The Mystery on 17th Street

Body-2

“How does Rogelio behave toward you when you see each other in events?”

“He is calm all the time. He has a big and jovial smile plastered on his face as he makes the rounds of the press club. He appears so friendly, temperate and religious. The media is generally fond of him. They published photos showing the general embracing the icon of the Virgin Mary. I got a copy with the press release and threw both into the trash can.”

“He had the nerve,” my mother responded.

“I cannot imagine doing battle in the mountains without shoes or with shoes that are falling apart. You put your life at risk; the least that a commander could do is provide good shoes.” My father shook his head. “I wonder how he can face himself. Maybe he turns his back on the mirror when he combs his hair in the morning.”

“Why don’t you publish a ‘wanted’ bulletin in your paper? ‘Wanted: thief of my son’s clothing.’” My mother abruptly changed topics and resumed her lament about my clothes.

“What will be your reward?” my father asked, cutting a piece of his omelette and sticking it into his mouth.

“I will give them your hens!” My mother laughed out loud as she saw my father enjoying the omelette. She had the capacity for humor even in the most taxing circumstances. She knew how much my father cared for the hens.

“Not my hens,” he said. “I need them for our omelettes.” We all laughed and forgot the theft and any potential threats to my father’s life.

“What did you learn in school this week?” my father asked as he turned toward me.

“We are learning multiplication, writing our alphabet, English and Filipino,” I said. “My teacher said that I am making good progress, but I have to work hard on my math.”

My school was a few blocks from our house. I walked there with Noli and Rhuel, each of us carrying a plastic bag that held our notebooks, books, paper, and pencil. Actually, most of the time we didn’t walk; we chased each another, kicking up the dust of our streets. Our parents complained about our dirty feet and broken slippers.

“On the last grading period, math was his lowest,” Nanay said. She placed a small bowl of kalamunggay soup close to my plate. “This kalamunggay will make you brighter,” she said with a teasing smile.

“Maybe you need to put more effort into it,” Tatay said. “When school breaks up for the summer in two weeks, maybe you can spend some time brushing up on your math. Your mother can help you. She is the math wizard in this family,” Tatay said.

“One of us has to be. Otherwise, we will get cheated in the weighing scale and change in the Cogon Market. The vendors can add, subtract, multiply and divide very quickly, quicker than any math teacher in town,” she replied.

“Agustin takes after me. I like languages,” Tatay smiled, puffing out his chest.

“Sakto na. Don’t extend your chest out too much. You might break your old back,” Nanay quipped, laughing as she took a sip of her tablea.

This started a round of banter at the table between Tatay and Nanay, and I joined in. Meals were our times for learning and gaining insight about one another before we went our separate ways for the day to do our different tasks.

Like any other Saturday, breakfast was followed with the routine of work around the house. My father went to his garden to care for his plants, feed the hens, and sweep the yard. My mother cleaned the table and the kitchen and collected our clothes to wash them.

The neighborhood was waking up. The sounds of mothers directing their children to clean the house, wash the laundry, sweep the front yard or tugkaran, and feed the dogs could be heard. Tin basins or batya clanged and echoed from the houses as the women and maids carried them to the back, set them down by the faucet, and squatted in front of them to wash the laundry by hand with bars of Perla soap. The activity made their hands raw; when they healed, they became calloused. My mother had calloused hands.

Time was not to be wasted. “We have to catch the sun, Agustin,” Nanay said. “The early laundry gets the sun.” Sitting around in the morning was almost an unforgivable sin. There is no room for laziness on the first part of the day. Siesta, yes, but the morning was set aside for work. My mother was firm with that.

I knew my part. I took the coconut husk and broom and went to my room. I applied wax on the floor. The wax was round and pink and smelled of petroleum. The petrol made the floor shine. We bought it for a cent from the store at the end of our street. We did not know then the consequences of cleaning with gas. A lighted match accidentally dropped onto a floor glistening with petroleum would have lit up our house and reduced it to ashes. But that never happened, one of the many blessings I am grateful for as I look back. I positioned my foot on the husk and pushed forward and backward, polishing the wood, finding a rhythm, and stopping only when the floor shone like a mirror. I did the same to the other parts of the house: my parent’s bedroom, the kitchen, the sala that was also our dining space, and the front and back stairs outside the house. My mother was particular about cleanliness, and none of us dared fall short of her standards.

While I cleaned the front stairs, I stretched my neck to see what my friends were doing. Noli was outside sitting on his family’s porch, stretching his long legs out. In doing so, he hit Spartacus, the dog in front of him. The dog with droopy eyes and ears winced, and Noli kicked it, this time intentionally, sending the dog running away with its tail between its legs. If there is one thing that I regret most in my childhood, it was our disregard for our dogs. We did not know any better then. There are times that I find myself asking God to allow me to see Spartacus in heaven, to give me a chance to make up for the unkindness we showed.

My friend saw me and nodded his head. I nodded back, an acknowledgment that we would meet up and play after our tasks were done. He pointed a finger toward Rhuel’s house. Our friend was helping his father clear up the ditch in front of their home. Noli clapped to call Rhuel’s attention. He gestured with his hands to indicate that we would play litik. Our friend looked up, and so did his father. Noli dropped his arms to his side. He did not want Rhuel’s father to know that he was calling his son to play. We were careful not to be disrespectful to Mr. Abellana. He was the principal in our school.

My mother finished her laundry and took her round rattan basket to the Cogon Market to buy dried fish, cooking oil, vinegar, sea salt, sugar, rice and pilit. She needed the pilit to make suman for her novena at home that night. She took two empty bottles with her, one for vinegar and the other for cooking oil. Before she left, she paused to touch the pink and red bougainvilleas and the sampaguita on our veranda. She held the tiny white blossoms of the sampaguita to her nose, breathing in their sweet and sharp fragrance. She clipped some and placed them in her hair. She certainly knew, long before others, to stop and smell the flowers. She went down the stairs to find a calesa, the Filipino version of a carriage, to take her to the market.

I finished wiping the front stairs in a hurry. When I was done, I ran to my room and opened a cardboard box where I stored my rubber bands and marbles like valuable jewelry. They were expensive; not every child could afford them. My father bought me a dozen rubber bands, and the rest were won in competitions. My goal was to get more. I counted very carefully the seventy-eight rubber bands, one at a time. They were badges of honor among the children in the neighborhood. A championship in litik was a coveted title among my peers. I took fifty and slid them up my left arm. They almost reached up to my elbow. There were green, red, and blue. I ran down our front stairs and crossed the street to Noli’s house. I did not tell my father where I was. He knew where to find me. When it came to our Saturdays playtime, my father was obliging; so were Rhuel’s and Noli’s fathers. They allowed us to be children, to play maru-maru, litik, kundese, and bato-lata; to climb trees and eat their leaves and fruit; to chase fireflies, catch grasshoppers, get dirty and quarrel. We were grateful to them for the time. So ordinary when it happened, yet so full of enchantment when we look back. Those days were the Sabbaths of our lives that gave us the courage to face the Mondays of our adult years. Noli later said that he had learned all he needed to know about becoming an exceptional salesman from being a child in our neighborhood. Rhuel developed the art of diplomacy from being caught in the middle of Noli and me. I gained insight about people, the complexities and fragilities, from my parents and nosy neighbors. I also learned that most of the time, our quarrels are about nothing more than rubber bands.

Rhuel ran across the street to join me and Noli. He could not wait to play. The elastic around his pants was old and loose, and his shorts were always in danger of falling off. His left hand was constantly pulling up the left side to prevent them from sliding down.

Playing rubber bands was serious business in our neighborhood and school. It was a source of our recognition, pride, and belonging. We intertwined the elastics and wore them like necklaces. The longer and thicker they draped, the more popular one became. They were our trophies. The boys went to sleep, dreaming of these multicolored lastiko and of winning them all.

We met under the lomboy tree, one of our favorite spots. Noli, Rhuel and I each contributed twenty rubber bands in colors of blue, red, green, and yellow. They looked very desirable in our eyes. We intertwined them and knotted them at the middle. We took turns striking the bundle with our index finger until one rubber band separated itself from the bunch. The person who separated a lastiko from the knotted ball won. I took the first strike with my index finger. I squatted on the earth, eyed the knotted rubber band and bent over it to find a weak spot where I could hit it. I saw the yellow elastic sticking out of the ball. “There is the weak point,” I thought. I placed the tip of my index finger on the middle side of my thumb and snapped it to hit the spot. The rubber band loosened up a bit. Noli took a turn and did the same thing. Rhuel took his turn, too. We crowded around the ball of elastics, our heads touching one another and our bodies bent so close to the ground that we could smell the earth of 17th Street. All of this, just so we would know how to break loose one rubber band.

It was Noli’s turn again, and he took a snap at the yellow elastic that was sticking out. It did not break away. Rhuel tried his luck, but he did not have a strong finger. Finally it was my turn. I spat on my hands and rubbed them together. I did not know why I did that, but I thought it looked clever and mature to spit on my hands and rub them together before snapping on the elastic bundle. I knelt on the ground and snapped the bunch forward with my index finger. The yellow elastic broke off from the pack! “Yehey, I won, I won!” I shouted, jumping up and down. I scooped all of the rubber bands and added them to the ones on my arm. I planned to intertwine them into a necklace when I get home. The necklace would be my trophy.