House of the spirits

When I was seven years old, my maternal grandmother died. When I visited Oas, Albay, my parents’ hometown, she would ask me the usual questions. She used to be fat, her soprano vibrating round and round the church during Sunday Masses. When she became older, she looked diminished: thinner, her hair like a white veil.

And one day, a telegram informed us that she had died. My mother went to her room and wept quietly. Later, she packed her clothes, along with the clothes of my father and my sisters. I didn’t go with them because my final examinations were near.

I was left in the care of the housemaids and of my paternal grandmother. Lola Juana was footloose, and she used to bring me everywhere. I slept beside her in her room, which she always locked, the night my parents and sisters went home to Albay.

But the next morning, I was found asleep on the floor of the sala. The maids were frightened. They told me that my dead grandmother must have pulled my hand and led me to sleep outside, because I had not gone home to attend her funeral. My Lola Juana remained quiet, praying quietly for the soul of my other grandmother.

A year later, we were having breakfast on a cool morning. The previous night had been stormy. Rain lashed the trees outside, and the wind keened in the dark. The radio was turned to the news (a grisly murder, a corrupt politician; some things never change). Suddenly, somebody knocked on the door. My father answered it. He came back, crestfallen.

“A C-47 plane has just crashed in Lubao.” I knew that some of the passengers in the plane were my parents’ friends. He changed into his fatigue uniform and then rushed outside. I ran to him. He asked, “Do you want to join me?” I said “Yes,” and off we went.

In the early morning, the wind was like a knife against my skin. When we reached the hospital, the first ambulance was just arriving. The siren wailed. The red light flashing on its roof looked like a wounded eye. The hospital attendants in green cotton uniforms ran down the stairs. The ambulance doors flew open. On the stretcher lay a man, his fatigue uniform torn around the elbows and knees. His leather boots were gone. Another stretcher bore a woman. Her blue dress was dripping with blood. I felt something rising in my throat. A sudden warmth spread through my nose. Everything felt furry. And then another ambulance came, its wail shattering the morning air into so many fragments.

During the wake, I refused to enter the chapel. One day, with one of our housemaids, I just sat at the back. Forty-one coffins crowded the chapel. My friend’s father, a military captain who used to arrange my friend’s Cub Scout kerchief, died. His 16-year-old daughter also died. Beside her coffin stood her boyfriend, in quiet grief. Children milled around, asking where was their father, where was their mother? Questions hung like cobwebs in the air.

The wreckage of the C-47 was retrieved and left in the middle of the cogon fields in front of the apartment where we lived. On stormy nights, we thought we could hear them, the mostly female voices carried by the wind: “Help, please help us!” Then: “We are falling, we are falling!” I would grip my grandmother’s arm; her other hand was wound around her rosary, and she was muttering her prayers. I was sure the other people in the household, or in the entire row of apartments, heard the voices in the night. But nobody dared talk about it in the harsh light of day.

It was a bright and windless summer day when I decided to learn how to ride a bike. My cousin taught me how to balance myself. “Just look in front of you,” he said. I did that. I fell and had bruises but I had always been the soul of determination and grit, and in a week’s time, I could ride the bike. I was riding with my friends when we reached the cogon fields. It was already late afternoon, and a sickly light fell. Suddenly, in the air rose the fragrance of frangipani flowers, of funeral flowers. My friends and I looked at each other, and then we raced back to our houses. We avoided going near the cogon fields for the rest of the summer.

But in the next summer, we decided to fly our kites. We were flying our diamond-shaped kites when the wind carried them right in the direction of the cogon fields. Not wanting to lose the kites we had made with our own hands, we followed the strings into the middle of the fields. But the wind just kept on pulling my kite in one direction. I ran and ran and when I stopped, I was right in front of the wreckage of the C-47. We were surrounded by cogon grass. The aluminum wings of the plane glinted in the sun. When I walked nearer, drawn to its silvery sheen, I saw a pink zipper stuck in the wingtip. In a flash I was gone.

When my grandfather died, it was my sisters’ turn to stay home. My mother and I returned to Albay. My two sisters stayed in our house in Antipolo. It was a hot afternoon when my grandfather was buried. I thought the entire town had turned up for his funeral, so long was the cortège that snaked around the town. I was holding on to my mother, who was weeping. I had to restrain her when she lunged toward my grandfather’s coffin as it was being pushed into the niche.

At that same instant, my sisters would tell me later, something happened in our house. My sisters were staying in the bedroom. Suddenly the white curtains lifted on that windless day, and a chill spread through the room. My sisters held each other’s hands, saying, “Lolo, Lolo,” and they began to sob. When we returned home, silent in our grief, our house looked empty and old.

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Email: http://[email protected]Danton Remoto’s novel, “Riverrun,” was recently published by Penguin Books.