Heart Failure

The house was difficult to find. I walked downhill; the apartment rows on either side followed the slope of the road. There was no numerical identification to differentiate one unit from the other, and each was an exact copy of its neighbor. Luckily, my father was outside under the shade of the porch, newspaper in hand. When he was still living with us, it was his constant ritual to read the paper immediately after lunch. It gave me comfort to know that some things had not changed.


His smile was warm and tentative, maybe even wary. I did not tell him I would be coming over. I told no one. In fact, until I got to his house, I wasn't sure myself.


What a surprise!
I'm sorry. Is this a bad time? I could come back...
No, no. Don't be silly. Have you eaten? I'll have Ting heat up some food for you if you like...
Please don't bother. I'm not hungry. I'll grab something to eat later. My next class isn't until 2:30...


He invited me inside.


I took off my shoes on the stoop, out of respect for the woman he now lived with after he left my mother. I had not seen my father in 4 years and I missed him terribly. But I knew that if I ever set foot in his house, I had to acknowledge that I had no place there. It didn't matter that blood was thicker than water; I was part of his past. I abandoned my pride by the door, with my shoes.


Ting is 31 years younger than my father. She worked as a waitress at a bar my father frequented. She was poor and tired and hungry and, to her, my father had been a beacon of hope. To my mother, he meant the world. That small house was a haughty display of Ting's triumph and the emotional pain my mother had to endure.


I never understood the reason for my parents' separation. I guess it was ethos that dictated that I simply accept it, that I should not question it. Or perhaps it was an unconscious decision because the less I understood, the less pain I thought I would feel. My mother, on the other hand, sought answers. She loved no other and wanted to know what she had done wrong. She loved him best. Many years later, when I had married and had children of my own, she would apologize for having loved my father more than her children. She said that if she had known that despite all her efforts he would have left anyway, she would have devoted her energies to caring for us instead. On the space next to "cause of death" on her death certificate, it was written: heart failure. It was her heart that failed her.


The visit lasted just a little over an hour---long stretches of unsaid things and some small talk. I wanted to tell him that I was okay, that I needed no apologies, that if he wanted to hear it I'd say "I forgive you"; but in the warmth of his presence, words did not seem necessary. I didn't even say goodbye. Ting had emerged from her room after allowing us time that, I suppose, she deemed a polite and sufficient amount by her standards because, after all, my father and I already had each other for almost 18 years.


I walked away, grateful and broken. My feet felt oppressively heavy, though my footfalls were light. My shoes were loafers in a rich brown hue--the color of living earth--with tassels that danced timidly as I walked. Each step I took landed purposefully and silently, the soles confident on the uneven ground. They were my friend Yumi's, but she asked me to break them in for her because, though we wore the same size, her feet were wider than mine. These are nice shoes, I thought. And when I bowed my head to look at them, a tear fell on my left shoe.

Breathe

Certain smells make me gag, but up until today, I didn't realize that it's generally fragrances that turn me off. Like certain fabric conditioners, some perfumes, shampoos and lotions, even flowers. I do wear scents but I like them clean and very, very faint. With laundry, I like them to smell as they should: like detergent. Not like a garden in full bloom, or the ocean breeze, or a baby's bottom peppered with talc.

But there are smells that leave me giddy with pleasure.

I love the smell of cigarettes on my husband's hands, and the mild odor of smoke as he leans closer for a kiss. I love the smell of his neck, right below the ear, when it's devoid of artificial fragrance. Even healthy sweat is wonderful--- warm and comforting. I love to catch the breath that hovers above his upper lip, vanishing momentarily to marry with the atmosphere, then rolling out once more like a lazy drawl. I love the smell of him, where the chest muscle curves to his shoulder--- masculine but surprisingly gentle in its subtlety.

I hitch my pleasant memories to smells. Though in real life they are evanescent, in remembrance they do not fade.

1992

It was the evening of Friday the 13th, and it should have been warning enough.

Traffic was terrible, as it invariably was when all the nine-to-fivers who had just received their salaries trooped to their favorite haunts, as if to immerse weeks' worth of stress in a steady stream of alcohol. She had decided to join 3 of her officemates that evening for dinner and a few drinks, thinking that in a couple of hours or so, the ride home would be more bearable. She was a bit uneasy about commuting alone but allowing one of her male co-workers to take her home made her more nervous. It seemed like a breach in security; disclosure of where she lived meant trust, and she had always been careful not to give the impression that she acknowledged a deeper level of closeness between them where there was none.

They had settled for an obscure bar which, because of its being off the beaten path, was less crowded. The place enjoyed a less trendy clientele, and its interior was at best functional--- a testament to, as well as cause for that. But the beer was cold and the company was amiable. It's all good, she had thought.

Early in the evening and halfway through her bottle of beer, she felt lightheaded. She didn't think anything of it but decided to go to the washroom to splash some water on her face. The effort proved futile and she still felt a strange buzz. She walked back to their table, but she swore her feet never touched the ground and everything was a blur. It was ridiculous, she remembered thinking. She was drunk on half a bottle when she could down a pitcher and still walk in a straight line. She was surprised to find only one of her co-workers waiting for her. He said the other 2 had left, furnishing her with an account of what had transpired in the few minutes of her absence--- and she could all but make out the words. She didn't have a headache and she wasn't sleepy, but for some reason she couldn't keep her eyes open. But she vaguely recalled him asking if she was feeling okay and offering to take her home. She wasn't sure if she had managed to answer before she passed out.

She woke up in an unfamiliar bed and the air she breathed smelled of disinfectant. He was propped up on an elbow, staring at her in a calm, protective manner that made her feel sick. There was no discernible threat, no maniacal glint in the eyes fixed on her--- but she was gripped with fear. She ran to the bathroom and locked herself in. His voice broke through the door, asking if she was all right and if she wanted anything from room service. She said no, she was fine, but permitted herself a few more minutes rooted to the cold bathroom floor--- not knowing how she could stand when a constant trembling coursed through her body, but well aware that she had to abandon her false sense of security and open the door eventually.

He stood in the middle of the room, waiting, his full height dwarfing her 5'3" frame. As if he could read her thoughts, he assured her that he wouldn't force her to do anything she didn't want to, but that he wouldn't stand for getting nothing at all...

In the end, what he got was much more than she could bear to give. He was handsome, with dark skin that flushed an attractive shade of red, an infectious smile, a calm disposition that put people at ease, and everybody loved him--- but there was no one she loathed more, whose memory left her numb with cold fear. It's been 16 years since, but the flashback still reeks of disinfectant.

food thoughts

This month, my book club is going gourmand, with the theme Philippine food and culture. We're supposed to read a book about food, but not to confuse it with a cookbook. It took me a while to pick out what to read because I was on a budget, I didn't want to spend on a title I wasn't sure I'd enjoy, and because 4 out of 5 food books in the bookstores ARE cookbooks. After browsing through shelves and shelves of books and salivating over more than a few cover photos, I finally settled on Tikim , a collection of essays on, serendipitously--- Philippine food and culture--- by Doreen G. Fernandez. It proved to be a very interesting read. Her essays on the durian farms of Davao, on Philippine wines, on shrimps in Manobo folktales and as part of our culture, on haute and indigenous cuisine, and on the influence of flavors of foreign origin on Philippine cooking are as entertaining as they are informative. Her descriptions of the typical Filipino kitchen, of the centerpiece on a fiesta table, of noche buena traditions, and of dipping sauces or sawsawan evoke nostalgia, filling me with vivid memories of past Christmases, ambrosial tastes and smells, shared experiences with loved ones while preparing to cook a meal...
I only just realized that a lot of my childhood memories revolve around food. We used to live in a house with a spacious yard littered with plants and trees of different kinds. We had roses, orchids, santan, calachuchi, poinsettia, sampaguita, ylang-ylang and other plants I can no longer identify. Throughout the year, the garden yielded papaya, langka, dayap, macopa, chesa, coconut, starapple, mulberry, kamias, guava, tanglad and siling labuyo. The most assiduous in producing were the coconut trees in the front yard, and it really is the Tree of Life. I learned how to be handy with a knife very early on because I was tasked to trim the leafy part off the twigs of a huge palapa to make walis-tingting. The coconut shells were left to dry in the sun, and later used to feed fire or as parikit when grilling. When the fruits were in abundance, my mother went wild with gata, cooking anything whose recipe called for it: kalamay, cassava, guinataang halo-halo, kanduli with gata, guinataang kalabasa and sitaw,guinataang mais or monggo, puto maya cooked in gata and topped with shredded coconut and sugar just before serving, biko, adobo sa gata, and creamy pastillas you scoop out of a jar.Though I sometimes hated being asked to help out in the kitchen, especially when I would rather be reading or doodling away quietly in one corner, I generally enjoyed riding the small kabayo to grate the coconuts. It made me feel special, as if the kabayo contraption had been designed for me, being just the right size for a child. It was tedious work to squeeze milk out of the grated coconut flesh: my 8-year old force wasn't strong enough. But when I managed to coax out the thick, creamy liquid, the feeling of triumph was unparalleled. When my mother extracted oil from the coconut milk over low fire, I loved the smell until the latik
started to form. At that point, it gave off such a strong fragrance that stuck to the walls of the house--- though not really unpleasant, it smelled thick and hot and oily and invasive--- that I had to resist the urge to gag. I've since learned to love latik, especially on sapin-sapin and biko, but the fragrance still affects me; more out of memory than its actual smell.

My sister told me that most of her memories are associated with smells: the pungency of newly-cut grass, the smell the parched earth exuded when it drizzles, oil of wintergreen on an aching body part, my lola's signature scent which Ate Alma remembers as a mingling of fresh laundry and Ivory soap. Most of my own are kitchen smells. When, unexpectedly, a familiar kitchen smell wafts through the air and beckons--- I succumb, and return to the time when life was simple and without care, food was uncomplicated and nourishing, and I was young and contented.