedspread, and my brothers stained my pillows back home. I may be over-romantizing it a bit by now.
When I arrived in Manila and met my mom, who had come all the way from Zamboanga City to get me, I could see the bend on her shoulders from where the world was too heavy. A tilt in her shoulder, a crinkle in her eyes, an emptiness in everything. She smiled then, but she forgot who she was fooling.
This was the cherry on the cake of our demise.
Now, five years later, ages older, financially under, we are still alive. The pieces of the broken Tote family are still intact, despite the constant weight that threatens to finally break it. This is a story of survival and faith. This is the truth I didn't get to say.
YOU ARE READING
Tell Me Something True
General FictionXena Tote lived all her life with a silver spoon. Her family was rich and she was protected eagerly from the evils of the world. She sang her way through the meadow of life but did not realize that the tune could not go on to be the same forever. At...
