by Mia Alvar
Visitors, the village that had once calmed her by filling the house in Jim’s absence, now threatened to drive her insane. Her family came, of course. Khakis, who claimed to be filing reports. Friends, with food. How to sort the real news from the noise? And the gate! What a fumble to unlatch it! By the time she got it open, the sound in the street was always gone.
They kept Jackie indoors for weeks. No, you cannot help Vivi hang the clothes. It’s more fun in here anyway! The TV’s here, and all your toys. “To play is your work,” Milagros said absently. Jackie couldn’t wait to work for real: she gazed at maids and street sweepers the way her parents had worshiped their professors. She loved laundry, her grandmother’s career: the soap-and-lemon smell, the cold, wet cotton on her cheek. But keeping Jackie indoors, now, was not an idea, not a slogan. “Outside is dangerous,” Milagros said. “Outside is just for grown-ups now.”
“But how come Jaime was allowed?”—Jackie obsessed, at that young age, with justice.
“In the country things are different,” said Milagros. “Here in the city there’s a giant lady who eats children for dinner. You just look at her the wrong way,” she said, “or laugh too loudly and poof! no more Jackie.”
Hadn’t she and Jim discussed, and sworn off, talking such nonsense to children? Children deserve the truth, not some mysterious code language: didn’t she believe that, still? “Go inside, Jackie. Now!”
After dark, in bed, she tossed like a new mother, waking to every fuss and startle.
They searched in shifts: Jim drove while she sat phoneside, or vice versa. One night, after another useless drive, she stepped over Jackie in the living room and walked past Vivi in the kitchen. There was no news, again. Tonight only Jim’s voice could keep her from crying. She approached the study door and heard him at his desk.
“I see,” he was saying into the phone. “Understood.”
He hung up and sat with tented fingers. On the wall hung his press passes. Jefferson and del Pilar stared across the room at one another.
What did Jim see? What did he understand? She, too, would have liked to see something, understand anything, in those dark days.
She pushed the door open; he turned. “No news,” she reported, flatly.
After that phone call, ending just as she walked in, she asked about his afternoons, made him explain his evenings. Could you blame her, tense and tired as she was, for worrying, as wives had worried since the dawn of husbands, that there might be Someone Else? Her mother, after all, had planted the idea for years. And once this Other Woman entered Milagros’s mind, she never left. Her son was gone; a stranger took his place. Milagros listened both for Jaime and for Her.
One day, after the sound of Jim’s engine had faded from the garage, she opened his top desk drawer. He’d left the key in the lock. They were not a husband and wife who locked each other out of desk drawers. Her fingers grazed the watermark of some letterhead, trifolded, off-white. Biscuit. She took the papers out, and yes: they matched the walls. She squinted at the seal on top. These couldn’t be school notices from Ateneo; Vivi would have handed those to her. Slowly she recognized the blue wheel. The yolk-yellow sun. THE OFFICE OF THE PRESS SECRETARY. Another love letter, like the kind Jim used to receive long ago. She turned the pages: more than one. Same seal, many dates. A long courtship.
They’d wept together over the torment of not knowing. Closed offices, tied hands, phones that rang and rang. Men at the Metrocom station who said, We’re doing all we can, while paring their nails, flagrantly, in front of her. For all Jim and Milagros knew, some ordinary nut job had kidnapped their son. They had no proof of more. For all I know, they’d both said, again and again. For all we know. At least they lived in the dark together. But here in this desk were letters, addressed to Jim, dated since Jaime had disappeared.
She shook her head, which made the spinning worse. She made bargain after swift bargain: she’d take an Other Woman, she’d accept receipts for dinners and lingerie, late nights and lipstick on his collar, over this. She flipped faster, reading words she promptly wanted to unread. No use: scholarship girls knew how to scan and skim for meaning.
…illegal press activity at 26 Avalon Row and the distribution of printed material without the proper media licenses.
…specific terms, as follows. You shall (1) cease and desist all printing at 26 Avalon Row; (2) submit to the conditions of house arrest as outlined in our previous memorandum dated 7 October 1985, including the surveillance of all incoming and outgoing communications; and (3) craft a letter of retraction to be printed in the Metro Manila Herald, and other outlets as necessary, discrediting all claims listed by date on the following page…
…under orders to enforce such consequences as the administration deems fit, for the failure to abide by said terms.
There may as well have been an Other Woman. Milagros felt every pang her poor, scorned friends had described. Their stomachs, too, had sunk to the floor. And then that floor had disappeared beneath them. Like her, they forgot how to breathe. When Jim came to the doorway, Milagros was caught, like any jealous wife, sniffing and rifling around.
To his credit, he didn’t insult her with denials. He looked at the letters and said, “I thought it premature to tell you.”
Of course he’d planned to tell her, sometime. Was there reason not to believe that? Because her hands were shaking, the edge of one page sliced into her thumb, which she brought, bleeding, to her mouth, dropping the papers.
“The regime is all but over,” Jim explained. But anyone could lose a job. For this country, after twenty years, Jim did not believe that was enough. After twenty years, a dictator didn’t simply get to be fired. Or worse, get to resign. Papa had to be called to account.
“And unlike him,” Jim said, “we’ll have the decency to do it right. With a trial. And with evidence like this. What hasn’t he done to stay in power? We’re far from the only ones, you know.”
“I never said we were the only ones,” Milagros said.
“The paper trail itself tells you a lot about his state.” Jim pointed to his brain.
“And Jaime’s state?” Milagros squeaked, like someone not all there herself.
“Is safe. This”—Jim pointed at the papers on the floor—“is theater, that’s all. Intimidation tactics. Some goons were told to shake me up a bit, and this was their interpretation. He’s lost control of his men, along with his mind.”
The room tilted around Milagros. If Papa’s lost so much control, she would have said, if she could find the words, how can anyone be safe?
“My father saved this man’s life,” Jim said. “He’s not about to trifle with my son’s. In all my years at Camp, why do you think I had a private cell to read and think in? All the others, even some women, were shoved around, at least. My term was study leave, compared to theirs. Did you ever see a scratch on me? A dubious advantage, I know—I wasn’t proud of it, but I’ll be damned if I don’t use it now.”
Milagros knelt to leaf again through the pages on the floor, hoping to see something new.
“You can fill in the blanks,” said Jim, as if to save her trouble. “Stop the presses, take it all back, get my son.”
“Your son,” said Milagros. (I repeat, she thought, as in one of those presidential speeches.) “Your son?”
“Our son, Milagros, of course. And we will. It’s just a matter of time. We’ll get him back without kowtowing to a dictator. You’ve always trusted me. On this I need you to trust me more than ever.”
There was nothing for her to do but to repeat. “I’ve always trusted you,” she said, her voice so faint she may as well have mouthed the words.
—
Jaime would escape, she fantasized. This was, Milagros knew, a stretch. Her pudgy boy, so easy to bribe with snacks and candy. She’d sooner believe that Jackie had broken out of her nursery lockdown. But he would miss her, Milagros knew that too; he’d miss Jackie and Soba and want to come home. People talked of how prison had changed the
m. They came out of Camp Crame or Fort Bonifacio stronger, out for blood. Could this be the thing, at last, that manned up Jaime Jr.? At City Hospital, she’d seen pain turn children bionic. A bone marrow biopsy so painful that a boy bent the steel rail of his bed. A girl whose high, shrill weeping could have shattered the windows. So she had to imagine Jaime in pain to imagine him free. What twisted fantasy was this? From what kind of mother?
—
In the morning Jim was at the kitchen table with his coffee and newspapers. A stranger. She could hear, in the nursery, his men unlatching the trundle bed from its hatch.
Now she’d found the words in her throat. “Where is he?” she said, sending Vivi and Jackie out into the yard. “You’re so convinced that he’s safe. How do you know? I want proof.”
Jim sighed, as if he’d wished to spare her these details but now had no choice. “A source inside the Metrocom, someone I trust,” he said, “told me he’s in a safe house outside Santa Clara.”
“A source,” Milagros repeated. “A safe house?” She imagined a windowless cabin, an armed khaki guarding it—the kind of man who had never, in thirteen years, made her feel safe. Her husband, a man who’d always despised euphemisms—why would he accept this one? “Ask your source for an address,” she said.
“I’m trying,” said Jim. “He walks a fine line too—working for them, and with me.”
“You care more about your sources,” Milagros said, “than about him. You never cared for Jaime. He was never tough enough for you. You’re happy he’s in danger. You don’t care if it’s Ateneo or a ‘safe house’ that mans him up.”
“I care what country he grows up in,” Jim replied. “What kind of man he emulates.”
“He can’t emulate you if he’s not here,” Milagros said. “Just stop the presses! Where’s the fun in being a newsman if you can’t, at least once in your life, say Stop the presses?”
He looked up from his Bangkok Post at her, but didn’t close it.
“They will win,” she said, “if they have to drag you out kicking and screaming.”
Jim shook his head. “I can’t fear a weak man. If there’s anything emptier than his promises, it’s his threats. His own kidneys are in revolt against him, at this point.”
“Organs don’t get into politics,” Milagros said. “Trust me, I’m a nurse.”
When he didn’t answer, she snatched the Bangkok Post from him and tore it, clumsily, to bits. “We are talking about your children here!”
“Yes, Milagros.” He stood and left the newspapers splayed on the oilcloth. Before going into his study, he turned to her. “And how do you want our children to remember us?”
February 25, 1986
At midnight she wakes up to fireworks. Or is it gunfire? Even the radio can’t tell. But that must be the thrill of EDSA: partying like it’s your last night on earth, because it might be. In her suburban bed Milagros closes her eyes and sees Jaime Jr. on an ordinary New Year’s Eve, scraping watusi sticks along the ground, the phosphorus sparking under his rubber slippers.
By the time she wakes again, the party has reached her living room. Her mother on the sofa, Jackie on Vivi’s lap, and neighbors—mostly wives, Milagros notes, whose husbands must have gone into the city—in front of the TV. Someone has printed yellow T-shirts for the children: with Kuya’s face on them, for the boys; and his widow’s, for the girls. On-screen, helicopters swarm the country club in Greenhills, where the rebel leaders wait for her. A brass band plays “Bayan Ko” (My Country), “Tie a Yellow Ribbon,” and, as if remembering who’s watching, “Dixie.”
Cheers and yellow banners as the widow steps out of a van. The mothers on the sofa chant her name, teaching their children how to flash L-for-LABAN with their thumbs and forefingers. In Vivi’s lap, Jackie’s all but trembling with excitement, her quiet, serious house transformed as in some Christmases and New Years past. But when Vivi sees Milagros headed to the kitchen, Jackie’s handed off again, demoted to a neighbor’s lap. Something to eat, ma’am? All Milagros wants is water; Naz’s magic beans have dried her mouth out.
Back in the bedroom, on the radio, the widow takes her oath of office, gives her speech. Shattering the dictatorship. Grateful to the military. Rights and liberties. National reconciliation. Her first executive order. Her cabinet. Jim must be there for all of it. Milagros can imagine him, standing in but not of the crowd, as they recite the Our Father and sing the national anthem.
And so he is, sardined in the Club Filipino, watching the people watch their new President. A members-only country club, where all those 1898 heroes are said to have dreamed the nation up. Now it’s bigwigs in barong, the foreign press. Following the rebels’ lead, they’ve signed the so-called Citizens’ Resolution: out with Papa, long live Madam President. The signatures read like a page out of Manila’s 400.
Rich-People Power. Martial law, to some, was a rude interruption: now their fancy dinner party can resume.
Afterward, he rushes from the club to Malacañang Palace, where—only in Manila, says his taxi driver—the stubborn sitting President has booked his own oath and inauguration. A flash of Jim’s press pass, a pat-down at the palace gates. In the ceremonial hall, a few cabinet ministers—tourism, agriculture, public works—some soldiers, a New Society youth group. Not a barong or butterfly sleeve between them—a first, in all Jim’s visits to this palace. Entering to watery applause and out-of-sync chants of his name, the President slurs through his speech. The First Lady, in white, paces behind the podium. It’s over within twenty minutes. The room clears quickly. As Jim leaves, soldiers with rifles guard the lawns, between tanks and battle buses, all their engines running.
At home, in Batanglobo Village, the radio and TV blink off the air just as the President appears. His fifth inauguration in twenty years, silenced by static. A rebel sniper has hit three stations with one shot at a single transmitter. PLEASE STAND BY.
At the Herald offices, Jim fires off his tale of two inaugurations. A chaotic week: no one there to police Jim, to send him back to Entertainment where he belongs. (All the movie stars are at EDSA anyway, he’s noticed.) Not that it’s a free-for-all: there are new rules now. An editor has scrubbed his piece about the new President: striking out all mention of her inexperience, or her family fortune, playing up slain martyr’s widow, pious Catholic, and housewife instead. The same editor would like Jim to tone down what he’s said about the Club Filipino elite. The piece will end on feel-good lines from the widow’s inauguration speech, not on Jim’s wet-blanket questions about the country’s future.
Jim’s on hold with a friend from the Washington Post when he hears that helicopters have banked on the Pasig River. By the time he reaches the palace again, they’ve lifted off. With the First Family inside, people are saying, bound for Honolulu. How has all this happened in one day? After his years at Camp, where one minute looked so much like the next Jim could lose track of how many days or nights had passed, a short, full day is still a shock to him.
On Laurel Street, ribbon after yellow ribbon waves and waves. Jeepneys, with nowhere to move, have become snack bars, blaring music, offering shade. The archbishop has ended his hunger strike; his devoted nuns cut cake and scoop ice cream at the palace gates.
A good old-fashioned fiesta, the radio tells Milagros. She thinks of Jaime’s first birthday: the single dancing candle flame, ten chubby fingers in the frosting. The phone off its cradle so Jim could hear, and sing along from Camp.
With no one left there to protect, the Marines have left the palace grounds. Jim sees people cutting away at the barbed-wire fence, fiddling with the intercom and walkie-talkies in the guard tower. He walks into the mansion freely, no press pass or pat-down this time.
A typhoon couldn’t have left more wreckage. Capsized tables, scattered papers, curry gone cold in foil trays on the dining table. He passes the door of the chapel, where servants huddle in prayer. A wardrobe filled with slippery silk gowns and bulletproof brassieres tough and reptilian to his tou
ch. A frigid meat locker whose shelves of beef are stamped STATESIDE.
Beside the king-size master bed, there’s a hospital gurney, an oxygen tank, and an IV stand, its bag three-quarters full. Adult diapers on the bathroom floor, soiled.
On the twenty-fifth of February 1986, thinks Jim, who can’t resist a juicy lede, sometime between his oath of office and his helicopter ride out of the country, the tenth President of the Republic of the Philippines shat himself. He shakes his head. It’s the kind of showy, self-satisfied hook Jim would have produced at fifteen, for his high school newspaper. Herald editors won’t go for it any more than the Jesuit priests did.
Within an hour, Jim’s quiet tour has ended. It seems like half of Manila has stormed the palace. Cries of Soubenir! Soubenir! bounce off the mahogany-paneled walls. Those who can’t make off with a military helmet or a high-heeled shoe settle for a radio, a plant. Jim threads his way against the stampede. Outside, people smile for pictures against streetlamps, under trees. He reaches for his Dictaphone, but when he bothers to stop someone for an interview—Who are you? Were you at EDSA, too? What brought you to the palace?—he feels like a Camp interrogator, and his subject’s in a rush to get inside.
Back at the Herald offices, the photo department is shredding pictures of the stampede, and filing others away. “While we’re at it,” he can hear the harried City Desk editor suggesting, “let’s brainstorm some other words? Stampede sounds so…negative.” Jim can hear the former President, his onetime godfather, call them all balimbing, ten-sided as star fruit. Wetting their fingertips to gauge the wind’s direction. No better than the politicians.
We are talking about your children here.
He stands abruptly—turning all his colleagues’ heads, never his style. Without saying good-bye he leaves the Herald newsroom.