Plural | 1

Plural | 1
PLURAL is an online prose journal that caters to fiction, nonfiction,
and criticism geared towards prose.
http://pluralprosejournal.com
Cover artwork by Kevin Roque | Layout by July Amarillo
EDITORIAL TEAM
Carlo Flordeliza
[email protected]
Erika Carreon
[email protected]
Neobie Gonzalez
[email protected]
Lystra Aranal
[email protected]
Erich Velasco
[email protected]
July Amarillo
[email protected]
Plural | 3
4 | Issue One
TABLE
of
CONTENTS
FICTION
What Christian Did
Glenn Diaz
Driving Lessons
Wina Puangco
Naengkanto
Christoffer Mitch C. Cerda
There is a door down the basement
Joshua Lim So
The Patient
Marguerite Alcazaren de Leon
JunglEnglish
Jenette Vizcocho
A Rubbed Out Sky
Chris Mariano
9
21
31
41
44
59
73
CREATIVE NONFICTION
The Perfect Crime
Francis Alcantara
Tita, I’m Home
Melissa R. Sipin
Projectile
Stephanie Shi
81
85
95
CRITICISM
Philosophy, Science Fiction, and the Limits of Speculation
Dr. Noelle Leslie dela Cruz
105
Plural | 5
6 | Issue One
FEATURED ARTIST
KEVIN ROQUE
Kevin Roque is an artist and illustrator in Manila. Since finishing studies,
he’s been drawing for publications.
Driven by emotions to influence his creative output, he draws highly intricate
black and white drawings in mix of styles. His works are mainly in traditional
mediums such as pen and ink.
Likes surreal, lowbrow art and oddball creatures.
Plural | 3
ISSUE ONE
The Part Where We Make
A Grand Pronouncement
Which is to say, this issue.
A tall order, considering how it is swimming with
and against the tide of other grand pronouncements.
Though, to say that something is “swimming
against a tide” is already, in itself, another declaration that attempts to point at the importance
of this venture.
Which is why the statement is qualified with
a “with”. Does this connote a half-step, a
disclaimer? Is this inaugural venture dipping its
toes gingerly into the water?
It is meant, simply, to underscore how there is no
real way to tell where the tide is turning, if there
is a tide to follow at all.
There is only the proclamation. “We are
swimming, here, this is our direction.” Wherever
that may be, we’d like to think it is Forward.
To use another trite statement, we want to make
a splash. Diving into the ocean.
Or plunking ice cubes into your drink. We would
like to be your poison, now.
Would you like us super-dry? Warm? Wet?
Fruity? Is it still the liquor metaphor we are
extending?
Metaphor, yes, you’ll find some of those here, too.
It is also equally acceptable not to refer to them
as such, if that is your cup of tea.
However you feel about figures of speech, we’d
like to think that the prose selections you will
find here will get you there.
By “there” we mean that satisfaction that comes
from/with a great discomfort, whether you are
looking for a climax in terms of plot or some
other bodily experience. It can be both, though
you might find that plot would seem quite circumstantial to the overall appreciation of any of
these texts.
Hopefully that did not deflate you or your expectations, because the prose you will encounter in
these (digital) pages certainly didn’t deflate ours.
Though that is a little misleading, as we did not
expect anything beyond what we had set out to
find: a contemporary (Contemporary: Now. Also,
temporary) sensibility (Sensibility: making sense,
in your head and bones).
Meaning, prose that plays Operation with itself.
Painful, serious play.
Painful. Serious. Play.
Really, is there any other way to go?
Erika M. Carreon
Plural | 5
6 | Issue One
FICTION
Plural | 7
8 | Issue One
FICTION / GLENN DIAZ
What Christian Did
Police are blaming the dense fog on the intersection of Ayala
and Buendia Avenues early Sunday morning for the death of a
21-year-old fast food crew member who was hit by a bus as he
was crossing the street.
Philip Manabat, a resident of Project 6, Quezon City and originally from Pagudpud, Ilocos Norte, was seen walking from the
Makati Post Office to the direction of EDSA before bystanders
heard a loud screech from a Newman Goldliner bus (TXJ-710)
bound for Leveriza.
I had been surveying the robberies and homicides and
countryside massacres with only a cursory glance but I still recognized
my name in an instant. I fold the too-big broadsheet in half and flatten
it on the table to read the story again. I had always felt a kind of affinity
with the 16 other Philip Manabats in the city—I checked—but this
particularly unlucky namesake, I truly sympathize with him, prey to
this murderous freak weather phenomenon that had landed him on the
leftmost column of page 6, right next to a boxed weather report.
A fatal lightning strike in Nueva Ecija, sure. A two-minute
hailstorm in Bulacan, why not? But a fog? In summertime Manila? I
look outside and try to look for a malevolent sign, anything at all, but
the clouds are in their usual splendor, incorrigibly declaring this day
business as usual. A squadron of birds serenely swoops by toward the
direction of Monumento as if to drive home the point.
From my balcony, 24 floors up, I can see the triangular brick
roof of the train station to where I will walk to start my morning
commute to work. Now pale, you can tell it used to be red, and rain and
sun had drained it of any color. Conversely, my tiny terrace is visible
from that station. It’s easy to spot. Just look for the lone pink high-rise
in the sea of earth-toned structures and confusion of black cables. Then,
from the huge portico on the ground floor, count 24 windows and turn
your eyes to the rightmost balcony.
Right there.
Those are the mauve satin curtains I bought on a trip to
India. That’s the wrought iron chair on which I fell asleep once, drunk,
Plural | 9
and realized upon waking up that that the nice guy from the bar last
night had ran off with my wallet. That’s the steel balustrade, now devoid
of sheen, witness to many nights when the city’s assembly of yellow
flickering lights leave me in awe.
A cup of coffee awaits on the side table, where it sits in the
middle of crumpled receipts, crushed beer cans, and an overflowing ash
tray which I think used to be ice cream canisters.
In front of the full-length mirror in the bedroom, I tilt my
head once, twice. There are days when you look in the mirror and say
to yourself, a bit shamelessly, “Not bad. Not bad at all.” Today isn’t one
of those days. With a sigh, I grab my satchel and laptop bag, then join,
with a wincing upward look to the clouds, the morning fray outside.
“Galit?” I ask Jen, the boardroom secretary who is stoically
typing on her desktop.
“I don’t know,” she says. She stops typing and looks at me. Her
gaunt face is fully made up. “Please take your seat. I’ll call you when
they’re ready. Thank you.”
A Nazi, indeed. Her reputation precedes her.
Except for the glum clacking of her keyboard, the waiting
room is a quiet, perfumed oasis from the polyphony of morning chaos
outside. As a remembrance of my journey, my long-sleeved polo smells
ever so faintly of vehicle exhaust. My ears still ring with the blare of
jeepney horns. Like a mausoleum, here it is bare except for some joyless
plants, half-hearted attempts at life. Behind the big wooden door, I can
imagine, grave-looking men and women in Armani suits are converged
around a table, arguing about something earthshakingly important, like
the price of our banner paracetamol or the unveiling of a revolutionary
dengue vaccine. Framed portraits of former CEOs look sheepishly
from their gilded rectangles.
Muted laughter erupts from the room, and Jen and I look at
each other askance—a split-second solidarity, gone as quickly as it
arrived.
The door opens and the dutiful assistant is up from her chair in
a flash.
“Four cappuccinos, two macchiatos, and a vanilla latte, please,”
said Carolina, the red-haired Australian expat who is Consulting
Director for Asia Pacific. She looks at me and smiles.
“OK, Ma’am!” Jen calls out, as the boardroom door closes with
a thud. She scribbles something on a pad then summons someone via
intercom. A man soon shuffles inside and Jen hands her the piece of
paper. “Don’t screw it up this time.”
“But your handwriting—”
“Go.” Jen glares at him.
“Jesus Christ,” she mumbles under her breath then, seeing
10 | Issue One
me, narrows her eyes, “Didn’t I ask you to sit
down?”
I am on my way to the L-shaped
couch when the door to the boardroom creaks
open. Carolina emerges and hands Jen a
post-it, which she wordlessly hands to me.
21F pantry. 11:30.
– Carolina
The digital clock on Jen’s table says it
is not even 9 AM. My moment of reckoning
has been postponed.
Good ol’ HR had been lead
committee as usual during our annual
Children are Our Future Day last week. Up
to a certain point, our talent show had been
passably successful. Happy even. I saw one
of the big bosses crack a tiny smile. We had
hauled the kids from our learning center in
Calauan town in Laguna, an hour or two away
from Manila. It was built a few months ago as
part of a relocation site for families who lived
near the esteros and tributaries that had risen
during Ondoy. I’ve been there myself. It’s an
amazing place, clean and expansive. The air
is fresh, and Mount Makiling looms in the
horizon. Cows from who-knows-where graze
on pockets of grassland. You hardly mind that
you still don’t have electricity or running water
after being there for a couple of years.
The morning of the talent show, 62
tiny figures darted in between pin-striped suits
and blazers at the lobby of Tower One, where
our corporate office was located. Amusingly,
one of the guards refused entry to one of the
kids’ props—a life-sized makeshift cardboard
house for a dramatic tableau—thinking it was
garbage, which it was, a remark that elicited
shrieks from the girls and inarticulate chanting
from the boys. In the elevator, the kids went by
batches of 15, pressing all the buttons within
reach and contorting their gaunt faces in front
of the globular security cameras. It was a
beautiful day.
The idea behind doing a talent show
instead of the usual feeding program was
to engage the community more than the
usual dole-outs. In the end, the goal is no
different from the other outreach activities:
to give these people a nice treat, to let them
experience something different. This was how
I had ended my pitch for the project to the big
bosses; it was approved on the spot.
The last group to perform, made up
of kids no different from the other scrawny eight- and nine-year-olds, turned their
otherwise uneventful singkil into one for the
books, when the tip of one bamboo pole hit
the ridiculously expensive ceiling-mounted
projector in McDowell Hall. It was hit on the
lens, and the painful sound of breaking glass
rang in the air right after the final note of the
prerecorded kumintang.
As early as at that point I was already
thinking of excuses; how it was, for instance,
one of those things nobody could’ve possibly
foreseen. Accidents happen, I resolved to say.
For a few moments, nobody made a sound in the
hall. This silence was followed by earsplitting
feedback from one of the kid-emcees’ wireless
microphones. My orange-clad colleagues,
too stunned to move or say anything, looked
around. The participants, then assembled in
their respective color-coded groups, ran to
their parents, who were all sitting on the steel
benches arranged around the stage, awaiting
what would happen next.
Carolina curiously surveyed the
maelstrom from the judges’ table. She was
seated between the head of the Christian relief
group that provides us with volunteer-teachers
and a columnist for a national daily. Carolina
gave both ladies a reassuring smile and
whispered something to their ears.
Ó
Plural | 11
Minutes later, everyone seemed to have miraculously forgotten
what just happened. Onstage, everyone was gamely posing for pictures
with a giant inflatable globe, the symbol for this worldwide company
effort. Apparently, a utility person had been vacuuming the broken
shards of the projector lens when Carolina went onstage and asked
everyone to settle down. She got the score sheets and told people to
start computing. While waiting, she invited the kids to do a little recap
of their performances while waving hundred-peso bills in the air, a
reward for the desired cooperation.
Looking at the grainy photo that appeared on the columnist’s
lifestyle spot the next day, you would never have guessed, from the wide
smiles of kids and adults alike, of Filipinos and foreigners alike, that
anything had been amiss.
Meanwhile, the singkil group had won. The accident
notwithstanding, they had distinguished themselves at the event,
bringing something different into a morning filled with near-obscene
gyrations to the latest dance craze, tearful skits about overcoming
poverty, and off-key Air Supply ballads.
I have long quit smoking, but I have kept a secret stash under
a pile of manila folders at the bottommost drawer of the filing cabinet
near my desk precisely for a moment like this. Unable to do anything
remotely productive, I retrieve the frayed sticks and head to the fire
escape on the 23rd.
As expected, I find a few figures leaning on the steel rails.
Here, the glitter of Makati’s skyline is nowhere to be found; instead,
the smokers get a view of the soiled backside of old buildings, the
rusty, cobwebbed machinery of generators, spindly trees inured to the
smoke, the noise. Cigarette in mouth, I only need to extend my hand
before a lighter appears from a stranger’s jeans pocket. I nod my thanks,
belatedly noticing that the red skeleton of the fire escape had been
creaking uneasily since I stepped on it.
The first puff is a tender warmth in my throat, my chest, then,
letting it out, in the air in front of my face.
With its orange walls and white tables, the office pantry
mirrors the company palette. On a regular day like this, it is filled with
people chatting over hot meals. Caucasians and Filipinos, Koreans, a
lot of Indians. Baby back ribs, kare-kare, bibimbap, chapati and mutton
curry. An explosion of aroma welcomes me to the spacious room. I
smile at Ate Stella, who is in charge of the kitchen. She looks at her list
and tells me to sit down and my food will be ready in a few. Meals here
are planned for senior and middle managers.
12 | Issue One
I find Carolina in a corner table. Her black coat is draped
over her chair. She is wearing a dark green sleeveless turtleneck that
contrasts with her red hair, tied in a loose ponytail.
“I hope you don’t mind that I’ve started,” she said, putting
down her spoon. “It gets soggy really quick.” The peanut sauce dribbles
down the side of her fresh lumpia.
“It’s OK,” I tell her.
“What are you having today?”
As if on cue, Ate Stella arrives with my plate of beef teriyaki.
She puts the big bowl of ceramic beside the requisite plate of extra rice
and glass of ice-cold Coke.
“Nice,” she says, smiling. “Why don’t we finish our meals first
then talk about it later?”
“OK,” I said.
“So,” she says, “how are you doing today, Philip?”
After 20 minutes or so, we stare at empty plates, soiled bowls.
Carolina asks if I will join her for a smoke.
Outside the building, there is the usual laziness of afternoons,
people walking slowly and the air heavy with digestion. From slightly
nippy this morning, the weather has decided to reveal its true tropical
colors, and it feels like it’s 40 degrees outside. From time to time, a
warm gust of wind blows from the north; absent this, the air is heavy,
unmoving. She hands me her pack of cigarettes.
“Oh, I’ve quit,” I tell her, returning the thin white box.
“Don’t I see you on 23rd? Anyway.” She gives me a look,
perhaps catching a faint nicotine scent from my fingers, a flicker of ash
on my shoulder. “Suit yourself.”
We walk over to the gated entrance of a nearby park and stay
beside a metal trash bin rimmed with a circular ash tray. “I’ll only be
here for a couple of years,” she looks at me, her eyes half-closed, lazy. “I
hate it here.”
A group of office workers scooping frozen yogurt from small
cups passes by and looks at Carolina’s red mane, which looks bright,
aflame under the 1 o’clock sun.
“In the city, I mean,” she adds. “I might head to the beach.
Again.”
I have heard of Carolina. She had gone MIA for five years,
and speculations abound on what really happened during the “lost
years.” Some say that she lived with a Filipino lover somewhere in the
slums of Manila; others, that she had been hypnotized by a millenarian
cult in the Sierra Madre mountains during a swimming trip to Baler; others still, that her divorce in Australia caught up with her here
and she finally snapped, after which she was committed at an upscale
Plural | 13
Î
14 | Issue One
psychiatric facility in Tagaytay. Nevertheless,
the regional office at Sydney still hired her for
a consulting job in Manila because they said
she did great work.
“I’ve lost my tan,” she says now,
inspecting her arms. “Damn it.” She taps her
cigarette over the trash bin, looking beyond at
the manicured lawn and the towering trees in
the middle of all the grays and lifeless chromes
of the complex. “Anyway, this thing with the
projector. Would you agree with me that it’s
such a silly thing?”
I clear my throat. “I think we need
to take responsibility for our actions, and I’m
fully responsible for the talent—”
“I mean, it’s silly that they’re giving
you such a hard time over this. It’s a projector,
for Christ’s sake. It’s not like you leaked
a formula to a competitor.”
I exhale. “I think they’re using it to
attack CSR.”
“That’s one more thing. Do you
know what the most profitable industry in
the world is?” She takes a long drag from
her cigarette. “Not banking or investments.
Not petroleum. Not even tourism. You know
what? Pharmaceuticals. Health care. Can you
imagine that? A single drug sells billions of
dollars in a year. A single drug. And they’re
making such a huge deal out of what? $4,000?
I can’t believe it. These grumpy old men at
your country’s board need to take a Vicodin.”
I snigger at the display of unabashed
candidness, so rare in the corporate world.
“I shouldn’t have said that,” she says,
letting out a yawn. “Where’s my brand loyalty?”
She takes a final puff on her cigarette
before extinguishing its flames against the ash
tray. She lights another one. “Can I?” she asks,
and, when I nod, starts to blow a string of
perfect smoke rings.
“That’s amazing,” I gush, unable to
stop myself.
“Why, thank you,” she says. “It took
me years of practice. Years.”
After lunch, while waiting for Jen to
amiably order me to the boardroom, I find a
follow-up story on my ill-fated namesake.
Police are now considering the possibility
of suicide in the case of the fast food crew
member who was run over by a bus yesterday
in Makati.
The development came after it was discovered
that Philip Manabat, 21, had figured in a viral
video last week that his family said may have
finally driven him to the edge.
Last week, a viral video spread on
YouTube of a fast food mascot flipping tables
in a fit of rage at a children’s party. At the start
of the two-minute clip, the red-and-yellow
bee could be seen overturning one table
after another, knocking over styro packs and
spilling fried chicken and blood-red spaghetti
on the floor. At the 58-second mark, just when
the five- and six-year-olds in the sidelines had
started screaming in horror, the beaming face
of the mascot turned to the camera. Its gloved
hand smacked the unseen person recording
the video, which sent the device crashing to
the floor. Still recording, the camera lay on its
side just as the mascot’s face peeked from one
side. All the viewers—1.32 million after just a
week—then saw a white oversized boot rocket
toward the camera lens at full speed.
The strange twist of events had
somehow rescued his story from the metro
section and delivered it right into the home
page of a major news website. The banner
headline alternated with news of rising prices
of banana because of a super-typhoon; the
canceled concert of an American pop singer
whose songs, a priests’ group said, had satanic
lyrics; and another call center moving to India,
the fifth one since authorities discovered
a multi-million-peso inside job a year ago.
My thoughts are interrupted when my
phone rings. “They’re ready,” Jen’s monotonous
voice says.
“I have a question,” I say and put the
phone down just as I hear “What.”
I take the first decisive steps to the
boardroom on the 20th and try to shrug
off the pesky nervousness. Shoulder erect,
head held high, and strides forcefully long
and confident, I hope the casual gait is all
that matters.
“Christian?” Carolina asks. “Is that the
name of the kid?”
“Yes.”
“What a lovely name,” she says,
looking around the table.
“Anyway,” says the same old man,
giving Carolina a confused look. “Let me be
candid with you, Mr. Manabat. It’s getting
harder and harder to justify our CSR program.
You see, it’s not generating the same level of
buzz as we had expected. So this is actually
a good chance to revisit that aspect of our
business.”
“With the kind of economy that we
have, the level of competition, and this stupid
“3 years, 10 months,” I tell the grim new legislation on affordable medicine,”
faces around the modular conference table says a woman who reminds me of our
inside the boardroom. Someone—with a deep, college librarian, “we are taking a very, very
guttural voice—had asked how long I had close look at our balance sheet.”
been with the company.
“It was an accident,” I say, then, louder
“Philip,” Carolina then asks, sweetly, to put forth my sincerity, “you know, it’s really
“do you know how much that projector costs?” difficult to measure the benefits of CSR. As
“Yes, Ma’am Carolina. P159,000.”
you know, it won’t appear on any chart or
“Just call me Carolina,” she says, ledger. It is not a figure you see in the analysis
smiling.
of bottom lines or profit margins. If our goal
is for these learning centers and medical
The scene is vaguely reminiscent of my missions to generate a return, we might as well
final interview in the company. It had been my drop the whole thing.”
first attempt at a “regular” job after working in The board regards this with an
a call center for three years and taking a break ambiguous grunt, and I exhale.
for several months. The feeling then, as it is “Well,” Carolina says, looking around
now, is not unlike the final moments before the table, “that was productive.” She checks
a nurse gets your blood, when she is opening her watch and smiles at me. “Anybody up for
her kit and taking a new injection fresh from merienda?”
its plastic wrapper.
“You’re in charge of the whole thing, My leather shoes can only manMr. Manabat,” says an old man. “From what age baby steps on the cramped stairway to
we hear you’re quite invested on the CSR the train platform that night. Around me,
side of things, aren’t you? Your colleagues said bodies; nothing but jostling, murmuring
you’ve even become close with some of the bodies. I try to relax by taking deep breaths,
kids. That’s great. Don’t get me wrong. That’s but what smells like ten hours of manual sungreat.”
kissed labor swirls in the air. From time to
“I take full responsibility for what time, the odor becomes too cloying and I have
Christian did.” I tell the panel.
to look up, lest I suffocate.
Ó
Plural | 15
In the platform, the crowds funnel to spots marked where
the train doors will be. Trains arrive like clockwork, but each one is
fuller than the last. Faces and torsos are contortedly pressed against the
glass doors. “Let people get off first!” a voice would scold over the PA
system, whenever waves of passengers would crash into half-opened
doors before anyone inside the trains could alight. The disgorged people
gasp for air, like newborns.
From where I stand, I can see a familiar billboard on a far-off
medium-rise. On it, a meadow is set against a clear, blue sky, and a
woman in office attire lies on the grass, legs crossed in abandon; below,
in a laidback cursive: “We make things better.”
This ad was laid out by a graphic artist I hired last month.
The copy was written by a marketing staff whose resume I screened.
The final design was approved by a manager whose climb through the
ranks I had excitedly overseen through the years.
An empty train soon slides to the station, and I scamper to
get inside. Somebody settles behind me on the train, and a head of
sweat-smelling hair positions itself just below my chin. An arm brushes
my right cheek en route to an overhead handlebar, and a heavy backpack
is placed on the tip of my left shoe.
The train traverses a beautiful part of the city; without the wall
of bodies, the ride may have been a scenic tour. Instead I see darkness
when I look down and a fluorescent blinding when I look up. Elsewhere,
a forest of heads, constantly turning in search of a bearable view.
It was also rush hour in the trains when I saw that billboard for
the first time. I still remember the distinct pride that I felt upon seeing
it. It was a testimony, I thought, to my value to this organization. Sure,
it’s the research people and med reps who earn big bucks for us. It’s
the marketing guys who maintain goodwill and draw business. But
everybody starts with a firm handshake and a job offer. Everybody
starts, everybody grows with HR.
16 | Issue One
Ó
Seconds before the train arrives at my stop, two nuns announce
that they are getting off. They part the obstinate crowd and I follow the
path cleared by their powder blue habits. A mass of bodies quickly take
the space we vacate inside. The nuns are soon lost in the sea of people
who make a beeline to the turnstiles.
I step out of the train station and begin the five-minute walk to
my building. The city is breathing its last for the day, quietly surrendering
to a secret, less visible kind of bustle. The guard at my condo gives me
the familiar salute.
By the time I reach my unit, it is well after 9 o’clock, more
than half a day since I stepped out. There’s the awful creaking sound as
I open the door. The click of the doorknob, the flick of the light switch.
I sit on the computer chair and remove my shoes. Right shoe first. Sock.
Then the left. Sock. I kick them underneath my bed, a few feet away, to
which I collapse, all of a sudden so tired.
I was able to pay the down payment for this 25-square-meter
studio around three years ago, thanks to some savings from my time as
a call center agent. I had always been thankful for this refuge, although
sometimes, like tonight, the silence becomes unbearable, the walls too
dense, never-ending. The price of peace, I suppose, of being safe from
the crime and flood and the sundry evils of the city. The evil fog. I turn
on the television to break the quiet and head to the balcony, parting the
curtains and sliding the glass doors on the way.
Muted to a faint murmur, Manila seems innocent enough,
kind enough, until the blare of an ambulance, such as this one that plies
a nearby side street, reminds one that people actually are dying, that
loss is an everyday occasion.
I can faintly hear a reporter saying something about suicide and
cyber-bullying, no doubt in reference to my namesake. What if it really
had been an accident? What if the fog indeed made things difficult
to see and, when the bus emerged from the haze, it was too late?
I get a beer from the fridge to take me through the night.
What Christian did, which the panel didn’t know, was search
for me in the crowd then look at me in the eye right before the mishap,
before the bamboo pole, which moments ago he had held so adeptly,
smashed into the projector’s face.
After what happened, I escorted him to the supply room
that had doubled as our backstage. I told him not to worry. “It was
an accident,” I said, “right?” When Christian didn’t answer, I asked him
again, to which he finally, with some effort, nodded.
“Why did you do it?” I asked. “Tell me the truth.”
“I already—” he said, stammering. “It was an accident, Sir
Philip.”
We were sitting on knee-high reams of A4 paper while my
colleagues took care of the commotion outside.
Plural | 17
“Too bad ‘Nay Agnes can’t come today.” I told him.
Christian nodded, indifferently. “She can’t miss work.”
“Jessie?”
“He said he has a quiz.”
Christian’s father, who had been a councilman in their
barangay, died a couple of weeks ago. It was a shooting incident that
involved hazy characters in their neighborhood. The company helped
out in the funeral expenses, and I took Christian out to lunch at the
mall the morning after the burial. We then went shopping for clothes
and ordered fried chicken for take-out, which we ate at my unit.
“I knew that projector would pose some problems,” I said.
He nodded. “Leah couldn’t stand because the ceiling’s too low.”
“Well,” I said, chuckling, “we didn’t expect anyone to be
standing on bamboo poles.”
“It was your idea.”
I looked at him. “I can get fired for what you did.”
“I guess so,” he said.
Someone opened the door, took a peek inside, and quickly
closed it. Some of the kids’ clothes lay discarded on the carpeted floor,
obscene and limp with age but clean, like rags that had been thoroughly
washed. Christian’s own oversized shirt and discolored pants were in
one messy heap in one corner.
“Why didn’t you wear your new clothes?” I asked.
“They were too small,” he said, standing up to gather his
old ones.
“It’s OK,” I told him.
He didn’t say anything, and for a few minutes it was quiet, the
kind of ringing silence in the aftermath of numbing tragedy.
18 | Issue One
ABOUT THE AUTHOR
Glenn Diaz

Glenn Diaz is finishing his Master’s Degree in Creative Writing
at the University of the Philippines in Diliman. He is the 2013
recipient of the M Literary Residency at Sangam House, outside
Bangalore in India, where he will work on his first book.
FICTION / WINA PUANGCO
Driving Lessons
She takes her ring off when she walks in, folds her hand
into a fist—his eyes are trained on the white ceiling, unblinking. She
wishes they would let him sleep, or let him pretend to, but his mother
insists: he can see everything, even if. She hopes his dreams are black
like coffee or the end of a movie. She has nightmares about being awake
inside that gray body and staring up at the ceiling tiles, listening to the
sipping sound of the machine that regulates the drip attached to the
back of his hand.
The bed is stone-slab white under him. Plastic veins snake
in and out of his bruised skin. The thin hospital gown he is wearing
stops above his knees, mid-thigh. There is no hair on the insides of his
legs, only an elastic tube that opens up into a sack of yellow piss.
When she pushes the heavy door open, it creaks a little—the only
interruption to the hum of the air-conditioning and the rhythms of
drip-and-beep. In one hand, she is carrying a green eco bag from the
local supermarket. Another bag—black, leather—is slung over her
shoulder. She walks slowly. Her heels clack on the floor. She’s worried
something might spill.
Before stopping to say hello or how’ve you been or it’s raining
today, she goes into the bathroom and begins to undress: she steps out
of her black heels, lets down her hair, removes her blazer, takes off her
glasses, pulls her blouse over her head, unzips her skirt, leaves her ring
on the edge of the sink.
It starts to rain. He’s waiting for her outside, inside the car
parked on the pavement. She pulls a checkered polo tighter around
herself as she steps out into the drizzle. She’s wearing her favourite
shirt underneath. It’s Sunday night. It’s a Smashing Pumpkins shirt.
Billy Corgan is smirking at the rain. The doors unlock. Inside, he’s
smiling. Hey. She grins. Hey. Shall we?
She washes her face, dries it on a cool, sanitized towel before
unzipping the leather bag and pulling out a different set of clothes.
She sets the alarm on her phone for an hour from now, takes a deep
breath and goes back in time—she pulls on a pair of jeans ripped at the
knees (inhaling so that they fit over the scarred skin across her belly),
slips on a black band shirt (the front man headless now, from too much
washing); she clasps a blue-and-white seashell choker onto her neck,
Plural | 21
sticks out her tongue and struggles to fasten a silver stud in place. She tries
to get used to having it there again, runs her tongue along the roof of her
mouth. Leaning over the marble counter, she puts on plum lipstick, checks
for anything that might be stuck in her teeth—just in case, even if.
Oh, fuck. He points a finger at her, grinning from ear to
ear. Ha! No cursing! Bam, drink twice! Ughhh. She takes two shots.
He laughs, reshuffles the deck of cards. She lies belly-down on the rug.
His apartment smells like stale pizza. Next round. She can feel her heart
thumping. She needs to pee. Why are we playing this again?
‘Cause it’s my motherfuckin’ birthday!
He looks good in this light. She thinks he should smile more
often. Shouldn’t you be the one getting wasted? He’s trying not to watch
her. He fills a shot glass.
Well, it’s always more fun to see you suffer.
She inches closer, puts her head on his lap. He thinks this should
be considered cheating. He’s glad it isn’t. Remind me about the rules again.
He sets the rearranged deck down. It’s simple. I draw a card for
me, a card for you. Shots on numbers 4 and 7, plus the Jack. No cursing. No going to the bathroom. If you get an Ace, that’s the bathroom
pass. Get a King, I drink twice. Queen, you can skip twice. Violate any of
the rules and you drink again.
And if I just take a piss right here?
Do I get to watch?
You wish. He rolls his eyes, still smiling. She sits up, adjusts her
pants, suddenly self-conscious.
Hey. What. You said M-F.
Fine. He fills the glass to the brim. Bottoms up.
She locks the door. She carries the supermarket bag into the room.
She stands by the bed and takes a long look at him. He’s gotten thinner,
but also softer in certain areas. Here, here, here. She touches his wrist,
the crook of his arm, the underside of his chin. She plants a kiss on his
forehead. He’s almost bald. She puts the grocery bag down. You did not
age well, my friend. She sits down on the fold-up chair and slips her hand
into his.
I’m so bored. They’re lying on the floor; it’s littered with cards.
I’m hungry.
Let’s eat.
Pizza?
Again?
Fine, you choose.
She sits up, hovers over him. China town?
Eh.
She shakes him. China town!
22 | Issue One
He pretends to be asleep. She pokes him in the belly. You drive.
Do you want to die?
I’m lazy.
She stands up, sits on his bed. Come on, let’s do
something different.
I was going to bring tequila—she begins. But I didn’t think
it would be appropriate. She shifts in the metal fold-up chair beside
the bed. I do, however have this: she picks up the bottle of wine sitting
by the chair’s leg. She’s taken the two glasses from the bathroom and
set them on the meal table.
Grocery brand. Three hundred fucking bucks, can you
believe that?
She fills both glasses a quarter, sets the bottle down. The drip
machine slurps.
The stoplight turns red. He hits the brakes. She lurches
forward, lets out a laugh. He makes a clicking sound with his tongue.
She crosses her arms over her chest. He can smell the tequila in her
sweat. They’ve been driving for hours.
I thought you knew where this place was?
She is buzz-pink.
In the driver’s seat beside her, he sits with his hands on
the steering wheel and a scowl pulled tight over his face, his skin
wrinkled and stretched in all the wrong places. Left or right? She
starts singing the chorus of a Lenny Kravitz single. He hates that song.
It’s raining. The lights start to blur. She burps, excuses herself, laughs.
He takes a deep breath. This is an adventure! Turn right? He turns
the wipers on. Right. He turns left.
She leans over, squints at something beyond the intersection, beyond the lights, beyond the rain. It’s there! That’s the church!
It’s behind the church. He glances at her. She’s smiling. Her left
cheek dimples.
Are you sure it’s this one?
She grins at him. Positive.
She crosses and re-crosses her legs. Hi. She can hear her phone
vibrating through the open bathroom door. Her back tenses. Was
she supposed to pick the kids up today? Was she supposed to watch
the painters? Was the school bus working even if it was Saturday?
Wasn’t make up class still part of what she paid for at the start of the
quarter? Why were classes always being cancelled, anyway? She puts
a hand on the heart monitor. It beeps. She crosses her arms around
her chest.
Inside-Out-Boy, she thinks: swung too high, pushed too hard.
The phone is still vibrating. Why do painters need someone to watch
Plural | 23
them, anyway? She imagines them taking her jewelry box and leaving
white paint prints all over the dresser. Take it all, assholes.
I told you to turn right. She thinks it’s his fault—he was the one
driving.
If I could drive, we wouldn’t be in the predicament.
You’re welcome to try.
They loop around the curb, again. In the distance is another
church. She realizes, both slowly and suddenly that after a couple of shots,
all churches look the same. After a couple of swigs from the bottle between
her knees, all the tiny roads look the same. She’s happy she doesn’t drive.
Mind if I have a cigarette?
He doesn’t smoke. She knows he doesn’t smoke. She is already
rolling the window down. I hope you get cancer.
She lights up. He smells gas from the lighter. She looks at her
reflection in the side mirror, blows smoke out of her mouth and smiles
a little. I hope you die alone.
He turns the radio on.
She laughs. Joke.
Sure.
The radio sings. Livewire right up off the street, you and I
should meet.
He wants to go home and sleep.
She’s singing along, punctuating the lines with puffs of smoke.
She wants to eat dumplings and maybe call her boyfriend: have some
phone sex. It’s been so long.
I miss him.
He turns left, again.
I think he’s cheating on me.
He lets his breath out slowly.
Well. She cocks her head to the side. Do you think I should break
up with him?
She’s asked him this before. Do whatever you want.
She takes a drag. I think I should. But those eyes. That body.
She throws her cigarette out the window. Hey.
Yeah?
Thanks for being such a good friend. He is stoplight-red.
If my mom smells the cigarettes, she’ll kill me.
Green light.
Happy Birthday, she says and clinks one glass against the other. She
takes a long swig and feels the warmth trickle down her throat, creep into
her cheeks. Who knew we’d get this old huh? She pulls her chair closer to
the bed. I was going to get you a present but what do I get a 40-year-old
man? I was walking through the department store with cufflinks and
24 | Issue One
a cigar in one hand, caramel popcorn in the other. I felt like an idiot—
like maybe I should’ve gotten you a plaque, or like maybe I should have
a secretary. I thought of a tie too, because that’s what I got—
Don’t go there.
She rearranges herself in her seat. She lets go of his hand. I had
the best chicken sandwich for lunch.
They’re parked at an intersection, again. He isn’t sure if
the church off to the side is new or right or the same one they passed
an hour ago. The digital clock on the dashboard says it’s fifteen minutes
past two. He can feel the backs of his eyes throbbing.
Are you okay?
Fine.
He licks his lips. She wonders what it would be like to—
He’s frowning, again. She’s always been curious about that.
I’m so tired.
Come on. We’re almost there.
The car moves forward, rain slipping off the body.
She’s halfway through the bottle. She wonders if her husband
ever thinks of cheating on her. There was one time she found lipstick on
his collar. Just once, after he’d gone to visit his mom. She’d never seen
his mom wear lipstick, but that was beside the point. She takes another
swig, sings happy birthday. A kiss isn’t considered cheating, anyway.
She would cheat on her too, given the chance—if she were him.
There are probably laws against this. She imagines security
walking in, pulling her out of the room in handcuffs. She still can’t
place the face: who was it on the shirt? Bach? Axl? Vedder? She sees
her family coming to pick her up: the 9-year-old asking what she did
wrong, the 12-year-old wondering about the man on the bed, the
40-year-old wondering why she isn’t wearing her wedding ring—and
had she gotten applicators for the paint? They were painting the lanai
orange. Carrots. I forgot the carrots. And corn and Oyster Sauce. And
celery for tomorrow night’s barbecue.
They’ve found the place and it’s closed. La Mien Dumpling
House, behind the right church, across the right road. The street smells
like broth and chicken cubes.
We should’ve turned around.
Don’t say that.
You said you knew where we were going.
She turns to face him. His eyes are trained on the blinking
hazard lights: the two arrows going on and off behind plexiglass.
I thought I knew.
It’s fine.
I saw the Smashing Pumpkins last month. We went to Hong
Plural | 25
Kong to catch them and it was great. I wish you’d been there. He—
the guy I went with—didn’t know a lot of the words, though—but
that’s okay, ‘cause he isn’t a fan. Not everyone can be a fan, right? You
would’ve loved it. And I had fun, anyway.
But we had fun, right?
He doesn’t say anything. He looks at her.
It was okay.
He wonders what it would be like.
It was fun! An adventure! We got lost in the city of lights!
I’m almost out of gas.
I’ll pay for your gas.
No, thank you.
She looks at the body on the bed. Is anyone home? The lights
on the drip machine blink. Hazard, arrows behind glass.
What is your problem?
Why aren’t you out with him tonight?
She sits up. Because it’s your birthday?
He pushes a button. The arrows stop blinking.
Hey, lighten up. How about let’s get some Drive Thru?
Birthday burger!
It’s not my birthday anymore. His hands are tight around
the steering wheel.
Come on.
I’m tired.
She offers him the bottle of tequila she’s holding under
the seat. He takes a swig, makes a face.
She rolls the window down. He pulls the window up. Stop that.
Red light. No more smoking.
His eyelids threaten to close.
I want to go home.
Me too.
Run it.
She’s leaning forward with her head on the bed, now. Careful
not to disturb any of the wires, she rests a hand on his knee. Remember
the song playing that night? And we don’t know, just where our bones
will rest. It was such a good song. His mouth is slack. She wants to kiss
him. Who does that? She buries her face as far into the blanket as she
can without displacing anything. You know I’m sorry, right? The song
is still stuck in her head—To dust I guess.
Come on, it’s four in the morning.
Well, that’s the fucking point of a traffic light. Those are the
rules. It’s red, you stop. It’s green, you go. It’s yellow you either hurry
the hell up or stay where you are. It doesn’t change just because it’s
dark outside.
26 | Issue One
Of course, you do the latter.
What?
Stay where you are.
You’re drunk.
Stupid rules, stupid games. You don’t need an excuse to drink.
Let’s play a card game. Yeah, right. You can run the light if you wanna
go home. You can drink if you wanna get drunk.
Do I need an excuse not to run the light?
Does he ever get back over the swing? Do people still know
it was him? Cool tattoos—oh no, that’s my skin. She closes her eyes.
Her son watches these cartoons about shapes that share their toys and
cry little sugar cubes and say sorry when they’re wrong. Gosh, I.O.B.
You know what? It’s no wonder he cheats on you. You must
drive him nuts. If I were your boyfriend I wouldn’t let you do things like
this. Does he even know where you are?
She lights a cigarette. Good thing I’m not your girlfriend, then.
The inside of the car fills with smoke.
Boy, I dodged a bullet.
She turns to face him. You know, this is why I didn’t that time
in your apartment.
The vein in his jaw is throbbing.
You would have too many rules for things.
The alarm in the bathroom is ringing. Just a few more minutes.
You can’t hang out with him, you can’t do this with him. And
then you’ll get pissed off and I’ll have to hear all about it. All I could
think when you were breathing down my neck is that if I, by some sick
twist of fate get knocked up, I’m probably going to have to live with you
for the rest of my life.
He steps on the gas.
The light turns green on the wrong side.
Carrots, corn, Oyster Sauce, celery, maybe some lipstick. She
can’t stand how he looks up at the ceiling like that. Maybe she should
close his eyes? Didn’t they only do that to people who died? Are you
still there?
She hates it when people cry in front of her. She is in
the Emergency Room and his mother is crying, pounding her fists
against the bed. Pull yourself together. She thinks she’s going to be sick.
Her arm’s broken in a couple of places. She wipes snot from her nose.
His mother is asking doctors about her son, where was her son? The
doctors tell her to please take a seat. She sits down and holds a hand to
her mouth, bites her nails.
May I have some water, Doctor? Her voice is small. She hates
herself for it.
Someone tries the door. She leaps out of her chair, spills wine
on her front. Goddamn.
Plural | 27
Woops, she says to the body lying on the bed. The monitor beeps—he’s out of fluid. She hits the nurse’s call button, unlocks
the door before slipping into the bathroom.
She wipes her face on the sleeve of her shirt. Cobain? Axl—
wait, Corgan? Was it Corgan? No. No, she would’ve remembered if
it was Corgan.
In the bathroom, she pours the rest of the wine down the sink,
caps the bottle. She takes her shirt off, undoes the clasp on her jeans.
She removes her tongue ring, tries to get used to its absence. She runs
her tongue along the roof of her mouth, feels only flesh.
Her grown-up clothes are folded by the counter—nice suit,
I.O.B. Oh no, that’s just my skin.
Carrots, celery—what else?
She can hear the nurse in the other room: undoing the dextrose, rearranging the wires, scribbling. All done. She has a pretty voice.
I’ll be back with your mom around 7, for the cake and candles and
singing. It’ll be lively, just like you like it.
We’re the best of friends, aren’t we?
She feels like she’s eavesdropping.
She leans against the bathroom counter in the fluorescent
light, half-undressed—in-between selves.
28 | Issue One
ABOUT THE AUTHOR
Wina Puangco

Wina Puangco was born in 1990. She writes stories and
is partial to small, serif fonts. You can find her at thetorturesessions.com
or at the EM Zine website (emzine.webs.com).
FICTION / CHRISTOFFER MITCH C. CERDA
Naengkanto
Alas-singko na ng hapon nang makarating si Marcelo sa
paaralan ng kaniyang anak na si Dan. Galing siyang palengke kung
saan mayroon silang tindahan ng tela at damit. Bago umalis sa
palengke’y pinadalhan na niya ng text ang kaniyang anak, tinatanong
niya kung nasaan na ito. Nang hindi ito sumagot, tinawagan na niya
si Dan ngunit hindi nakaaabot ang kaniyang mga tawag. Kung patay
ba o nalobat na, hindi niya alam. Sumakit ang kaniyang tiyan, tila
namimilipit ang kaniyang bituka dahil sa kaba at pag-aalala. Kaya
nagpasya siyang pumunta na sa paaralan ni Dan, umaasang maaabutan
niya ang kaniyang anak doon.
Malapit lamang ang paaralan sa bahay nila. Isa iyong pribadong
paaralan na pinatatakbo ng mga madre. Doon nag-aral si Ellen,
asawa ni Marcelo, noong elementarya at high school. Tuwing umaga,
inihahatid ni Marcelo si Dan sakay ng kanilang scooter. Pagkahatid
sa kaniyang anak, tutuloy na si Marcelo sa palengke. Pagkasarado ng
tindahan sa palengke, sinusundo ni Marcelo si Dan sa paaralan. Dati’y
nilalakad ni Dan ang pag-uwi pagkaawas sa paaralan. Ngunit sinimulan
ni Marcelo ang pagsundo sa kaniyang anak noong isang gabi’y inabot
na ng alas-syete’y hindi pa rin umuuwi si Dan. Sinakmal na siya ng
pamimilipit ng bituka at nagsimulang maglakad papunta sa paaralan.
Ngunit habang nasa daan ay nakasalubong niya ang kaniyang anak.
“Napasarap lang po sa paglalaro,” sagot ni Dan kay Marcelo kung bakit
hindi ito agad umuwi. Hanggang doon na lamang sana ang gabing iyon
ngunit bago makabalik sa bahay nila, nabanaagan ni Marcelo sa malayo
ang isang taong sumusunod sa kanila. Hindi niya masigurado dahil
madilim noon. Nabahala rito si Marcelo at mula noo’y binigyan ni
Marcelo si Dan ng selfon at palaging pinadadalhan ng text—kung
nasaan na si Dan, na susunduin na niya si Dan sa paaralan, na
hintayin siya ni Dan. Minsa’y hindi siya sinusunod ng kaniyang anak
at ikinagagalit niya ito. Minsa’y naabutan niya ang kaniyang anak na
naglalakad pauwi. Titigil siya at paaangkasin ang kaniyang anak sa
kaniyang scooter. Sa bahay na lamang niya pagagalitan ang kaniyang
anak. Hindi siya sigurado kung nakikinig pa nga ba ang kaniyang anak
sa kaniya.
Pagdating ni Marcelo sa paaralan, trapik na ang daan sa tapat
ng tarangkahan ng paaralan dahil sa dami ng kotseng sumusundo sa
Plural | 31
mga kaaawas na mga estudyante. Puno naman ng mga mag-aaral ang
mga bangketa. Naglalaro, naghihintay, nagkukuwentuhan o naglalakad
na pauwi o sa kung saang lakwatsa kasama ng kani-kanilang mga
kabarkada. Mas magiging kampante sana si Marcelo kung mayroon
man lang na kaibigan o kabarkada ang kaniyang anak. Walang
ipinakikilala o ikinukuwentong kaibigan si Dan sa kaniya. Tuwing
sinusundo mula sa paaralan, naroon lamang madalas si Dan sa may
tarangkahan, mag-isa at tahimik na naghihintay sa kaniya. Ipinarada
niya ang kaniyang scooter sa tabi ng bangketa, may kalayuan mula sa
tarangkahan dahil sa dami na ng mga nakaparada. At nang dumating
siya sa tarangkahan, wala pa rin doon si Dan.
“Magandang hapon po,” bati sa kaniya ng guwardiya nang nasa
tapat na siya ng tarangkahan.
“Nariyan ba si Dan, Mang Ando?”
“Ang akala ko po’y umuwi na siya. Nakita ko ata siyang
lumabas. Kani-kanina lang.”
“Ganoon baga?” sabi ni Marcelo. Nagtaka siya dahil hindi
naman niya nakita ang kaniyang anak sa daan papunta sa paaralan.
“Hanapin ko lang siya sa loob, hano? Sisiguraduhin ko lang.”
“Sige po. Pasok kayo.”
Nakita ni Marcelo na naglalaro ng sipa sa ilalim ng puno
ng kamatsile ang dalawang kaklase ni Dan. Nilapitan niya ang dalawa
at tinanong kung nakita ba ang kaniyang anak, kung nakita ba nila
si Dan.
“Pagkaawas, hindi ko na po nakita,” sagot ng isa.
“Ang alam ko po, nakaalis na,” sagot naman ng isa.
Nagpasalamat si Marcelo sa dalawang kaklase ni Dan at
naglakad papunta sa gusali para sa elemantarya. Una niyang pinuntahan
ang silid ng seksiyon ni Dan. Wala nang tao sa silid. Umuupo si Dan
sa may-harap at malapit sa bintana.
Si Dan ang pumili ng upuang iyong malapit sa bintana.
Kapag nasa bahay, mahilig tumabi sa bintana si Dan. Padungawdungaw. Nagsimula ito mula nang umalis si Ellen, asawa ni Marcelo,
papuntang Singapore. Isang buwang dumudungaw si Dan sa bintana,
tila hinihintay ang pagbabalik ng kaniyang ina. Ang mga unang buwan na iyon ang naging pinakamahirap para kay Marcelo dahil hindi
32 | Issue One
Î
niya alam kung paano haharapin o tutugunan
ang pangungulila ni Dan para kay Ellen gayong
ganoon rin ang nararamdaman niya. Tinangka
na lamang niyang aliwin si Dan at gayundin
ang kaniyang sarili. Madalas silang lumabas
noon para manood ng sine o mamasyal sa
tabi ng lawa. O nag-uuwi siya ng pelikula at
panonoorin nila iyon nang magkasama. Pero
hindi nawala ang kinagawian na ni Dan na
pagdungaw sa bintana.
Dumungaw siya sa bintana. Tanaw
niya ang taniman ng paaralan kung saan
nagtatanim ang mga mag-aaral para sa
kanilang Home Economics. Nakatanim
malapit sa pader ang isang puno ng narra.
Nang patalikod na siya sa bintana, may nakita
siyang tao sa ilalim ng puno. Isang batang
lalaki. Inakala niyang si Dan. Ngunit nang
tingnan niya ulit ang puno’y wala nang tao
roon. Lumabas siya ng silid at pumunta sa
may puno ng narra. Namimilipit ang kaniyang
bituka habang iniikot niya ang puno. Ngunit
walang tao roon. Bumalik na lamang siya sa
gusali ng elementarya at ipinagpatuloy ang
paghahanap kay Dan.
Isa-isa niyang sinilip ang mga
silid. Nagbabakasakaling naroon ang kaniyang
anak. Ngunit wala nang mga bata sa
mga silid, lahat sila’y nasa larangan na ng
futbol o basketbol, naglalaro na. Rinig niya
ang alingawngaw ng mga hiyawan at tawanan
ng mga bata habang sinisilip niya ang mga
silid. Malamlam na ang liwanag ng takipsilim
na pumapasok sa mga silid.
Nakita siya agad ni Mrs. Coronel,
adviser ng seksiyon ni Dan, nang mapasilip
siya sa faculty room. Lumabas si Mrs. Coronel
para kausapin siya.
“Napadaan kayo, Mr. Santiago,” bati
sa kaniya ng guro.
“Magandang hapon po. Sinusundo ko
lang po si Dan. Nakita n’yo ba?”
“Naku,
noong
awasan
pa.
Nagmamadali nga siya, e. Naiwan pa niya ang
kaniyang pencil case. Hengka lang, kukunin
ko.” Inabot sa kaniya ni Mrs. Coronel ang
pencil case. May disenyo ito ng Power Rangers.
Padala ng kaniyang asawa. “Alam n’yo, palaging
walang gana si Dan tuwing klase. Palagi siyang
mababa sa mga quiz at exam. Palagi ko rin
siyang nahuhuling nadungaw sa bintana tuwing
may lecture ako. Ilang beses ko na siyang pinagsasabihan. Pero hindi pa rin siya nakikinig.
Nag-aalala lang po ako sa kaniya.”
“Hayaan n’yo po, kakausapin ko siya,”
sabi niya habang kinipkip ang pencil case
sa ilalim ng kaniyang kaliwang braso. Bago
umalis si Ellen, mataas ang gradong nakukuha
ni Dan. Tinuturuan pa nga ni Ellen si Dan
sa mga assignment nito. Tinatangka ni Marcelo na tulungan si Dan sa mga assignment
nito ngayon pero iniisip ni Marcelo na mas
matalino lang talaga si Ellen kaysa sa kaniya.
“Salamat ho,” paalam ni Marcelo kay
Mrs. Coronel at nagsimula siyang maglakad
patungo sa tarangkahan.
“Nakita n’yo na po ba si Dan?” tanong
sa kaniya ni Mang Ando nang papalabas na
siya ng tarangkahan.
“Hindi ho, e,” sagot ni Marcelo.
“Mukhang nakalabas na nga ho.”
“Ganoon ho ba? Pasensiya na ho. Sa
susunod, babantayan ko ho nang mas mabuti
si Dan.”
“Salamat ho,” sagot ni Marcelo at
lumabas na ng tarangkahan.
Nang nasa tabi na siya ng kaniyang
scooter, tiningnan muna niya ang kaniyang
selfon. Walang text o miskol na nakatala.
Tinangka ulit niyang tawagan ang kaniyang
anak sa selfon. Ngunit hindi rin ulit niya
maabot ito. Yamot na yamot na siya. Sa
kaniyang anak at sa kaniyang sarili. Bakit
hindi pa rin tumatawag o nagtetext si Dan?
Bakit hindi pa rin niya nakikita ang kaniyang
anak? Gusto na niyang itapon ang kaniyang
selfon sa kalsada ngunit ibinulasa na lamang
niya ito. Sumakay na uli ng scooter si Marcelo
at umuwi.
Plural | 33
Nayayamot siya sa kaniyang sarili dahil ipinangako niya kay
Ellen bago ito umalis na aalagaan niya si Dan. Matagal na pinag-isipan
ni Ellen ang pasiyang umalis papuntang Singapore dahil ayaw niyang
iwan si Dan. Ayaw rin ni Marcelo na umalis si Ellen. Ngunit mababa
lamang ang sahod sa pampamahalaang ospital na pinangtatrabahuhan
noon ni Ellen at nagsara ang pabrikang pinagtatrabahuhan ni Marcelo.
Noong linggo bago umalis si Ellen, gabi-gabi itong umiiyak sa loob ng
banyo, tuwing bago tatabihan si Dan sa pagtulog. At sa linggong iyon
bago umalis si Ellen, gabi-gabi ring ipinapangako ni Marcelo kay Ellen
na aalagaan niya si Dan habang wala ito.
Pagbali ng pangako o pagsisinungaling ang pinakakinamumuhian ni Marcelo na gawin. Tila namimilipit ang kaniyang bituka
kung may naipangako siyang hindi niya kayang tuparin o kung
magsinungaling. Hindi niya alam kung bakit. Ganoon na siya mula
noong bata siya. Kaya basang-basa siya ng kaniyang mga magulang o
mga kapatid kung may bumabagabag sa kaniya dahil napapangiwi siya
palagi kung may dinaramdam siya. Nang umalis si Ellen, gabi-gabi,
bago matulog, tinatanong ni Dan kung kailan uuwi ang kaniyang ina.
“Hindi ngayong gabi” o kaya’y “Matagal pa, alam mo na naman iyon”
ang laging sagot ni Marcelo. Hindi siya nagsisinungaling o naglilihim
ngunit pakiramdam niya’y may ginagawa siyang mali. Kaya’t noong
mga panahong iyon, hindi siya halos makakain dahil sa tila pamimilipit
ng bituka. Hanggang hindi na nagtatanong si Dan tungkol sa paguwi ng kaniyang ina. Tumigil ang mga tanong ni Dan kasama ng tila
pamimilipit ng bituka ni Marcelo ngunit hindi ang nakasanayan ni
Dan na pagdungaw sa bintana o ang pakiramdam ni Marcelo na may
ginagawa siyang mali.
Alas-sais na nang makabalik ng bahay si Marcelo. Nagbakasakali
siyang nakauwi na si Dan habang wala siya. Ngunit wala pa rin ang
kaniyang anak. Hindi rin niya nasalubong sa daan si Dan. Hinintay
niya sa sala ang kaniyang anak. Ipinatong niya sa coffee table ang pencil
case ng kaniyang anak at ang susi ng scooter. Umupo siya sa sopa at
34 | Issue One
Ó
kinuha ang kaniyang selfon, nagtext at pagkatapos ay tumawag sa selfon
ni Dan. Tinawagan na rin niya ang lahat ng kakilala’t kamag-anak niya,
nagbabakasakaling pumunta sa kanila si Dan. Ngunit hindi pumunta
si Dan sa mga tinawagan ni Marcelo at hindi nila alam kung nasaan
ang kaniyang anak. Dumudungaw siya paminsan-minsan sa bintana,
sa pagitan ng pagtawag sa mga kakilala’t kamag-anak. Bawat kaluskos
o yabag o ingay ay dinudungaw niya. Ngunit walang Dan siyang nakikita. Naubos na ang lahat ng kakilala’t kamag-anak na matatawagan.
Nagpatuloy lamang siya sa paghihintay kay Dan.
Puno ang kabinet ng mga laruan at kagamitang nabili niya
o padala ni Ellen nitong nakalipas na taon. Mga pigurin, shot glass,
picture frame na may larawan nilang pamilya. Bilang ni Marcelo
ang lahat ng nasa kabinet na iyon. Kabisado ang bawat isa. Mayroon
doong dalawampu’t limang pigurin ng angel na paboritong kolektahin
ni Ellen. Pito dito’y binili mula nang umalis si Ellen patungong
Singapore. Mayroon ding labing-isang laruang robot na paboritong
laruin ni Dan, nakalagay doon sa kabinet para masubaybayan ni
Marcelo ang oras ng paglalaro ni Dan. Mayroon din iyong sampung
larawan nilang magpamilya na naka-frame. Mga litrato na kinuha sa
iba’t ibang okasyon—ang unang kaarawan ni Dan, si Ellen noong nasa
kolehiyo pa lamang ito, si Marcelo na buhat-buhat sa kaniyang braso
ang sanggol na si Dan noong binyag nito, si Dan noong graduation
mula sa kinder. Hinihintay ni Marcelong madagdagan ang mga litrato
na iyon kapag nakapagbakasyon na si Ellen sa Pilipinas. Mayroon din
iyong anim na shot glass na iniipon ni Marcelo. Hindi alam kung bakit
tuwang-tuwa siya sa maliit na baso na iyon. Iyon ang binibili niya sa
mga lugar na pinuputahan nilang pamilya noong nasa Pilipinas pa
si Ellen. At nangako si Ellen na bibilhan at pasasalubungan niya si
Marcelo ng mga shot glass sa pag-uwi nito.
Alam ni Marcelo ang lahat ng bagay na naroroon. Bawat isa.
Dahil tuwing Sabado ng umaga’y pinupunasan niya ang mga iyon.
Tinatanggalan niya ng alikabok. Inilalagay sa tamang lugar.
At habang naghihintay at nakatitig sa mga gamit na ito,
sumilid sa kaniyang isipan ang kung ano-anong mga ideya. Hindi
kaya hinablot si Dan ng isang masamang-loob? Isang kidnaper kaya?
Dahil lang nars sa ibang bansa si Ellen? Ngunit hindi naman talaga sila
mayaman at wala silang maipambabayad sa isang ransom. Sindikato
kaya iyong nanghahablot ng mga bata para ibenta o gawing pulubi sa
Maynila? Napuno ng kung ano-anong mga pangyayari at dahilan ang
kaniyang isipan. At binalot ng takot ang kaniyang puso at lalong namilipit ang kaniyang bituka. Hindi na siya mapakali. Kinuha niya ang
susi ng kaniyang scooter mula sa ibabaw ng mesita at lumabas ng bahay.
Plural | 35
Pagbukas niya ng tarangkahan, nabanaagan niya ang isang
batang nakatayo sa likod ng isang poste. Tila kamukha ni Dan.
Nilapitan ni Marcelo ang poste ngunit nawala na ang bata. Isinigaw
niya ang pangalan ni Dan ngunit walang sumagot. Inisip niya kung
nababaliw na ba siya. Napahaplos siya sa kaniyang noo bago siya
bumalik sa kaniyang bahay at kinuha ang kaniyang scooter.
Bukas na ang mga ilaw sa poste nang tahakin ni Marcelo ang
daan sakay ng kaniyang scooter. Kung saan siya patungo, hindi na
niya alam. Gusto lamang niyang matagpuan ang kaniyang anak. Tinahak niya’t siniyasat ang bawat lansangan, kalye, kanto, at eskinita na
madadaanan niya. At sa bawat pagliko sa isang kanto at pagpasok sa
isang kalye, inaasahan niyang matatagpuan ang kaniyang anak; nakatayo sa ilalim ng ilaw-poste o sinisipa-sipa ang isang bato o naglalakad
na pauwi. Ngunit hindi niya nadatnan si Dan. Ibang taong naglalakad
at mga kotseng napadadaan lamang ang nakasasalubong niya.
Mag-aalas-syete na nang pumunta sa pulisya si Marcelo. Wala
na siyang iba pang maisip na puntahan. Nilapitan niya ang desk ng
isang pulis. Napansin niya sa loob ang isang lalaking nasa loob ng selda.
Unang naisip ni Marcelo ang naglipanang mga drug pusher sa bayan
nila. Inisip niya kung may kinalaman kaya ang mga drug pusher sa
kaniyang nawawalang anak?
Nagbabasa ng diyaryo ang pulis na nasa likod ng desk.
“Nawawala po ang anak ko,” unang sinabi ni Marcelo sa pulis.
“Nawawala ‘ka n’yo? Teka,” sabi ng pulis. Kinuha ng pulis ang
blotter at binuksan ito. “Kelan pa siya nawala?” tanong ng pulis habang
naghanda siyang magsulat sa blotter.
“Dapat nakauwi na ho siya kanina,” sabi ni Marcelo, “pagkaawas
galing sa paaralan.”
“Hindi mo siya sinundo?” tanong ng pulis habang nagsusulat.
“Kapag nakauwi po ako’t wala siya sa bahay, nadaan akong
paaralan. Pero kanina, wala po siya sa paaralan nag sunduin ko na siya.”
“Wala sa mga kakilala n’yo?”
“Wala rin po.”
“Meron kayong litrato niya?”
Kinuha ni Marcelo ang isang litrato mula sa kaniyang pitaka. Sa litrato, magkakasama silang tatlo nina Ellen at Dan tulad ng
mga litrato sa kabinet nila sa sala. Kinuha ang litratong iyon halos
dalawang taon na ang nakararaan. Magkakatabi sila sa Mines View
Park nang magbakasyon sila sa Baguio kasama ng mga magulang at
kapatid ni Ellen.
“Ilang taon na’ng anak n’yo?” tanong ng pulis.
“Magsasampu na.”
“Alalang-alala siguro ang asawa n’yo, ano?”
“Hindi pa po niya alam. Nasa Singapore siya.”
36 | Issue One
Î
“Ganoon ba?” Ibinalik ng pulis ang litrato. “Bigyan n’yo po ako
ng mas bagong litrato ng anak n’yo. Mukhang luma na iyan.”
Hinalungkat ni Marcelo ang kaniyang pitaka ngunit wala
siyang makitang bagong litrato ni Dan.
“Hayaan n’yo. Balik na lang kayo pag nakakita kayo ng bago,”
sabi ng pulis. “Sa ngayon, wala pa po kaming magagawa hangga’t
hindi siya nawawala nang 24 na oras. Ang puwede lang naming
gawin ay balitaan kayo kung may dumaan o kung may magbalita sa
amin na may nakita silang nawawalang bata. Pahingi na lamang po
ng inyong number para masabihan namin kayo.” Inabutan ng pulis si
Marcelo ng papel at bolpen. Isinulat doon ni Marcelo ang numero ng
kaniyang selfon.
“Salamat ho,” sabi ni Marcelo habang ibinalik ang papel at
bolpen. “Babalik na lang ulit ako bukas.”
Paglabas ng presinto, napakapit si Marcelo sa kaniyang
tiyan. Matigas na ito. Hindi na niya halos ramdam ang kaniyang
tila namimilipit na bituka. Ngunit alam niyang namimilipit pa rin
ito. Huminga siya nang malalim upang bahagyang lumuwag ang
kaniyang tiyan.
Pinag-isipan ni Marcelo, habang nakasakay sa scooter, kung
tatawagan ba niya si Ellen at ibalita ang nangyari kay Dan. Sigurado
siyang magagalit si Ellen at mag-aalala. Halos anim na buwang hindi
nagtrabaho si Ellen para lamang alagaan si Dan. Ngunit kahit na ano
man ang maisip niyang magiging reaksiyon ni Ellen, hindi niya kayang
magsinungaling sa kaniyang asawa. Pagkauwing-pagkauwi, tatawagan
niya si Ellen.
Iniisip na niya kung ano ang kaniyang sasabihin kay Ellen
nang makita niya si Dan. Natanaw niyang may naglalakad sa madilim
na dulo ng kalye. Namukhaan lamang niya ang kaniyang anak nang
maliwanagan si Dan ng ilaw-poste. Binilisan niya ang takbo ng scooter
at agad na tumabi kay Dan. Pagbabasa scooter ay hindi na napigilan
ni Marcelo ang kaniyang sarili sa pagtatanong. “Saan ka nagpunta?
Anong nangyari? Tinawagan kita. Anong nangyari sa cellphone mo?
Plural | 37
Bakit ngayon ka lang umuwi?” Tinanong niya ang mga tanong na ito
habang nakakapit ang kaniyang mga kamay sa mga balikat ni Dan.
“Pumunta lang po ako kina Teddy,” sagot ni Dan.
“Sino si Teddy?” tanong ni Marcelo.
Wala nang iba pang paliwanag na ibinigay si Dan. Tinanaw
niya ang direksiyong pinanggalingan ni Dan, inisip kung saan
nanggaling ang kaniyang anak, saan ba ang bahay nitong Teddy na
iyon. Sa mga bahagi ng kalye na hindi lubusang naiilawan ng ilaw
poste, may nabanaagan siyang anino ng dalawang tao. Sa liwanag ng
headlight ng isang dumaang kotse, nakita ni Marcelo ang hitsura ng
dalawang tao: si Marcelo at si Dan. Kamukha niya at ng kaniyang anak
ang mga taong iyon. At paglagpas ng kotse’y nawala na ang dalawang
iyong tila kambal niya at ng kaniyang anak. Isang kilabot ang gumapang sa kaniyang likod.
Sumakay si Marcelo sa scooter at pinaangkas niya sa kaniyang
likod si Dan.
“Kumapit ka nang mabuti,” sabi ni Marcelo kay Dan. At nang
mahigpit na ang pagkakayapos ni Dan sa kaniya, umusad na sila pauwi.
Tinitingnan-tingnan niya ang salamin ng scooter para malaman kung
may sumusunod sa kanila. Mahigpit ang kapit ni Dan sa kaniyang
tiyan ngunit hindi mawala-wala ang pakiramdam ni Marcelo na tila
namimilipit ang kaniyang bituka. Na may mali sa nangyayari. Na may
nawawala pa rin mula sa kaniya.
Alam ni Marcelo na iyon ang daan pauwi sa bahay nila. Pero
sa kadiliman ng gabi, tila iisa lamang ang hitsura ng bawat kanto, ng
bawat kalye.
38 | Issue One
ABOUT THE AUTHOR
Christoffer Mitch C. Cerda

Tubong San Pablo City, Laguna. Guro sa Kagawaran ng
Filipino ng Ateneo de Manila University. Nagtapos ng BFA
Creative Writing at MA Panitikang Filipino sa parehong
pamantasan. Inilathala ng NCCA at AILAP ang chapbook
ng kaniyang mga maikling kuwento, ang “Paglalayag Habang
Naggagala ang Hilaga at Iba Pang Kuwento” bilang bahagi
ng UBOD New Author Series II noong 2010. Unti-unti
siyang natututong magluto.
FICTION / JOSHUA LIM SO
There is a door
down the basement
The rasping sounds pull her out of her sleep. She elbows her
husband. There it is again, she says. It is several hours past midnight,
and he hasn’t slept a wink. He had wasted hours staring at their
blue curtains, ornately printed with metallic impressions of foliage.
Damask curtains, she would say if she heard him thinking. I’m going
down there, she says almost to herself. And do what? he asks. She turns
to him violently. Have you been awake all this time? Did you check
the time when it started? She’s anxious now, and her thoughts are
careening in every which way. Do you want some warm milk? he asks
by habit.
She leans against the kitchen sink, hugging herself while
staring at the pot of evaporated milk he’s heating on the stove. Does
it still hurt? he asks. It’s driving me crazy, that noise, and she starts
crying. He reaches out to brush her hair back. You know how it is
in the movies, when they hear something odd and they try to find
out what it is. They’d take a look inside a closet, or under the bed, or
behind the door, and we say to them: Why do that, stupid? She cracks
a smile, and lifts the mug of warmed milk to her lips. He chooses not
to talk about it, knowing she can’t bear the weight just yet: a week ago,
she lost another baby. He can tell when the thought barges into her
head, and just as she takes her third sip her face sinks. She turns and
narrows her gaze on the stairwell leading down to the basement. The
couple had bought the house in Malate about five years into their
marriage. When the real estate broker showed them around, the wife
mentioned how it reminded her much of her grandmother’s home. She
could smell it, the aged hardwood the house was built of. There’s also
a basement, the broker had told them, unusual but very Americanstyle.
There’s no pattern to it, is there? Two, three times a week?
she says. The rasping is not at all aggressive; it sounds more like a
bed in constant rearrangement. At times they think it’s a couch, or a
Plural | 41
dining table, or a wooden cabinet; always something heavy, so that the
legs would grind against what sounded like marble floors. And I can’t
remember when this all began. I think I was in the toilet, brushing my
teeth. He is silent and somber, even as she starts laughing. I should be
taking those painting sessions already, but with all the racket, hay! She
flings her hands in the air. All right, all right, he says, his voice hard and
brittle. Her breathing softens.
They open the door and turn on the light. The noise grows
heavier. Is it there? she asks. On any other day the basement is an
empty room, raw in its cement finishing. As he descends, there he
sees the white door at the other end. It doesn’t look freshly painted
or decrepit. It’s peculiar only in its ordinariness, given the situation.
They sit on the dusty floor, and stare at the door, and listen to the dull
screeches of what they now think is a bookshelf. I got those tickets,
he says. We leave by May. The weather will be nice in May, she says,
standing up and approaching the door. She’s much paler, he observes,
and he thinks she’d say, I’ve always been like this. And he wishes she’d
say something mundane and off topic like that now. Are you going to
open it? he asks. Maybe we’ll see them this time. You’ll be disappointed.
She turns the knob and gently pushes the door open. Well? Nothing, she
answers, but it feels closer, like I could stub my toe if I take another step.
So don’t. But you hear it so clearly you can almost see it. A bed this time,
but bigger, heavier; the antique type, with those twisting posts and linen
hanging from above, like my grandmother’s in Davao. I wonder why they
can’t ever find the right place for it. He calls her out and she turns. Do
you really want to go in? She nods. Like the movies then? I knew you’d
say that. You won’t be much help rearranging furniture. She smiles. He
stands, dusting himself off, avoiding her eyes. Maybe I’ll join you later,
he says. I would like that. She faces the door and steps into the thick of
the dark.
He comes down the stairs, clean-shaven and fresh out of a bath.
He settles down in his chair before getting dressed for work, as is his
daily ritual. It is quiet in the morning, he thinks. He lifts his head up,
taking in the sweet, warm scent of milk from the kitchen.
42 | Issue One
ABOUT THE AUTHOR
Joshua Lim So

Joshua Lim So has been shortlisted for the 23rd BBC
International Playwriting Competition, cited in The Year’s Best
Fantasy and Horror 20th Annual Collection, and has received
the Carlos Palanca Memorial Awards for his full-length and
one-act plays in English and Filipino. He has translated and
adapted plays for local and international theater companies,
and his stories have appeared in several publications, including
A Different Voice (PEN 50th Anniversary Fiction Anthology)
and Best of Philippine Speculative Fiction. He graduated from
De La Salle University, and is teaching playwriting at Fo Guang
Shan Mabuhay Temple. He is currently the artistic director of
Destiyero Theater Commune, an independent theater company
based in Manila, and chef/owner and occasional busboy
of Exile on Main St.
FICTION / MARGUERITE ALCAZAREN DE LEON
The Patient
Date: August 21, 2011
Patient: Ma. Lourdes Gomez-Cui
For: Colorectal Cancer
Attending Physician: Dr. Heinrich Ong
This pain in the ass told Dr. Ong she was good to interview.
At least that’s what he told me, and he was probably telling the truth,
because you know how patients suck up to their doctors like that. And
the second I got to her room she was all pissy and trying to show how
inconvenienced she was by me, like it was my fault she got anal prolapse.
That’s the thing about this job: they look at you like some random,
low-level employee, just one of the barely skilled administration people
the hospital just happens to need to get all that soul-siphoning paperwork going while everyone else is out there being heroes, Saving Lives.
But the truth is, I can string an English sentence together and most
of them can’t. (Seriously! Even some doctors! You can apparently pass
med school illiterate!)
It was actually okay if Patient was a bitch, if she had given me
something to work with during the interview, but that wasn’t the case. I’d
ask her something reasonably juicy, like, say, “What was going through
your mind when Dr. Ong told you you needed surgery,” and she’d be
like, “Well, he said I needed it.” And then she’d leave it at that, staring at
me in that impatient, exasperated way big-name actors stare reporters
down in press junkets. I was told beforehand that her husband was a
famous painter, but I’d never heard of him, so I figured he was one of
those farmer-in-the-rice-fields or farm-lass-with-basket-of-mangoes
44 | Issue One
kind of painters who don’t really matter anymore, and therefore does
not make her any more important or glamorous than the other patients
I interview.
Worse, she told me that a lot of my questions were too personal
to answer. But it’s not like I was asking how her catheter affected her
sex life, or how the consistency of her shit had changed in the course
of her arduous journey. Other patients have readily told me the poor
habits that led to their illnesses, or described the fear they felt getting
wheeled into the OR. But this one, this Ma. Lourdes Gomez-Cui, was
as cooperative as a tumor.
How I’ll to get that 450-word count I still don’t know. Dr. Ong
did give me a lot of information on how he did the surgery, down to
the last bloody stitch. But, it’s in five handwritten pages, because he
wasn’t comfortable around a tape recorder. Didn’t like how he sounded
on tape, he said, which is pretty fucking stupid since it wasn’t like he,
or anyone else but me, would have to listen to it. So now I have to go
through five pages of medical jargon written in classic doctor’s chicken
scratch and figure out how to tell a story worth the X,000 pesos the
hospital pays the Inquirer for advertorial space each week. Best job
in the world.
Plural | 45
Date: August 23, 2011
Patient: Miguelito Razon
For: Laparoscopic Gastric Banding (Obesity)
Attending Physician: Dr. Baby Castro
Sometimes, the most poignant conversations happen in the
control room for a magnificent medical machine, while watching a
335-pound man have his stomach literally squeezed to a fraction of its
size. It’s a little terrifying how Doc Baby can be so chatty while joysticking her way through someone’s insides, but I’m thankful she can
nevertheless. She’s always been so nice to me, one of the few doctors
here who manage not to sound parental or condescending, but it’s the
first time we’ve had a really real conversation going.
It started when I gave her a copy of the feature I wrote on
her for All Woman magazine months ago. It’s not like I invested any
ounce of my soul into writing this thing; it was just another PR job
the department asked of me, but she loved it. She loved it so much, she
had it framed and hung at the reception nook of her clinic. It didn’t
matter if it didn’t have a byline; if I happened to be at her clinic while
one of her patients was there, she’d always point out to them that I’d
written it, and that I was so incredibly talented, that it didn’t sound like
fluff, etcetera etcetera.
And it really wasn’t fluff, because Doc Baby really was good at
what she did, and she did seem like a good person to me, because she
spoke about her work with the kind of wonder and excitability that
couldn’t be anything but absolutely, staggeringly true. She spoke about
helping the morbidly obese live far healthier, functional lives, and while
some would see this as frivolous amidst, say, third world poverty and
strife or the mortifying rate at which the polar ice caps are melting, it
definitely didn’t seem that way when you were with her. It was easy to
write about her. It was also easy to take her advice very seriously.
46 | Issue One
“Do you even get paid well here?” she asked, her eyes fixed
on a small black panel with a mass of dot matrix numbers clambering
upwards like ants. “I hope it falls under your rate.”
I didn’t even have a rate. I had no idea how much writers were
supposed to charge, let alone how much they deserved to be paid. I’d
just been taking whatever job skittered my way since graduating, deathly
afraid each time that it was my only chance at having any semblance of
a salary in my entire life.
“You should try getting published. Work on a book,” she went
on. A set of digits blinked on the screen, and this prompted her to flip
a couple of switches and jot something down on a notepad. Patient didn’t
seem fazed in any way by her actions, but in truth, some foreign object
had just been commanded to move around deep inside of him, to hold
onto his insides in very severely specific ways and degrees in pursuit
of something good. “My sister’s husband is in publishing. He focuses
more on interior design books but I’m sure he knows who to ask.”
I don’t know how many times I’ve heard this from people. And
I have very much gone out of my way to do something over the past
few years.
I do have a book. It is done, complete. Four years of fiction
collected, each piece having braved and survived the scrutiny of the
people who mattered in these things, most of which even anointed
as proof that, somehow, I was the Future, that my words and how
I arranged them would actually matter in this country’s grand and
esteemed literary tradition, if you believed in that sort of horseshit.
I was introduced to people with a flurry of superlatives—brilliant,
Plural | 47
ingenious, extraordinary. And each of those twelve stories had been
published at least once, mostly twice, and was not ignored. I even used
to get mail from people my age who fawned over what I’d written,
and who wanted to be just like me. Me! Those fucking idiots! Was
I delusional to think that having this book accepted for print made
sense? I had played by the rules—got read by the right people; got
published in the right places; got loved—and it felt in every conceivable
way like my time was nigh.
I submitted the manuscript to three university presses and a
major publishing house. Only one university and the publishing house
bothered to reply, and both said what dumbed down to the same thing:
You need to stick to a genre. It’s not sci-fi enough. It’s not realist enough. It’s
not erotica enough.
But I never really stuck to one in the first place. The very idea of
putting forth a collection that only fell under a single, specific category
never crossed my mind, let alone appeal to me. But it was supposed
to occur to me, apparently. Starting another story after that felt like
having to clean up my own vomit.
I know the opportunities are still very much there, and that I
just really need to keep at it, to just keep doing what I’ve been doing
over and over until someone finally, wholeheartedly grasps it, and fully,
passionately understands why there should be a clamor for it, but I was
exhausted. It sounds cowardly, and it is. But that didn’t make me feel
any less like a whole lot of nothing.
“Yes, try getting published,” Doc Baby went on. “I don’t think
I know anyone half as good as you, and at your age! You know, I tried
my hand at writing, too. But I could never get past that first sentence.
It never sounded right, or it sounded like something someone else had
48 | Issue One
written before. You, you can write whatever you want and it would be
so much better than the stuff most people read now. I’m very serious,
you know. This is something you deserve to have.”
Half of me believed in her confidence, in the idea that I
actually bore this hefty amount of worth. The other half reminded me
that it wasn’t like she was the sharpest critic I’d ever come across. She
spent most of her days making fat people thin, not poring through
manuscripts of literature’s younglings. But I was thankful.
“Grab a snack first, dear. I’ll text you when Mr. Razon’s dressed
up and ready.”
“Oh, he’s done?” I said, realizing right after that this was
the first thing I’d said since entering the room. So it wasn’t much of
a conversation between us, technically, but it was still the closest thing
I’d had here to human interaction that actually mattered.
“It was just a tightening. These lap bands will stretch out over
time just like giant strips of rubber. I think this is his third session,
actually; I can double-check with Myrna. Too bad you didn’t see him
when he was 512, though. He couldn’t even stand up! Seriously!”
I watched as a nurse entered the other room and began peeling
off and plucking out a host of white and grey objects from Patient, and
imagined the slow, sticky, sucking sound this must be making, and how
Patient would wake up a decidedly changed man, with only tacky spots
on his body belying what it took to alter him so. And then he would go
on to live an even more improved version of his life, an improvement
from his already astounding previous improvement, and all he had to
do was nap on a cold, hard surface every once in a while, and maybe
let a girl he’s never met watch him quietly from behind a thick wall
of glass.
Plural | 49
Date: August 30, 2011
Patient: Ma. Lourdes Gomez-Cui
For: Colorectal Cancer
Attending Physician: Dr. Heinrich Ong
I’m here at my desk in the Corporate Communications
Department, waiting to get fired. I don’t know what’s taking so long. I
guess those scenes in movies where the boss just shouts “You’re fired,”
seconds after whatever horrible mishap transpired doesn’t happen as
often in real life, although honestly, I’m really surprised Miss Susan
didn’t make an exception in this case, because I’d just fire me, too.
Ma. Lourdes Gomez-Cui, my asshole Patient du jour,
is currently in the OR again for emergency surgery. Something to do
with her previous prolapse surgery not healing as expected, due in great
part to the fact that she’s spent the past two days incredibly stressed,
pacing an entire wing of the hospital while on one hysterical phone call
after another. She isn’t even supposed to get out of bed, or do anything
more strenuous than surfing channels. And she says it’s all because of
me, the “child” with her grown-up-person tape recorder and dearth
of human decency.
My piece on her came out in the Inquirer a couple of days ago.
Prime real estate, too: a full spread on the front page of the Lifestyle
section. Miss Susan probably struck a deal with the editor—a sweet
spot in exchange for a one-on-one with Robby Molina, who broke his
arm filming a dirt bike scene for Sana’y Ikaw na Lang Ang Ikang Iibigin
Magpakailanman, and was now a fixture in the Physical Rehab Department. Anyway, Patient even had a really good picture of herself, hair all
coiffed and shit, with one of her husband’s rice paddy paintings crisp in
the background. I would’ve been thrilled if I cared about such things.
Patient, as it turned out, cared about certain other things. Like
the fact that I mentioned the condition that made me write the piece
on her in the first place. Patient had told Miss Susan that she was
completely mortified that she came out in the paper at all. She didn’t
50 | Issue One
even know about it until a dozen or so of her kumares called her up,
expressing their shock at this sudden bit of press—and one that was so
revelatory to boot! And she told Miss Susan that she’d never, ever been
so embarrassed.
That child who wrote about me, she wrote about my condition
in that area of my body. Now everyone will be thinking of that area of
me, of what’s been going on there, in that place. Doesn’t she know who my
husband is? Doesn’t she realize the trauma this is causing? I am traumatized. I have never been so humiliated in my life. How can I show myself in
public? Everyone will be talking about that, about that disgusting thing. It
was a secret. It was my private business, and that child had no right to put
it out there for everyone to see.
Normally, I would argue vehemently that Patient did sign a
waiver stating, in so many words that, yes, I had every right to put it
out there for everyone to see. The problem was, about an hour after her
little tirade with Miss Susan, her wounds down there took a turn for
the worse, and she started hemorrhaging all over her sheets. They’re
not 100% sure yet what caused it, but Dr. Ong’s considered her sudden,
aggravated state as a viable factor. She needed bed rest, and instead, she
had a cow.
Maybe I should quit? Maybe I should freelance, do what so
many others like me would do and just scrounge up SEO content
writing jobs here and there and just figure it out from one day to the
next? Right now, that sounds so much better than waiting in this cluster
of filing cabinets and roller chairs for any word on whether I’d killed
that bitch. Unless they put me in prison or something. Okay, I know
that’s not very likely, but fuck it, that waiver was still a joke.
Plural | 51
Date: August 30, 2011
Patient: Agripina Baluyot
For: Glaucoma
Attending Physician: Dr. Mark Stephen Mauhay
Still haven’t heard from Ms. Susan. I suppose it’s a good thing
that Dr. Mauhay, who has no clue about what had happened, called to
remind me that his patient was ready to talk, so I at least don’t have to
trap myself in my head any longer than I already have.
Patient had just undergone surgery for glaucoma, using
a super-advanced laser treatment the hospital wanted to market to
death. Patient was old, 68, and had bandages wound over her eyes.
Normally, I don’t have much luck interviewing the more elderly of the
infirm. They’re hard of hearing, or have shot memories, or chew their
words, or shout their answers at me like I was the deaf one or, in one
ridiculous case, answer everything in perfectly modulated, charmingly
enthusiastic Kapampangan which, to my ears, was just thirty long
minutes of mekeni mekeni mekeni. But this Patient was pretty sharp.
When I asked her who accompanied her here, she gave a snort worthy
of a disenchanted adolescent.
“Nobody.”
“Who’s picking you up?”
“I’ll have the nurse take me to the taxis, and the driver’ll take
me to the front door.”
“It sounds like you thought this through, Ms. Baluyot.”
“I’m not an idiot,” she said heartily. “I have a plan.”
Turns out she’d been living alone for well over a decade. She’d
never married nor had children. When she said she did embroidery
and beadwork for a living, I assumed she was just another one of those
little old lady seamstresses with a humble shop and long-time friends
and neighbors for clientele, but apparently, she was a pretty big deal
among the matrona set. Should’ve known, though, because the bills this
hospital imposes are horrific.
“Some of my dresses are in the Museum of the Filipino,” she
said when I asked her to talk about it more, flicking the fact away like
a little ball of lint. “I didn’t donate them, though; I’m not one of those.
It’s just that they were worn by people who were apparently important.
I knew some of them were famous for all sorts of things, but displaying
their clothes? Because their bodies were in them once? I find it strange.
Don’t you think it’s strange, Cecilia?”
52 | Issue One
It’s always very strange when I hear someone call
me by my name here. I scrunched my face between a yes
and a no.
“It’s also about how good your clothes are,” I
offered. “I don’t think they’d put a t-shirt up there just
because someone famous wore it. They’re kind of honoring
you, too.”
“Oh? You’ve seen my clothes?” Patient asked,
shooting me a sly look. She seemed to be the kind of
person who was always in a fighting mood, who always
managed to turn every civil conversation into an argument.
But I had a hunch she was just trying to liven things up for
its own sake.
“No,” I replied. “But, well, I wouldn’t think you’d
lie to me.”
It was true that I hadn’t seen any of her work,
although I could already imagine the obsessive beadwork,
hugging against bodices like the loveliest armor; and the
full skirts of piña fiber, ivory strands woven into creamy
stripes and ghostly lattices. Heavy, itchy clothes, for sure.
But beautiful beyond measure.
“You think I wouldn’t lie to you? Where is this
coming from? Have we known each other for years?”
Patient pressed cockily.
I hung my head down, mocking defeat.
“Do you believe you worked hard, though?” I asked
after a few moments, determined to keep busy.
“Of course I did. See these?” She thrust out her
open palms and revealed fingers caked in calloused skin.
Her flesh was quite pale, however, so they looked more like
a delicate, pearlescent fungus, like something you would
pay good money to dig out from the ground. “But all the
fuss people make afterwards just feels very wrong. These
people, honestly, I think they’re just idiots with nothing
better to do. I feel dirty just talking about it. I really don’t
think I deserve to be treated this way.”
“Treated this way?” I echoed incredulously. “I don’t
think they’re doing anything bad to you. Pretty much the
opposite. At least that’s how it looks like. You worked hard.
People who work hard deserve praise. Some are lucky
enough to actually get it, like you.”
Patient gave out an actual snort, then tilted her
face toward me in such a way that she seemed to be staring
at me directly through her bindings, like her eyesight could
laser a path through every beige thread.
“I worked hard, dear. But everyone’s supposed to
work hard for what they love. So all these awards, this
recognition, it’s stupid. It’s stupid. Everyone’s an idiot
for thinking that doing something you’re supposed to do
deserves a prize.”
“I guess you could look at it that way.”
“I can.”
The door suddenly cracked open, and Dr.
Mauhay’s face poked through, looking fat and happy.
“How are you doing, Ms. Baluyot?” he asked,
slipping in. “Has Cecilia squeezed the life story out of
you?”
“I’m fine,” Patient replied, marinating in her own
vagueness.
“I’ve gone through your latest x-rays, and you’ll
have all this stuff off by Wednesday at the latest. Isn’t that
good news?”
“Yes. So I can get back to work.”
“You’re still sewing? Seriously?” I asked in surprise.
“Shouldn’t you be retired?”
“Oh, I asked her the same thing,” Dr. Mauhay said
with a shake of his head. “She’s a stubborn one.”
“I am,” Patient admitted. She said it without a
trace of remorse. She appeared, all of a sudden, like a poor,
pitiful Lady Justice, her blindfold looking so noble and
tight. And while she may have been perfectly proud of her
resolve, I just couldn’t decide if this was even a good thing.
She was her own person, and that was very good, but at the
same time she was glaringly alone.
“I am stubborn,” Patient said again. “I sew clothes.
Yes? What else can I do?”
Plural | 53
Date: August 31, 2011
Patient: Ma. Lourdes Gomez-Cui
For: Colorectal Cancer
Attending Physician: Dr. Heinrich Ong
The last time I was on TV, it was in a news snippet on this reading organized by a high-end bookstore, where I read an excerpt from
a story I wrote, and whose audience was comprised mainly of the very
people invited to read their works, plus a smattering of their friends. It
was a soundless clip: just a few seconds of me mouthing a sentence to
a microphone while the reporter’s voiceover said something about the
store’s refurbished Filipiniana section. And I didn’t mind then, because
I was already overjoyed at thought of being remotely associated with
local literature in the eyes of the mainstream media, for a sad little girl
was I.
Now, however, a microphone was being thrust right in my face,
with about ten pairs of eyes and the seething red dot of a large video
camera trained at me, and I was not feeling particularly jubilant, or
proud.
Patient wasn’t dead. She was going to have to stay much, much
longer thanks to the emergency surgery, but at least none of her kin
were writing eulogies and daydreaming of me rotting in prison—at
least, that was how Ms. Susan explained it to me.
Furthermore—and this was the part I didn’t know how to feel
about—Patient decided she would not sue the hospital provided certain
“requests” were met:
1)
She would be moved from her current room in the
Executive Wing to the Presidential Suite, free of charge;
2)
Dishes from La Cocina Terecita, her favorite restaurant,
including but not limited to callos, lengua, paella, and pavlova, be delivered to her hospital room twice daily for the duration of her stay;
54 | Issue One
3)
She would have lifetime unlimited access to all spa
services at the hospital’s Holistic Wellness Center, including the twohour gold leaf rub and wrap;
4)
The hospital, as an institution, would have a halfspread press release out on major dailies apologizing profusely for the
incident; and, finally;
5)
I, as an individual, would make my own public
apology at a press conference arranged by the hospital, during which all
major news crews had fair game.
“Just read it, dear,” Ms. Susan mumbled into my ear, referring
to the statement she and I had punched out at the Corp Comm office
the night before. It was the kind of statement the word “groveling” was
coined for, where every syllable dinged like a cash register being opened
and emptied.
I skimmed through each paragraph, my head swirling. With
utmost remorse. Rueful and reprehensible act. Fully culpable. To atone and
make reparations. Negligence. Transgression. Respectful, regretful.
“May we have your statement, Ms. Cordero?” one of the TV
reporters asked, giving a blatant glance at her wristwatch, outright
hinting at her big and important day of hopping from one staggering,
historic event to the next.
Someone trained an extra light on my face.
I could imagine everyone I knew flipping through their
TVs later that evening and suddenly finding my bewildered mug on
their screens. They’d wonder what the hell I was there for, and would
doggedly brace themselves for the words that would come out of my
Plural | 55
mouth. But what would I say? What message could I proffer that could
make the best possible use of my rare and unusual advantage?
Dear everyone. Today, I have been tasked to announce that I have
done something horribly, horrendously wrong, and that because of it, I should
be despised at worst, and forgiven at best. But instead, I am going to take advantage of this opportunity to let everyone know that, beginning today, I am
going to shed all pretense of needing this 9-to-5 dreck, writing things I do not
love, and move on to what I truly want to do with the rest of my life.
It’s going to be difficult. In fact, it’s going to suck, big time. Because
here’s what has to happen: I will have to move back to my parent’s house. I
will have to be on a never-ending search for rackets here and there—cheap,
brainless labor I can amass to form the equivalent of one decent paycheck a
month, but without the constraints of contracts and offices and pretending to
respect corporate values. I will have to spend a much, much longer time per
day writing my stories, punching out little spurts of words in between long
stretches of conceptualizing and second-guessing and staring at the computer
screen in writerly fury, because being persistent and prolific is key. I will have
to remain steadfast and loyal to my written output, and not fall prey to what
other people think is right and wrong about what I made. I will have to strike
that torturous balance between being present at all necessary literati events
yet still managing not to care about the goings-on, simply assuring my existence without giving any thoughts or feelings away. I will have to get respect
without asking for it. I will have to receive praise from someone without being
obliged to praise that someone in return.
“It is with utmost remorse that I admit to this rueful and reprehensible act,” I said. “And because I am fully culpable, I do promise to
atone and make reparations with Mrs. Gomez-Cui. It was an act of outright negligence, almost a transgression towards what I, as an employee
of this hospital, stand for, and I truly am sorry. I will strive to be respectful and regretful from this point forward. Thank you.”
And just like that, the light blinding me was shut off, and I could
sense the immediate withdrawal of all attention from me and whatever
I had to offer. And at first, I felt relief. I felt colder and lighter. And that
stayed with me for a few seconds, up until this teeny tiny ball of heat
began glowing right in the middle of my stomach, and began growing larger and larger and larger, so much that it became this huge, flat
mass of heat radiating from below my neck, and it was starting to stifle,
to creep upwards and swell up my throat, as if trying to smoke certain
words out of me, words like, “Wait! Come back! I’m sorry! Let me tell
you something! If you could just give me a minute! Let me tell you what
I’m really sorry about!”
56 | Issue One
ABOUT THE AUTHOR
Marguerite Alcazaren de Leon

Marguerite Alcazaren de Leon is a Social Media Producer
for Rappler, and Editor-in-Chief of the Filipino Freethinkers’ website.
FICTION / JENETTE VIZCOCHO
JunglEnglish
She should have known that her relationship with September
would end. His name had three Es, and if you had three tiles of the
same letter, you had to trade them in. Well, never mind, he was with
Amanda now, another person who shared his name’s characteristic.
She saw them together once; they were holding hands, exiting the
movie house, having watched some cheesy romantic flick she wouldn’t
have wanted to watch with him anyway.
She had met September in June. She was in her junior year,
sitting at computer class, done with the day’s task, bored and browsing
random websites on the internet. He was seated beside her, slamming
his mouse down with his every mistake, as though it were to blame.
He turned to her and asked if she could help with creating hyperlinks
for his website project. He told her he was creating a Choose Your
Own Adventure type of site where users decided the fate of their main
character, except it was more like Choose Your Own Death. Oh, cool!
She scooted closer and helped him, their fingers colliding over the keyboard, sorry! Both their hands reaching for the mouse at the same
time, sorry! Both reddening and mumbling their apologies over and
over again at the slightest touch.
He sat beside her during lunch that day and offered her half
of his dessert. He told her his name was September. She asked him if
it was because he was born on that month, and he shrugged and said,
nope, July. Then he started laughing. It’s a joke, lighten up, hahaha.
He asked her name. Now Jocelyn took pride in her name. In total
it was 19 points; J with 8 points, Y with 4, C with 3, and O, E, L, N
with one point each. It was exactly seven letters long without having
to repeat a single one. It was as though her parents reached into the
velvety bag of tiles and pulled out a Bingo! at the get-go, and every
Scrabble player knew that was rare! She believed that her parents had
the foresight to carefully consider her name; that names predicted what
kind of person you would be in the game of life. Maybe it was the fault
of September’s and Amanda’s parents. They gave their children names
without thinking, and look at what they turned out to be.
But then as she shared the plate of dessert with September, she
did not know any of this about him. Funny how as she ate sansrival
the day their relationship started, the thought occurred to her that if
Plural | 59
she sounded the word out differently, she heard sans rival, felt confident
it was a sign that they were meant to be. She found herself counting
the number of letters of each word he said, as she often did during
conversations. She instantly had a crush on him when he opened his
lunchbox and inside was lasagna. That’s seven letters, 9 points. He told
her he lived in San Juan, another 14 points. And when he told her his
surname was Mendoza, 19 points, she decided she was in love.
When she was five, Jocelyn learned to read and spell using
her mother’s Scrabble board. Her mother would sit her on her lap
during games, and after these, mother would spell out words like ON,
rearrange the letters and show how all of a sudden it read NO. Jocelyn
found it fascinating. ON meant okay, go ahead, yes, affirmative action.
Switch the letters around and access was now denied. Kind of like
how her father was with her staying up late, or eating another scoop
of ice cream, or sleeping between her parents in their bed. On, no,
on, no, on, no, ohno! Change the sequencing of boring BAR into the
funnier word BRA and she would immediately envision her Mother’s
bras strung up on the clothes line, faded cup Ds flapping in the breeze
like tethered balloons with their strings twisted together, struggling to
break free.
She took to her books immediately after she learned how
to read, devouring each one on the little shelf in her room until she
finished them all. Hop on Pop. Froggy Learns to Swim. Goodnight
Gorilla. Jalapeńo Jal. See Spot Run. I Love You Stinky Face. When
she ran out of books, she padded into her parents’ room and announced,
I don’t have anything to read. Her father looked up from his newspaper, fussed with her hair and called her Silly, then told her to pick
her favorite and just read it again. But when Jocelyn did this, she got
frustrated at how she knew what would happen next, at how the words
did not change, how the story stayed the same despite reading and
re-reading it. From then on, whenever she received a new book, she
read through it once and then stuck it into the trashcan by the bathroom. The next day she would be surprised at how it would magically
reappear on her bookshelf.
One day, Jocelyn watched her mother fold back a roll ofstomach
fat to inject herself on the hip with a clear liquid that came from one of
60 | Issue One
Î
the very many tiny vials she had lying around
the house. What’s that, Mommy? It’s sugar,
Honey. Get a teaspoon of sugar, heat it in a
low flame- remember to keep stirring!- and
put it in little bottles marked Insulin. Why
do you need sugar, Mommy? Because life is
sweet, Honey Of Mine.
Mother had a Humpty Dumpty Took
A Dumpy body, Jocelyn’s classmate Gregg
said, when she was in second grade. He had
laughed and pointed when Jocelyn’s mother
fetched her at school, toddling at an ungainly
balance, looking more like a child taking its
first steps. Mother used to be thin, father used
to be able to wrap his arms around her tight in
a hug. Jocelyn walked into their room once,
they were both naked, their limbs entangled.
Jocelyn ran to their room because she heard
strange noises all the way outside to where
she was playing. Mother said, Daddy was just
giving me a bear hug. Oh, so that’s what bear
hug means.
Mother had grown fat in the last year,
but her arms and legs had stayed the skinnysame. Her neck grew lumpy, her face puffed
up, her chipmunk cheeks always full, her
breasts spilling onto her distended stomach.
She started sweating a lot. Walking from one
end of the room to the other caused large rings
to form on the armpits of her shirts, her forehead and neck were always damp, the thickening fuzz of her upper lip constantly moist.
Mother used to wear such clever clothes.
Tailored slacks, double breasted- I have two
breasts, Honey Of Mine!- blazers, hound’stooth dresses made from teeth of hounds,
kitten heels made from heels of kittens who
did not behave. Now, she had to wear dusters
with loud flowery prints and wide, sensible, flat
shoes. Why are they called dusters, Mommy?
They are called dusters because you wear them
and roll around and about on the floor to dust
the house clean. Mother had a wild laugh.
Nowadays, walking makes mother’s
bones ache. Mother used to take long walks
with her before she had to sit in the wheelchair. They would hold hands and go for ice
cream at Matahimik corner Maginhawa. She
used to have a nice motherwalk. Father used to
come along. They would play Mommyholdsonehand, Daddyholdstheother, and Jocelynswingsupanddown. Mother said it was alright that
she was on a wheelchair now since it was a
We’llchair, and in the We’llchair, we’ll ride
round and round and up and down and back
and forth and never tire and never have to
take breathers. What’s a breathers, Mommy?
Breathers are stopping and stooping low with
hands on your knees and dropping your head
down to take a breath, because air is fresh
closer to the ground. Jocelyn knew breathers;
she had to take a breathers behind a tree one
time, when Gregg chased her around school
with a frog in his hands.
Jocelyn did not like feeling ashamed
when her mother fetched her at school. She
punched her classmate Rorrie on the nose
when she said, your mother looks like the
moon when it’s full. Your mother is a full
moon. She ate the moon! Hahahahahaha!
When she started the third grade, she told her
mother she wanted to ride the school service
going home.
Jocelyn disliked school. She found it
tedious to come to a class she already knew
the answers to. She made no friends, and no
one was interested in playing games with her;
everyone else enjoying Barbies and blocks and
Plural | 61
tow trucks. She was doing poorly in class not because she didn’t understand the lessons but because she did not participate in lectures or
bother in completing her seatwork. She was having a fierce shouting
match with yaya after being asked to do her homework one afternoon.
She refused, and even threatened to break yaya’s favorite things if she
was forced into doing so. Mother would wonder later that night why
the pots and pans she had polished religiously every weekend were
banged up and littered all over the floor, why the detergent and other
cleaning agents were spilled down the drain, a pool of blues and greens
and yellows melting into the rusted grating.
When her mother saw a sweaty and breathless Jocelyn in
the living room, she told her that she would do her Math homework
for her if Jocelyn would be in charge of tallying their scores in their
Scrabble game. Her mother made a deal with her, that for every time
Jocelyn won, she would sign an excuse slip so she could absent herself from school. And so Jocelyn grew up playing against her mother,
starting off with two and three letter words, gradually working toward
four, five, six, and finally, Bingo!, seven letter words. That earned her
plus fifty points. And if she positioned her letters just right, hitting
the Premium Word Squares- a Double Word, or better yet, the Triple
Word space- well, that just multiplied the amount she would earn by
two or three!
Her mother would be at the living room waiting for her when
she got home from school every day, and they would play a game over
their merienda of puto pao. What did you learn at school today? Oh,
we read Tarzan.
Jocelyn first beat her mother at Scrabble when she was in the
third grade. Her mother was sitting in her wheelchair, twirling the
Scrabble board this way and that, her lips pursed, a dry and scaly pointer
finger poised over her rack of tiles. Finally, she took a letter up, and one
by one arranged her tiles from left to right. Her mother laid the tiles I,
R, A, T, and E directly under where the board previously read HAM,
62 | Issue One
Ó
and now the new words HI, AR, MA, and IRATE were formed. Hi,
ma, greeted the irate pirate. The letter R fell on the Double Word
space on the board, bisecting AR and IRATE. That meant AR was
2 points times 2, IRATE 5 points times 2. HI and MA brought in 9
points. A total of 23. Ar, not bad, mate, not bad, the irate pirate said
to ma.
Sometimes, you can call your mother ma. Especially when
you’re a pirate.
Jocelyn had watched her mother play a dozen times ten times.
Her mother told her that practice made the difference; that you can
have the luckiest hand and still lose if you did not train yourself to
spot the best position to place your tiles, if you left openings that your
opponents can use to their advantage. She was seated on the couch,
her feet dangling in the air. She looked at her letters and adopted the
same look of concentration her mother had. Her nose wrinkled as she
rearranged them around in their wooden rack.
Her back tensed as her eyes widened, why did she not see
this until now? She imagined that it must be how pirates felt when
they saw treasure, or how Tarzan felt when he saw Jane. Her heart
thudding, she placed the letters M, E, T, E, R, E, D under the word
IRATE. The words HIM, ARE, MAT, TE, ER and METERED
replaced those her Mother had previously spelled out. Him are all
that matter, said Jane to Tarzan. Tarzan smiled, Him meet her are all
that matter. JunglEnglish is a funny language we speak with chimps
and men in noclothes. Even before JunglEnglish, we spoke in grunts
and drools. Jane teaches us how to speak PeoplEnglish.
Jocelyn’s eyebrows furrowed as she added up her score in her
shaky nine-year-old handwriting. METERED alone- M was on the
Double Word space- scored 22, but being a Bingo! word meant it had
an additional 50 points. HIM, MAT, ARE, TE, and ER together
earned 29. That meant her one move earned her 101 points. 101 plus
37 equals 138. Take that, irate pirate!
Mother asked Jocelyn how she knew the word metered.
Metered is when Teacher Rachel whacks you hard on both palms
with her meter stick for doodling on the nice, clean table while the
rest of the class read Tarzan aloud. The root words of metered are
meter and red.
Tarzan started wearing clothes when he learned to speak
PeoplEnglish.
September, Jocelyn would quickly come to learn, was
a funny boy. He was not funny the way a circus clown was, or the way
Plural | 63
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64 | Issue One
a dancing cartoon hippo in a pink tutu was.
He was funny in the way someone would
tickle you roughly in the ribs even when you
say stop, stop, stop September! over and over
again, even if you accidentally pee yourself a
little, even if tears of laughter and pain well up
in your eyes, and for many days after that, you’d
feel the bruising, see faint finger marks, but it’s
okay, you even press on the site to make sure
you still feel it, and it’s there. She had spoken of him day in and day out ever since they
had started dating. He’s got a motorcycle! He
took me to a movie. His grandmother is part
French. He kissed me! His favorite band is
Nirvana! Her mother laughed and told her
to invite him over for dinner one time. Oh
Mommy, we must have lasagna!
He would take Jocelyn on speedy
bike rides around town, telling her to cut the
last class, or to stay out a little bit later after
school, it’s okay, I’ll get you home by dinner, I
promise, gunning on the motorcycle past busy
intersections, beating red lights, and squeezing
into impossibly tight spaces between cars,
buses, trucks, and people on foot. Initially
she would ask him to slow down, her heart
thudding so hard against her chest she could
feel its force reverberating against the back of
his thin white shirt. Always a thin white shirt,
hot and damp and sticking to her on the warm
days, and soft and cool on her cheek when it
was cold out.
He was easily revved up like his bike
was, that’s what he always said. He said it was
because his father used to beat him up, and how
somehow it was ingrained in him, that anger,
that need to inflict pain. He said it was because
he was an artist- he had his websites, and his
collection of broken mannequins in his backyard- and she had to understand, artists had a
temperament. He said it’s because he felt too
much; he loved too much and hated just as
quickly, I’m sorry Jocelyn, I didn’t mean to pull
on your arm too hard, it’s just that that guy
was looking at you funny and you didn’t seem
to mind and I’ll never do it again, sweetie.
He called her Sweetie. She liked it. It
was seven letters, 10 points. He always cracked
gum in his mouth, and he always tasted just
like his monikker for her, always just the right
amount of sweet. That night, after he told her
he loved her, she came home a little bit sore,
a little wide-eyed, the scent of his Juicy Fruit
seeming to cling everywhere, her hair, the back
of her neck, her lips and tongue, between her
ribs, between her legs. For many days, just
before falling asleep, she would touch herself,
prod at the aching places where he held her,
and smile when she felt the dull pain, felt that
it was there.
What’s a Cushions, Mommy?
Jocelyn was sitting on Mother’s
lap as the driver wheeled them out of the
hospital. Mother had an appointment with
Doctor Atanacio at 2:30 PM. Jocelyn had
just learned opposites in class. The opposite
of appointment is disappointment, which the
doctor would be if they missed it. Jocelyn had
been playing with the stethoscope, pressing it
against her head to see if she could hear her
thoughts. Father said that to her a lot whenever
she got into trouble, there you go, listening to
the voices in your head again! She wanted
to know who was responsible for talking her
into pouring a box of detergent into the pond
because she wanted to give the fish a bubble
bath, or putting Playdoh in the oven so she
could bake a pie, or eating an entire tube of
paste because it smells just like rice, doesn’t it?
Instead of hearing the little people in her head,
however, Jocelyn heard Doctor Atanacio tell
mother that she had Cushing’s Syndrome.
The words held no meaning for her, but
the faces of her mother and the doctor looked
just like father’s did when he told Jocelyn that
grandma had died. The word to describe that
look is grim. Grim sounds like the name of
the scary troll that stays under the bridge
and wants to eat the Three Billy Goats Gruff.
Grim is spelled just like grin, except a little bit
different. Grim is grimmer than grin, who
smiles a lot. Grim does not have reason to
smile. Grim is not a color, stupid!
And so, as they were on the way home,
Jocelyn asked, what’s a Cushions, Mommy?
Little brown eyes have shadows of worry.
Little pink mouth was excellent at being grim.
Mother smiled and drew Jocelyn toward her
for a hug. Cushing’s is when your body turns
into fluffy pillow cushions for others to lie
down on. Jocelyn’s face is now the opposite of
grim. Cushions is not so bad, then, after all. It
meant warm and cuddly and safe. Jocelyn liked
the idea of taking a nap lying down on the
soft, smooth folds of mother’s belly. If you’re
turning into a Cushions, how come Daddy
doesn’t lie down on you anymore? That’s
because Daddy is never tired anymore, Honey.
On her very first day free from
having to go to school, Jocelyn sat at the curb
of their street, at a loss as to where she should
go. Her mother allowed her to go anywhere
in their village, so long as she waited to cross
the street only when other people did, and got
home by merienda. There was the playground
over at Valenzuela Street, the ice cream store
at Mabait corner Matahimik, the movie house
at Cuanco, a used bookstore at Session Road.
But these places she got to go to during the
weekends. She kicked at a rock sitting at
the gutter and watched as it skipped across
the road. Jocelyn was hungry. She entered
her house and decided to see what her parents
were up to.
Mother was at the living room, lying
down on the couch, her feet propped up on
pillows, it soothes my aching back to have
my feet up, Honey. There was no pandesal,
scrambled eggs, and hotdogs on the table like
there usually was. She wanted to wake mother
up but knew that she was always tired. Never
mind, I’ll go find Daddy, we can make pancakes. She looked for her father in her parents’
room, but only his newspaper was in bed. She
walked back through the kitchen and into the
dining room. Maybe yaya can help me make
breakfast.
She heard a grunting sound coming
from inside the downstairs bathroom, its door
slightly ajar. She knew the sound was familiar
but could not quite place where she had heard
it before. She tiptoed quietly toward the
source and peered into the room. Yaya was
making the noise. She was bent over the sink,
her hands on either side of it, hunching up
and down. Oh, she must be sick. I think she’s
gonna throw up. Don’t look. Oh no, I think
I’m gonna throw up!
Someone else was in the room,
making the same noise yaya was, but
a little bit deeper. Oh, it’s just Daddy! He was
standing behind yaya, rubbing her back and
tugging at her hair and smacking her on her
butt. Don’t say butt, say buttocks! Yaya’s skirt
was bunching up and down. Jocelyn heard
the slapslapslap of skin against skin. Daddy
must be helping yaya throw up. Why doesn’t
yaya have her shirt on? Oh, I know, yaya must
not want to get throw up all over her nice
uniform. Yaya’s low moans become louder and
louder and her father clapped one hand over
her mouth.
Jocelyn thinks the word breast is
funny. So are the words penis and vagina. She
doesn’t know why, but they make her giggle.
She walked back into the living room to see
her mother still asleep. She sat down on the
wheelchair, wheeling herself this way and that.
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Plural | 65
She wondered if it really was Daddy she saw
in the bathroom. No Silly, it was just a bear
giving yaya a hug!
One day in September, Jocelyn took
September home with her to introduce him
to her mother. She was dragging him by the
hand down the street and through their gate,
announcing that she was home just as they
cleared the front door. The living room was
bare. Her mother’s wheelchair was in its usual
place, but her mother wasn’t. There was no
scent of lasagna warming in the oven. Jocelyn
dropped September’s hand and rushed up the
stairs two steps at a time. Her mother was in
bed, her thinning hair damply slicked across
her shiny forehead, her body blanketed up
to the neck. She smiled at Jocelyn and said,
I’ve had too much sugar today, Honey, and
yaya had to help me up to bed. She reached
an arm out from under the bedspread and
beckoned to her with a greenpurple finger.
Yaya forgot to put Vaseline on your hands and
feet again, mommy, Jocelyn observed. Her
mother shrugged.
Jocelyn grabbed a pot of petroleum
jelly from the dresser and pulled the blanket
down from her mother’s chin. She put her
mother’s leg on top of her own, removed a
sweat-stained sock, dipped her hands into the
pot, and gently massaged her mother’s right
foot. Mother smiled in pleasure as she felt
the warm, sticky liquid soothe the cracks of
her heel and work its squishy way between her
toes. The hem of her dress was pooled around
her huge belly, purple and red lines drawn on
its uneven, pale flesh like they were thick roots
of a dying tree. Her bellybutton was a knothole. Below that, a nut hole. No more nuts
are stored in the hole, not for a whole long,
long time. Her flowered underwear, size XXL,
had frilly edges and a blooming garden in the
middle. No need to blooming water these
66 | Issue One
blooming seedlings under these blooming
bloomers. Mother was humming a tune when
she stopped altogether, why, hello there.
Jocelyn turned around to see
September standing at the open doorway, one hand on the doorknob, his mouth
agape. He mumbled an apology before
turning and sprinting away, a thudthudthud
resounding throughout the house- mimicking
Jocelyn’s heart hammering at her ribcage- as
he ran down the steps, the slamwhambam,
nothankyouma’am! of the front door closing.
Jocelyn’s shaking fingers kept on moving as
she silently rubbed at her mother’s corns. Salt
mixes with corn to make binatog. It’s better to
use iodized salt though; salt from snot and tears
taste bitter or happy or angry or sad depending
on the mood of the binatog-maker.
The next day, after reporting to her
mother that September ignored her during
Computer class, and then sat beside Amanda
during lunch, sharing his dessert with her, tickling her and making her giggle loudly, Mother
held her hand and said, Honey Of Mine, the
root word of betrayed is trade.
One day, just before Jocelyn turned
ten, she came home to find her father
carrying a baby boy in his arms. This is your
brother Gabriel, he said, holding him down
for her to see. Jocelyn tentatively touched the
baby’s little hand and he immediately grasped
onto her by reflex, his fingers opening and
closing over hers as he drifted off to sleep.
Gabriel was a Handsome Young Thing, as
father fondly referred to him. He was a little
darker than Jocelyn was, and had curly wisps
of hair. Jocelyn’s hair was slick straight, so
were father’s and mother’s. She wished she
had curly hair like Gabriel did.
Jocelyn has learned about reproduction in school. She learned that the mommies carried the babies in their stomach.
Ó
Sometimes they laid eggs. Sometimes they gave birth to a whole baby,
that’s called a mammal. Mother must have been pregnant and Jocelyn
didn’t even know it. Maybe that’s what Cushions is; your body turns
into fluffy pillow cushions for others to lie down on. All that time that
mother was getting bigger and bigger, it was because she needed to become a bigger and bigger cushion for Gabriel to lie down on. Jocelyn
loved Gabriel right away. He was always smiling and laughing, and
rarely cried unless he was put down.
Jocelyn wondered why mother never touched Gabriel. Mother
stayed in bed for longer and longer periods of time. Father had moved
out of their room and slept on the couch. He said it was because he did
not want to disturb mother while she was sleeping. Jocelyn asked, Why
doesn’t Gabriel sleep with Mommy upstairs, doesn’t he get hungry?
Father told her that Mommy is really, really tired from having a baby
and Gabriel should just stay in yaya’s room until he gets older. He said
that yaya was in charge of giving Gabriel milk. Father always greeted
Jocelyn at the door with Gabriel in his arms whenever she came home
from school. It’s okay if mothers don’t take care of their children; there
are daddy animals like kangaroos, penguins, wolves, ducks, and seahorses that take care of their babies. Those babies’ mothers must be
very tired from giving birth, too.
Jocelyn liked Gabriel’s name. It was seven letters without
having to repeat a single one, just like hers. It had a Scrabble score of
10. She knew this because once while playing Scrabble with mother
upstairs, she added the letters G, R, I, E, L to mother’s word AB. Look,
Mommy, I spelled Gabriel’s name! Mother slammed her fist onto the
bed, causing the board to shake and the tiles to jump. The word Gabriel
isn’t allowed. How come, Mommy? Because it isn’t a real word, Honey,
now hand me a tissue. Jocelyn had been shocked at mother’s reaction.
She looked down at the board, the letters swimming before her eyes.
Mother wearily righted herself in bed. Be a dear, Honey Of Mine, and
get me a glass of water.
Jocelyn ran downstairs to the kitchen. There were no clean
glasses by the sink. She stared up at the cupboard, wondering what
to do. She could call yaya for help, but she didn’t really like going
near yaya’s room. She pushed and pulled at a stool by the kitchen
counter and righted it just under the cupboard. She carefully climbed
up its foot rest then slowly shimmied up, one leg at a time. When
both her knees were on its cushiony seat, she held unto the stool’s low
backrest and stood up. The chair wobbled and Jocelyn held onto the
handles of the cupboard for balance. She pulled the wooden doors
open. Dishes were on the bottom shelf, father’s wine glasses were in
the middle- no touching, Silly!- and the everyday glasses were on top.
Jocelyn stood on tiptoes as she reached for the nearest glass. She had
Plural | 67
her three middle fingers around the rim when the chair swayed. Whoa,
don’t look down! She desperately grabbed at air as the stool shifted,
her hands pulling at plates and bowls before she fell down onto the
linoleum with a crashcrash and an ouch!
Mother could be heard hollering from upstairs, what’s the
matter what’s going on what happened? Father rushed into the
kitchen, bits of grass and dirt clinging onto his clothes, a pair of muddy
gloves in his hands. Yaya came running from her room. Gabriel was
in her arms, his face nestled between the folds of her shirt where the
buttons were opened.
When mammals are born, they drink milk from their mother’s
teats. Teats are breasts too, but when Teacher Rachel asks you to read it
aloud in your Science Learning 3 book, it’s not funny, so stop laughing.
Jocelyn could often beat her mother in their games when she
turned sixteen. Mother’s neck had to be propped up on pillows and
they would place the board on the broadening expanse of her belly.
Mother placed the letter S beside Jocelyn’s ZIP, and then laid Q, U, I
and D vertically under it. The letters Q and I were on the Double Letter spaces, earning SQUID a score of 26 plus ZIPS’ 15. 41 points for
the stinky, inky squid zipping by.
Having played since she was a child, Jocelyn knew to position
her tiles for the maximum score possible, knew to only connect her
S tiles onto the high-earning words, to save her Zs, Js, Xs and Qs for
the Double and Triple Letter Squares, and to avoid leaving openings
into the Triple Word Squares. Today, however, she played carelessly,
thoughtlessly, forming words like ON that earned her no more than
3 points, or giving up her turn just to swap one tile. What mother
did not know was that at the start of the game, Jocelyn had drawn the
letters B, S, T, R, Z, P, and A, and that she had been playing with the
utmost concentration since.
Jocelyn looked at the board, nodding when she saw that her
word could be added to her mother’s previous play. She placed B and
A above the letters I and D of the word SQUID. Then, she connected
the letters S, T, A, R, and D to it. The new words were BI, AD, and
BASTARD. A total of 23 points. Mother stifled back a gasp. Bingo!
BASTARD, having seven letters, meant another 50 points.
Mother stared at Jocelyn, her chin bobbing, her cheeks flushed.
She carefully twirled the Scrabble Board to face her, her other hand
on her tile rack. She started placing her letters on the board but
then Jocelyn interrupted her, aren’t you going to challenge my word?
Mother laughed. Bi is a word, you know that, Honey Of Mine.
Jocelyn didn’t particularly feel very sweet. She didn’t like being
called Honey Of Mine any longer. It made her envision her mother
creeping into her room in the dark of the night, rolling her over in her
68 | Issue One
sleep, and sucking her fingers raw until all the
sweetness ran out. She looked at her Mother’s
cracked, dry fingers, and then folded hers up
until her nails dug into her palms. Do you
know what bastard means, Mommy? Mother
cleared her throat and said, I suddenly feel so
very tired. It was Jocelyn’s turn to laugh. Do
you know that that’s what they call Gabriel
when we go to church? The nuns would come
over and kiss him and say, tsktsk, you poor,
poor, poor bastard. He would tell them, I’m
not Bastard, I’m Gabriel, and then their hearts
would break all over the church floor.
Mother pushed the board from her
stomach and turned away. Really, I am very
tired.
Jocelyn moved into a dorm room after
bunking with her cousins during her first two
semesters in college. She was unpacking her
things when her cellular phone rang. It was
Gabriel calling, Jocelyn, come home, something happened to Mommy. Gabriel, he was
nine now, and a very precocious boy. He had
become responsible for mother after yaya had
left them. Yaya was fired when Jocelyn was
sixteen. But maybe yaya just left. Gabriel was
six then, and no, she did not want to take the
poor bastard along with her. Gabriel woke up
early every school day to make sure he had
washed mother, fed her, given her medicines,
and helped her to the toilet before the school
service came to take him to class. Gabriel and
mother played Scrabble every afternoon as
soon as he came home. Mother called him
her Little Angel.
Jocelyn and mother had stopped
speaking a few months into college. They had
arguments all the time, with Jocelyn asking
mother, why do you stay in bed all day? Why
don’t you have surgery? It’s just a tumor, you’ll
be better when it’s taken out! She had blamed
her mother for their family falling apart, for
her failed relationship, for living in her own
dream world speaking in her own dream
language. Jocelyn would come home every
weekend to do a load of laundry, help clean
the house, and cook meals. She did this
every week no matter how tired she was. But
she never went upstairs anymore. Every week,
Gabriel would ask if she wanted to join in on
a game of Scrabble. He asked her every week
even when he knew her answer.
When the taxi pulled up in front of her
house, Jocelyn was shocked to find it shabbier
than she had remembered. She walked in, past
the living room, past mother’s wheelchairrendered useless when mother refused to leave
her bed, oh my bones, Honey!- sadly sitting in
its usual place, dust and cobwebs decorating
its seat and wheels. Jocelyn slowly walked up
the steps and into her mother’s room. Father
and Gabriel turned to look at her when she
walked through the door. Mommy’s dead.
Jocelyn nodded, her knees swaying. Father
stood up from his seat and hugged her. Hey
there, Silly. I came home from work as soon as
Gabe called.
Mother was laid out in bed, her hands
folded over her lap, eyes shut, her mouth
slightly open. She had grown larger than the
last time Jocelyn had seen her. Her hair had
thinned into a fine fuzz over her head, the skin
of her face slack and riddled with dry flakes.
She had suffered painful necrosis of the hands
and feet. She was unable to hold onto her
tiles in the last few weeks. What’s necrosis,
Mommy? Necrosis is when your neck begins
sprouting roses and your hands get all bloody
from the thorns. No it’s not, necrosis is the
death of living tissue. Necrosis means your
mother is dead and who knows if she died
because you weren’t speaking to her?
The doctor said the medicines had
stopped working. Oh. The casket will be here
in a while; I had to order a larger one at extra
cost. Maybe you should think about coming
back home. Okay.
They stared at each other, wondering
what to do. Finally, Gabriel reached beneath
the bed and pulled out mother’s Scrabble
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Plural | 69
board. The tiles were worn and faded, the board stained with oily
splotches, the mixed scent of mother’s perfume and sweat. They each
took seven letters out of the green bag, its velvety days long over, and
arranged them in their racks.
Father had drawn an I and played first. He placed the
word LILY at the center of the board. Jocelyn recalled the time she
had played Gabriel’s name and how her mother had gotten angry,
saying that names were not Scrabble words. But lily can both mean an
aquatic plant and the name of a woman who was very sick and spoke
in JunglEnglish. Father smiled as they proceeded to play, telling them
they had met at work. She was an architect, I worked in landscaping.
I first got to talk to her when we played against each other at our office
tournament. She was a serious player, but I beat her somehow. My
winning word was Quakers. I was only thinking about the oats, but
she thought I meant the people. We got married a year later. She was
really disappointed when she found out that I never was any good at
the game. She was really disappointed at a lot of things. LILY had
earned father a score of seven times two.
The star at the center of the Scrabble board is also a Double
Word Square.
70 | Issue One
ABOUT THE AUTHOR
Jenette Vizcocho

Jenette Vizcocho is a working student. This is what she always
says in a whiny voice to get her parents, friends, and co-workers
to feel sorry for her; it never works. A lover of telling stories,
surfing, and Bon Jovi, she somehow manages to mix all three
whenever she feels the occasion calls for it. She comes up with
very awful jokes, and she will forgive you if you do not laugh,
because she is very busy laughing, anyway.
FICTION / CHRIS MARIANO
A Rubbed Out Sky
In the nine months that you have been gone, our home has
learned to discard its old chrome and glass skin for my brother’s eclectic
one. Mama insists that he stay here to keep me company. There is a sisal
mat in the foyer and another beneath the dining table. You wouldn’t
have liked either, but I am in no mood to argue with Dom. He leaves
his marimba and kulintang in the bathroom. He invites his book club
on the weekends and his girlfriends on weeknights. Tonight, we are
dining with Dara Surrey and he’s prodded me off my bed to make
chicken masala and basmati rice for her benefit.
She is not, of course, the real Dara Surrey, but she pretends to
be. She stars in that UTV fanseries that Dom produces. You must have
seen at least one episode, channel-surfing at two in the morning, in
between your video-conferences and online auctions. There are too many
fanseries to count but according to the views, hers is the most popular
one. Do you remember it now? The original show is at least thirty years
old and has been remade at least six times. In this incarnation, the
aliens have already arrived and Dara Surrey’s partner is still missing.
She is all that stands between us and them.
The actress has a face for standing alone. She is slow to smile
and she gazes too hard and her teeth are beautiful between her prim,
plum lips. But she is gracious enough, and she thinks the chicken
is delicious.
I actually call her ‘Surrey’ in the middle of dinner. Dom has
told me her name, Lourdes or Fatima or some such Marian apparition,
but it has since slipped my mind. “Thank you, uh, Surrey,” I say instead
and nobody corrects me. You would have been appalled by my behavior.
“Dom tells me that you’re an actress as well,” she addresses me.
“Have I seen you in anything?”
“Plays and such,” Dom answers. “Nothing fancy. My sister
dabbles.”
“Anything recent?” Surrey presses.
What do I tell her? That in the last nine months I have done
nothing but shadow theatre in my room? “No, but I’m auditioning
for an indie film with a Kafkaesque vibe.” It’s somewhat true. I saw a
casting call on a forum and thought about it for a minute.
Plural | 73
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74 | Issue One
She shrugs. “Everybody writes a Kafka. I’ve read people turning into lizards, into
fish, into roller coasters. You can do better.”
Then her face brightens unexpectedly, dark
lips pulled into a smile as she turns to Dom.
“Why can’t she be Surrey?”
She is resigning from the fanseries,
Dom explains, moving on to play Judas in
one of three controversial Biblical adaptations.
They have been looking for a replacement but
schedules have been tight. “We’re not like
most fanseries,” he admits. “We have a fixed
stream schedule. People depend on it. But the
schedules turn a lot of the actresses off.”
“You could still try. Do us a favor,”
Surrey insists. “They won’t let me quit without
a proper replacement.”
I look at Dom and his eyes are kind.
But no, no, they tell me, don’t. I probably didn’t
need to tell you this but when we were kids, I
was the one who was always telling him that
he couldn’t come with, that he was too young
for this, no, Dom, no. Now it’s my turn to be
reckless. It’s been a while since I had a paying
gig. An audience. But you’ve never liked UTV,
and I wonder if you will still click and watch
me when you come across my stream.
We shoot in a home clinic in New
Manila, owned by the director’s uncle. The
uncle isn’t there but the director motions to us
from Dom’s phone. He is telling Dom that he
wants me to walk to the gurney as the scene
opens. I try not to think about why a home
clinic has a gurney. The space is too small. The
tiles are the light blue of a rubbed-out sky. You
have a shirt in this color.
Before the weekend airing, the
material would be sent with the other footage
-- Kryukov is shot in Spain, Spanner in
Vietnam -- to a quick and dirty post-production house in Denmark. We only have two
days to perfect my Surrey’s first five minutes
on UTV.
“I’d like a wig,” I tell no one in particular.
“You don’t have to wear a wig,”
the director says from my brother’s handheld
device. “That’s the beauty of it, see? The actress
is gone but the character remains. Our writers
are industry greats.”
I look at Dom, who had the grin of
someone with an illogical pride in something
he did not do. He’s relented, finally, but I still
want to push his buttons, just because I can.
“I’d still like a wig, please.”
In the end they give me red hair, a
throwback to the original. No one in their
version has done it before, as if hair color alone
can set them apart from all the others. I touch
it, wondering how it shouldn’t feel heavy but
why it does, it does.
Dom comes home the next day,
telling me I’ve gotten the role. Yesterday was
just a trial run, he reveals now; they would have
killed me off if I didn’t register well with their
test audience, a group of forum fanatics on the
widest online UTV review site. Merciless, he
calls them, with unpredictable tastes. But for
now, I am safe.
“They think you look motherly,”
Dom says. “They’re extracting Biblical and
mythological undertones from your portrayal.
The director loves it.”
I nod, as if that had been my
objective all along. Better that than tell him
now that all I had been thinking of were the
ghosts of that gurney, seething with rage that
their deathbed has become a movie prop. Did
I feel someone’s hand touch me, or was that
just the industrial fan at work? Or was it you,
where you are, clutching at the spaces I had
left absent?
In the script that Dom hands me,
Holder is chasing black oil in Tunisia and
Surrey is left to solve the case du jour: twin
synesthetes who communicate with machines. They change their
grades. They change their town. They want little else in life. I imagine
Surrey in the dingy motel room, and am surprised to find myself there.
The bedside phone is cold. She wants little else than a call.
“What happened to Holder?” I ask Dom.
“Well, he refuses to accept his sister’s death and believes that
the only way to expose the whole conspiracy is to go off the grid.”
“No, I meant the actor.”
“Oh. He’s studying for his A-levels. We tried replacing him
with another actor but there was a lot of flak over it so we rewrote the
part until he can be back on board.”
“So why replace Surrey?”
“Because the guys always love Surrey, no matter who plays her,”
he says, patting my arm. “You’ll do fine.”
My phone rings in the middle of the night. I can always tell
that it’s you. I start to answer but Dom is knocking on my door and
telling me to let you go.
Choice is no longer an illusion. As our fanseries unfolds, I
begin to understand how to rewrite reality. What did we do before
this? What life did I have, the quiet acquiescence, the shuttered light of
mornings? Why did you want to leave, and why did I let you?
Surrey has a one-sided conversation with the actor who plays
Spanner. Somebody -- maybe Dom -- recites Skinner’s lines softly for
my benefit.
“They said the rain made them do it.” Me.
“Their rain god, you mean.” Voice.
“No, the rain. There was no ritual involved here, no traces of
the hallucinogenic wine the elders ingested to create the Dream-State.
They believe that the rain entered them through their skin and their
orifices and that made them slaughter the rest.” Me.
Ó
Plural | 75
Dom watches me carefully. I think he thinks I understand.
I’ve skipped the wig because I think my hair is better red
anyway. I’ve dyed my eyebrows to match. The next time you see me it
will be through a glass, across a crowd.
I close my eyes and think of Spanner in Vietnam. Maybe he
is sitting in a loft in Hanoi, brand-new, with its painted-on French
windows the only thing about it resembling the older façade around.
Maybe he is waiting for an email that will change his life, telling him
that he has won the part on off-off-Broadway show so he can head to
Hoboken, New Jersey instead of doing this fanseries in his free time.
We have been to Hanoi once, haven’t we, backpackers fresh out of
college. It was summer. You didn’t want to hear mass but I insisted. We
were the only ones who held hands while they recited the Lord’s Prayer
in their tongue. Give us this day. I said it differently but I meant what
they meant. Deliver us.
My phone rings in the middle of the night. The moon is
looking the other way. There is no one to stop me.
76 | Issue One
ABOUT THE AUTHOR
Chris Mariano

Chris Mariano’s work has appeared in Fully Booked’s Philippine
Graphic/Fiction Awards Prose Anthology, The Philippines
Free Press, TAYO Literary Magazine, Ideomancer, and the
Philippine Speculative Fiction Anthology Vol. 7. She was a
fellow for Poetry in English at the 34th UP National Writers
Workshop in Baguio. Cover (Story) Girl, her first contemporary
romance novella, was published independently.
78 | Issue One
CREATIVE
NONFICTION
Plural | 79
80 | Issue One
CNF / FRANCIS ALCANTARA
The Perfect Crime
Recess noon at kakatapos ko palang kainin ang baon kong
vienna sausage with rice at inumin ang medyo nainitang tetrapack ng
gatas. Halos palaging ganoon yung baon ko araw-araw pero hindi ako
nagsasawa dahil Grade 2 pa lang ako noon at hindi pa yata nag-dedevelop yung taste buds ko. Maaga akong natapos kumain noon at ayaw
kong makipaglaro sa mga kaklase kong nabilad sa araw. Ayaw kong
mahawa sa amoy nila na parang pinaghalong Johnson’s Baby Cologne
at pawis kaya naisipan kong magpa-aircon na lang sa classroom namin
kasi sobra rin yung init noong araw na ‘yon.
Habang mag-isang nakaupo sa classroom, may naramdaman akong kakaibang paggalaw sa aking tyan. Inangat ko yung
isang pisngi ng pwet ko at nagpakawala ng medyo napahaba at
napasarap na utot. Nang maayos ko ulit yung upo ko parang hindi ako
mapakali dahil parang may something-something squishy sa loob ng
brief ko. Hindi ko alam kung bakit ko naisip i-check ito gamit yung
kamay ko. Kinapkap ko yung loob ng brief ko at aking laking gulat
sa natagpuan kong sorpresa. Nataranta ako dahil nasa kamay ko na
ngayon ang problema.
Inisip ko kung paano malilinis ang krimen mula sa aking
pwet at kamay. Alam kong hindi ako pwedeng lumabas ng classroom na may ebidensyang dala-dala kaya naghanap ako ng magagamit upang mailipat ang kasalanan ko sa iba. Napako ang tingin ko sa
bukas na notebook ng foreign exchange student namin na ayaw ko
dahil maitim siya at hindi ko siya maintindihan mag-Ingles. Hindi
ko alam kung saang bansa siya nanggaling. Sabi sa akin ng lola ko na
‘wag daw ako lumapit sa mga maiitim na tao kasi madumi sila kaya
hindi ko na rin sinubukang alamin. Madali kong pinahid sa isang pahina ng kanyang notebook ang aking kamay na parang nagpapalaman
lang ako ng chunky peanut butter sa Tasty. Isinarado ko ang kanyang
notebook at tumakbo palabas ng classroom papunta sa pinakamalapit
na CR. Nang makarating ako sa CR natandaan kong nakalimutan ko
pala yung pampalit kong brief at tissue. Pumasok ako sa isang cubicle
at sinakripisyo ko ang aking brief for the greater good. Fli-nush ko
ang lahat ng ebidensya, nagpaalam sa aking magiting na brief at agad
bumalik sa classroom dahil narinig ko na yung bell.
Plural | 81
Medyo feeling wet, wild and free yung
pwet ko noon dahil hindi ko na siya natuyo nang
maayos sa pagmamadali ko. Kahit naging moist
and sticky yung shorts ko dahil sa pinaghalong pinanghugas na tubig at kabadong pawis
nang makaupo na ako, tiniis ko na lang siya,
at nagkunwari akong nagsusulat sa notebook
habang pasulyap-sulyap kung namalayan na
ni foreign exchange student ang regalo ko sa
kanya. Dumating ang aming titser at pinabuksan ang mga notebook namin para kopyahin
ang sinusulat niya sa blackboard. Binuksan na
ni foreign exchange student yung pahina kung
nasaan nakatago yung sorpresa niya. Palihim
kong pinagmamasdan ang kanyang reaksyon
nang makita niya ito. Sa unang tingin mukhang
akala niya yata na mantsa ng tsokolate ito kaya
nilapit niya ito sa kanyang mukha, at bigla
na lang narinig ng buong klase na sumigaw
siya ng “Yuck! What is this?! So gross!” Sabay
hiniritan siya ng katabi niya, “Yuck! May
tae sa ilong! Kadiri!” Nagtawanan ang mga
kaklase ko habang naiwan akong nagtataka
kung paano nakita ng kaklase ko yung tae sa
ilong nung foreigner kung kakulay naman ng
balat niya ‘yun.
Isa-isa kaming sinuri ng aming
guro para malaman kung sino ang mga
salarin. Nang oras ko na para tanungin ng
aming guro kung may kinalaman ako sa
nangyari, binigyan ko siya ng isang Oscar-
82 | Issue One
award winning performance. Hindi kayang
pagdudahan ang aking simpatiya sa aming
kaawa-awang bisitang dayuhan at walang
katumbas ang paghahangad ko ng katarungan
para sa karumaldumal na nangyari sa kanya.
Pagkatapos ng ilang oras ng sermon
ng aming homeroom adviser kung bakit
namin dapat galangin ang mga bisita tulad ni
foreign exchange student, pinapunta ng aming
adviser si foreign exchange student sa clinic
para malinis daw nang maayos ang kanyang
mukha. Nang makalabas na siya ng kwarto,
tinawag ng aming adviser ang ilan sa aking
mga kaklase sa harap. Pinagalitan sila dahil
tinawanan nila si foreign exchange student at
sinabi sa kanila ng aming adviser na sila raw
yung prime suspects sa kaso na ito. Narinig
ko rin na sinabi nung adviser namin na pag
umamin daw sila ngayon mas mababa raw ang
parusang ibibigay sa kanila kaya umamin na
raw sila para wala nang problema.
Humingi ng tawad ang buong klase sa
kanya dahil walang umamin sa amin. Umalis na
si foreign exchange student papuntang New
Zealand noong sumunod na linggo. Napagalitan ang aming homeroom adviser dahil hindi
niya nahanap kung sino ang may kasalanan.
Pagkatapos ng insidenteng iyon natutunan
kong hindi dapat akong uminom ng gatas
habang nasa school.
ABOUT THE AUTHOR
Francis Alcantara

Si Francis Alcantara, mas kilala sa pangalang Chise, ay isang
manunulat na trip pagtawanan ang mga bagay-bagay na
nakakaaliw para sa kanya. Mahilig siyang magsulat ng mga
sanasay, at mga tulang hindi mukhang tula. Kasalukuyan
siyang nag-aaral sa Ateneo de Manila University kung saan
niya kinukumpleto ang Fine Arts Degree niya
sa Creative Writing at Minor sa Philosophy.
CNF / MELISSA R. SIPIN
Tita, I’m Home
“Up till when? Will it always be this way… Always so desperate?”
— INSIANG, 1976
SEARCHING FOR HOME
I was born of two countries—one with a heavy, tormenting
sun and dry weather that cracked my skin, claimed that I was of the
other, which questioned my brownness and the accent in my voice. One
where I was called “small” repeatedly, critically, and where I attended
school with a sea of other brown faces who spoke languages beyond
English, a mix of Spanish, Tagalog, and Samoan, and we learned only
about the American civil war and white-wigged presidents, memorizing and singing their names. A country where I perfected my English with Hooked-On-Phonics as my father stood above me—hands
on hips, eyebrows furrowed—practicing the strange words I couldn’t
sound out, words that didn’t even fit his own mouth. It was here where
my father, worried of his daughter’s failures, silenced his Tagalog and
stopped speaking to me in his mother tongue because I was taken aside
in the first grade and placed in an ESL class—despite the fact I didn’t
speak a word of Spanish, or even Tagalog. It was here where the slur
and silences that imbued my speech were deemed “problematic;” they
embodied my loss of language, and in turn, my loss of culture. The loss
of self.
In this one country where I was born, I was taught to forget.
Whether it was about my mother, who left my family when
I was two, or about the hills in a faraway land she had once roamed when
she was a child, I was taught not to remember. I was taught silence. My
father and lola, who both raised me with iron fists, rarely mentioned
their homeland, their fractured memories of Marcos or addictions to
gambling. There were no stories about their broken childhoods or the
land they still loved—only the want, the need, to return. They would
still speak of the Philippines like it were “home.” They would fill
balikbayan boxes with cans of packaged meats, snacks, sweets, or my
outgrown clothes, and “Send it home.”
Plural | 85
Î
86 | Issue One
Growing up, this loss of “home” spilled into my lola’s or father’s
anger. Whenever they were angry with me—whether I was home late,
talked back, or acted like a know-it-all “Americana”—they would switch
to Tagalog, and I knew the level of their rage from the shrill or twitch of
their eyebrows. A cascading wall of sound. I had to distill meaning from
the movement in their mouths, the crooked smiles, or the narrowed eyes.
Tagalog, to me, has always been emotive, like images replaying on
a screen. It was the one tangible thing I could hold onto in my head and
mouth, the vehicle I used to imagine that land my family had once walked.
It is that land, my other country, to which I also belong. It is a
land I had not seen until I reached the age of 12 and flew across the Pacific
to the tarmac where, five years before my birth, a man, whom I had not
known or recalled or remembered, was shot. This history, this memory of a
dictator and his ruthlessness, this nightmare that forced my family to flee
from the country of my ancestors’ birth, never left my body. And when I
returned to Manila at that tender age, that age of awakening, a torrent
of change lapped through my body. It was the moment I first felt the
wet heat, heard the incessant honking and spitfire Tagalog on the streets,
entered a cemented church in colonial square, and pressed my feet on the
land that obsesses me today with no end.
It was the first time I marched in a funeral parade for my father’s
dead sister. It was the first time I ate pancit palabok on a banana leaf and
nibbled on fresh pan de sal in the twilight of morning.
This was a strange moment of my life. It somehow trajected
everything that made me into the dalaga I am today—it perpetuated
this in-betweenness, this constant walking between two countries, this
rampant desire to discover, reveal, who I am.
When I was 12, I flew to the Philippines for the death of a family
member. It was at this funeral procession, where I walked over the hills my
ancestors walked, when I first met my Auntie Susan.
To the rest of the world, she was known as Hilda Koronel: great
actress of the Philippines.
I remember this moment distinctly: she was tall, unlike the rest
of us, she was pale skinned, had long, dark hair, and large sunglasses that
covered her face. She wore a billowing hat. I walked behind her as we
trailed the limousine that carried my father’s dead sister. I wore a white
barong dress; she wore black. The heat was relentless; both our backs were
drenched. The crowd moaned, treaded the dirt path, and the banyan trees
swayed. My father’s cousin held onto her arm like they were blurring into
one in the heat. A few weeks later, in a chapel in Las Vegas, where a
drier heat still draped our backs, I watched my father’s cousin and Auntie
Susan get married. I sat in the pews in that same barong dress. Later, as she
walked down the aisle, I stood up and hugged her, congratulated her on
entering our big, Filipino family. She smiled
at me, her lips perfectly red: “No, salamat, dear
dalaga. Thank you for letting me become
family, too.”
It wasn’t until 13 years later, when I
grew into the body of a young woman, a dalaga
on the brink of an awakening, that I realized
whom my aunt was, and what she meant to me
as a Filipina in the diaspora. But it took time.
It took years of schooling in an overcrowded
public system where I fell between the cracks,
entered a low-ranked community college
after graduation despite my shame, and after
years of hard work and sweat, I transferred
to a prestigious private university where I
discovered the books and films that told me
everything about my homeland that my family
did not. It took years of anger—anger at my
mother for leaving, at my father and lola for
policing my body—which later morphed into
a relentlessness to become a writer, an artist.
This contention, this obsession of
motherhood, land, and belonging brought
me to Lino Brocka and his lead actress,
Hilda Koronel. My Auntie Susan. Growing
up, I heard through the grapevine that she was
once a famous actress in the Philippines. But
to me, she had always been Auntie.
To the world, and to my homeland,
she was the beautiful, graceful Hilda.
A fact I didn’t discover until I was 19,
alone in my university library searching for
films that resembled anything that mirrored
my other country, that reflected, inherently,
myself.
Ó
Plural | 87
DISCOVERING LINO: DISCOVERING HILDA
When I first discovered Insiang, I was blown away by the
first scene: the screeching of the pigs and the gutting of flesh. It was
my first Filipino film that spoke, without averting its eyes, about
the devastation and desperation I knew so well—in my family and
my own bones.
Insiang was also the first movie I watched by Lino Brocka.
I discovered him by happenstance. I was in the large, grand library at
USC, flipping through a collection movies for my philosophy of film
class. My hand landed on the cover of Insiang—a woman’s face frozen
with eyes that looked much like mine: black, almond-shaped, Filipina,
and not white. Then I realized it: it was my Aunt Susan. This discovery
was a shock, my knees buckled, and I immediately put the movie into
one of the library’s video players.
It was then I became obsessed with Lino Brocka. It was then
I learned that Insiang was the first Filipino film screened at the Cannes
Festival in 1978. That Lino was nominated for the Palme d’Or twice,
in 1980 and 1984. His films exposed me, once again, to another land
that is a part of me and not. In a strange, ironic moment, alone in a film
library and surrounded by the hush of white faces glued to other video
players, I sat alone, numbed and in awe that I did not know my own
aunt was part of a history I was desperately trying to figure out. Lino’s
films about Manila and the slums, poverty and desperation, and that
land that is mine and not, encircled me back to my own blood, who
had married into my large Filipino family when I was 12, who later let
me interview her and ask her questions of her childhood—something
unprecedented in my tight-lipped family.
She was surprised and honored when I asked to interview her.
She was bashful. She let me in her house and accepted me with opened
arms. It was as if her life story was something nobody, at least in our
large family, had asked her before.
This is her story. In a way, it is also my story, my family’s
story, and in another, it is every dalaga’s story: a story of in-betweens, of
mothers and daughters, of father figures and that search of belonging,
that contention between living in two worlds, two countries, and existing in neither. It is that story of home, that declaration: Tita, I’m home.
88 | Issue One
TITA, I’M HOME: A BRIEF LIFE
My Tita Susan was born as Hilda, the daughter of a Filipina and American G.I. once stationed at Clark Air Base. She was an
American Occupation, post-World War II baby, born in Angeles City,
Pampanga, and grew up impoverished in Pasay City, as a mestiza child
in the slums with no father. She stood out with her fair skin and long
black hair, and everyone in the barrio told her: “You could you be an
actress one day. Especially with that face.” But her mother: she was
indifferent, passive, silent, and only reclaimed her when Hilda became
famous.
She was raised by her aunt, her mother’s older sister, until
she was 12, when she was discovered by LEA Productions. Her aunt
tirelessly took Hilda to different studios for extra casting calls, and
when she signed her contract, her mother took over.
But, it was as if the stars aligned that year in 1969. A year
before that, Lino Brocka had just returned to Manila as a failed
Mormon missionary, escaping the sugar cane fields of Hawaii and his
job as a busboy in San Francisco.
Lino was born poor, too. Of his sojourn to Hawaii,
Mario Hernando said: “[Lino] had gone from being a prize-winning
high school graduate with the world ahead of him, to a university
dropout whose mother compared him unflatteringly to his former
classmates, and his search for meaning in life through the Mormon
faith was unfulfilled.” In 1970, Lino casted Hilda as the supporting
actress in his award-winning film, ‘Santiago!’ At just 13 years old, Hilda
won Best Supporting Actress from the Filipino Academy of Movie
Arts and Sciences (FAMAS), a prestigious title and record that no one
has beaten to this day.
This was the start of a beautiful mentorship, of a relationship that
has never left Hilda, of a family built outside the bounds of blood
and genetics. Lino, as a gay man in a Catholic country, was like a
father to Hilda. They loved each other dearly. Like Lino, whose classmates used to laugh at him for pronouncing “bathing suit” wrong,
Hilda fought her way into the University of the Philippines (UP) for
a master’s degree, the best school in the country. Growing up, she had
to teach herself English from a dictionary. She finished her bachelor’s
Plural | 89
at Maryknoll College but couldn’t finish her master’s thesis at UP.
Married life impeded onto her studies and she left her second husband,
forcing her to return to work and provide for her children. But it was that
connection, two university dropouts desperate for survival, which brought
Lino and Hilda together—that understanding of in-betweenness, desperation, and resilience that made their love thicker than blood.
He trained her despite her youth, directing the 1971 televised
drama, “The Hilda Show,” a corroborative effort during the Marcos era
dedicated to cultivating Hilda’s craft. She was just 14. He promised Hilda
that before she turned 18, he would make a film that showcased her talent,
and the award-winning, the first Filipino film ever to enter the Cannes,
was it: Insiang.
Parts of Lino’s films, like Insiang and Hello, Solider were taken
from Hilda’s own life. And it was painful for me to watch them. The
mothers in these two films were polarities reflecting off of each other:
in Hello, Solider, the mother mirrored Hilda’s very own mother, except
she was full of life and love and rage and bitterness. She let herself
feel her emotions. The mother was another dalaga impregnated by an
American G.I. during World War II, and the daughter was a fictitious
young Hilda, hell-bent on leaving the slums, moving to the States with
her American father, and erasing everything that has ever made her poor
and utterly herself. I will never forget the scene when the white man and
his wife stepped into the shantytown, in search of his mestiza daughter.
The movie played out Hilda’s tragic life. As the neighboring kids guide the
retired G.I. to his daughter’s nipa hut, a crowd grows from the heavy heat,
the crowd becomes larger and larger, grabs onto the white man and his
wife, and women ask them, assault them with photographs of other G.I.s
who left the Philippines: “Have you seen my soldier? Look, this is my
daughter. This is his daughter!” The contrasting realities in Hilda’s life and
her imaginary role is like that ending scene: the mother rushing through
the slums in tears, in search for her daughter, deathly afraid that she has
abandoned her. In real life, Hilda’s father never returned to her. He never
90 | Issue One
came back to fetch her, to offer her an American dream, an American ticket to the States.
She had to fight her own way to America,
and it was through countless failed marriages,
countless cruel lovers, and it wasn’t until she
married my uncle, my father’s cousin, did she
find someone she could trust, marry, and let
go. The mother’s words, when she finally meets
her old American lover again, haunt me, and
they reflect the ostensible shame that imbues
Hilda’s dreams, my own nightmares, and the
collective Filipino psyche: “I was so happy
when you came with your tanks and guns. I
trusted you. I let my own savior fool me.”
In Insiang, the mother is fierce and
ruthless, her Tagalog spitfire, as if they were
my own lola’s tirades. I saw every mistake and
sin impressed upon the mother’s lips as she
blamed her daughter, Insiang (played by Hilda) for every thing that is wrong with her life:
the father’s absence, for living as a squatter in
the Tondo slums, for Insiang even existing.
The silences and the emotive Tagalog gripped
me, reminding me of my own childhood
in Los Angeles, of the expressive lines that
came across my father’s crossed face or my
lola’s tirades, when I couldn’t understand their
angry, Tagalog tongues but knew, in my body,
every ounce of rage and emotion they spoke
of. Whenever the mother screamed, whenever
Insiang pleaded, “Tama na, tama na,” I broke
down: to me, the film was a cascading wall of
sound, a remembrance of something my body
knew, this brokenness of home and language.
The mother pays to sleep with a younger
man, Dado, a pig butcher that owns the slums
like the back of his hand. He eventually moves
into their bamboo hut, and in turn, he cons
Insiang’s boyfriend to stay away from her,
claiming he owns both daughter and mother
Ó
Plural | 91
like a Shakespearian tragedy. He rapes Insiang
late at night. Repeatedly. And the moment her
boyfriend, her last chance at escaping her lot,
leaves her in an abandoned Manila hotel room,
Insiang shifts, becomes ruthless, just like those
before her. She enacts her revenge, grabbing
and twisting both Dado’s and her mother’s
emotions and lusts with her bare fingers,
and Lino captures that moment in focused
single-shots: the mother stabbing Dado’s back,
repeatedly, with a pair of scissors; Dado falling
to his knees, his eyes swelling, blood dripping;
and Insiang standing before them, chin lifted
to the ceiling and her eyes dead and cold. It
was as if this were a scene from Hitchcock’s
very own Psycho, but comparably better, more
bitter.
ON SURVIVING
Hilda was his Kim Novak, Grace
Kelly, Ingrid Bergman, and Lino was her
Alfred Hitchcock, except he lusted after men.
He taught her everything, from how to move
her body, lift her eyebrows, smile, and seduce
the camera: “Lino taught me everything about
acting, how to be and look seductive, through
mere eye movement.”
Their relationship only grew stronger
through the years, and Lino would doll up his
protégé, fixing her hair, applying her make-up,
and dressing her in colorful ternos made by his
couturier friends whenever there was an awards
ceremony. He even dressed her for her appearance at the Cannes in 1978. She remembers the
red carpet like it were yesterday, but even then,
when people asked her where she was from,
she faced the same prejudices she experienced
at UP. She answered them proudly: “The Philippines.” But they responded: “Where?” and
“But your English is really good.” Years later,
after ‘Maynila’ screened at the Cannes, Hilda
said in an interview with the Inquirer: “When
Insiang went to Cannes, Lino and I secured a
place in Philippine cinema history. No one can
take that away from me.”
92 | Issue One
She learned to stand her ground from
Lino, a regular protestor during the anti-Marcos
rallies. He was her idol, her model, her father
figure. When he died in a stupid, easily avoidable
car accident on a humid day in 1991, his words
never left her:
“Life will never put me down; I shall
prove stronger than life.”
She was there to dress him in the morgue,
the eve before his funeral. She couldn’t even look
at him, but in her tears, in the presence of a man
who loved her more than her mother or father
ever did, she remembered what he taught her: life.
That is was hers to live. Hers to make her own.
Hers to laugh, cry, and fight for. Hers to never
forget.
That strength Lino bestowed to her
never left. With over 100 films under her
belt, three awards, 11 nominations, and five
children from four different partners, she
raised her children single-handedly, with her
own grit, resilience, and intelligence. She is as
giving and as funny as Lino, reminding me that
my contention between my two countries, my
in-betweenness, my dalaga-ness, is just a part
of life, something that makes me into me, that
gives me strength, that makes me mine. That the
mothers in Brocka’s two films who broke me, who
reminded me of how my own mother left—with
her silences and indifference—is just the fabric
that has made me into an artist. She says, with
gusto, taking my hand: “No matter where we are
in life, no matter who we are, we work harder,
better, and with every bit of passion within us.
Kayang kaya natin yan. World-class talent tayo.
Let’s never forget that.”
I will always remember this moment: the
way my aunt holds her body, sits straight in her
chair, smiling and laughing, recounting her life
story to me with all its hopes, failures, silences,
tears, happiness, and laughter. She looks at me
with those seducing eyes Lino had taught her
years ago: “You are a survivor like us, sweetheart.
And you will make a difference in this world.”
Ó
ABOUT THE AUTHOR
Melissa R. Sipin

Melissa R. Sipin is a writer from Carson, California. She won
First Place in the 2013 Glimmer Train Fiction Open for her
story, “Walang Hiya, Brother,” and her writing is published or
forthcoming in Glimmer Train Stories, Kartika Review, Kweli
Journal, and The Bakery, among others. She is the Narrative
Writing & Community Engagement Fellow at Mills College
and the Tennessee Williams Scholarship recipient at the 2013
Sewanee Writers’ Conference. Her short fiction received the
2013 Ardella Mills Prize, the 2011 Miguel G. Flores Prize, and
in 2012 and 2013, was nominated for a Pushcart Prize. As a
VONA/Voices fellow and a U.S. Navy wife, she splits her time
writing on the Pacific and Atlantic coasts.
CNF / STEPHANIE SHI
Projectile
The signs of life here are that of death. Little spiders that throve
on the bugs that found their way in the room. Mosquitoes that buzzed
by my ears. The little insects that crawled on the leaves of books. All
smashed by my hand. The bodies of mosquitoes are on the window.
u
People ask me where I live sometimes out of whim, others out
of necessity for flood updates or picking me up and dropping me off.
I cringe whenever I say Biak na Bato; it feels so coarse in my mouth,
as though I were chewing rocks as I say it. I don’t have the leisure
of saying I live in Intimate Street, Calypso Street, Paraiso, or Third,
Sixth, Seventh Street like my friends and other relatives do. Biak na
Bato turns people off. They, too, feel the coarseness. But they don’t know
where it is. I’ve been answering Banawe for a while now, a mistake
every time as the customary reply Rice Terraces? makes me feel like I
belong nowhere.
For proms and balls back in high school, there’s no evading the
question unless I went on my own to the hotel or country club, or just
stayed at home. I had to go, though, because my mom said so.
She had the pleasure of putting make-up on me, dressing me
up, and fixing my hair. She loved having my date go in the house and
showing me off. I always just led the boy out as soon as I could, tugging
his suit to the direction of the stairs.
Going down the stairs or on the way to the parking lot, the
date would comment on the house: how traditional Chinese it was with
the workplace on the ground floor, and that my family had not yet outgrown it while his did; how difficult it was finding the street, and then
the apology for the slight lateness because he got lost. One pointed out
the stench, another laughed at the plump lantern torn apart by time. It
still blackens like a rotting pumpkin as it hangs in the warehouse.
u
What’s framed becomes permanent. The sunset at my bathroom window. The crisscrossing bars over the glass impede the view. I
take my camera out for a shot. They become part of it. Nothing’s ever
clear. The first time I drew my curtain to the side at night, I jerked
Plural | 95
in fright. A person was staring back at me through the window. Then I
recognized myself and my room.
u
The convenience of things is in the nearness. Twenty-six steps on the
staircase separate the warehouse to our bedrooms; twenty-one between my
grandparents’ place and mine. I live on the second floor, my room beside my
brother’s, both directly above the office. A door at the fourth floor opens to
the playground with swings and seesaws. I once frolicked with my brother
and my cousins there, bruised my right knee, twisted an ankle.
Attached to the slide where I used to play on, the basketball hoop
rusts. No net hangs from it. It remains unmoved no matter how turbulent
the wind against it may be. I used to look up to it from the bottom end of the
slide. The sun would find its way in slowly and carefully unlike the ball my
brother and my grandfather released years ago at the flick of their wrists.
To view the sunrise or the sunset, one may go up the spiral stairs to
the fifth floor, the roof deck.
There is no need to go out; I’m comfortable here. See me climb stairs to dine
with my grandparents every meal.
u
A cousin two years younger than I am waits with a boy at two in
the morning for the gate to be opened. Sitting on the counter, I watch them
sometimes through the kitchen window when I happen to be awake and
hungry enough to look for food instead of surrendering to bed, anticipating
breakfast. He smiles when she is let in. She turns to him and wishes him a
good night. She walks right beside the part of the lot where a garden used to
be. Three cars are parked there now.
u
The house in Greenhills had too much empty space for a family
of four with two helpers. The ceilings were high, walls plenty. Either there
was one commodious living room or three living rooms separated by
arcades. Afternoons were spent in the living room. On one side: a billiard
table, the sticks leaning on a corner with their tips lining the white wall
blue. Another: a treadmill beside two punching bags suspended on a black
stand; a cycling machine; a wooden bench before a wooden table that looked
like the remaining trunk of a tree that had been chopped. Another: a piano
before cream-colored leather couches. Another, by a window: four cushioned
chairs surrounding a little round glass table, their metallic green legs curled
like tendrils.
Our voices echoed. So did music, so did the sound of chairs brushing
the floor and the clatter of silverware. Over dinner: I bought a pair of small
boxers today. Why not extra large? I asked for extra large and the guy showed me
this!—my dad stretched his arms to the side, and we laughed; I think that rum
cake had too much rum. I had a slice today, got sleepy, slept the whole afternoon.
Me, too! And I got so dizzy while taking my trig quiz today. Would you believe
Adams Street got flooded ‘coz of Milenyo? What does ‘yero’ mean? She’s the girl
96 | Issue One
who vandalized my face in our group picture. Wait, she’s the sister of that guy who
hated me for having a girlfriend! How’d the stampede happen? What did he say?
Well, it’s obviously his fault. How’d he react after you asked? What did you ask him
again? I asked, How could you say ‘I love you’ to two women at the same time?
Outside was a garden. There were steps that led to a little house.
The kitchen. Beside it, a little shed for grilling. In between their roofs, metal
bars where I hung from to keep my scoliosis from worsening and prayed my
weight make my spine straight. Sometimes my brother did pull-ups beside
me. After dinner my dad would spend a few hours by the garden, whispering
to someone over the phone and smoking.
u
You are usually under a roof. Outdoors, you open an umbrella. You
clutch the handle as if your life depends on it. Sometimes you guess the
length of shadows that buildings cast, what the angle is and where they face
given the time of day and year. You walk where the shadow is. Choose the
shady path in a fork. Averse to the sunlight and the freckles it might give you.
All for whiteness. More averse to having dark spots on the body than what
creeps and crawls in the dark. But at night the shadows on the ground keep
you from walking.
u
All bedrooms in the house are clothed with wallpaper. Vines with
flowers which I thought looked like fu dogs or one-eyed ducks, spiral down
from the ceiling until two-thirds of the wall. I used to fear them. The bottom
part is polka-dotted.
I became attracted to pristine white walls when I lived in Jefferson
Street, Greenhills West for five years. The house was white, and so was my
room.
While barking dogs woke me up in Biak na Bato, chirping birds did
in Jefferson. Because I had curtains for the first time, a shift from Venetian
blinds, my room would have a touch of pink or peach, depending on their
color. I caught myself imagining the silhouette of my naked body by those
curtains.
People knew Jefferson Street. Going there was hardly a problem to
any of my friends; it was just like going to school. It was about ten blocks
away from my school. The house was then pregnant classmates and friends,
few suitors that brought letters, bandmates I played rock songs with. My
brother had his friends over, too. Hours of practicing his shots and tricks on
the pool table paid off as he beat them in every round.
The village was across a mall. Most Saturdays were spent in the
cinema with my mom and my brother, then in restaurants in the area for
lunch. Some were spent with my girl friends who had invited boys to hang
out with us. It would take me around an hour to fix myself for people I
weren’t close to. My clothes didn’t seem to fit me well anymore. The hem of
my tops stretched on my hips. I was having hips. My mom teased me that it
was becoming wide like my grandmother’s.
It was a ten-minute walk to the music studio I frequented. Even if I
Plural | 97
was prepared, having practiced well, often, and hard, before my music teacher
my hands stiffened. Right hand forgetting how to hold the bow. Right hand
being tapped by his index finger. Relax, relax. He was a decade my senior.
We had to move back to Biak na Bato. Furniture sold to make up for
money lost and spent elsewhere. I asked if I could at least have the wallpapers
removed and my room painted. My mom said no. The wallpaper had been
imported by my grandmother, the woman my mom disliked yet wanted most
to please.
u
I don’t have friends over anymore. The ground floor consists of
scattered piles of boxes. Across the ceiling dangle cobwebs, nestling every
insect and bug whether predator or prey, dead or alive.
My grandmother’s employees spend most of the day on a stool. Their
bent bare backs glisten with sweat. They polish and sharpen parts of vehicles.
The area is dim save for the light that plunges its way through where the
garage gate should be, and the intermittent sparks.
The sound of metal: a canon of hammers pounding nails. Endlessly
rolling grinders scratching away like a gramophone on a steady 78. A silver
tube tossed, crashes in a box filled with others like it. The scent of boxes too
putrid; a waft stabs the sinuses.
Once during a typhoon when the local government officials opened
the dams to release water to prevent them from breaking, the warehouse
got flooded. A monsoon rain three years later resulted to the same mess.
When the water receded we saw that the towers of stocks had collapsed,
that pieces of metal jutted out from the soggy boxes like a fractured bone
pushing against skin. The graying walls from years of dust became bistre with
the addition of mud that swept across the place. The odor of mud, boxes, and
rain altogether lingered for a month, and so did the germs on every speck of
each surface.
My grandmother was occupied with her drenched stock of auto
supplies and the boxes for them. She ordered a group of men around the
house to go one way to dry things, another to pack them, and then another
to pile them high up once more.
I worried about my health. I found myself holding my breath and
rushing past the muddle of brown every time I got home from school—
I gasped for air never mind fresh or not as I moved—quickly turning the
doorknob to let myself out of the warehouse and into my grandparents’ office. Its mint blue bubblegum walls attempted to console me, but with the
undeniable stench and the tingling sensation on my fingertips from contact
with the knob teeming with filth, I stormed to my room where I washed my
hands. I shivered in the warm water.
One day I heard that the walls and the doors that had been
submerged were scrubbed clean. I wondered what pushed my grandmother
to consider sanitation. I found out later that my dad had scolded her workers
for thinking of their salaries and work hours instead of health.
u
98 | Issue One
The spotlight is turned on every six in the evening, off every four in
the morning. It’s there underneath the kitchen window of the second floor
overlooking the parking lot and the gate for us to see who knocks, who has
just come home. A few months after moving back, my father and I stood on
the orange pool of light. My head down, his hands on my shoulders.
u
I wanted my grandfather to teach me Tai Chi a couple of years ago.
With some Tai Chi strokes, he once knocked down a man who held him up
for his wallet. He muttered under his breath that Tai Chi was difficult, that I
wouldn’t be able to do it properly even if I tried. After my mother coaxed him
that nowadays no one in this generation apart from maybe myself bothered
or was interested to learn Tai Chi, my grandfather led me to the parking lot
where we began stretching. We did the basic 24 positions that day.
I wasn’t sure of what I was doing other than attempting to
copy my grandfather’s movements. My grandfather and I hardly spoke
to each other. I didn’t quite know how to talk to an authoritative
figure without being considered impolite, and I didn’t want to stammer and
fumble for the right Chinese words in the proper intonations so I couldn’t
ask about the placement of my limbs, let alone have him teach me how to
fight.
u
My brother and I used to pretend we were ninjas or spies. After
creeping down the stairs, we dashed through the warehouse and work place.
Sometimes, when I was ahead of him, I would hide behind one of the many
stacks of boxes. I’d slide out, he’d shriek, occasionally nudge me. With stifled
giggles we continued.
Standing behind him, I watched my brother slowly open the side
door of our aunt’s house, put his left hand in to gather the chimes hanging
by the doorknob. He then further pulled the door open to let me go through,
then himself while closing it carefully, then gingerly opening his hand to
release the chimes that coyly swayed without a sound.
We would creep through the living room and up the stairs to
surprise our cousin in her bedroom. We invited her to play with us. Patintero
with our yayas on the lot when the cars weren’t home yet. Cops and robbers,
my brother and I ganging up on her—during the pick: wet willy, BMW, and
other cues.
It was only us three kids at the time. When exhaustion claimed the
best of us, we strolled on our garden, even plucked little red flowers. My
cousin sucked what she said was honey at the end of the stem. My brother
and I gave our humble bouquet to our mom.
u
I told my mom I wanted a maya bird. She had the cook catch one
for me.
Plural | 99
One day, the cook was in our living room; the maya bird happened to be there, too. It was then only a matter of her stretching out
her arms and jumping to clasp the frenzied animal in her fingers.
The bird darted to the wall, the corner. No escape. The cook
finally caught it.
My mom got a big rectangular plastic basket and inverted it
to serve as the cage. Frenetic, the bird kept chirping and flapping its
wings and bumping its head against the basket. My mom got a stick
and pushed it through one of the open spaces of the basket. The bird,
finally having something to perch on, fell silent.
I ran to my dad when I saw him, tugged his pants to follow me;
I was going to let him meet my pet.
“Free the bird,” he told me after seeing the makeshift cage and
the bird. I didn’t want to, especially not after I saw the difficult task of
grabbing one by hand, the almost impossibility of it all.
“What if you were the bird and someone caged you?”
“But I’m not a bird.”
“You’ll let it die.”
I asked my mom if that were true; she said it was.
Later that day, I stood by the raised gate of our warehouse with
the cook. The maya bird was in her hands. Realizing I had not touched
it yet, I asked if I could pet it before we let it go. The cook passed me
the bird. She said I should be the one to free it.
The bird clawed my palms—so birds had claws and these hurt.
It wanted to be as far away from me as possible, and it did what it could.
The natural course of things.
100 | Issue One
ABOUT THE AUTHOR
Stephanie Shi

Stephanie Shi is a senior creative writing major at
the Ateneo de Manila University. She was a fellow for essay
at the 18th Ateneo Heights Writers Workshop. Her works
have been published in Heights, of which she is currently
the managing editor for communications.
“Projectile” is part of her thesis-in-progress.
102 | Issue One
CRITICISM
Plural | 103
104 | Issue One
CRITICISM / DR. NOELLE LESLIE DELA CRUZ
Philosophy, Science
Fiction, and the Limits
of Speculation
A note from the author: The following paper was presented as part of the lecture
series of the Philosophy Circle of the Philippines, co-sponsored by the DLSU Philosophy Department and DLSU Pilosopo, held last 27 July 2013 at the Waldo Perfecto
Seminar Room, De La Salle University. The aim of the lecture series is to popularize
philosophy and instigate critical inquiry among both professionals and students interested in the field. The paper is thus written primarily with a college undergraduate audience in mind, although humanities scholars and science fiction buffs may also
find it worthwhile to read.
There are obviously many intersections between philosophy and science fiction (SF).
Both are associated with abstract concepts and speculation. They both address the nature of
reality, moral conundrums, the limits of human knowledge, and other classic philosophical
preoccupations. They also inevitably feature an argument structure, whether this is explicit or
implicit.
We may say that literature in general is susceptible to a philosophical reading.
However, the SF genre is of special interest to us for three reasons. First, philosophers themselves have written SF in order to evince their ideas. These are not just fictional sketches
that preface abstract exposition, but full-fledged literary works that have been published in
academic journals.1 Second, a great many SF works pivot on philosophical issues, and have
thus been used by teachers to make the subject more accessible. Finally, the sorts of conceptual
experimentation that philosophers and SF writers engage in are very similar, so much so that
we may say that at least some SF works are doing philosophy.
My main concern in this paper has to do with the third reason. When a
philosophical or SF text makes use of conceptual experimentation, how do we assess its claims?
Thought experiments, broadly speaking, are hypothetical—freely delving into the realm of the
what-if. Hence, their assumptions are not based on facts about the world, but imaginative
extrapolations of existing facts. What limits, if any, should be imposed on such speculations?
How do we determine those limits? Since fictional discourse takes the form of a narrative,
should aesthetic considerations, not just logical ones, factor in our evaluation?
1
See Table 1.
Plural | 105
In examining these issues, I address some skeptical objections against thought
experiments in general, and the idea that at least some SF works are doing philosophy. By
“philosophical SF,” I mean SF written by a philosopher in support of his or her views, or SF
which is highly susceptible to a philosophical reading.
SF and philosophical thought experiments
Before I present my arguments, let me cite critic Darko Suvin’s definition of SF, which
I’ll be using here because it underscores the similarities between writing SF and philosophizing.
“SF is, then a literary genre whose necessary and sufficient conditions are the presence and interaction
of estrangement and cognition, and whose main focal device is an imaginative framework alternative
to the author’s empirical environment” (Suvin 1979, 7-8). Suvin differentiates SF from both
fairy tale and fantasy in that SF respects the laws of the empirical environment whereas fairy
tale escapes from them and fantasy directly contravenes them. The estrangement or feeling
of unfamiliarity induced in the reader by SF is achieved through a re-imagination of reality,
in a way that is scientifically or technologically coherent. The alternate world presented must
logically follow from factual circumstances. Suvin (1979, 66) thus refers to the work of SF as a
“mental experiment” validated against a “body of already existing cognitions.” Moreover, Suvin’s
poetics of SF puts a premium on cognitive content. The aesthetic value of a work of SF depends
on the hard science of its world-building.
In this respect, the link between SF and philosophy becomes clear. Etymologically, philosophy is derived from the Greek words philia (love) and sophia (wisdom). In
the Platonic tradition, wisdom is a higher species of knowledge, which in turn is acquired
through logical justification. The work of the philosopher is not unlike that of the scientist, who
employs systematic rules and the empirical method. But whereas the scientist conducts physical
experiments, the philosopher putters around in a mental laboratory.
A favored tool, especially in the analytic tradition, is the thought experiment, sometimes also referred to as the conceptual experiment. The aim of any experiment is “to answer
or raise its question rationally” (Sorensen 1992, 205), and a thought experiment is one which
“purports to achieve its aim without the benefit of execution.” Some stereotypical features identified by Sorensen (1992, 208-09) include (1) autonomy (from concrete particulars), (2) metal
imagery, and (3) bizarreness.
A famous philosophical thought experiment is that presented by Descartes in his
Meditations. Here he imagines the existence of an evil genius whose sole aim is to deceive him. If
this were the case, how could he trust anything, from the data from his senses to mathematical laws
and propositions? Descartes uses this scenario as a springboard to formulating his idea of the
indubitable fact.
While the Cartesian meditations are obviously not a work of SF, the basic idea behind
them—paranoia about what we can know—may also be found in some popular SF movies, such
as The Matrix (1999) by Lana and Andy Wachowski and Eternal Sunshine of the Spotless Mind
(2004) by Michel Gondry. In the former, powerful AI have taken over the world, colonizing
human bodies as a source of energy. The contents of our consciousness are a product of computer simulation; in reality, we are all hooked up to the Matrix. In the latter, two lovers disen-
106 | Issue One
chanted with each other undergo a memory erasure procedure in order to start over separately.
They meet each other again and begin to fall in love, not knowing that they had been lovers
before. Both these films have an epistemological question at their heart. Both posit the existence of an evil genius of sorts: the AI in the case of The Matrix, and the memory erasers in the
case of Eternal Sunshine. Each film dramatizes the logical conclusions of the alternative world
it presents.
Thus, thought experiments feature prominently in both SF and philosophy. In
the following chart, I summarize some key works of philosophical SF, identifying their
assumptions and the problem they address. In supporting my claims in the next section, I will
refer to these examples:
Table 1. Some key works of philosophical SF
Title
Premises
Philosophical Issue(s)
“Where Am I?”
by Daniel C. Denett (1978)
Dennett is tasked by NASA
to diffuse a bomb, which he
could accomplish only by
sending his body in harm’s
way while his mind/brain remains behind in the safety
of a life-support system.
Is the self an information
pattern independent of
the body or the brain?
“A Brain Speaks”
by Andy Clark (1996)
The reader is introduced
to the point of view not
of a human subject, but
of a brain. The brain explains the phenomenon of
functional decomposition,
i.e. the distribution of specialized functions among
different subcomponents.
Are human brains
computational entities?
“The Book of Life:
A Thought Experiment”
by Alvin I. Goldman (1968)
Goldman finds a book in a
library that accurately describes his past and seems
to accurately predict his future. He devises some experiments to test whether
the book would be right.
Is the world or our lives
determined? How can we
know otherwise?
1) SF works by philosophers
Plural | 107
2) SF films susceptible to a philosophical reading
Blade Runner (1982),
based on the novel
Do Androids Dream
of Electric Sheep?
by Philip K. Dick
Humans have developed the capacity
to create clones or replicants, which
service earth’s distant colonies.
Deckard is a retired Blade Runner, a
cop whose job is to terminate replicants. He is called back to duty when
four replicants escape from an offworld colony and go to earth.
What is the difference
between a human being
and a machine?
Minority Report (2002),
based on the short story
of the same name
by Philip K. Dick
The Pre-Crime division headed by
John Anderson ensures a crime-free
world by arresting people before
they could commit their acts. They
rely on visions from three “Pre-Cogs,”
humans who can predict the future.
When Anderson is himself accused
of a future crime, he escapes and
tries to find what may have manipulated the system.
Are we free, or are our
actions predetermined?
Total Recall (1990),
based on the short story
We Can Remember It for
You Wholesale
by Philip K. Dick
Quaid, a construction worker, buys
a memory implant of a vacation on
Mars. The procedure goes wrong
and he recalls instead having been
Hauser, a secret agent. During a series
of adventures, some characters try to
convince him that he is really Quaid,
having delusions that he is Hauser.
He sticks to the Hauser identity,
eventually foiling the government’s
attempt to charge people for oxygen that can be freely obtained on
Mars. The ending has the character
wondering whether it has all been a
dream.
What is real? How do
we know?
Gattaca (1997)
Humans are categorized according
to their genetic makeup. The strongest,
healthiest, and smartest ones occupy
the top tier while the flawed ones get
menial positions. Vincent Freeman,
who wants to go to space, deceives the
system by using biological samples
from a former athlete, now a paraplegic.
When a murder is committed, the
resulting investigation jeopardizes
his secret.
Is it just to organize
society according to
eugenic principles?
108 | Issue One
Aeon Flux (2005)
In a future world, humanity was almost
wiped out by a virus. A cure for it was
eventually found, at the price of an
entire city submitting to a totalitarian
regime. Aeon Flux, a rebel, is sent
on a mission to assassinate the ruler,
Trevor Goodchild. In the course of
her mission, she discovers the secret
behind the survival of humanity—the
replication of consciousness through
cloning.
Is immortality something
to be desired? Is genetic
engineering ethical?
Prometheus (2012)
by Ridley Scott
Dr. Elizabeth Shaw is on the trail
of aliens that may have created humanity. She goes on an exploratory
mission, funded by a billionaire who
wants the secret of immortality.
Finally encountering a representative of the creators, she finds that
their intentions may not be benign.
Does God exist? Does
human life have a purpose
or meaning?
2001: A Space Odyssey
(1968) by Stanley Kubrick
and Arthur C. Clarke
Humans go to Jupiter in search of
a monolith that somehow affects
the course of human evolution. Two
astronauts engage in a battle of wills
with HAL, the supercomputer that
controls their spacecraft.
Can computers be
self-conscious?
Assessing the claims of philosophical SF
How should we assess the claims of philosophical SF, given their heavy reliance on
hypothetical worlds?
This brings us to a conundrum in the philosophy of literature, about the status of fictional discourse and whether it can be said to be making any truth claims. That question cannot be settled here given the scope of my paper. Instead, I will take a stand and adopt Currie’s
(1985: 387) definition of fiction. Fiction is an illocutionary act in which the author intends to
get the reader to engage in a game of make-believe, which the reader does so in recognition of
this intention. This entails that the opposition between fiction and nonfiction is not equivalent
to the opposition between false and true. The claims of works of fiction—which encompass
philosophical SF—are not necessarily false simply by virtue of being in and of fiction. They may
be true or false, in the same way that the claims of nonfiction works (e.g. an unreliable memoir)
can be true or false.
Plural | 109
The ideal reader of philosophical SF enters the world
of the text with evaluative criteria apart from propositional
truth. Her enjoyment of the work depends on its speculative
vision. How plausible is it given the scientific and technological
constraints of the world she lives in? How relevant is it to the
concerns of her actual world?
Dennett’s short story, “Where Am I?”, certainly
raises an important question concerning personal identity.
After the digital revolution, we are increasingly becoming
like the disembodied character described in the story, whose
consciousness may be uploaded in numerous instantiations.
However, on the whole it fails to convince me. Dennett’s
assumption that the living brain could ever be severed from
the body is, in a word, preposterous. Not only is the scenario
he envisions based on bad science, it also forces Cartesian
assumptions on the reader. The story leaves us no room to think
our way out of dualism. The very question of “Where am I?”
becomes intelligible only in spatial terms, making us look for an
“I” that is an object, a thing.
Î
110 | Issue One
On the other hand, the movie Prometheus convinces me
about its message that human beings have a vestigial need to
believe in, and search for, a creator or god, and furthermore, that
such a search is futile and misguided. The idea that aliens have
created humanity and left cryptic messages in ancient caves is
not implausible, considering the prevalence of such speculations.
Regardless of the propositional truth of the statement, “Aliens
exist,” the belief that they do exist is popular enough to warrant
a reference in fiction. Also, the technology depicted in the film
is not out of bonds with our existing capacities, in particular the
presence of an immortal android. We know that we can create
machines with unprecedented computing capacities. It is still
debatable whether such machines can become self-conscious,
but it is not the fact but the possibility that counts. The way that
the movie juxtaposes two creator-created pairs—aliens-humans
and humans-androids—drives home the futility of Elizabeth
Shaw’s quest to find the ultimate creator. The android already
knows the answer to who created him, and it makes no difference whatsoever.
Thought experimentation is thus not an “anything goes”
art; it has constraints that bear on the text’s overall power to
convince. Minimally, there must be a logical relation among the
cognitions that arise from the experiment. We may also say that
the work’s argument is sound if it addresses the pressing issues
of the real world that it essentially mirrors.
Ó
Now, there may be two objections to the view that at
least some SF works are doing philosophy.
The first objection reflects a general skepticism
about thought experiments. In his criticism of John Searle’s
Chinese room experiment, Dennett (1991) writes that thought
experiments are not arguments so much as “intuition pumps.”
As such, they are skewed to evoke certain images or emotions
that affirm the assumptions of the author. Dennett’s point is
that these are merely assumptions, not in themselves arguments.
My view is that philosophical SF, as thought experiments, are
arguments in terms of their author’s speculative vision about
the world. Cultural critics like Luckhurst (2005) show that SF
as a genre is inextricably tied to the social issues, norms, and
technological possibilities of a particular era. Thus, philosophical SF mirrors reality based on the author’s chosen conflict (the
premise) and inevitably present a solution, answer, or verdict in
the end (the conclusion).
The second objection is evinced by Sorensen (1992)
who classifies fictional experiments as “natural thought
experiments,” which are not intentionally produced and are
therefore not experiments as such. He thinks of the phrase
“fictional experiment” as a misnomer. I think that Sorensen
subscribes to a hasty generalization concerning the aims of
SF writers. While we may imagine that literary works are
primarily written and read for ludic purposes, who is to say
that their authors necessarily have no philosophical aspirations?
We cannot read their minds. Also, what of SF works written
by philosophers intended to support their views, cited above?
These are clearly thought experiments, yet they are in the form
of fiction. The phrase “fictional experiment” is not necessarily
a misnomer.
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Conclusion
In this paper, I have argued for the case that at least some SF works are doing
philosophy. I call them philosophical SF, and have outlined a way of evaluating their
power to convince. I have made use of two conditions. The first corresponds to Suvin’s
idea of cognitive validity. Although we are not concerned with propositional truths in
fiction, we must judge the plausibility of alternate worlds against existing science and
technology. This entails that there are, and must be, limits to speculation based on these
considerations.
The second concerns the relevance of the author’s speculative vision to the actual
world we are living in. Although SF is purely imaginative, even imagination must begin
from empirical facts. In keeping with the cultural criticism of SF, I submit that the work
must be read in terms of the historical and socio-cultural circumstances of its writing. Its
aesthetic value, and moreso its power to convince, therefore depend on how it addresses
the problems or issues of its social milieu.
Given the broad scope of philosophical SF, my aim in this paper has
been to explore the specific question of whether a literary work such as a science
fiction narrative can be said to be doing philosophy. If so, in what way, and how can
we assess its truth claims? In discussing these issues, I have referred to popular SF
narratives summarized in the preceding chart. Interested instructors may use these stories
as springboards for critical discussion. As for the interested reader, he or she is invited
to test the paper’s claims by applying the two conditions I enumerated (i.e. cognitive
validity and socio-cultural relevance) to his or her favorite SF works. For a more detailed
criticism of the SF genre and specific narratives, which is outside the scope of my framework, I refer the reader to Darko Suvin’s classic Metamorphoses of Science Fiction: On the
Poetics and History of a Literary Genre.
References:
Dennett, Daniel. 2009. Where am I? in Science fiction and philosophy, ed. by Susan Scneider Schneider.
Massachusetts and Oxford: Wiley-Blackwell.
----------------------------. 1991. Consciousness explained. New York: Penguin.
Luckhurst, Roger. 2005. Science fiction. Cambridge and Massachusetts: Polity.
Sorensen, Roy A. 1992. Thought experiments. New York and Oxford: Oxford University Press.
Suvin, Darko. 1979. Metamorphoses of science fiction: On the poetics and history of a literary genre. New Haven
and London: Yale University Press.
112 | Issue One
ABOUT THE AUTHOR
Dr. Noelle Leslie dela Cruz

Noelle Leslie dela Cruz is Associate Professor of Philosophy
at De La Salle University. She specializes in philosophy of
literature, existential phenomenology, and feminism. Her most
recent co-edited book is the anthology, “Feminista: Race, Class,
and Gender in the Philippines.” In 2009, she won first prize for
her poem “Discourse” in the Philippines Free Press Literary
Awards. She is currently working toward
her MFA in Creative Writing in DLSU.
114 | Issue One
EDITORIAL TEAM
CARLO FLORDELIZA
Jose Carlo C. Flordeliza, who was born in Davao City and raised in Manila,
graduated from De La Salle University-Manila with a degree in literature. He
was a fellow of the Iyas Creative Writing Workshop in 2008 and the Silliman
University National Writer’s Workshop in 2010. His works have appeared in
the Malate Literary Folio, Ideya: Journal of Humanities, the Philippine Free
Press, and the Philippines Graphic. He is currently completing his first novel.
ERIKA CARREON
Erika M. Carreon currently staggers through academic life as a lecturer at De
La Salle University-Manila and as a creative writing masters student at the
same institution. She’s also co-editor of its MFA creative writing journal, TagAraw, for its revival 4th issue, to be released in 2014.
NEOBIE GONZALEZ
Neobie Gonzalez is a student at De La Salle University–Manila, taking up
her Master of Fine Arts degree in Creative Writing. Her works have appeared
in the Malate Literary Folio, as well as in the anthology “A Treat of 100
Short Stories.” Her essay Voices from the Village (2013) won a Carlos Palanca
Memorial Award for Literature. She is currently crafting her own collection of
fiction, perhaps a few memoirs, and an igloo to stay in.
LYSTRA ARANAL
Lystra Aranal is an MFA Creative Writing student at De La Salle University
- Manila and is the 2012-2013 Fiction Fellow for the DLSU CLA-RAS
and BNSCWC Mini-Grant Recipient for Creative Writing. Her fiction and
poetry have been published in the Philippines Free Press, TAYO Literary
Magazine, and other contemporary Philippine anthologies. Her short stories
Bright Lights (2012), Rén (2013), and her one-act play Debrief (2013) won her
three Carlos Palanca Memorial Awards for Literature. She is in the process of
completing a collection of short stories.
ERICH VELASCO
Erich Velasco is a writer and graphic artist currently pursuing his Masteral
Degree for Creative Writing at De La Salle University-Manila. Some of his
works have been published in Malate Literary Folio. He is currently in the
process of writing.
JULY AMARILLO
July Amarillo is an essay collection away from completing her MFA degree in
Creative Writing at De La Salle University-Manila. She’s also a layout designer
whose most recent works include zines, online journals, and poetry books.
Plural | 115
116 | Issue One