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.