Exactly seven in the morning at the Bankerohan-MacArthur-Magallanes intersection, I found myself wearing a mask of a prominent revolutionary. I stood there, but I wasn’t screaming like the other protesters. Despite the shouting, I could still hear commuters and pedestrians complain. I heard not the loudest cries of the protesters but the woes of the morning commuters.
“Quit that, you are just causing traffic,” one driver shouted.
“What are you doing, ‘day?” an old woman asked.
I looked at her, but I couldn’t speak. How could I explain that I was there because I was fighting for something? Because I was fighting for a cause. When I woke up that morning, I reminded myself to wear the mask hoping it would shield me from their cold reactions. The others were just quiet. Some were too preoccupied with their own concerns. Others just didn’t care.
At exactly 7:30, someone blew a whistle louder than I expected. If it was from one of us or from a policeman, I did not really know. We were told before the rally that if we heard a whistle, it was time for us to leave. It was a signal for all of us to drop everything—the banners, the placards, the masks. We threw them all away in every corner that we turned into. I started to walk fast then I remembered my friend telling me to throw my mask. I threw my mask under the footbridge that smelled like piss. I hurriedly took off my red shirt under a cart full of cabbage. I ran towards the alley that led me to the terminal where we rode the boat to cross the river. While waiting for the boat to fill, I stripped off my black shirt and put it inside my bag. When I looked up, the woman sitting next to me was staring. I was now wearing my course shirt, a reminder that I had a class to catch. I tossed my next shirt into a bin full of carrot peelings, leaving me in the shirt I had worn eight hours before the protest when we were still planning our propaganda stunts and escape routes.
When I arrived at the terminal in SIR, I walked toward the church where we had met for the protest. I knocked on one of the doors as if nothing happened. Nobody answered. Good, I said with a sigh of relief. At least I didn’t have to explain myself to anyone, not until I got my cup of coffee. I stayed there for about fifteen minutes waiting for some of my friends to arrive. But when it seemed as if no one was coming, I decided to leave the church and take the first jeep to Mintal. It was almost 8:30 and I was late for my MST class.
I was about to cross the street to where the L300 van usually stops when suddenly somebody held my arm. When I turned to check who it was, I saw a man wearing a yellow polo shirt with a logo CTTMO. Before I could say a word, he said “asa ka ‘day?” I wanted to say I was trying to wait for an L300 van to Mintal but no words came out of my mouth. I simply said “Dira lang kuya. Ngano diay?”
“Ayaw’g tabok dira. Jaywalking na.”
Without saying a word, I walked away as fast as I could. Finally, I hailed a van and was on my way to school. I had never felt like this before. I didn’t know if it was fear or passion. Maybe it was just an adrenaline rush. It was my first time to join a rally, but it was the first time that I felt so scared. I didn’t know what could have happened if the police had caught me. I knew the rally was for a cause but I was also aware of the risks it came with. I was just glad that it was all over.
From that day on, I decided to not go to street mobilizations anymore.
But Charlie was different. We were together in several street mobilizations and not once did she wear a mask. Not even a handkerchief to cover her nose. Charlie was the person I have always wanted to be but feared to become. And what I am today, I think, was because of her.
A month ago, our organization went to the community school where Charlie was a senior high scholar. We visited to conduct a writing workshop for the Lumad students. I wanted to get away from the noise of the Kadayawan Festival in the city and I was hoping I could talk to Charlie about my thesis project. Her face lit up when she saw me walking towards her. She was standing by the door of the school clinic. I reached out my arms and gave her a tight hug. My schoolmates and her friends sat on her turf, the clinic, where she served as the most competent health officer in their community school.
“Now that I think about it, I was jealous of you when we were kids,” I confessed to her.
“What?” she asked in disbelief.
“I heard you tell your mom that you wanted to be a journalist so I pushed myself to join campus publications,” I said. She stared at me. And before she could let out a word, I said. “I started reading books because I saw you and aunt Magda looked fascinated with reading. And now I am taking up creative writing because of that.”
Charlie and her Nanay Magda would always go to bookstores.
When my Tatay was not around, Tita would go to Book Sale and buy books for cheap bargains. If I got lucky, my Tita would let me join her and Charlie at the National Book Store where stacks and shelves of books await them. Unlike Charlie, I was not a big fan of reading books. I came for the food that followed their hours of reading.
“Charl, aren’t we going to eat a foot-long burger yet?” Charlie would just continue reading synopses and skim through books as if she did not hear me.
Today, I can say that books were their escapes. Books made them temporarily forget about reality—that Charlie’s father was in prison, that Nanay Magda could not visit him in the City Jail, and that life will never be normal because of Uncle Tommy’s absence.
I had been with my father driving Nanay Magda to UCCP Haran before. It was always for a meeting but I never really paid attention. It was long before UCCP became a home for Lumad evacuees from different parts of Mindanao. Before, I did not understand why my Nanay Magda would come often to a church facility for meetings. I wondered if she was a church volunteer.
When I was about eight, I remember Tatay brought us over to a private resort in Samal. Nanay Magda and Tatay would let Charlie and me spend the day swimming and the night time catching fireflies. Nanay Magda, Tatay, and the rest of their friends would spend the whole day in a cottage by the breakwater.
One time, I asked Lola Mami what they were talking about. Lola Mami was our 56 year-old-grandmother. Tatay assigned her to look after us for the meantime. Lola Mami said “I don’t know, just continue playing.”
That night, Charlie and I peeked at the window of the cottage. We saw Manila papers and a chalkboard full of scribbles. I was about to read what was written on one of the chalkboards when I heard a familiar voice. “Nagunsa man mo dinha?” my Tatay asked. I don’t recall what I answered him, but I do remember struggling to catch my breath. We never talked about what happened. Tatay never asked me again about it, but I never dared to go near the cottage where they met. I was just too scared.
When I turned twelve, I started seeing Nanay Magda work in the same office my Nanay was working in. Nanay worked in the dental department, while Nanay Magda had one of the tables in the admin and finance office. Whenever I came with my mom at work, I would often see Nanay Magda sit at the edge of the table in the conference room. I wondered what they talked about. I asked Nanay about it several times, but she didn’t answer. It was as if she didn’t hear anything.
Once, I heard Nanay tell Tatay that Nanay Magda was trying to convince her to open a bank account. She said they plan to put twenty five million pesos worth of operational funds. The money was for UIHSFI, NLDF, Gabriela Party list, ALAMAPA, and MISFI that was then called MIPC.
I remember seeing Nanay Magda holding different sizes of letter envelopes except they came in browns and not the usual white. I only knew they were envelopes for money when I saw Tatay hand in those kinds of envelopes to Charlie last month. Charlie told me during one of our interviews that it was because of her mother that they gained favor of being enrolled in Daniel R. Aguinaldo National High school. She said that her mother had connections.
As our conversation continued, she told me about her experience sleeping in different hotels in Davao. And then, she told me about the car chase his mother was involved in together with different colleagues who are now working in the government as Makabayan bloc representatives.
Because of Nanay Magda’s active participation in mobilizing urban people in fighting for an egalitarian society, she could not afford being seen by policemen.
I often wondered how Charlie dealt with the fact that Uncle Tommy was in prison. In one of the conversations, I asked her “So okay lang sayo?”
Then Charlie answered, “Constant man among communication. It was like my father was never away.” That day she told me about how they were able to bring in a cellphone in jail. Nanay Magda’s jail guard friend kept it a secret.
For five years, Charlie went in and out of the prison to visit her Tatay. And this meant going naked before the jail guards for security purposes every time.
“How was it for you?” I asked Charlie during an interview on a Monday morning.
“It was alright, I’ve always been open and confident about my body,” she explained.
I couldn’t imagine myself going through it. Maybe Charlie was able to adjust. After all, she visited her dad at least twice a week. But it must have been awkward at the beginning.
For the last three and a half years of Uncle Tommy’s imprisonment, he was transferred to the provincial jail in Santo Tomas, Davao Del Norte. Their security was much looser and so we were able to bring in a cell phone, DVDs, and a packet of cigarettes. The environment was much better too. The space is way larger than what most prisoners needed for livelihood programs like carving wood and Sprite bottles and making Papier Mache to sell later.
When we visited, the prison air smelled like feces or some kind of putrid food, I remembered. Charlie and I covered our mouths with our hands despite Lola Mami’s command to be civilized and mature.
Uncle Tommy managed to laugh and explain. “We’ll make glue paste out of those overripe bananas.”
“’Nya Kamusta naman mo sa imong boyfriend?” I asked Charlie.
“Lahi napud.”
“What?” I asked in surprise. “Why didn’t you tell me about it?”
“It’s not as if you know everything about me. Daw be, kanus-a man ko first dinatnan?” she said, sounding irritated.
I kept silent. I was surprised by how she asserted herself, reminding me of how Nanay Magda used to speak to their colleagues at work. It was as if she was always in an argument with someone.
Charlie broke the silence by changing the topic. When I didn’t respond to what she said, she blurted, “Do you really have to know everything about me?”
We used to share a lot of things together. We practically grew up together. I couldn’t remember when we stopped. It was only then that I realized that Charlie and I were not like before. Things were different. We grew apart.
“We used to visit Tatay in DAPECOL when we were twelve,” Charlie said. “Nanay asked us to bring over her special adobo, which my father liked. Days like that always ended with Lola Mami, Ate Beth, and me eating lunch together. When we got home that day, Nanay told me it was time that I learned to wash my own clothes. She showed me the stain on the pants I was wearing yesterday. I tried to recall where I sat, but I was sure I was careful,” Charlie continued.
I remember the day I got my period too. It was like Charlie and I lived the same lives. That day started and ended with a conversation with my Nanay.
“Sorry ‘nay. But I honestly don’t remember where I got the stain. I will wash it off myself ma.” I said, almost crying.
“It’s okay, ‘nak.”
Surprised at how tenderly my mom called me anak, I asked, “Ma, how do I wash the stain off my shorts?”
My mom gave a small laugh and said, “This is not just any stain anak. Dalaga ka na.”
To me, it was always my mom who knew everything about the world. She taught me everything from the ABCs to Mindanao being the place where the most successful of uprisings will take place. She is my first teacher.
“If ever the revolution starts, the Philippines won’t be ready for it. But Mindanao— it can surely stand on its own,” she told me once with confidence in her voice.
I didn’t understand her then. I felt the same way the day I got my period. When she told me that I just had my menstruation and that meant I was already “dalaga,” I didn’t understand what she was trying to say. But I had a strange feeling it would bring about changes that I might not be prepared for. I just wished then I could be as confident as my mom whenever she spoke of human rights and fight for what is right.
I apologized to Charlie for sounding too demanding. I didn’t want to push her to tell me everything but I quietly hoped that she would. I remembered one summer day we spent in Lola’s ancestral house. I could never forget how Lola Mami laughed too hard when I asked her whose family was richer—mine or Charlie’s.
“Both Charlie’s family and your family are poor, honey,” she said.
I wondered if she was serious about it. Growing up, I always thought my family was financially more stable than that of Charlie’s. Our house was at the center of the city. They ate more vegetables than we did. Nanay would always tell me that we should finish pork or beef dishes served at the dining table, because meat was too expensive and not everyone could afford it. We had a nanny too. The helper in the house took care of almost all the household chores that I grew up knowing little about sweeping the floor.
I would often hear Charlie complain about how Nanay Magda would often ask her to sweep the floor, wash the dishes, and sometimes even take care of the small laundry. I never got the answer that I wanted. It’s only now that I understand that it was the answer that I needed.
Our families were both poor not just because Charlie’s mother and my father earned a little but because we never kept the money for ourselves. It was impossible for us to get rich. My father and mother earned more than we needed, but they would always give more than they could to help others.
Charlie’s Nanay Magda and my Tatay Romy are brothers and sisters, and the two had the same job. They both worked in a humanitarian organization that aims to resolve political and social conflicts, at least that was what I thought back then. But now, I am finally sure it was more than that. My father did not talk much about it. All he says is that they have served society much more than we had to.
When I told my Tatay I planned to join the movement to call for social equality, he asked me if I really had to. It was as if he was trying to talk me out of it. It was as if he was telling me that I didn’t have to do it, because he believed that what he and Nanay had done was more than enough.
That night, my father surprised me. He asked me to stop going to UCCP Haran where hundreds of Lumad evacuees were currently staying. He told me he didn’t like that I was very active in the movement. When I asked him why, he simply shrugged and said, “Just do as I say. Don’t get yourself into the Lumad issues.”
I told Charlie about what Tatay told me. She said she was not surprised at what Tatay wanted me to do. But she also told me that Nanay Magda told her differently.
Charlie and I had a similar childhood. We went to resorts, hotels, and rest houses and waited for our parents to finish their meetings and discussions. For Charlie and me, they were all fun and games. For our parents, they were risks that they had to take. Bringing us over was the only way they could work and still be with us at the same time.
Beth, Charlie’s older sister, used to go with us out of town. She is four years older than us, so by the time that our parents became busy with their meetings, she was already in high school. She was no longer interested in collecting shells or catching hermit crabs. She was more concerned with other things she considered more important. Once, Ate Beth told us, “It’s okay. Soon, you will grow up and understand what we are fighting for.” It left us wondering. Who was the enemy to begin with?
Charlie and I liked the attention of our parents’ co-workers. We are both extroverts. Nanay Magda was more involved in the organization and held a higher position than Tatay. Charlie was “much popular,” my young insecure self would definitely say. Our parents’ coworkers would call Charlie “Magda’s little guard” until today that Charlie is all grown up and her mother is no longer here with us.
Nanay Magda died on the 12th of June in 2012. It was Philippine Independence Day yet we were grieving. Charlie’s father had just been released from jail for a month when she passed away.
Charlie said that a few weeks before Nanay Magda’s death, it was Uncle Tommy who started coughing small lumps of blood and was already suffering from appendicitis. This was why Nanay Magda accompanied him to the hospital for a check-up. Charlie and Beth did not find the need to come with them for the check-up. A few days later, it was their Nanay Magda who needed to be hospitalized. I could not imagine my cousins’ clueless and stunned faces.
The doctors initially said she only had dengue. My family wanted to come by the time she received the diagnosis, but my Tatay said it was no longer necessary since Nanay Magda was about to be discharged in the next few days. “We assumed everything was alright because Nanay was already making vacation plans with me that time,” Charlie revealed during our interview.
“Let’s go to Manila, Charl. Just the two of us,” her Nanay said.
“What would we do there? We were just there two years ago,” Charlie wondered.
“Let us watch Phantom of the Opera. The show would surely be good,” Nanay Magda assured.
It was from Nanay Magda that Charlie inherited her love for literature. Almost every month, she would bring Charlie with her to bookshops, cinemas, and shows. She did not ask Charlie to read. It was Charlie who started picking up books, browsing, and saving money to buy them. It was Charlie who asked for every Percy Jackson book for her four consecutive birthdays.
The day before Nanay Magda was about to be released from the hospital, everyone was shaken up. The doctor’s findings for her death were not just believable. “Lupus with the signs of malaria and dengue,” Charlie heard from the doctor.
The whole clan was both grieving and apprehensive about her death.
Nights before her death, a couple of suspicious men lingered outside Nanay Magda’s hospital room. Tatay and the rest of the family just ignored this, because Nanay Magda was sharing the hospital room with two other patients.
Everyone strongly suspected foul play, but the clan still decided not to have her body autopsied. It was a unanimous decision and so her funeral followed shortly after.
“It was easier to accept that Nanay died because of natural causes,” Charlie told me one Sunday she went to our home to get her monthly allowance my father asked from the organization.
For two nights, the funeral was held in a funeral home an hour away from the city. By the third and last night, the family decided to transfer the casket to a semi-private church the movement owns in the city for more privacy, accessibility, and safety.
I was there by the third night. The church premises are huge. Aside from the main church building, there was a five-floor dorm and a function building. To my surprise, the hugeness of the premises was not even enough to hold about four to six hundred people who wanted to pay their respects to the dead. (I am not even exaggerating.)
Jeepney and trucks brought strangers from far-away places. They kept on coming to the point that the visitors had to stand by the highway since the whole church premises were already full of people. Most of them were not our relatives. They were supporters of “the far left.” I saw a number of different organization flags everywhere. But what I liked most was the flower arrangement on top of her casket. Bloody red roses dominate it, but it did not overpower the yellow dandelions forming a scythe and sickle.
On that same night, Charlie’s classmates paid a visit. About ten in the evening, Charlie decided to send her friends off by the church premise’s entrance. While waiting for a jeepney with her classmates, she noticed a short man with dark complexion across the highway. Charlie and her classmates needed to talk so much to keep up with each other that she did not have much time to be suspicious. A few moments later, Nanay Magda’s workmates were already chasing after that man.
“That was an ‘intel’, Charlie,” they said half an hour later when the man they chased had already gone. Uncaught. “We noticed him observing you from afar.”
A month and a week after Nanay Magda’s death, Lola Mami also died in her sleep.
It sucked out all the vigor and will in Charlie. Charlie started losing her interest in her studies. She was supposed to finish high school in a public school in Davao and was about to take the entrance exam for UP by 2012, but she started having boyfriends and relational problems with her classmates. And her family’s financial and emotional instability just made it harder for her to continue. The monthly financial allowances given by the organizations were just not enough.
Beth had to stop her studies and work in a call center. Charlie, her sister and her father— they all were struggling to adjust. Every feeling seemed alien to them. The absence of their Nanay and the presence of their father in the house made the situation much odder.
During the last month of Nanay Magda’s life, everything was fine. In fact, their house finally felt like home. Nanay Magda cooked the recipes she learned from her mother like rellenong bangus, turon, and Christmas ham. She and Uncle Tommy sat on the sofa and watched TV until they fell asleep in their eight-by-eight-feet living room.
After that one perfect month, Nanay Magda’s absence left the largest void. It was a black hole that sucked everything from their family.
Charlie ended up not going to school for three years and I did not blame her for that. Now, I can say that she needed those years to grieve, reconstruct her memories of her mother, and help herself go back on track.
The K-12 program was institutionalized by 2016. So when Charlie decided to go back to school, she had to undergo the extra two years of senior high program.
In May 2016, our clan had a summer reunion in a private resort. We were called to form a circle and have a meeting. All of my cousins were there because Charlie, Malaya, and Mario’s education were the main agenda. All three of them decided to enroll in the community school where one of my cousins, Jay, taught.
I, my mother, Charlie, Mario, and Malaya rode our Toyota Innova to Compostela Valley by 5 a.m. on a Saturday morning.
Charlie expected the school to be on top of the mountains, so she brought all the sweaters that she owned. To her dismay, the school was in between valleys where the air circulation was not that good. But Charlie sure was an optimist. The school campus was better than expected, she said to me. She expected the rooms to be made of amakan, but they were made of concrete cement. The only issue we observed was the uncleanliness of the dormitory comfort rooms. They were not comforting at all. I waited for Charlie to express her dismay, but she did not.
I stayed with her for a few days. We hoped that she would then continue staying there. The following Wednesday morning, I went back to the community school to volunteer and check how she was. By the time I arrived, she, too, had just returned from Davao.
“We should have gone together!” I said.
“Yes, you could have helped me with this baggage.” She pointed to the rectangular plastic sack that contained her new clothes, a month-long supply of snacks, and a few handfuls of classic books she wanted to read for the whole semester.
I knew Charlie was determined to continue and thrive. Today, she is already in her last year in senior high school.
I wanted to come back to Com Val to talk to her again. There was no point in texting her because she did not have a phone, and their school lacked cellular signals. I planned to go without telling her. As I logged into my Facebook account, it beeped and notified me that she liked my latest post.
“Hey, where are you now? I was planning to go to Com Val tomorrow,” I immediately messaged her.
“LOL, I am in Davao now.”
Good thing she was online. I could have traveled miles and still not see her at their community school. I got to talk to her and ask if it had ever crossed her mind to leave the school.
“Yes, but just for a few days to cool down and then return again. In fact, the school is not doing well right now. Teachers were also in protest for their cash advance,” she said.
As we talked about her continuing her studies in that community school, she said “It was my way of finding myself again and reaching out to those who knew Nanay. Ate B and Kuya A visited the school for an event and they knew Nanay so well. They recognized me too!”
Seeing her excitement as she saw the people she and her mother were with made me happy and comforted too. I knew that Charlie was back on track. She did not die along with her Nanay.
She said she went to school to find herself again. As we spoke, I felt that she already had. Now, it seems like she is starting to shape another version of herself. She already knows who she is and what she wants to be. She recognizes whom to serve and whose interests she’s prepared to fight for.
While I am afraid of the rush, she welcomes it so well. “It is fun when you are with your friends, much more when you know what you are fighting for,” she said to me.
Afraid to say how hard it was for me to return to the streets, I diverted my attention by offering her a banana cue to eat before she leaves for Com Val again.
Rizia Jahziel V. Perez is a graduate of BA English (Creative Writing) from the University of the Philippines Mindanao. She has a five-year experience in public service and is currently a sophomore at Rizal Memorial College of Law.