“Oh, don’t worry, I already thought of that. Besides, I would not want you to eat whatever they offer you there. Don’t eat anything anyone offers you,” he cautioned.
“Cesar is on his way. We called Aling before we left the base and instructed her to cook dinner for you. Your mother also gave Cesar a bag of your clothes, bed linens, and other things you might need. When you see Cesar, let him know what you would like to eat so Aling will cook it whenever you want,” he continued.
Cesar was our family driver, and had been with us for many years so that he was treated like family. He came to us as a young man from Leyte, a province in the Visayas. Sometime later, he brought in his cousin, Aling, to help my mother keep house and cook. Ima insisted that Aling use only the recipes that she had taught her when she first came. She was picky about eating only Kapampangan dishes, not the ones Aling grew up with in Leyte.
Two soldiers arrived at the camp a short time later, escorting the pregnant young woman into the conference room. She looked tired as she waddled into the room. Before we were introduced, I was instructed by another guard to accompany him to the lobby. Arriving there, I found Cesar, who then handed me a small suitcase and a basket of food. Soon, other family members appeared, all bringing provisions. This would become a daily ritual. Cesar would come twice daily, arriving just before lunch, and then he would come again in the late afternoon, delivering dinner and breakfast for the next morning.
Later, when everyone’s food had been delivered, it was laid out on the conference table. The ones who were there earlier invited all the others to join in and to share their meals. We all sat down to eat. I picked at the food on my plate.
“What’s the matter? Not hungry?” one of the men asked me.
“No, not really,” I said. “Please go ahead. Take what you want.” He took the bowl of food I offered and started passing it around the table. I handed him the other bowls Cesar had brought. He passed those around too. All the men ate hungrily and seemed to be having a good time. How could they even eat?
We sat in companionable silence, and then, after a few minutes, people began chatting. Eating was mostly a forgettable experience that first night, while talking seemed like a perfunctory attempt at being polite. Still, I was grateful that I was not eating alone in a prison cell. The pregnant young woman was at the far edge of the table from where I sat. I couldn’t hear her when she mentioned her name. She seemed relaxed, eating heartily, and chatting with the men next to her. I, on the other hand, felt exhausted, giddy and somewhat shaky.
After dinner, the guard came in and told the young woman and me to follow him. He led us into the commander’s office.
“Hi, I’m Annabel,” the young woman said.
“I’m Vicky,” I said, shaking her proffered hand.
“When did you get here?” she asked.
“I really don’t remember, but it was sometime today. It’s been a long day. What about you?”
“They came to my mom’s store in the afternoon but I wasn’t there. They waited for two hours until I arrived. Then they drove me here. I told them I wanted my husband to accompany me but they said there was no time to waste. It was almost dark when we got here. The commander had already gone home and they said I would have to wait until tomorrow to be interrogated,” she explained.
“Oh,” I said. I did not know what else to say. How do I tell someone that I couldn’t remember what I had gone through just hours ago? She noted my discomfort and quickly changed the subject.
“What school do you go to?” she asked, trying to make conversation.
When I told her she replied, “That’s where I went to school too. I graduated high school two years ago.” We talked some about St. Scholastica’s. She did not attend the new campus as it had yet to be built. I began telling her where the new campus was and described to her how it looked.
The new campus was called Cer-Hill, named, oddly enough, after the real estate company that developed it. The school’s main building comprised three stories and accommodated more classrooms than the old site, located in central San Fernando, next to the foul-smelling wet market. It was located in the San Agustin neighborhood, an area sandwiched between the center of town and pointed north to the city of Angeles.
The school building had been quite bare when we moved in that early September in 1972. It smelled of fresh concrete, paint, creosote, and various industrial odors from building materials. All the desks and chairs were also new. I remember how much more comfortable these felt compared to the ones we used at the old school, many of which were already there when my mother and her sisters attended in the 1940s and 50s.
Attending the first few weeks was not a pleasant experience. Most of the side roads feeding off from the main highway were unpaved, and dusty during the dry season, but muddy and full of potholes at the onset of the monsoon rains. The dust from these roads and from the empty rice and sugar fields, after the harvest, was whipped up by blustery winds that began in earnest after the monsoon ended sometime in October. The school, being the only building on this side of the street for miles, served as a funnel for the post-monsoon winds, which blustered into our classrooms, blowing doors shut and rattling glass casement windows. If we happened to be walking along the hallways, the winds fluttered our starched and ironed pleated skirts, flapping these up and over our undergarments—we found this somewhat problematic as convent school girls are taught to be modest in all manner of dress. At the time, there was only one male teacher in the school and we naively worried about him seeing us in what we perceived as a red-face moment.
As Annabel and I continued conversing, we found we knew a few Kolasas in common. Then we gossiped about the teachers—our favorites—and the ones we wanted to avoid. This was beginning to feel normal. But was it? The office was large enough for the two of us to settle our cots at some distance from each other. As we chatted, we decided to push the cots closer together in order to hear each other better. It was then that I noticed the color of the room. It bothered me. It was painted a pale green color I had seen in hospitals, and stirred up memories of Timmee, near death at the San Agustin Hospital. Every now and again, a guard knocked and quickly opened the door, checking to see how we were doing. What’s the matter? He didn’t seriously think that Annabel and I could squeeze out of those steel-barricaded casement windows, did he?
The commander’s office was not unusually large. There was a massive mahogany desk at one end of the room, and above it hung a portrait of Ferdinand Marcos and another one of a uniformed man I did not recognize. Under the desk was an oriental rug and next to it was a pole flying a Philippine flag. There was a map of the Philippines posted on the wall across from the door. The yellowish light from the ceiling fixtures illuminated the room, casting a depressing glow on the green walls. I avoided looking at Marcos’ picture. A well of anger always swelled inside me whenever I saw him on TV or in the newspaper. Knowing he was looking over where I would sleep tonight was like a sword hanging over my head. Of course they wanted to remind me I could never get away from Marcos’ grasp. When I saw his eyes bearing down on me, he seemed to be saying that he was my guard, my jailer, and my executioner. I vowed not to look at his picture again for as long as I slept in the office.
Annabel, who was speaking next to me with her soothing voice, eased some of the queasiness I felt. How could she be so brave? I took note of her features, as if seeing her for the first time, appreciating that she was my only ally for miles around. She had long, dark black, waist-length hair that framed her roundish face and angular jaw. Her dark brown eyes, despite being hidden by equally dark plastic eyeglasses, pierced me—focused and penetrating—as if she could see through everything around her. She was rather short, but she had a physical presence that I found difficult to ignore. Her demeanor seemed fearless. When the soldiers asked her questions, she looked at them with neither cowardice nor apprehension, answering firmly, without losing her calm. Being around her soothed me, if only for a short while.
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br /> Then my gaze turned to the windows, where I noticed it had gone dark outside. I looked at my watch. It was after 9 pm. Moments later, she asked, “Do you think we could turn the lights off now so we can sleep?” She said this in a tone like an older sister asking this to a younger one, one whom she senses is afraid.
“Sure,” I said, though I felt uncertain. Did I want that soldier creeping in on us in the dark?
She stood up, walked up to the switch on the wall next to the door, and turned the light off. The room was instantly cast in darkness but for a sliver of light coming from a street lamp that cascaded gently by the casement window. Lying on the cot, I arranged the bedding tightly around me, hoping to be cocooned against the almost physical terrors gripping every part of my body. Then I started to shiver and shake, drawing the bed sheet and blanket still tighter around me.
My thoughts drifted to home. Ima and Tang were probably getting ready for bed. My sisters, Atching L., Timmee, along with cousin Q., were likely watching TV or maybe doing schoolwork. The twin boys, K. and T. and my older brother, Koyang J., would be on the patio, telling stories or with friends listening to music. A jolt of pain shot through my chest as I saw these images in my mind. My family was only a few short miles away and yet they might as well have been a million miles from me. It was as if a cord had been cut suddenly and cruelly. Maybe I would never see them again. Sleep eluded me that first night; and did not come easy for many more nights afterwards.
Around six the following morning, I heard a knock on the door. Before Annabel or I had a chance to say, “Come in,” the massive door opened, a head peaked in and the soldier from the night before said, “You need to get up. I have to take those cots away before the commander comes.”
We walked the short distance to the conference room and joined the men for breakfast. The men slept there as well. The military camp did not have a jail. It was never meant to be a prison, but it handled the overflow when Camp Olivas became over-crowded with the hundreds of political detainees being taken there daily. On my second day, a young man warned me about Camp Olivas. He had been arrested once before and was sent there. He said the conditions there were bad and I was lucky to be here.
“ A colegiala like you would definitely have a hard time over there. You have no idea what it is like to be in Camp Olivas. You see, when they fed us, there was very little of it and much of it tasted awful. I was always hungry. The cells smelled, and so did we. We did not shower regularly as there were very few showers and with hundreds in the camp, sometimes water ran out. Sometimes they put five or six people inside a cell where only two should fit. I heard screaming nearby all the time, coming from this one hallway where we were not allowed to go, and there were a series of rooms, which were always padlocked. Sometimes the screams seemed to turn into howling, almost like the kind of howling dogs do. It seemed to go on forever. Although to tell you the truth, Camp Olivas is not as bad as Camps Crame, Bonifacio, or Bicutan, from what I heard. Being here is somewhat nicer.”
How could you expect so little of yourself? What was it really like there? What was it like for you? I was loath to ask him those questions. A part of me did not want to know, a part of me was curious. Then I sensed that he, too, was holding back. He was trying to decide if he should say more. It must have been really hard. I kept silent as he hesitated. Maybe he would get the message. I was not ready for more of what he had to say. No more details please. If I showed him that I was not curious for more, he would stop. He did. I was relieved.
While soldiers worked in their offices, we camped in the conference room. When the room was needed for meetings, they ordered us to sit on the floor of the lobby until they were finished. They restricted us to that small space, told not to make any noise and not to talk to anyone who visited the building. Sometimes, they called someone to another room. We knew then that another interrogation was taking place.
Over the course of the day, I discovered that we were allowed minimal reading materials except for weeks old newspapers, a single Time magazine, and a couple of Pilipino vernacular magazines called Tagumpay. These were passed around so frequently among us that most of them were now in tatters. If we wanted to have a book of our own brought in, we had to give it to the guards for inspection. But few books passed muster and so we read and re-read what we had in the room. Radios were not allowed and so news from the outside never reached us, except the stories whispered by relatives on their visits. I wished I had my school bag. I could at least do my schoolwork.
There were between fifteen and twenty detainees at any given time in the conference room. Every few days someone from the group disappeared. A fatigue-wearing guard with an automatic weapon (then called an Armalite) at his side would come in the room, and soon after whomever was sent for would gather his belongings and leave with the guard. Everyone knew he would not be coming back. Was he sent home? Was he taken to another camp? Who knew? No one dared talk about it. Whatever we had known about the prisoner who departed and never returned was left to the world of forgetting. It was better that way. The following morning, a new detainee or two would join the group.
The blur of men’s faces was beginning to clear. These men were the regulars who were already here when I arrived and who would still be there when I left. I conversed with them here and there, though I remained cautious. Many were genuine political detainees, I am sure, though I heard that there were spies in the camps. Probably better not to trust anyone here.
Two of the men were lawyers. One was taller than the other, and both were of fair complexion. While one talked incessantly, charming us with stories and gossip, the other was quieter, preferring to read. Then there were the two brothers. One was a journalist and the other was a businessman. The journalist was of a slight, lanky build, with short curly hair that frame his bespectacled face. He was never without a cigarette, and was the one who told me to ask my family to bring my meals. He had a confident air about him, and it was probably this that made others suspicious of him. He easily spoke his mind, a defiance that unnerved others in the room. Where the journalist was thin, his brother was portly. He possessed a sunny disposition, and had a penchant for cracking jokes. Both their wives visited daily without fail. It was as though the two wives made a pact to stick together, undertake a ritual, unbroken and unwavering in its repetition. They were the only two wives who visited this much.
Another fellow in the group was a tall and wiry writer who taught at a university. He, too, liked to tell stories. Then there were a few young men in their early 20s. I have forgotten all their names except for Annabel’s. But I can still see their faces. In my mind’s eye, I can see them squatting on the sea grass mats we called dase, which some of them preferred to the metal chairs of the conference table. Many of them chain-smoked. When the odor from cigarette smoke became too much, we asked the guards to open the windows.
Our day was spent in the conference room, punctuated only by visits to the stinky restroom, which was located next to the lobby. Its black and white tiled floor was always wet and muddy. The toilet flush did not work. The pungent smell from it distressed even the commander, whose office was close by, prompting him to order a few buckets to be brought in. Filling these up with water from the lone spigot on the wall, you would need to pour buckets of water straight into the toilet bowl to keep it clean.
Days went by. I was now getting used to the routine. Still, no one told me what I was being charged or if I was charged at all.
One morning, a few of us were, as usual, sitting around the conference table. Others were on the dase, reading the days old newspaper, The Manila Bulletin. In another corner of the room, a new detainee was attempting to read the tattered pages of Tagumpay. A couple of the men were smoking cigarettes while sitting on the floor and leaning against the walls. They were talking about some movie they had seen, dissecting every part and scene in the film as if they were critics. Their voices got louder as they argued over their favorite scenes.
“Wow, did you see how h
e was slouched in the bath tub with all his clothes on, looking very drunk, and seeming to be without a care in the world? My, oh my, what acting that was,” the writer said.
“Yeah, and I remember how Robert Redford came barging in and saying something clever about this guy being wasted,” the journalist remarked.
They were talking about the 1973 movie, The Sting, which was very popular in San Fernando at the time. Everyone began speaking at the same time, and becoming louder with each passing minute. Soon a soldier opened the door and told us to pipe down. Everyone became quiet for a while until another topic was introduced. It went on like this, from topic to topic for some time, and then someone mentioned something about the latest thing that Marcos had said.
“Where and when did you get this information?” the lawyer asked.
“Yesterday, when my wife was here visiting. She said she heard Marcos saying on TV that the government had just released the last of the political detainees,” the businessman replied.
“Now then, what would you call us?” the tall olive-skinned young man inquired.
There were puzzled looks all around. We were not exactly thieves who stole, murderers who killed, or civil society’s miscreants, but since no one has been charged or even told what laws we had violated, we were in a kind of legal limbo. But Marcos did have words to label us. We were actibistas, a term that could either have a positive or negative connotation, depending on whom you were talking with. As conditions in the country worsened, Marcos’ rhetoric acquired a nastier tone, and his descriptions of us became more sinister. The names he gave us include, “subversives,” “radicals,” “Maoists,” “Communists,” and then to satisfy his verve for political drama, he labeled us the “undesirable elements in his New Society.”
A Thousand Little Deaths Page 3