Please forgive me for disturbing your peace. I, being a total stranger, am fully aware of Ambrose Bierce’s acerbic admonition: "A letter is an uninvited guest." But then I am buoyed up by this seamless faith that, in the end, your good self will understand, what with your inherent humanity and gentle compassion.
I am TRANQUILINO G. T. Jr. of Caestebanan, Banna, Ilocos Norte.
I have long admired you, albeit from a distance. I saw you once fielding answers to a television host regarding raging issues in Mindanao. Delivered in flawless English, your commentaries had the gospel verities of truth, honesty, sincerity, and compassion.
If the very same spiels were delivered, nay, spewed, straight from the big mouth of some oily-faced politician, they would have been dismissed as nothing but a beautifully arranged protoplasm, meant to score media mileage points, and nothing else.
But it was the Tingting Cojuangco speaking. And when she speaks, voices are muted, all other faces become a veritable wall of paper. After all, nobody, even the insipid, could accuse your good self of pandering to your ignominy because you’ve been there, done that.
I once saw a life-size photograph of that memorable Mendiola rally prior to EDSA I, where street parliamentarians were welcomed by Marcos’ centurions with tear gas and water canons. It was a sea of humanity defying the autocrat. Alas, I could only identify three persons among these multitude – two men and one woman: the venerable Chino Roces and Sen. Lorenzo Tañada and you, Ms. Cojuangco. The rest disappeared in the background what with your – three’s trio’s, I should say – incandescent presence.
But the most welcome surprise I came to learn about your renaissance persona happened August 2003. A fellow lowlife brethren happened to be reading the The Philippine STAR, given to him by a visiting relative, a rarity in that hell hole where I came from and I did not stop badgering him until he gave the paper to me.
It was a Sunday issue (August 2003) of The STAR, and lo and behold, your column in all its splendor of a title "Sons I Never Had" materialized before my very eyes.
Written in elegant, effortless prose, "Sons I Never Had" had an elegiac effect on me. I cried everytime I read it.
I returned the paper to my fellow lowlife brethen, minus page F-7 wherein your column appeared, and he understood perfectly well.
That particular page of The STAR is still with me – the only memento in my possession that reminds me of my exile for eight years from the larger society.
I read it again this morning, before I sat down to write this what-would-turn-out-to-be a kilometric letter.
I am a disgrace to humanity, a shame to everything that self-esteem, self-worth stands for. I am an ex-con, Ms. Cojuangco. A former insular prisoner in the national penitentiary in Muntinlupa, where I served time for eight years: the price I had to pay for switching off the life of my Nanay’s second husband – an evil man of a Palaweño who had a gumption to corrupt the honor and besmirch the virtue of my mentally-disadvantaged sister, my only sibling.
Three weeks ago I arrived in Metro Manila, aboard a C-130 cargo plane, from Palawan after the parole officer found out to his horror that I had no place to stay in the province while reporting for my parole duties: for I went straight to Palawan after I regained my civilian status. Go to Ilocos Norte, where you truly belong, and report instead to the PPO (probation and parole office) in Laoag City, the parole officer handling my case bellowed to his dismay and irritation. For your sake, he added, before he went out of his way to help me secure a space in that Villamor Air Base-bound plane, which was about to take off from that air field in the outskirts of Puerto Princesa.
Because FariñasTrans did not honor the DSWD-Puerto Princesa referral for me to ride one of the bus firm’s buses that ply the Manila-Laoag route, and because I could not figure out where a relative or two are staying in the metro, I ended up living off the streets: homeless, unwashed, famished.
I used to sleep under the waiting shed fronting the Fariñas bus terminal, just a stone’s throw from the UST campus, but nightstick-wielding centurions of the MMDA arrested me for vagrancy, warning me that if caught again, I’d be put in jail.
How have I been keeping my body and soul intact, Ms. Cojuangco? I scour the streets for empty soda cans and plastic bottles which I sell before dusk, enabling me to have the luxury of at least a single meal a day, enough to keep me warm from the cold nights as I sleep them away in that miniature plaza along Taft Avenue, just across the Masagana Superstore, and a few strides from the Department of Tourism.
I like to think that I am strong, a survivor, but there are times when I could not hold back a tear or two, especially when I wake up in the dead of night: hungry to the very marrow of my bones, and reeling from intolerable pain as my body ailments – UTI, heart condition, ulcer – connive to complete which of them could inflict the worst discomfort to a decimated body that hungers for Ciprobay, Norvasc, and Losec: prohibitive medicines all. How long, I often cried out to high heavens, could I keep on holding to my faith that all these will come to pass?
Times like this hunger for the embrace of a family one calls his own. I no longer have a family I call my very own. My sister met her Maker in 1995, after she gave birth to a stillborn. Nanay committed suicide in 1996. I could not even bury either of the two persons closest to my heart, because I was then behind bars.
Why am I pouring out these bottled-up sentiments to you, Ms. Cojuangco? Because I could feel in my gut that you’ll understand, that your middle name is empathy.
I need your help.
No, I am not pleading for financial or monetary help. I am begging for a pain or two of old, old used clothes, a pain of an equally old, old used shoes, and old, old used sweater or jacket: needful things which your gentle family could do without, yet mean a whole lot to me.
The sweater or jacket I need mercifully because of the freezing cold at night.
The pair of clothes and shoes I need for my desire to apply for a job – any job – because I greatly yearn to live a life of even just the least semblance of dignity and decency. No, not an existence that depended solely on scavenging, and characterized by homelessness, vagrancy, unwashed demeanor.
I am virtually naked, Ms. Cojuangco. My clothes consist of a pair of short pants, an ill-fitting trouser, and a T-shirt, colored black.
I have accepted with stoic resignation my helplessness to go home – to the embrace of a dirt-poor maternal aunt in Ilocos Norte, because I could not afford the bus fare. But I could not accept that day in and day out I scour for thrown-away things in the concrete jungle’s arterries, netting me a daily average of P35, not enough even for two spartan meals a day.
If it is not yet too much of an imposition, please share with me a little foodstuff to keep me get going for a day or two for when I’ll look for work, I’ll not be able to eke out an existence.
Please don’t deny me that help, for it will go a long, long way to silence my cry of anguish: Is there no one here to help me? Not one? Not even one?
Please consider the gesture as an investment: an investment for a lost soul to redeem himself, helping him to make sense of his post-release life, and making him realize the promise inherent in the Psalms: "Weeping may endure for the night, but joy cometh in the morning."
If it takes a village to raise a child, it takes just one compassionate soul to reassure me that all is well in this world, that I will stand up again, that I will smile again.
This mile-long plea of a letter means a whole lot to me, Ms. Cojuangco. And I have to believe, keep close to my heart indefatigable faith that you’ll find the time to read it, no matter how busy your good self is.
I’ll know if you’ll have read this letter, because every Sunday I pause for 10-15 minutes from this business called eking out a living, paying P3 to the newspaper vendor in Lawton, for the privilege of reading your column in The STAR. I’ve done that, Ms. Cojuangco, for the last two Sundays.
Sometimes, I pass by the Luneta at night, rummaging through the garbage bins while an eye is on guard for approaching park policemen who hate scavengers setting foot in the park.
Last night I just did that and I saw Wowie de Guzman and Ms. China Cojuangco rehearsing their lines as hosts for today’s program at the back of the Rizal monument.
I had goose pimples listening to your daughter. And right there and then I decided to write this letter, hope per chance to come true, that I’ll find a way to hand it over to Ms. China before the program starts this afternoon. I have to believe that she’ll understand.
Very respectfully yours.
Tranquilino G.T. Jr.
Would anyone care to help Tranquilino through me? Is there no livelihood or psychological preparedness that the government gives to former prisoners upon their release for their new life and renewed hope?