House of refugees

On the way home from visiting “the dead” for the Kalag-kalag in Dumanjug, where the Maker’s ancestral family plot is located, he drove into a narrow roadway only to have to back up to make way for a  sparking new black Isuzu sports utility vehicle, which approached his van from the other end. As it turned out, the people in the car were friends who used to share with him a house with a large bodega out back. And once again the Maker remembered how he grew up in this house of refugees.

The bodega was the heart of his childhood. It was huge, made of rusting metal, its high beams too far off to be consistently swept of cobwebs. They always trapped soot and dust until they got so heavy they hung and eventually fell from the inevitable volition of time and gravity. The bodega was for the most part empty except for a well-used basketball ring and bamboo beds with mosquito nets where people lived and eked out their lives for a while, albeit with some regular difficulty, for these were poor times for everyone. These were the sixties, the seventies up until the mid-eighties when the bank came to foreclose the property driving away everyone and ending finally the Maker’s childhood.

But before that, he grew up here with Luis, who was a wiz with hand tools. He built with the Maker as main designer-cum-assistant-panday a wooden car complete with four wheels and a steering system. It ran by pushing. Were an engine only available, the Maker has no doubt they could have made it run on its own. As indeed, between them, Luis and the Maker would eventually become excellent mechanics and welders.

Here lived also Pedyo, a tailor from the provinces. Pedyo had with him his wife and children who worked as house-helps for the family. He worked at his sewing machine all day and some nights. He never made enough money but what money he had he used to feed hungry mouths.

The bodega was also home to young people who did everything they could to send themselves through school. Some of them were scholars of the Maker’s elder sister Gingging. Gingging started teaching at the university at a young age. She earned enough to help with the Maker’s tuition and then help  young people as well from the old hometown get through college. Not everyone graduated and then found their fortunes afterwards. On a visit home to General Santos right after graduation and before shipping out as a mariner, Marvin died in a motorcycle accident. He and the Maker were close friends.

In the late seventies, the population of the old bodega grew many times over. The Maker’s elder brother Bimbo was a community organizer in Bais City, Negros Oriental, when martial law was declared. He ran to the hills and stayed there for a while until he was finally caught by Philippine Constabulary soldiers. Meanwhile, his co-organizers ran away from Negros and hid at the old bodega turning it literally into a refugee camp of over 20 hungry mouths, which the Maker’s mother Consuelo had to cook for and feed to the extent that this was possible within limited means. The Maker learned at a young age how to live poorly. His mother was a saint. But the Maker and his younger brothers Vicente and Gerry had the time of their lives. They had no lack for “playmates” from all walks of life, all of whom played basketball. He remembers a boxer named “Sorry,” a beautiful sexy “thing” named Lita whom his cousins regularly visited and courted. There were at least three Romies. Then there was Martin, Leo, Fredo, Plutarco, Bomboy, Nolan and Ben who became his best if older friends and taught him how to drive even before he was old enough to get a legal license. They taught him about women and how to hold well his liquor. They taught him what “structural analysis” meant and so also the theology of liberation. They were anarchists and rebels of a cause temporarily lost or put on hold by martial law.

In the run of time, all would find their own separate paths through life. When last heard from, Plutarco was alleged to have been making well trading “fighting cocks” all over Central Luzon. Ben is now the leader of a well-known religious cult. He lives abroad. Martin would find fortune and family in London. The Maker bumps across Bomboy from time to time. He and Nolan graduated from courses at the Asian Institute of Management. Nolan now lives in New Jersey with family. They e-mail from time to time.

The people who got out of the black Isuzu were Romy and his wife Pascuala, their lone son and many grandchildren. The Maker was happy to note they were quite well-off now. Two of the many success stories of refugees from that old house with its bodega out back. He drove his own kids home and remembered that he has had as he is having now a happy life, what, at that dark dusty old bodega, was once only a dream for the future unfolding in the here and now.