Elixir
Page 3
CHAPTER 8
MIGRATION TO THE GOOD OLD USA
The forward rhythmic march of time has a smooth, salving quality. Foremost, it allows the memory of a shocking or traumatic event to slowly fade away, but most importantly, the longer the amount of time that elapsed, the lesser the degree of grief and pain that remains. That is encapsulated nicely in the old saying: “Time heals all wounds.”
That was how it went with Mary. The seven years that passed since her loving mother died dulled the unpleasant pain. It wasn’t completely gone, though. The residue of that grief occasionally manifested itself into spontaneous, loud, and uncontrolled crying, sometimes followed by shrieking howls of despair.
But time did more than that. For with each grain of sand gently and steadily trickling down the hourglass of time, simultaneously transpiring in military-like cadence, was a stunning metamorphosis. It was an awe-inspiring work of nature in full display: the reed-thin, awkward, tomboyish teen had slowly blossomed into an exceedingly majestic beauty.
That astounding transformation would have put the masterpiece of Leonardo da Vinci, the “Mona Lisa,” to shame.
In addition to having that aesthetically-pleasing and unblemished, porcelain-like angelic face, Mary was also blessed with having statuesque, shapely curves at all the right places, and an ampleness in her well-endowed bosom.
What happened next only confirmed that we are mere actors in that theater called life. Fate acted as the puppeteer and we, as hapless puppets, are mindlessly following the script.
In a cruel twist of fate, it was her ravishing beauty that got her into big trouble. She, unfortunately, lived in a province teeming with ruthless Communist rebels, and the leader of the villainous band was unabashedly smitten with her.
In his initial visit, Kumander Karding (his nom de guerre) was very friendly and charming. He fawned over Enteng, constantly showering him with duplicitous flattery. But Enteng already knew what the rebel’s true intention was. He had already been repeatedly besieged and harassed by numerous men coming from near and far-flung places, from different social strata and from varied economic levels. He had been incessantly hassled and pestered by these legions of admiring men. For the apple-of-his-eyes, his recently-turned-eighteen Mary, with her fine, exquisite features coupled with a to-die-for voluptuous body, had aroused these dirty old men’s unsatiated carnal desire.
Enteng was very polite and tried to explain the reasons why he could not give away his favorite daughter in marriage yet.
Karding was very gracious and sympathetic, willingly accepting the rejection of his overtures. In his second trip, Karding tried a different tact. He tried playing to the old man’s business predisposition. So, he boldly floated the idea of treating the young girl as a chattel. In his proposed laughable barter, he would give five milking carabaos and twenty egg-laying hens to trade for Mary. In any other setting, Enteng would have burst out laughing at the absurdity of the proposal.
But sensing the seriousness of the manner with which the idiotic scheme was presented, the old man wisely and politely declined. The subsequent visits were more threatening, with threats of bodily harm not only to Enteng himself but also to his entire family. His children and house staff were, without exception, very intimidated and scared.
Enteng tried to seek help from the captain of the nearby police precinct. The chief explained that due to the dual directive of fending off the Commies while, at the same time, trying to maintain peace and order, the resulting severe shortage of manpower prevented him from being able to extend the needed police protection. All he was willing to promise was a biweekly patrol of the family’s premises.
Old Vicente left the precinct utterly dejected, pondering on his way home what his next move would be.
Upon reaching his mansion, he encountered a team of men threatening everyone in the household. He hurriedly went to look for Karding, who was at the middle of the dastardly group. He tried to appeal to the rebel head to send away his loathsome band, but Karding stopped him and stonily told him, “Hand over your daughter Mary within twenty-four hours or else I will kill your entire family.” After issuing the ultimatum, the group ploddingly left. But before leaving, just for the fun of it, they beat up a couple of male house helps.
Moving in lightning-fast reaction to the threatened extermination of his entire family, he gathered all of his children. He lovingly embraced and kissed each and every one of his terrified offspring, promising to join them in a day or two. He then loaded them up into two reliable, well-maintained Ford vans. He instructed his two Filipino drivers to drive nonstop northbound, only halting when they reach the abode of his close friend, Peter, who owned a sprawling estate in Quezon City, located just northeast of Manila.
After taking care of his business and dictating instructions to a subordinate, he embarked on a trip up north to Peter’s place. He thanked his close friend’s magnanimity for taking in his children. He confided to his wealthy friend his dire predicament.
Acting on his deep familial feelings and hopefully thwarting the threat of his clan’s total annihilation, he made the decision of uprooting his entire family and resettling in Manila. Furthermore, realizing that distance might not be enough of a barrier to the evil guerrilla’s unreciprocated amorous intent, Enteng reluctantly decided on a gut-wrenching decision.
He decided to send his beloved Mary on a one-way trip to America.
CHAPTER 9
SULLIED ROSE
It is always difficult adjusting in a totally foreign environment. The theory prevalent among behavioral psychologists argues that the personality that eventually emerges (in a developing teen) is shaped by some of these important factors:
1) predisposition from genetic makeup (genotype)
2) guidance and mentoring by the parents during the formative years
3) religious teachings/exposure
4) environmental influences
Mary was raised in a very strict and conservative manner. She wasn’t allowed to go outside their mansion without permission. Trips to theaters, shopping places, and amusement parks are always with her siblings and heavily chaperoned. Boys and men bold enough to attempt courtship on any of the Sy sisters are contemptuously shooed away from the well-guarded palatial home.
In addition to being exposed to religious enlightenment at the ultra-exclusive, girls-only St. Mary’s Catholic High School, more attempts to inculcate religious doctrines and principles included serious Bible study sessions every Friday night and the regular four-hour long worship and church activities on Sundays.
Private tutors were hired not only to help them with their homework, but expected to give the excitable, energetic bunch lively piano and singing lessons.
But all these positive reinforcements, teachings, religious instructions, and preparations in the formative years were no guarantee to having the potency to offset the corrupting influence of a degenerate environment.
Throw a single seed of a flower into a pile of manure and you can get either of two outcomes:
1) You get a fragrant, dazzling rose that has risen regally from that mound of excrement.
Or
2) You end up with a sickly, stinky, sullied, and unattractive flower, barely piercing through the odious lump of dung.
It takes a great strength of character and incorruptible moral compass to overcome the effects of a debasing environment.
Sadly, because of the urgent manner with which the young Mary was uprooted, in the hope of prying her away from the clutches of that lustful revolutionary, there wasn’t enough time to properly instill these highly desirable traits in her.
She fell in with the wrong crowd. Totally alone and away from the warmth, support, guidance, and comfort of family, she did things she would later regret.
Wishing to gain acceptance from the miscreant gang, she did things that were criminal in nature. Because of her religious upbringing, she initially resisted the advances of the testosterone-laden delinquents. But through a co
mbination of skillful flattery, the showering of cash and lavish gifts, the hollow promises undying love and affection, the incessant pleadings and use of the oft-repeated yet misguided advise of “when in Rome, do as the Romans do,” she eventually gave in to carnal cravings. At the height of this doleful episode, she became promiscuous.
The worse thing was, her stepmother had stopped sending Mary her monthly allowance. With no money to pay for tuition, she quit school and started working as a poorly-paid, overworked waitress in a Vietnamese pho restaurant.
It was a pitiable turn of events: an innocent, young, rich princess turned to a hapless and broke waitress. She became the antithesis of the fictional Cinderella.
But just like in that fictional story, a Prince Charming came charging in, trying to rescue the damsel in distress.
Fate is always doing its handiwork as the master puppeteer. In the lifetime of each and every creature, there is always an eclectic mishmash of occurrences. For we, as vulnerable and pathetic marionettes, are being deftly manipulated as players in nature’s highly entertaining grand opera that easily trounced even the very best of those Broadway productions:
From idly whiling away as a single sperm or egg in that slimy gene pool…to gaining consciousness as that lovable, cuddly bundle of joy…to experiencing the most fun and carefree existence as a child…to encountering the confusing, complex emotions of a hormone-induced physical transformation…to struggling with the trials, frustrations, and tribulations of life…to questioning and trying to comprehend the purpose of one’s very existence…to experiencing excruciating agony of failure or defeat…to enjoying the exhilarating and intoxicating feeling of fleeting success…to delighting and being immensely pleasured by the enrapturing feelings of that unforgettable true love…to becoming aware of the temporal nature of our carnal-based sojourn…to witnessing the irreversible ravages of time.
And so in that cold, rainy night that seemed like eons ago, fate dealt a sympathetic hand to a struggling, crushed, and hopeless soul.
While her fine angelic face and stunning beauty remained breathtakingly seductive, she had endured seven years of hard living. In an advanced First World country like the good old USA, it could be quite unforgiving. If one didn’t have an education, especially the technical skills for such highly desirable professions like nurses, doctors, engineers, bitcoin miners, software security (anti-hacking) specialists, and the like, then so sorry, friend, but you are out of luck.
One would invariably be either stuck in menial, low-paying, low-skilled demeaning jobs or be underemployed or unemployed. For more than three scores (started in the early 1970s) now, there was a steady erosion of the middle class base, causing an increase in the growing number of poverty-stricken citizens.
Many economists have attributed this sad plight to the uncompetitiveness of some of this country’s manufacturing industries (foreign-based companies have much cheaper labor costs), the consequential wholesale disappearance of previously decent-paying manufacturing jobs (even high school level factory workers used to earn salaries according their middle class status), the outsourcing of some of the low-skilled occupations overseas, the poorly-thought-out or lopsided trade agreements, etc.
In such an ultracompetitive financial landscape, there was no chance for Mary, who was then a twenty-five-year-old college dropout, to advance up the economic ladder.
Lacking any sort of training and hardly equipped with technical skills, Mary reluctantly accepted her financial situation, focusing mainly in the grind and hard struggles to eke out a living. She resignedly went through the hustle and bustle of daily living, solely channeling her efforts on surviving to live another day.
It was raining hard, and Jerry was toiling away inside his cubicle, located at a shared faculty office at the community college where he was employed. He was so busy doing last-minute editing of a chemistry final exam he intended to use the next day that he had lost track of time. He even forgot to eat dinner. He glanced at the wall clock: 9:45 p.m. “Damn,” he uttered.
He had heard the growling plea from his empty stomach for nourishment earlier, and ignored it. He is now weakened by the energy-sapping effects of skipping dinner. He knew that he had to rush as soon as possible to the Vietnamese pho restaurant across the college before their 10:00 p.m. closing time if he wanted that reinvigorating and flavorful sustenance.
In his haste, Jerry absentmindedly forgot to grab his raincoat, then he sprinted laboriously across the wet and slippery grounds of the public institution. He arrived at the bustling, still-crowded noodle shop dripping wet, totally aware that he had about a minute to place his take-out order of the steaming hot and nourishing bowl of beef pho. Anxiously, he called the attention of an Asian waitress nearby, who was furiously wiping away the laminated top of a recently-vacated table.
Upon hearing his call, she turned around and their eyes locked.
“…Strangers…in…the…night…”
CHAPTER 10
UNWEDDED BLISS
This was a no-doubter. You could bet your bottom dollar on it.
This had the all the fingerprints of that mischievous little tyke. It was hard to figure out how so much incomprehensible impishness be bottled inside that lovable little devil (or angel?). He was probably pissed off, suffering from a severe case of lactose intolerance. This temporary discomfort probably caused him to shoot his love-inducing miniature arrows indiscriminately.
The cherubic-faced little munchkin had used his arrows to spark an instantaneous love between two complete strangers. An irresistible, overwhelming force swept two totally polar opposites together, imbuing in each, in that singular moment of time, a heart-pounding and magical love.
It was a coalescing of “love-at-first-sight” and “love-you-just-the-way-you-are” moment.
“…I’m ready to take a chance again…”
For how else could anyone explain this awe-inspiring, out-of-blue enchantment, forcibly bringing two dissimilar people together?
“…I can’t smile without you…”
Jerry is one of those prodigious talents, getting his PhD when he was only twenty-two years old. He is an extrovert, always singing and entertaining a crowd. He is average looking, charming, sociable, sharp-witted, humorous, and polite. Although fast approaching thirty-seven years of age, he isn’t really looking for any serious relationship, nor marriage. While he believed that his special someone is somewhere out there, he isn’t inclined to actively go looking her. As far as his marital status is concerned, he preferred to let destiny do its thing and deal him whatever card was in store for him.
He was gifted in his ability to explain difficult concepts of chemistry and biology in a way that students understood. His lectures were never boring, since he sprinkled those with jokes, humor, and spontaneous singing of oldies love songs. His former students looked forward to the last few sessions of every semester, because it was always fun and highly entertaining. Every student was given a chance to sing in front of the class for extra credit points (more points if they emote while singing). Some of these undergraduates went to such extremes, like dressing up like Elvis, Old Blue Eyes, Liberace, or Cyndi Lauper.
His modest salary was more than enough to allow him to live in comfort, because he led a Spartan lifestyle. His only lone stab at self-indulgence was when he bought a new ML-320 Mercedes Benz SUV, some years back.
Jerry liked his German-made car since it was very reliable and rarely broke down. He was a generous and giving person. He did weekly deliveries of fresh fruits, fresh juices, and canned goods to the Pasadena City College food pantry for the benefit of students facing food insecurity issues. So, it was no surprise that when he learned of Mary’s sad plight and her grueling daily struggles to survive, he generously offered her the spare room in his apartment, at no charge. He figured the money she saved in rent could allow her some needed breathing room from the excessively usurious interest rates that credit card companies were charging her. This is the very dismal reality that
our income-challenged working poor face all too commonly. Their paychecks aren’t enough to cover their expenses, so they resort to using high-interest-charging credit cards to bridge the difference. The disheartening consequence is that these mounting credit cards bills would not only be albatrosses, but may turn into the figurative alligators that eventually eat the financially-enslaved folks alive.
Although they had been mutually besotted with each other, and blissfully coexisting and sharing Jerry’s apartment, the next phase of their relationship didn’t progress until a month later.
The night started innocently. The professor came home dog tired and completely exhausted. It had been a long and grueling day’s work for him: attending a departmental meeting and another meeting to brainstorm funding ideas for a proposed temporary shelter (Jerry was passionate for these types of noble and just causes) for PCC students facing housing-related issues. Due to the nonstop yearly increases in house prices and a dearth in supply of housing and apartment units, a growing number of collegians find themselves in varying degrees of homelessness. In addition, Jerry held court during his two-hour-long office hours, patiently answering questions and clarifying some of the topics that confused his biochemistry students.
Finally, his workday mercifully ended when he finished teaching and lecturing to two separate groups of eager college coeds. Mary just got out of the shower, feeling refreshed, cleaned up, recharged, and energized. Jerry let himself in to the apartment, thankful that he survived another arduous and challenging day. When they crossed paths in the living room, this modern-day Juliet, invigorated by the hot shower and smelling so fragrantly, looked compassionately at her fatigued Romeo, his wearied face and slumped posture betraying a day’s worth of hard work. She gently grabbed hold of his left hand and gingerly led him to her room, intending to give him a soothing back rub and body massage. It was at moments like these when nature took over—two love-struck people in a private and tender moment.