A fat drop falls.
I looked at my watch and it spelled-out, in bright neon, that I should have been home by then. Instead, I was stuck in a street corner in busy Makati. Cars spilled out onto the streets—their bright yellow lights glared at me as they slowly inched forward, and behind me were their red lights flashing in equal frustration. There were no taxis.
I looked up. By this time the sky should’ve shown dusk with a bit of orange light peeking at the end of the horizon.
The sun swallowed by the horizon of Manila waters: it's a sight I'm only too famliar with. It's the same picture that greets me as I looked out the FX everyday for three years as the shuttle crawled through Coastal Road.
Monday to Friday, I would sit at the back of the van. I never wanted to look at the sleepy faces of the passengers, their bodies slackened by fatigue. A few of them text—their faces brightened blue by cell phone screens. And every once in a while their sleeping neighbor wakes with a start. Ringtones were always a decibel too loud for those quiet van rides as they weaved in and out, avoiding reckless bus and jeepney drivers.
I didn’t want to think of my face having the same look as theirs or that it was illuminated by same kind of blue. So I always looked out, through the tinted glass of the van, and to the sun descending on dirty sea.
Monday to Friday, when I arrive home, Tito Larry would be feeding the flowerhorns. With his brown, lined face next to the glass, he would tap the aquarium twice (“Para alam nila nandito ako,”), and feed his hungry children three measured dashes of fish pellet (“Tamang-tama lang”). Their fins and tails were long and translucent, their scales were flawless and dappled with bright colors. They were fat and had as much personality as their tiny brains could ever muster-- meaning, none. But Tito Larry knows fish. He would observe them for a good few minutes while telling me there’s food in the refrigerator I can heat.
Tito Larry is my father, but I never call him that. He left when my mother was pregnant and came back only when I was five. They told me he was named Tito Larry, and when the grand revelation of my paternity came when I was twelve, the name stuck. My mother said she was afraid I’d get attached and that he’d leave again. Looking at his back bent over as he lovingly traced his beloved fish, I would eat my cold tortang talong, porkchop, or adobo—and wonder at how absurd my mother’s fears were.
But that night wasn't the usual Wednesday night. The clouds have taken over the sky and cast a gray spell on everything. Instead of me staring at the setting sun, I was standing in a crowded curb in Makati. The sky is turning an angry, dark color on me.
I sighed. By now, I should have been eating my cold dinner but Christopher just had to give us a pep talk. He round us up in one of the conference rooms and rambled on about the latest of his glorious accomplishments—never mind that our parents, unlike his, don’t have drivers to pick us up from work. Some of our parents have flowerhorns to attend to.
Smiling brightly and with an overrated curl of hair on his forehead, he told us how he just landed a deal with a difficult client—an old spinster who’s notorious for pestering agents by inquiring endlessly on how the real estate system works and the value and details of this and that property, and then balking at the last minute. Her knickers must have fallen off at the spark of his toothy smile. Twenty-four years old, rich, handsome, and with the world rolling red carpets before him—all the secretaries in the floor would’ve gladly thrown away their knickers for him too.
Forty-seven minutes after we were supposed to get out of work, I interrupted his speech:
“Landing a deal with—who? Oh my, Christopher, you deserve to be promoted as God! Henceforth, I shall replace all my expletives with Oh my Christopher!”
Well, that was what I thought of saying instead:
“That’s great, Sir Dulao. We’re proud of you. You inspire us.”
Sir Dulao stopped and grinned, the woman next to me sighed smilingly. He sauntered to me and ruffled my hair, “Andy, you should take some tips from me next time you meet up with a client!” I smiled sweetly after him as he swaggered out of the conference room door.
I smiled sweetly after him. Next time he touches me I’ll have the condescending bastard arrested for sexual harassment and finally end his streak of good luck. His fan club at the office will probably maul me before I could even say Oh my Christopher!
A fat drop gathers dirt and dust.
The crowd in the corner steadily grew; no taxi came to thin the crowd. One vacant cab turned up around the corner but a snarling twenty-something woman elbowed me out of her way. Looking at her sitting smugly inside the taxi, I itched to test the pepper spray inside my purse.
Instead, I returned to my hopeless spot. I stood there, inhaling the fumes of the city; the dirt and grime making their home in my lungs and my system until the city and I are indistinguishable.You know what they say, though anorexics would beg the case to be otherwise, that you are what you eat? That I, a twenty-two year old Sales Executive, am formed through the molecules that formerly belonged to cheap cafeteria food, mostly Baked Macaroni and diet Coke?
That isn’t always the case; for instance, the city swallows me and Manila doesn’t become Miranda. Miranda becomes a depraved little blood cell lining up to be loaded with the dirty carbon monoxide in this toxic body. I looked at the throng-- fellow bloodcells lining up to receive their pollution cocktail.
Beside me was a girl with short hair and glasses who waved frantically for a taxi that wasn’t there. She was wearing a modest office skirt and a white top. There are three thousand women in Makati wearing the same species of clothes, including me.
In the middle and muddle of the congestion, someone decided to annoy everyone by honking nonstop.
“That’s not going to make you fly, moron.” I said irritably. Of course the driver couldn’t hear me but it felt relieving to tell the universe a piece of my mind.
Suddenly, the black, shiny, honking sedan looked too familiar. It was Christopher’s car and I just blasphemed against God’s driver. I knew that if he had spotted me, he would offer me his patronizing benevolence and that sparkling smile, Andy, Would you like a ride? I sunk to the middle of the crowd.
A fat drop fell—squarely on top of my head.
I looked up and a drop splattered on my glasses. Another drop fell. And another. It began to pour, as did my breathless expletives.
I nearly collided against a man in a blue shirt while I was running to the small waiting shed where a crowd compressed itself.
“Reliable weather prediction, PAG-ASA!” I grumbled to myself.
People flicked off drops of water on their shirts and skits, their briefcases, and purses while muttering indistinctly about the hassle of rain. My hair was dripping wet. I squeezed myself at the edge of the shed and looked out as the rain roared and blotted out Makati. All I could see was the bright red lights of nearby cars in the white haze made by rain.
I took a huge breath and closed my eyes.
“God, thanks for stopping the rain,” I breathed.
I’m not sarcastic. I read in some New Age book that the way to get God to listen to your prayers is to be a polite brat and expect it, thank Him for isn’t what’s there yet. God is a smoker who follows “Thank you for not smoking” signs. The minimum requirement for His cooperation is politeness.
It poured even harder.
“Thank you for cooperating. I feel loved.” This time I’m sarcastic.
Somewhere in the city, someone is sighing and saying the heavens are weeping—that the heavens are with them in weeping, for a dead flowerhorn, missing children, betrayal, Manny Pacquiao losing a match, Kimchu and Gerard break-up. Romantic bull.
The consequences of divine pity are puddles that lure street children to the bacterial stew of Manila streets; and then later, deluges that sweep them away and under until all that remains of them are their little wet brown puppy bodies lying lifeless amid city trash. What are tears for? The consequences of His pity is me getting stuck in a waiting shed with a host of strangers who look exactly like me—drenched, tired, struggling, and ordinary.
Each drop of water is indistinguishable from the rest. And their brief lives as teardrops didn’t matter— they were all too soon puddles, and then floods riding through the city with the grime of the streets and the sweat of the workers whose bodies they wiped as they went down. We are like rain, each one of us in the shed. Suddenly, I felt tired of keeping whole.
I stepped out of the waiting shed and, suddenly, the world was too big.
Rain was forceful little pellets that soaked my hair and ran down it's short length. The man in a blue shirt, who stood next to me, stared. He didn’t say or do anything.I started walking away. My short black hair dripped and clung to my face, to my neck. The rain dotted my skirt until it was black and dripping. My blouse clung to my bra, my torso. I could feel tiny rivers of water in and through my clothes.
The trees swayed to the tempestuous rhythm, violently shaking their manes. The dark gray clouds loomed ahead, casting a dim look on the streets. Lightning flashed: a moment of brightness that momentarily relieved the panorama of it's colors. Though the streets were alight with car lights and though the rain, the thunder, the cars roared it felt deserted, and I was alone in the world.
And I didn’t feel afraid.
I turned to face the crowd left huddling in the waiting shed. They looked at me silently, oddly. I searched each of the faces I could make out throught the thick rain's haze. They didn't understand there was no glass between us and the world. What I learned just then, you don't fall off the edge of the Earth when you step out.
I ran hard and furiously. My feet dunked and splashed at the dirty puddles as I ran through them. I felt a new world. I ran my hands through the hard pavement, through the wet bark of trees that periodically dotted the streets. I smelled what I thought was long buried underneath concrete- the smell of wet earth.
The tiny pellets made gullies in my face, my arms, my legs, my body. The water seeped in, and it seeped out with failures, loneliness, disappointments, denial of Mom's death, Christopher's wrong kisses, jealousy for fucking flowerhorns, hatred for myself, for the world, for God. Rain drenched me through and through, until I was dripping, until I was no more, until I was filled with water, until I was new.
“Bakit ka basa?” Tito Larry asked, looking up from the aquarium. I was no longer dripping but my clothes were wet, and I shivered. Outside, the roaring of the rain was reduced to pitter-patters.
“Umulan,” I replied.
I smiled at his flowerhorns, and thought of the dirty sea they would never know, of the divine pity that knocked at their glass but they would never understand.
