Barrio Stories and Other Tales

Barrio

Not My Daughter



Sometimes I just get restless, I feel my spirit getting outside of me and one thing I do is to get out, I've been mall-walking the whole day today, I managed to get hold of all Anne Rice's latest novels. I started reading Pandora but...in no time I am tapping on this keyboard. Again. As furiously as I tapped on it last night, because my spirit is agitated. My soul is forcing me to write some more.

I am surprised at the way we treat religion nowadays, how we spit it out like it's the Devil incarnate. I am surprised at this because, I guess, I thought our country is a God-fearing, Church-respecting and decent country.

I promised Filemon not to write about our incident last night. But I can't keep up promises and besides, it is just appropriate to ask the Philippines today - Who will take care of the children of Filipinos who left to work in other countries?

Filemon was mad yesterday, he was mad because he had a big fight with his daughter. (His daughter is so beautiful she became one of the successful candidates in the Binibining Pilipinas.) He had a fight with her last night after she told him she had accepted an offer to do a sex film for a million pesos.

"At least," she told her father Filemon, "I am telling this to you before I'd do the film. With that money I can buy a car and I will become well-known. Most of all, you won't work hard anymore to support us."

Filemon could not even say a word for a minute in utter shock.

He left his daughter a baby. Eighteen years later she is someone he doesn't even recognize.

He asks her, screaming - "Who are you? You are not my daughter. You can't be my daughter!" He cussed her until the daughter started screaming back and crying. Filemon banged his head against the wall.

Filemon is fifty years old now, always worked in the Caribbean cruise liners based in Norway. When given an opportunity to land, he visits old-time friends like me, we're both Kapampangan and we pass the loneliness of Florida walking and talking. He's always talking about his children. How the eldest, Nenita, has grown so beautiful that she landed in a few modeling jobs. "Alex, she might become a Miss Philippines," he beamed proudly. "My work is worth it. This is the fruit of my labor. My children have grown without getting hungry, why, they're all in college. What else can a father like me ask for?"

I joke, "How about sharing my bed."

"Ay Alex, ekata talu ne, matwa na ku ginuko para pag-interesan mu pa. " Then we burst laughing.

But last night I never saw him so angry -

"Fuck them all", he said. "Whoever them offered this job, whoever lured my daughter to do this, may they all go to hell. Alex, I can't even think about it! I am so scared! I can't sleep! What if I see my own flesh and blood baring herself to the world? Or worse, doing things I can't even imagine....oh God oh God oh God help me!"

"Filemon", I said. "It's acting, it's art."

"Fuck you too!", he cussed me. "Since when did my 18 year old become an actress? She was taking Accounting at NCBA!"

"Still", I said, "She is an instrument for the freedom of expression of Filipino artists."

"Oh yeah? Why don't they start showing their own dicks in their own films? Why don't they show their wives and their daughters doing what their freedom of expression want to show? Why can't those people who are so eager to see these types of realism use their own selves? I don't give a shit if all they have is a paper or a pencil or a drawing or a statue or a cartoon anything to utilize in their freedom ...but my daughter? Why my daughter? Why do they they have to use someone's daughter and son to show their freedom of expression?"

(I am really losing here, I can't pacify Filemon). "Well, they say it's good to cinema-tize downtrodden people and what things they are forced to do in order to survive."

"My daughter is not downtrodden! I worked my ass here in Caribbean to support my family! If they wanna see downtrodden people, all they need is to film them real people in places where they live. If they wanna show the derelicts and homeless and unfortunates, they can visit them in Luneta orPasig or Recto or in their backyards --- everywhere, and they can give these a million pesos each -- But not my daughter!"

"Well, the people love these films, they say they learn about the truth of society."

"Then what? They stay in air-conditioned movie-houses or rooms to watch these films and go home and say to themselves "Darn I feel so lucky." Do you think they'd go there in those places where the scum of society live after watching these films? Do you think they'd raise hell in protecting my vulnerable daughter who was lured by a million pesos to do this film they enjoyed and learned "a lot from" in watching? Tell me, who among the viewers of that film came out to reach out to the scum of the Philippines. Go to the Philippines, Alex. Go there and ask these people who among them went to the scum of the earth with the intention of alleviating their conditions inspired by that film?"

And who among these patrons of art and freedom of expression would explain to me how this thing happened to my daughter? Who would protect my wife and daughter and my other children from the shame?

"Filemon", I said, "Stop this now. We still have work to do tomorrow. We need to rest and sleep, we have work to do tomorrow. "

He left my apartment crying in the dark. We can't do anything Filemon. We too are scum of the society. We are nobody here and nobody there. No one would listen to us. We're old. We are no longer in touch with reality in our country. We've lost even our own cherished children.

It's sad. But I pray and sleep.

Alex Maskara

Barrio Tales