by Noël Alumit
I reached over and said, I love you. Mr. Clift didn’t answer. Logan did.
I love you, too, he said.
•
I asked Logan to pick me up from the hospital. He had been good about picking me up from my sessions with Dr. Chapman. Logan and I have talked about my time at St. Joan’s psychiatric ward before. We’ve talked in short, vague details. He knew I didn’t want to discuss it; he never pressed it.
“I had some things to work out” was what I told him. I never told him about my hurting myself. I never told him how I used to find men and imagine them to be Monty. I planned to tell him someday, but I chose amnesia. It’s easier to forget bad things, pretend they never happened. I don’t have to deal with things if they never happened. Inevitably, it all comes back, every forlorn, hideous detail comes back.
I had to tell him.
“You hurt yourself?” he asked.
“I used to. I hadn’t done it in a long time. But I’ve been thinking about it lately. Hurting myself, that is.”
“Seeing your mother must have really been hard.”
“I thought it was over. I thought I had gotten over it.” Telling him about spending time with a dead movie star was a little harder.
“You used to see Montgomery Clift? Touch him?”
“Yeah.”
“Have sex with him?”
“Yeah.”
“Wow.”
I was scared. Scared he would think this was too weird. Too weird and leave me. I didn’t want him to disappear. He’d joked about knowing people who were psychotic; he’d call a lot of people he didn’t like psychotic. His boss was psychotic. People who didn’t like his screenplays were psychotic. But his boyfriend?
Logan once told me he wrote “formula” screenplays. He wrote movies where the lovers managed to get together in the end, where the good guys always won, and no matter how poor or disheveled a family was, they managed to afford great gifts for the children at Christmas. He believed all that stuff. He believed in formula; it worked. In a formulaic manner, he said, “I’ll stick by you.” Good. And I loved him a little more.
•
“Are you sure that was your mother you saw?” Dr. Chapman asked me.
“YES!” Everyone kept asking me that question. Logan, Amada, Mr. and Mrs. A, even Mrs. Billaruz called again for me to state unequivocally that the woman in the video was my mother.
“Don’t get upset. Sometimes we see what we want to see, that’s all,” she said.
“I’m not imagining things.”
“Do you think you’ll hurt yourself?”
“I hope not.” I hope not.
She didn’t understand. She just didn’t.
•
“Find her,” Amada said. “Find her.”
She didn’t understand how scared I was knowing my mother might be alive. If she died, it would have been easy: she didn’t return because she was dead. Alive, I wondered what went wrong.
“Find her,” Amada said. “Risk it. Take a chance.”
“You don’t get it.”
“Yes. I do. Do something that takes courage. Something that could have horrible consequences.”
“Why?”
“Because that is the only way to be brave.”
“I am brave. I’ve been through a lot—”
“Will you shut up and listen for a moment. Why do you men get threatened when you think your masculinity is on the line? Bravery does not happen once or twice, like getting over a car accident or getting out of a hospital. It is an ongoing effort, facing everything that scares you.”
That was the first time I’d realized Amada looked different. Sometimes when you’ve known someone for a long time, you assume she always looked that way. Sure, she may have a different haircut or she may have lost or gained a few pounds, but she’d remained the same.
Amada’s face had changed. Not so much her features, but what was behind those features. Her eyes used to appear anxious, unsettled. Her face used to be a little more full, with softer angles. Now her eyes appeared relaxed, a little more at ease. The angles of her face had become more sharp, defined.
“When I had that abortion,” she said, “it took every ounce of nerve I had. I was only seventeen. I corrected a mistake. It takes guts to correct a mistake. There are so few times a mistake could be corrected. And I did it.”
“But you almost died.”
“I wouldn’t have it any other way. People can say whatever they want about girls like me; they call me stupid for wanting to be an actress or dumb for getting pregnant, but I don’t care.
“Find her. There was a mistake made, you were sent here, separated from your folks. She was supposed to come, but she didn’t. You have the opportunity to correct a mistake. Find her. Find your mother; do this brave act.”
I asked Monty what to do. I asked him to show me what to do.
CHAPTER THIRTY-EIGHT
Bookends
There are no more letters. There is just now. There is just me. Logan, Amada, and Mr. and Mrs. A saw me off at the airport. They hugged me, kissed me, said good luck.
I boarded the plane. My letters to Monty tucked into my carry-on luggage. I waited quietly for the plane to rise. I watched the sun meet the moon. I searched for Montgomery Clift among the passengers of the plane. I didn’t find him. I have a feeling he wanted me to do it on my own. Everyone on the plane was asleep. I was to land in the Philippines by morning.
I had a little money saved up, but not nearly enough to get to the Philippines and stay for a while. Logan gave me some cash, but it was Mr. and Mrs. A who made it all happen.
“Take it,” said Mr. A, shoving a wad of bills into my hand. “It was some money we had.”
I tried to give the money back to him but he backed away. I tried to give it to Mrs. A, but she wouldn’t take it. She said, “Go see what happened to your mother.”
“I’ll pay you back.”
“Don’t worry about it,” she said.
They gave me almost a thousand dollars. This would have been pennies to the Arangans ten years ago, but it was a lot now.
I knew why they gave me the money: It was a peace offering. Guilt. Incredible guilt was all I felt. I’d put them through a lot. Amada had put them through a lot, too. We’d seen so much together. I knew we hurt people without meaning to. Like Amada said, So few mistakes can be corrected. If you get the chance to correct one, do. Mr. and Mrs. A were trying to correct a mistake.
How do I correct the mistakes I made with them? I was cruel to them, refusing them in my life. They took me in, fed me, clothed me, and I resented them for hurting my parents—something they had no direct involvement with. They got entangled with the Marcoses because they wanted a life, a good life. They didn’t know what the Marcos regime would do later.
“I’ll pay it back. I insist,” I said.
“You don’t have to,” Mrs. A said. “I don’t care what you say, I still think of you as my son. You should learn a little from Amada. She would never think of paying us back.”
“Well, Amada is a little selfish,” I said.
“Yes, she is. That’s because we raised her that way. There is nothing wrong with being a little selfish. One of the reasons we got mixed up with that Marcos stuff is because we were not selfish enough. We kept thinking that we owed people. We paid back all the money we borrowed and more, but we never turned them down, because we weren’t selfish enough. Learn to think of yourself a little bit.”
•
In Manila the humidity wrapped around me like a wool blanket. It was a gray day with typhoons in the forecast. Warm winds blew like the devil himself was breathing on us.
I met a friend of Mrs. Billaruz’s. Her name was Mrs. Andifacio. She is letting me stay with her while I search for Mama.
Logan had made a still photo from the videotape. I didn’t like the photo, Mama on the verge of tears. I showed it to Mrs. Andifacio.
“I don’t recognize her,” she said. “But there were a lot of people
at that rally.”
“Could you introduce me to other people at the rally? I’d like them to see the photo.”
“Of course.”
Mrs. Andifacio’s brother was abducted in 1975. She hadn’t seen him since. “I dream about him,” she said. “I still dream about my brother. Sometimes, I dream about when my brother and I were children, playing or fighting the way children do, then he disappears right in front of me. I think that is the worst part of all of this. When my brother disappeared, so did part of my childhood. We shared memories together like two bookends holding up books. When one bookend is taken away, what was in the middle falls away.”
•
I wanted to find a bookstore or library. I had a pen with which to begin my blotching. I took a taxi, instructing the driver to find a library or bookstore.
“Yes, sir,” said the driver, a shriveled man.
He drove around the city, passing Manila Bay. Wind had kicked in, clouds rolled through, and waves from the bay smashed against the cement railway, splashing onto the sidewalk.
I had met over half a dozen people who had sketchy memories of the woman in the photo. Some thought they saw her, most had not. Almost all had remarked on the sadness on her face, grief they understood.
I realized how small I was in this world. I was one of many who had family members taken away, never seen again. I have to confess I find comfort in their company. Thousands of people had disappeared, meaning thousands of families were affected. They all had a missing spot in their lives, a black hole in their gut that nothing can fill.
The taxi driver had been driving for half an hour when I thought how funny it was that in a city as big as Manila, there were no libraries or bookstores. Then I realized the taxi driver was literally taking me for a ride. I ordered him to stop and let me off.
“We’re almost there,” he said.
“Yeah, right,” I said, getting out. I threw him two hundred pesos, which added up to about five American dollars. The taxi driver sped away.
I walked around for hours, it seemed, coming across a large cement structure. It was the Cultural Center, one of many buildings Imelda Marcos erected to make her mark on the city. That was what my father died for? Why my mother was not in my life? All that for a dark monstrosity of a building, looming like a fist.
I had been exploring my surroundings, taking long meandering walks through the city. Drizzle dampened my hair, and as I wiped the drops of water falling onto my face, I took a long look around. I didn’t know what part of the city I was in, but it was dirt poor. Exhaust from speeding taxis made the air toxic. The street was lined with wooden houses, ready to fall. If those houses were in Los Angeles, they would have never been able to handle even the smallest earthquake.
I came across a long white wall. I followed it until I found an entrance. The white wall circled the Malacanang Palace, where Ferdinand and Imelda Marcos had lived and entertained, where orders were carried out to make people disappear, where Imelda kept her depository of shoes. The white wall separated the poor from the wealth of the Marcos regime.
I peered through the gate, and saw the lushness of the property: Green grass carpeted the ground, colored tiles decorated the palace porch, and a small river ran through the property. On how many moonlit nights did the Marcos family sit by the river while the poor struggled outside their palace walls?
I wondered if Malacanang Palace was any different from any other palace in the world, Buckingham Palace, the White House, or the Vatican for that matter? Poverty encroaching on the walls of the immeasurably wealthy, most of us peering through gates wondering how they lived.
•
I went to interview a friend of Mrs. Andifacio. Her name was Phelia Buro. I pulled out the picture of Mama, ready for Phelia to say, I don’t know her. Instead, she said, “That’s Cecilia.”
Cecilia, my mother’s first name. Cessy for short.
“Cecilia something…”
“Luwad,” I said, “Cecilia, Cessy Luwad.”
“Yes. She was in hiding. She hid for quite a while, I know that. Maybe a year.”
“Hiding?”
“People who rallied against Marcos, who made noise, often went into hiding. She was looking for her husband, asking questions. You don’t ask questions about missing persons and be ignored. She had to go into hiding.”
“How do you know this?”
“She told me.”
“When?”
“When we met.”
“When was this?”
“I guess in the late ’70s, early ’80s. When we were in prison.”
“Prison?”
“You did not know your mother was in prison for three years?”
I wanted to hurt myself, desecrate my body somehow, destroy what part of me was left. I knew what they did to women in there. I heard an internal howl, a hot scream that pierced my being.
“No,” I said, “I didn’t.”
“She talked about you. She talked about her son. She said you were in the States with your auntie. She was not well when she was released. Not well at all. You are not treated well in prison, some of us had breaking points. When she found out her husband was killed…she seemed a little lost. You know, lost in the head.”
“I know what that feels like,” I said.
“I know other people who could help, I know people who were detained—we keep in touch.”
“Can I talk to some of these people?”
“I can try. Some people don’t want others to know they were detained. They just want to forget the whole thing. Or they don’t want to talk about it because they’re afraid they can get hurt.”
“Hurt?”
“Oh yes. People are still afraid that they will be detained again. Many people are still loyal to the Marcos family, you know. You never know who might be listening.”
“I understand.”
I was amazed at how the network of political prisoners worked. It was like a select club, with membership limited to the beaten, the tortured, the raped.
I met a man who helped my mother when she left prison, a friend of Phelia Buro. His name was Mr. Tombayo. He had been detained for a few months. He took Mama in when she was released.
“My mother stayed here?” I said. I stood in a flimsy corrugated metal home about twenty miles outside of Manila.
“Yes,” said Mr. Tombayo. “For about six months. She slept over there.” He pointed to a ratty old mattress on the floor. Wind blew in from the broken windows, the frayed yellow curtains billowed in the restless air.
“She moved around a lot,” said Mr. Tombayo.
“Was she well?” I asked.
“No. She looked like she would go away in the head. I would talk to her and she wouldn’t know I was there. We went to the movies a lot,” he said.
I asked Mr. Tombayo if I could be alone in the room. I wanted to be alone in the room Mama slept in. I took a deep breath, hoping to smell her, but no residue of her lingered, only the stale smell of moisture. Then again, I wasn’t sure what Mama was supposed to smell like. I had forgotten her scent.
Mr. Tombayo said my mother went on to live in Angeles City. He gave me the names of some people who could possibly help me.
I found a bookstore in Makati, a well-to-do neighborhood near Manila. Dazzling high-rises jabbed at the sky, shiny European cars glistened in the streets. Light-skinned Filipinos sported names of American and French designers on their clothes. I sat in the bookstore for hours, blotching page 168 of every book I could get my hands on.
When night approached, I walked around. A little boy wearing an oversized T-shirt looked up at me. He sat by my feet with shoe polish and rags.
“Shoeshine, sir?” He asked.
I nodded, unable to speak. I couldn’t help but think that boy and I were the same person, one individual meeting at different points in his life.
I wanted to speak to the boy who was me, tell him a journey is in store, tell him that he will encounter people, some he will love, so
me he will regret ever meeting. A search will take place that will consume his life. I wanted to tell him this. Instead, I watched his little body sway as his hands buffed my shoes. When he was done, he sat waiting for his tip.
I gave him two hundred pesos. He lifted his head shyly, his eyes to the ground. He said it was too much money. I told him to keep it. I saw the boy who was me run off clutching the money in his hands, meeting a woman at the far end of the street. He showed her the money. She kissed his forehead, and they walked away together.
Angeles City is a small town at the base of the mountains. I ordered an orange soda from a wooden store near the bus stop. The weather had cleared; puffs of clouds opened up, introducing a sun so hot, it burned. Its rays lit up the golden dirt beneath my feet, reflecting the heat back up. I approached the owner of the store.
“Excuse me, I’m looking for Mr. Gumboa.” I spoke in Tagalog.
“Who are you?” the owner inquired.
“My name is Bob Luwad. I’m looking for this woman.” I showed him the photo of my mother.
“You’re not from around here.”
“Yes. I am.”
“You don’t sound like it.”
He was right. I wasn’t from around “here.” At least not anymore. My accent didn’t sound authentic. I was an American trying to sound like I was a native. I had spoken English for most of my life now. When I spoke Tagalog, it had many English words and phrases mixed in.
“I was born in Benguet province, but raised in America.” This seemed to appease the owner. “I was told I could talk with Mr. Gumboa. I’m trying to find my mother. I need his help.”
“What is your mother’s name?”
“Cessy Luwad.”
He cocked his head and studied my face.
“I’m Mr. Gumboa,” he said, “and Cessy Luwad doesn’t live here anymore.”
“What happened to her?”
“She left.”
“Why?”
“There was no work here. At least no work for her to do.”
“Where did she go?”
“I don’t know. There aren’t that many nice houses around here for her to clean. She didn’t know how to do anything else, you know. She may have gone to Manila.”