Year 2004-2005

AS DEAD AS GOOD FRIDAY



He is an American now.

He stops momentarily from what he is writing. He stares out the window and for a brief moment finds himself staring at the ricefields. He closes his eyes to remind himself of reality - what is seen from his window is a well-manicured lawn where pine trees stand in a designed landscape. The sight is beautiful but is not as beautiful as the barrio where he grew up. In the barrio, there is no such thing as designed landscape, everything grows naturally. Every beauty is direct from the hands of God. His barrio owns him. Every part of his body and soul was formed out of materials and elements of his barrio.

He is much much older now. He'd been away just like many other Filipino overseas workers who opted to stay away for economic reasons. Now he thinks of his barrio like a postcard from an island in the Pacific. At nights he imagines everybody he knew, makes them live, move, walk, work, gather, laugh and giggle. He talks to them in voices he clearly hears.

Though most of them are dead now.

As dead as Good Friday, which is today. And he is working, like any other American day.

When Good Friday arrives, everything goes in a dead mode. His Mother reminds him that "On this day, Jesus died so we must empathize with him." They all play dead. No music, no talking, no laughing(oh that one was always tough), no TV, no music. If his Mother can only stop the cock from crowing or the mouth from chewing or people from coughing, she will do that.

So the landscape of green becomes a cemetery and all the houses become tombs. And he becomes a skeleton in hunger and thirst.

His Mother says, "We must wait till after 3 o'clock. That's the time Jesus gave up."

Meanwhile, not far from the barrio, men start walking the streets bearing crosses, others get themselves nailed, others flagellate themselves till their skins become red and bloody.

In the barrio, the sky usually turns gray on Good Friday, like the heavens weep because of the death of Christ.

But, alas, on this Good Friday, he, the Am-boy, is seeing green: green lawn, green bucks, green trees. Everything is green and not gray the way it is gray now on good Friday back home.

And there lies his sadness as he sniffs, feeling how dry his nose had been since the start of winter going on Spring. But what can he do? He will be allergy-free staying home but then what?...Watch his family die of hunger? Feel the hopelesness of his country? Watch his parents die of disease and old age with him unable to do anything?

Ah, what matters is survival, not the usual romantic and patriotic excuses for living. There is no more excuse for living in poverty especially if it's rooted on the corruption and evil of society. To tough it out in the old country means death and what can you accomplish in death?

He'd rather be dead in his native country but alive in an adopted country, because living in another country may keep the memory of his native life, the memory that he now holds dear in his heart.

He no longer sees his country ugly, at least not as ugly as when he saw it while living there. In his memory, he creates a new nation all to himself. Every nght, he builds mountains around this country, rolls down beaches and shores. He colorizes the meadows and farm lands, plants flowerbearing plants and tall tall tress. He unwraps carpets of green grass and wipes out the unsightly things. He dots nipa huts and narra trees and carabaos and sunrises. Like a drawing. He dresses up people the way he wants them dressed up and make them talk the way he wants them to talk.

He murmurs to himself, "It is better to be dead in one's native country but alive in another".

There is nothing left in his country but the images left and mostly conjured in his mind.

"I am just as dead as Good Friday," this he thinks to himself as he pulls out the picture of the children he left behind. Here is Eric, just a child, and here is his sister Angelique, look how cute her little bag is, look at how her hair is fixed, And see how Hazel looks here, the poor girl is now autistic, I can not imagine her brother Gerald will grow so tall and so handsome everyone is after him. Now look at the backyard, how green it is, how secured these children are.

These are the reasons he went to America. He wanted the children to grow healthy without hungry stomachs, he did not want them crying in the night because of pain anywhere in their bodies. He did not want them to grow looking out into space, watching their parents roam around to borrow food and be treated like nothing, nothing more than rats.

He stares at this picture taken a year or two after the explosion of Pinatubo. He thinks it is better to see them this way, the way he left them fifteen years ago. It's better to see them as children forever so he can always hear their tiny voices, so spontaneous, so uninhibited, just like that forever.

But they have grown up, he could not put a stop to that. He knows, he knows...he could not stop the hand of time as it added height to their builds, he just could not stop the girls' hair from growing. He could not stop the boys from aqcuiring hoarse voices. He could not stop all of them from developing hairs, curves and shapes. He could not stop them from becoming teen-agers with all their angsts and shyness. He could not put a stop to their ever increasing complicated minds. Most of them are graduating from and entering into college. He could not keep them being children forever.

Except maybe in his mind. It gives him so much joy nowadays to pull out the childhod pictures of his nephews and nieces and see how happy they seem to be. To him, that is all that matters. They are all grown up now of course and he rarely speaks with them. None of them directly approaches him without the 'forced egging' from their parents ONLY to show respect to the uncle who provided. How he wish to someday, he will be able to sit down with these kids and tell them what really happened or what he had done to make his family survive.

He would tell Eric how he watched him suffer from diarrhea. Or Gerald how he fell from his bed. Or Michael, how he got sick because he was fed solid food at infancy. He would tell Leah how he punished her when she failed to do her assignments at Colegio de San Agustin.

But the rest, they would never see him anymore.

But then...ah, he would probably be so embarrassed to even think about telling them all that. No, it would just be wishful thinking for him to talk with these kids at a level that will strip away his role as the provider throughout their growing years. He will keep his image constant through all their lives: He was the adjunct, the one who supplemented, the one who picked up the slack, the emergency unit of the family. The one their parents called when their resources became insufficient.

They don't even know what is in their Uncle's heart, and they'd probably never learn because he would never tell. Yet, he would stare and stare at this photo until he would almost become blind. This photo is a reminder to him that he once existed in his native country. And that he became important and was needed.

There were many times he was asked,(by his American friends and flings) threatened even, to choose between one thing and his family. He got deeply offended and wounded by them when they asked him that stupid question.

When it comes to family, he said, everything else is secondary.

And so many of them left. As he chose to stay dead, doing work and living in a routine compartment. Like living in a coffin.

Afterall...

He came from a province who have natives that get nailed on the cross just to prove their love of God.

He came from a province where it was always a tradition for them to tie families together tightly and no one goes out of that loop. If someone gets lucky, helping the rest becomes a must, not a choice.

In his province, martyrdom and sacrifice are virtues and strengths.

He thinks all about these now as the days pass him by and as wrinkles emerge on his face and his legs are getting slower and his body becomes more stooped.

He thinks about these things as he stares at the photograph of the ones he left behind knowing he is still hanging to a life that was gone long long time ago.

Those kids, he mutters to himself.

There are many ways crosses are borne. There are many means of dying. He knows he took a different route to his death. With his own meaning.

But his death: abandoning his country, the abrupt change of culture ----

He believes he died long long time ago. The very moment he took a step on the tarmac of Houston airport, he knew he'd be a different person from that point on, devoid of all the vestiges of his native land.

And in his desire to keep his connection with his country active, he gathers bits and pieces of what remains of his native country. Day by day, he builds up his Philippines as more beautiful and perfect and reasonable in the solar system of his mind and imagination.

Just like holding on to the picture of the kids he took care of without them knowing him.