WET FIELDS

HOPE

My youngest son was exactly six months old and we decided to arrange for his baptism at a local Christian church. My dissertation also was almost finish for submission and review by my peers. My pilot project with Mang Usting’s rice field was also a success.

I visited the project only three times a week so I was planning to stop renting Mang Usting’s house altogether. But I was helping the Farmers cooperative to build their own palay dryer using indigenous fuels like corn cobs, rice hulls, carabao or cow manures and chopped fire woods or even dry twigs. Palay dryer was essential especially when it rains. A well milled rice needed the palay to be dried to the required moisture content.

It was one of those days when I visited Mang Usting; that I saw Lissa in their house.

“What happened?” I asked her.

She shrugged her shoulders and smirked before answering me.

“I was not made for the convent,” she explained shortly.

She was looking at me, with her gaze poking at me.

“Ama has a problem regarding his rice farm.” She added.

“We are not aware that he used this as a collateral to borrow money from a usurer. He used the money to enable my sister to migrate in Australia.”

We were under the shades of the mango tree where we had constructed the makeshift hut we used to rest and cook our meals while working in the field.

“Ateng wrote me in the convent about this.”

She was trying to embrace me. But I wanted to avoid her. It was enough that we ended our affair when I accompanied her to the convent. I was expecting my wife’s fidelity. I needed to be likewise. Whatever yardstick I use to my wife, I should use the same token of measure to myself.

When my youngest son came into my life I felt that my search had ended. I now had a shadow that I needed to shine on him a light in truth and righteousness. A footprint he could follow with pride and confidence. A cheating father was not a good model for my son.

I needed to be a good role model for my kids, for my family, for my community. I could not change the world. But I could change myself.

“It seems that you are not the same Greg that I knew before I went inside the convent,” she said almost tearfully.

“Let’s go it is getting dark,” I told her.

Acceptance and forgetting was easier if I wouldn’t let her feel what she wanted to feel.

“Greg, please listen to me,” she pleaded.

“Do you want to know the real reason why I decided to go out of the convent?”

“I was forced to stay out of that holy house to be a w***e! To sell my soul and marry the Australian friend of my sister’s husband just to bail out the farm from that usurer!”

She was on top of her voice. But it didn’t move me. Not as what she saw about my reaction. I walked past the narrow path walk of the rice paddies. Dusk was gathering along our way.

I stopped for a while to look at her over my shoulder.

“I will marry a stranger and a foreigner so that we can redeem the mortgage of this land!” she sounded almost hysterical.

“I will marry that Australian with you in my heart and in my mind. Don’t you understand how painful for me doing that? Won’t you be compassionate with my pains?”

I closed my hearing and hurried more towards home. I didn’t want to listen to her monologue. It pained me to listen to her pains.

“You don’t understand my agony; to give my p***y to another man when all my p***y wants is your d**k!”

“I don’t feel dirty at all f*****g you, because I love and adore you…”

“But f*****g another man for his money is a dirt to my soul and my dignity.”

“God knows I don’t want this. But I have to.”

“It’s my fate.”

“Yet your indifference makes me feel a lot worse.”

“You are a cruel man.”

“Engineer, you came just in time,” I found Mang Usting was very pleased to see me. I brought my owner-type jeep to get all my belongings in my rented house.

“I want to introduce to you my eldest daughter Oreng.” Mang Usting was beaming with pride.

“Ama, Norie, not Oreng! “ Lissa’s sister corrected her father as she offered her hand for a handshake.

“I am not expecting that you are this good looking. Lisse told me you are ugly and looks like a gorilla?“ she said while we shook hands.

Lissa was sitting on the lap of a white old man who was old enough to be her father. The Australian was mashing Lissa’s breast even in front of us.

Lissa was looking at her sister in helpless gaze. She was looking at her as if asking for succor.

“Hayaan mo lang masasanay ka rin sa ganyan,” Her sister told her in vernacular so that her sister’s fiancé would not understand what they were talking about. She was telling that it was okay, and she will get used to his manners soonest.

“Are you leaving?“ the Australian turned to me as I finished my packing.

“Yes, I am,” answered I.

“I will marry my fiancée here next week, hope you can come and attend the wedding. I will bring her to Australia afterwards,” the white old man was telling me.

It was already dark when I arrived home. Our baby was sucking for his milk in my wife’s breast. Mer was asleep lying on her sides. I guess she fell asleep while feeding her baby.

Her eyes opened sensing me.

“What time have you arrived? I fell asleep…” she whispered.

“I just arrived,” I told her.

“I would like to take a shower. There’s so much dust on the road.”

“I will prepare your dinner.” She said carefully sandwiching our baby between two baby pillows. She affectionately kissed Greggy on his forehead before getting up from our bed.

“I saw some shrimps, crabs, and my favorite twirled snails along the road. I bought some.” I told her.

“Manay Ising was already working on them. I told her to soak the snails on a wash basin the whole night and cook them in coco nut milk tomorrow.”

“Mom was already asleep with Jenny in her room. But I should wake up the two for a late dinner.” She spoke.

I was already inside the bathroom when Mer quietly barged inside. We have our own bath and toilet inside our room.

She chuckled watching me under the shower. She suddenly closed the door and sidled up to me.

“The baby could be awaken and needs you,” I warned her. But she seemed not to care.

She was already fondling my d**k when we heard Greggy was crying. She pinched my d**k and kissed me then rushed outside the bathroom for our baby.

When I walked out of the bathroom, I went directly to our bed to check little Greggy. Mer had him snugly asleep in his crib.

“I will help Manay Ising prepare our dinner. I have not eaten yet. I’ll wake up Mom and Jenny. They had only some biscuits because we were waiting for you.”

“You watched our baby while I take a hurried shower.” It was almost midnight. Jenny had come to our room to kiss us goodnight and her baby brother too an hour ago. She lingered around the crib.

“Have you brushed your teeth?” Her mom was teasing her. She rushed out of our room, I guess, it was to brush her teeth.

“We lost some little time and privacy with Greggy around,” Mer told me while she was drying her hair.

“It’s worth it. Our son is worth the sacrifice.”

“Come, let’s do it quickly.” Mer said spreading her legs. I swooped down on her. Grab her by her waist and buttocks. She held onto my nape as I carried her in the center of our bed.

We made love while our baby was deep in his slumber.

We were at the middle of the rice fields. We were taking photographs for posterity. It was the culmination of my work in Caranglan. The Farmers Cooperative awarded me a certificate of appreciation while I distributed their certificates for their successful participation in my pilot program. We erected a makeshift stage for the convocation.

We were able to finish the palay dryer on time and the Bureau had provided them the initial premiums for their crop insurance. This ensured that they could get a profit for their crops even if the worst weather should hit the area.

I caught the gaze of Mang Usting as everyone was preparing to leave. I approach him and shook his hands. He was more than a colleague-recipient farmer to me. For more than a year we worked diligently together in the fields. He had been a father to me.

I hugged him. He was teary-eyed too.

“Thank you so much Engineer,” he said. “We have learned a lot from you.”

“Likewise, Mang Usting.” I uttered clearing a lump in my throat.

“You did not come back for Lissa’s wedding,”

“I had some important meetings at the Bureau that time,” it was an alibi.

“I would be all alone now at home.” He said almost inaudibly. I could feel his sadness. And I could commiserate with it. Being old and alone is sad. He has only his rice field and the rice paddies.

I heard the sound of a jet plane from above and I looked up to see a trail of white smoke up in the sky among the clouds.

I remembered Lissa. She was now in a foreign land. I remembered what her older sister advised her.

She will get used to it.

Maybe her older sister was talking out of her own experience.

She will get used to it.

She surely, would get over with her agony and pains.

TO BE CONTINUED…