This is somewhat like a novel that reflects my social concerns about the lives of poor and rich people and the mingling between their dreams and goals in life and how I see the character and attitude in them. I hope to touch lives and make the readers think about the things written here. I also want to inspire many people to initiate change for the better especially for the unfortunate ones.
ALL UNDER HEAVEN
The still wind brings chill to my spine in spite of the scorching sunny rays looming in the window shield. It’s almost noon yet the late Amihan winds make me curl in the seat of the bus I am riding bound home. Yah, home. I wonder what awaits me there, with the fact that a newly graduate young adult with nothing in mind but lousy guys and jamming with friends like me should not be expected with any responsibility.
“A holy shit life!”
“Yah, that’s what you call it.” Came the emphatizing reply.
I readily realized that those are the bus vendors’ remark for the poor sale during the day.
Suddenly ice-cold fingers touched or rather squeezed me in the arm. I hesitantly turn my stare to the left and see a morose-looking child about an age of ten if my guess is right, and his white shirt is as brown as his skin with some morsels of food I can’t guess at the moment. I look at his open right palm directed to me and to his pity-asking eyes. I wonder where his parents are, so I asked him, “Where are your parents?” he bows his head and mumbles something I don’t understand. So I just looked for some coins in my pocket and gave them to him. Then without saying anything he turned to the other passenger to my front and did the same.
Whew! I thought. Isn’t life a holy shit? Then a distinct ringing of a polyphonic cell phone momentarily catches the attention of the passengers. A wealthy looking guy answers the phone and chats for it for some time. Am I the only audience of this reality show? Maybe yes. Maybe no. After all, I am a middle class citizen who thinks only of myself and my family affairs and my friends affairs, what else? I can’t think of any other else.
The bus starts for a run and the wind keeps on bringing me goose bumps. Sometime later we halt for a stop beside a gas refilling station. I am gazing at the man holding the pump; he has some resemblance to one of my ex-boyfriends. Yep, the nose. Suddenly I realized he noticed my stare and I stare away.
“The price just keeps on going up. It’s bound to go up, never down.”
The man I was staring awhile ago just nodded and turned his back to me.
I wonder how it is to be in their shoes.
Home is not what I expected it to be. “Home” which is sometimes literally transfigured as house; our old house was gone. The house I am referring to was cement cobbled, with thick walls and for upper extension cemented roof. It is grander now. Imposing its tiled walls and tainted glass windows and a striking “EVIA” on its second floor mast, every passing pair of eyes spark in awe while gazing up and a gasp of “anlaking bahay!” (What a big house!) is sometimes heard. Well it is not that big. Its unique design makes an illusion of a bigger space inside. And actually, it is not ours. The thought that people think it’s ours bring evil throat laughter to me. I might own it someday.
Home now is my family – full of love and laughter, hearty talks about anime cartoons and TV shows, DVD movies and songs, parental touch and care, occasional food trips, unexpected bonding sessions, angry sermons and whipping ceremonies, traditional petty quarrels, sibling rivalry and laziness issues going over and over again. What a pretty summarized common Filipino family setting. This is one reason why I love to be a Filipino. The families are so-closely knitted that it affects one’s whole life until hair has gone white. Blood thicker than water really hits on the surface. Especially when the surface becomes pink. Whatever.
Pink is the color of water when you wash your hands drenched with blood. Pink water. Flowing. Flowing on the blood-thirsty land. It smells like blood. Fresh blood.
Sometimes it I black. Thick pool of black blood that has dried beneath and around a stiff, cold human body. It is not flowing. It is cursing.
This is one reason why I hate to be Filipino. There is so much blood. Fresh and dried human blood.
Blood! Who killed my husband!? Who killed him!?
One rich family is in agony in the past week. The father has been found on his favorite couch as if sleeping but when the wife held his head; she felt, smelled and sees fresh and still warm blood. It seems somebody has shot him dead with a gun with a silencer. The murderer killed him with much anger in his heart. I bet the killed man had made something evil or something good that the killer or someone who commands the killer wanted him dead. It is very easy to kill these days.
In the Philippines, the rich can get good trial and justice for their families. But the poor never did. The poor are even accused of things they never do and end up in jail or end up being sentenced to death. Maybe it is the same in other countries. The poor really is pitying.
Poor people beg. Poor people are slaves. Poor people die without name or dignity. I hate how it goes and I hate that I have nothing to do with it but my heart is enraged. I want to give them what they need. I want the rich and abusive people to suffer like the poor people so they will understand how it is to be treated the way they treat the poor. I want to punish all rich and evil people with my own hands.
Luckily, I am not a lawyer. Or a police. I am not a judge. I am just a simple person who cares. A teacher by profession and a writer by heart. From a young age I have felt that I have a great urge to help the poor people who are always degraded in everything. I want to help them find themselves and stand up to the abusive rich people. I want them to have good lives. I did not grow up to a poor family. My family is rather blessed. However I grew up seeing many poor kids and poor people around the town and poor people killed and deprived of human rights in the nightly news on the television. At an early age, I understand that when you are poor, you have nobody to support you but yourself and God. You have no friends and the government does not care about you.
I never really noticed time passing on me. Well, I am a certified tambay (jobless) for almost a year now and I am the clerk of the Barangay (the smallest unit of government in the Philippines). Receiving an honorarium of Php 1,250 for a month ain’t bad for a lazy me who only wants to have boys and friends around and especially when this money only goes to petty needs. At least I am expecting a permanent teaching job in the high school of this small yet populated and organized town. May God bids to upgrade my old dilapidating self. I am too young for stagnancy and too old not having established goals like providing basic needs for my own and maybe for others who are equally needing my provision. Like my younger siblings perhaps. Or making money is the thing that I really should be doing.
“You stupid idiot ungrateful pig!” ---
“Madam, let’s be respectable here, be calm” ---
“After getting what I have given you! And your family all these years! You have the mouth to say that I enslaved you!? Ingrate! For only collecting left-over food from neighbors for the pig, you say I have enslaved you!? When all these years I fed your family! I send your son to school! How ingrate!”
“Madam, please try not to include your personal malediction to your balae (parent of the son-in-law) to this case. We are trying to solve the case. We are delaying time and hampering the solution if we say personal matters here,” says the presiding officer of this Barangay case.
“Ay! That demon rouses my blood pressure! So liar! So ingrate!”
“Ok, madam, to continue, your balae”---
“I never wanted him to be my balae!”
“Ok, Ok. As I was saying, the motorcycle was lost in your vicinity madam, and the complainant here, Mr. and Mrs. Abano who sold the motorcycle to you,”---
“It was not sold to me! It is for his son, I just paid the down payment of Php 25,000! It was for his son!”
I can’t help but smile in irritation and realization of the common life problems such as this one. You see recording the proceedings of such case hearing in the Barangay not only irritates me. It also affects my convictions in life.
“As I am saying, the computation of Mr. Abano is”---
Php28,000 is the amount yet to be paid for the tricycle, kagawad (councilor), since the down payment was substarcted which is Php25,000 and the installments given amounted to Php47,000.”
Wow, my computation is much lower, the amount to be paid should only be about Php24,000. I gaze at the wealthy man and woman who sold the missing tricycle to the angry mother. They are beaming with half-inches gold necklace and signature watch and clothes. I unknowingly continued my gaze to the left beside me to the babbling angry older woman who may seem older than her actual age. She and the father of her son-in-law have rugged skin and rugged shirts with marks of stains from whatever work they have. Again, I am an audience of a reality show.
“So, as we are settling it down, in behalf of our Barangay Captain, we charge it to you, Mr. Fermanes, the amount of Php28,000 because the motorcycle was lost before you completed the installments. And since you are the driver of this tricycle for rent, you have the responsibility to complete the payments.
The ashamed Mr. Fermanes nodded and slumped on his chair. I am thinking that there might be no payment that will happen since the tricycle is missing and the poor man has no other income aside from being a tricycle driver. I really pity him.
“Kagawad, can I pay it again in installments because you know, I am poor?”
“Mr. Fermanes, what if you do the same thing, not paying for some time? Can we charge it to your balae?” said Mr. Abano.
The old angry woman flared up again.
“What are you saying? I can’t be responsible for that! What happened to my Php25,000? Only spit on the air?! Oh, no! I will not be responsible for that!”
“Ah madam, please lower your tone. I can say here that we will just al sign in a kasunduan (contract) stating that Mr. Fermanes is liable to pay the said amount in installments for a year. Is it OK with you?”
“Ah Ok. And you can’t not acknowledge it or else we will have you imprisoned,” said Mrs. Abano.
The poor tricycle driver only nods down. Where will he get the money? I wrinkled my nose then.
“But, how if, I happen to find the motorcycle? Will I own it?” he asked.
“That will depend on your balae,” answered the kagawad.
“Well, what happened to my Php25,000 only spit on the air. What is the use of the motorcycle to me or to my old husband? Give it to your son. For the income the motorcycle can give to your son and my daughter.”
And I got an agreeable aura on my forehead.
And the case is settled.
Life goes on so this story of poor, of middleclass and of rich men goes on, too.
All under heaven.
