you're going to reap just what you sow

Which Trainspotting Character Are You?

My life revolves majorly around two entirely different but overtly material things: books and ice cream. I don't know why, exactly. That's just the way things are.

Like right now, I'm in a mall and I'm walking, right? Well, not now now because right now, I'm typing. But I'd like to use the present tense because YOU might find it more interesting and in a writer's life, YOU matter the most.

Have you noticed how much we look alike? We could be blood sisters; we could be identical granny apples.

Anyway, as I was saying, you might find it more believable if I narrated this story as if it's happening now. It has come to my attention that I used to always start my stories with the phrase I remember, or That day, or some such nonsense, which is evidence, really of how I like reviving circumstances that are sooooo yesterday.I want to do things differently today so kindly cooperate and pretend that what I'm talking about is all happening to me right this very minute and I'm not sitting in front of a PC I'm renting by the hour, typing so fast my head hurts.

Pretend that I am there. I am walking inside a mall and glancing at clothes mounted distastefully on the shop windows. My brother is bound to arrive at about 8pm so I have lots of time to kill. From this distance, I can see For Sale signs inside one of the more pricey bookstores. There are stacks of books by the entrance and I look at the selections for a while. Everything seems so uninteresting but I'm thinking, if I had $3,232,084,242, I'd buy them all. I'd even buy a David Sedaris. Is he any good? It seems that his books are always on sale. How would you feel, if you saw a published book of yours on the sales rack? Like 10 copies of your goddarned unsold books huddled together and they all look so fucking alike it's annoying. Would you, honestly, buy your own books?

So anyway, I was looking listlessly at the titles and my eyes, oh joy! my wondering, ever-curious eyes were persuaded by some unnamable force to look a little to the left and I see... I see... ICE CREAM! So I go up to the vendor and select the flavor of the day, which is apple crumble, and I happily eat it while looking at the books on sale.

And then I spot a familiar face. The person is looking at a stack of books and is wearing a pretty black bowler hat. I'm hopeless with names, really, but I have a good recollection of faces. She is supposed to be someone who attended the same church that my brother and I did back home.

She moves away from the stack of books she was inspecting and walks away from the bookstore. I decide to follow her because I haven't made up my mind whether I was going to talk with her or not. She goes to five different stores and I still could not decide on whether I wanted to come up to her and say hi.

Her hair swings. That's right. When she walks, it sways from side to side, like women's hair do in shampoo commercials. Her left elbow, strangely, is higher than her right and she walks with a slight limp. She turns her head and I notice that she has a small mole on the corner of her mouth.

Reading Peter Pan for the first time drove me nuts. Seeing that mole makes me remember that time in my life when I envied Wendy for having that mole so when I moved on to Kindergarten, I drew a mole on the corner of my mouth using my father's black felt pen.

She stops in front of a shoe store and looks at the shoes displayed on the store window. That's when I decided to just walk up to her like a normal person would. She had this polite look on her face when she turned to me.

That look was so familiar that for a split second, I thought she was me.

Truth is, I think the years have changed us, made us look eerily alike. That was my face, I thought. I was in college and I was in a boy's car. I was screaming Pulis Patola! at the top of my lungs and I never knew when to stop, when to say That's it, I'm getting off now. I never do.

And this woman looks at me as if she's seen me for the first time in her life. I am dismissed within a span of 4 seconds, before she even fully turns away. She opens her mouth and says,

I'm sorry, I'm not Grace.

Oh, I say, my mouth forming the shape of the dot at a bottom of every question mark.

Oh.

We can store around 232778 words in our heads. Of course, I'm guessing. It's a guesstimate. Now isn't that smart? That's one more word so I can say that I have 232779 words in this noggin of mine. Isn't it funny, though, how in important situations, all we can say is

Oh.

I wonder sometimes about what I would say if I die on the spot because of heart failure or a car accident or a shark bite. Would I get to talk to someone I love, like characters do in movies? Or would I be able to say

Oh

and move on? Like the way I did after I saw that woman. I moved away and headed over to the ice cream stand. My brother isn't here yet and I think the flavor Strawberry Rush sounds promising.

My friend sends me poems during the days when I tell her that
I don't feel at all like myself. Because she is good, she believes
in me. She also believes that what other people say will convince
me that life is wonderful. There are days when I do not
want words; there are even whole months when I feel
that water is not enough. For example, on the way
home today, I sat close to a stranger and
challenged myself to stare intently at his mouth for a full
minute. This man never snuck glances at me; transfixed
as he was by everything else. I envied
his wonder. I'd like to pluck it out of his ears and attach it
to the side of my left shoulder so that everyone could see
it and say So that's wonder! Wow! Where'd you get it?
But I couldn't do it because I considered the man, how
bereft this stranger would be without it. There are days
when looking at the world seems
as strange as mistakenly stepping into a
house of mirrors. You look so
much like Dolly Parton, it kills you.
I am so petrified, I never think to look up.

"The comedy is over."

What I was then was young. You remember being young, don't you? What those years presented was an excuse to be irrational, carefree. It was an excuse to see you in a different, a more refracted light. You would have to respect that the things that I believed in and held in awe during those years aren't the same things that I understand now.

It was your silence --the singular thing that stretched me out then made me immobile and hard. It should have made me want more of you but it did not. There should have been accusations, shouting matches on anonymous sidewalks, complaints, desperate measures to be rid of each other. Instead, there was that empty world, a back turned to me forever. And now, I will tell you truly, that that home in me that you spoke of so fondly once is gone. There is no one to blame, only fate, perhaps. A confusion of chances, our hopeful beginnings.

You remember being young, don't you? That's all there was to it, really. I have moved on, have outgrown your secret poetry and your tired hands. This is all you need to know, all I will let you know.

If it were at all easy to start over, I would have.

*****

The experience that I remember with stunning clarity dates two years back. For some reason, even the things I've experienced yesterday aren't as clear as this memory is.

It started that day when I received the Phone Call That Changed My Life. My aunt gave me a call. It was past 8pm and I said I'd just be calling her after 5 minutes because the reception was bad. I went out of the apartment I was living in then and walked to the phone booth across the street. I dialled my aunt's number and she informed me that I'd have to resign from my Dead End Job. I asked her why I'd want to do that. Then she said, quite matter-of-factly,

"Your mother is sick."

"Sick? That's it?"

"Sick. You'd really have to resign ASAP. Then come home and go straight to the hospital."

"Okay. She calls the shots."

So I attended my last shift and informed my supervisor about what I had to do. I apologized for how fast things had to be but my mother was sick, I couldn't do anything about it. Strangely, she was very amenable to the arrangement. It was the fastest exit I've ever made. In two hourstime, I had my clearance slip already filled out and I was formally out of the company I've enjoyed working with for the past two months.

I packed my meager belongings, which consisted of some articles of clothing and books, and rode a taxi to the bus station in Buendia. I don't remember exactly what I thought about during that four hour drive home but I remember being angry. Again, I thought. Just because she's my mother, she thinks she can control my life this way. And using her sisters as allies, Jesus. It was just too much. In my mind, I just kept ranting about her, how unstoppably mercurial she was. I hated her because I could not let her go. But after some time, I think I mellowed down. I talked myself into believing that she meant the best for me. Besides, I never really enjoyed talking with Americans who did not know what a Dial Up Service was.

I dropped my stuff off at our place then rode a tricycle all the way to the hospital in Iyam where she was confined. I did not know what I would say when I did see her, I mean, what would you say to the person who kept making decisions for you all your life? That it did not matter where you went, so long as she could tell you what to fucking do.

So I see her surrounded by two of my aunts. One looks at me with reproach, asks me why it took me so long to get there. I ignored her; I made a beeline for my mother's hospital bed and asked her,

"O, ano na?" (So what now?)

Her hair was tied in pathetically short pigtails and it looked as if it had not been washed for days. This is not the first time that I've seen her sick. But she looked so different that I was slightly taken aback. I was surprised by how shrunken she appeared to me -- this woman who struck terror into the hearts of children and some adults she knew just by opening her mouth. How changed she looked. My heart gave a little twitch. I did not know this woman. And all she said to me was,

"Masakit, anak, e." (It hurts, my child.)

I went out of the room for a while. To find the doctor, I told them. I went out and I saw our school teachers at the lobby. Their faces were drawn, as if someone had announced that Christmas was cancelled that year. It was December and it was cold in the hospital.

A doctor approached me and said he wanted to talk to me. He didn't lead me into an office, he just stood at a certain corner behind the small hospital chapel and said,

"Your mother has cancer."

"What kind? Where's the origin?" (I was actually surprised by how even my voice sounded. Then I realized that I wanted it to sound exactly like that. Unfazed. Normal.)

"We don't know."

"Oh."

"Hers is already in stage four."

"How many stages are there, doc?" (I remember snorting a little after I asked this question. God, I thought I was being so clever.)

"Four."

"Shit."

So I went back to the room, notably dry-eyed. I did not want the people inside the room to see any change that I might have gone through. I was, for once, going to be in control of something. And that woman on that bed would not be able to say STOP this time.

One of my aunts (the less nosy one, the one who was born after my mother was) approached me. She asked me if I already knew, if I already saw the doctor. The teachers were waiting outside, she said, because they have not received their pay for the month yet. They were waiting to hear what I had to say.

As I stood there, pondering over what she said, she told me,

"You're the brave one aren't you? Must've taken after your father. Your mother... well, she was always scared as a child. But I remember when she learned that she was going to have you, she said she did not feel fear."

And I could not take that. That statement put too much blood on my hands. I averted my gaze then I cried. Softly, so as not to wake my mother, who was, at that moment, sleeping.

I wanted to use a metaphor
for my sadness and translate
into a beautiful posey of a poem. I could say that
it is the hour stretched before one gets ready
for gaol but I've never been to gaol. I've
never lost a husband to cancer, never eaten a fish
cooked wrong, never stepped into a new
land only to find it more
imposing in pictures. I've never seen hatred;
I've never seen a miracle. The other day, I looked at a map
and saw that my
country is the color green and I believe it is so,
even in real life. Then I realized
that I do not know what it means to truly suffer,
if there is such a thing as a singular meaning
for a feeling; something so small and secular,
you can tie it around your finger to remember
to forget.

What are the things that console me now?
Is it this knowing that all things end?
Or is it the weight, the sudden tumult
of beginnings?