What if a doting daughter finally sees her father not based on what others told her but through her own memories? What becomes left of her after forcefully reordering the emotions and manifestations of this missing piece she has felt all these years?
If this is a game, it wouldn’t be just the two of us here.
It will be a whole spectacle with the kind of dizzying lights that would make you think of surgical rooms and dreams. First, its clinical brightness will make us glow like the ephemeral stars that we are – in our harshest angles, shadows, and innards. Next, the spectators will come in, filling up the seats and the corners of my eyes. If I let them get to me, I can almost see their invisible banners, their alliance towards you, or contempt with me. I wonder if your supporters will cheer me on, or they would only see me as the steel ball chained to your heels.
But I assure you that no matter what they yell as we take on the center stage, sitting across from one another, my gaze will remain on you. I will treat you as if you’re the only person in the room.
Cue the curtains, check the microphones, and let the games begin. Now …
Guess what I’m thinking.
Tao?
For as long as I can remember, I am only “Jolyssa Gundayao.”
Nothing fancy, unlike others who have two names or sometimes more to depict their whole existence. I didn’t know how long I’ve thought of it like this, but I always deemed my name as fitting. It’s as direct as you can get; No necessary curling of the tongue to the roof of your mouth or between your teeth to sway you away from the point. Perfect for the meek child who never learned how to carry on a conversation with strangers. It has always been just “Jolyssa Gundayao,” and people should be satisfied with that answer, but apparently, it’s yet another pattern that I’ve missed.
In our country, children come as patterned names. Predestined molds dictate a first name that could be absolutely anything your parents dreamed of that would solely represent you, then followed by a middle and a last name to trace you back to them. There’s ownership, identity, presence, and history all within those strings of letters given to children almost upon birth. But it was only after five years since that night in August when my mother finally registered my name. She conceded to name me after her in fear of having to seek out a father to sign some future documents solely because she wrote ‘Lolin’ instead of ‘Gundayao.’ However, the name tethered my mother and me closer together as if she was a goddess who became pregnant out of sheer prayers and given a child that was only hers and hers alone. But I wasn’t made out of mud and light but blood and flesh and sinew. Right when I forget that my name lacks something beyond some letters, it makes me stick out like a sore thumb.
Once, I applied for a job training and got called twice for the interview just because the evaluator thought he made a mistake with my lack of middle name. Upon clarification, his slow utterance of “alright” caricatured a cartoon version of himself in my mind scratching his head. Sometimes, my name brings a shock of novelty and amazement to others to the point that it got even called “Astig.” And rarely but a surefire way to make me overthink and be immediately defensive, they met me with a knowing nod or a tight-lipped smile.
Bagay?
It was late at noon, and the only channel in the house was the default ones that came free with any kind of television with an antenna that could aim high enough to ask the sky for entertainment. They cling to us by relating to what they imagine to be the most important among the Filipino middle class who mostly constitute their viewership – members of their family, comrades of the same heart. We cling to them by turning on our televisions in the mornings as we prepare for school, to sit in front of them with mouths agape as we eat, and in the evenings when they show a dubbed foreign film as part of the Sunday midnight special.
We just finished eating, and my mother was lying down on one of the bamboo seats in our living room, her arm tucked under her head to serve as her pillow. Her eyes are glued on the TV, watching kids rapped out random words out of their mouths with enviable precision as they guess words on their foreheads. In another time and place, this will be nothing but a useless talent. But not in a country where the siesta hours filled with noontime shows could land you a minimum of Php 5,000 if you hit the right criteria. I remember that the segment’s participants are elementary honor students, with the hosts listing their school achievements as the camera focuses on the wunderkind in question and zooms in on their dimpled smiles, waving hands, and the glistening medals and trophies that they brought to seal the deal. I only watched it with half interest and left to do something else that was too irrelevant to remain within my memory.
At the time, I thought that my mother was entrenched by the show just because it satiates her desire to be entertained. After all, it passes the time quietly, and it makes you forget about the heat. But it was only later that day that she shared her observation with me. Most of the participants on that day were children with single parents. She then told me that it must’ve been God’s will to gift the children with intellect as a token for the hard work of all the single parents they have.
I was an elementary honor student at the time, and as my mother predominantly consists of my world, I believed her. And based on her quiet smile and soft look as she prepares our dinner, I think for a time, she believed that, too.
Hayop?
My stepfather came into the picture with all the necessary precautions about the kid who holds on to her father like a sacred promise. I might be young, but I was a sharp child who held on to her father despite him not coming to see her even once. After all, I can only be my mother’s child.
You see, when it comes to pretending that my father was there, my mother is an artist. Knowing full well that she cannot fill up his corporeal absence in our lives herself, she instead sketched his presence to us through what she remembers. She picked up the books as thick as my arms from her memory that she always saw in my father’s hands. She pointed at the old Yamaha guitar gathering dust atop the cabinet opposite our bed and told me how she met my father through his songs echoing at one of the parks in Singapore back then. She showed me photos of them – with his arm around her, and urged me to put one under my pillow every night.
“Para mapanaginipan ka ng papa mo,” she whispered.
These conversations acted as my mother’s brushstrokes in an attempt to illustrate my father into our lives. First, paint everything that is not the subject, and you shall see the subject reveal its form. I saw an illuminating radiance of a courageous knight, like the ones in the fairy tales my mother tells me. But my mother only saw the bareness of the white space from her sketch – emphasizing what it can’t replace.
When the courtship began and inevitably extended to me, there was a flourish of gifts to win my approval. I particularly remember a stuffed dog just because of what came after. With a joke where my stepfather said that the stuffed animal came to life, a guinea pig went home alongside us. I guess that I can see what the punch line is about in the splintered detour that its logic has taken, but that’s how it started.
I remember bringing the little one home, embracing the cardboard box it was in as we ride at the back of a motorcycle. At the time, I didn’t know my stepfather all that well yet, but I was excited to have my very own pet for the first time. Perhaps it was out of pure coincidence that he gave me a guinea pig as it is a common animal that many vendors sell in the public market every Saturday. It was inexpensive yet docile, but most of all, its innocent appearance tends to enchant children to tug the arms of their parents to buy it for them. However, as I look at it now, it can also be that my mother hinted to my stepfather how obsessed I am with rabbits. Quite evidently, guinea pigs are different than rabbits. But rabbits are more expensive and require more care. After all, in the eyes of my six-year-old self back then, guinea pigs are rabbits who just haven’t fully grown their ears yet. And with this false belief, the poor animal got named “Kune,” with the last indicative syllable missing just like the ears of my little pseudo rabbit.
My stepfather is a good man. He was respectful of my mother and treated me like his own child. And it would be nice to say that I’ve acknowledged that kindness right away – that Kune was the beginning of a paternal relationship I’ve been longing for all this time. But even I cannot underestimate the hold of my father’s sketch to me. As I’ve visited Kune each morning in his cage that used to shelter newly-hatched chicks, my mother has to remind me to greet my stepfather every time he visits the house. As I put Kune on my stomach while I nap, I remain adamant with the space in our bed that I’ve only seen belonging to my father now occupied by someone else.
I wish I could say more about that ferocity that I felt at the time. One that feels accepting enough as to not deny the presence of another person in our life but proves to be merciless in drawing hierarchies of what it deems valuable. Part of it is how I have seen my stepfather occupying more of my mother’s life than mine. My mother deciding to let go of my father has divided our world whether we like it or not, and in this Venn diagram of relationships coming together and falling apart, my stepfather is more of a variable on my mother’s side. I could only wait on my side of things petting the animal I believed to have been missing something before fully metamorphosing into something better.
My stepfather naturally moved from a simple dinner to staying over and soon became a natural part of the household. The space on the bed is now nothing but a relic, occupied for the first time. But I have never called him “Father” even once.
Lugar?
I think about being a young child once who was utterly bored with the city she grew in. Back then, my mother and I can never commute home in a tricycle that wouldn’t make us jump on our seats as we ride from one pothole to the other. A town meant for errands – all there is to do is shop for groceries, have your hair cut, or buy clothes and shoes from the small stalls beside the wet market – and not for one’s enjoyment. There was nowhere to go where you won’t see where you left off after a couple of minutes. The only place designated for leisure activities is the town plaza that only ever becomes alive at night when you’re at a certain age and with certain people.
But it was also those early years when my Aunt Jina, my mother’s second to the youngest sister, took me to occasional trips in the big mall of Dagupan City that boil my excitement to the brim every time. If it weren’t for her, I wouldn’t be able to distinguish a mall from the air-conditioned warehouse back in our city where you can buy groceries in bulk. Compared to that, the elevator, the cinema, and the plethora of colorful birds and aquariums that adorn the central square of the mall during Saturdays felt like Disneyland to me. I looked forward to these occasional mall trips and savored everything about it – from the jeepney rides to accompanying my aunt to her unrelated errands.
That day, the mall hinted at its promise as always.
The brightly lit stores were welcoming and generous. Opening their bellies for my aunt and me as we stride inside them to look, nothing but to solely look, and yet we are allowed to marvel as much as we like. We do what we always do. I smiled at the cluster of puppies, rabbits, and talking birds located at the center of the mall. We rode the elevator that looked like a giant metallic egg, pressing my forehead to the glass as we ascended upwards where the mall shrinks back from my view. Its pull transporting all the strolling families, children, and every stranger away from me into another realm where the sun shines brighter and people are no longer people. Just when I urge the doors to open and join them, the spell broke off and everywhere is back to its place. My hand is back to my aunt’s own palm, and the people regained their routes where things could crash, elbows could graze, and fingers could brush against one another.
My aunt let go of my hand when we were in the supermarket. She told me to wait, and I looked at the never-ending aisles while she looked at her phone. My aunt mumbles her words before they land on her fingertips, but they never reach my ears. I wish I could’ve heard her. I wish I could read lips. Then maybe I wouldn’t have run away.
Three things happened the moment that my aunt’s phone vibrated in her hand:
She left me, and I stayed where I am.
She came back with a man.
I ran.
I recall seeing him taller than all the other aisles in the store. My aunt guided him over to me, and she started to introduce her friend. I have to crane my neck just to see the entirety of him. He’s smiling, nervous, sweating. My aunt was explaining how they were texting for a while now before they decided to meet. For the first time. Today. As he raised a hand to pat down the beads of sweat pulling at his temples with a handkerchief, the hairs on my arms stood up. I took a step back as they talked about where we should eat, and before they could ask me, I dashed.
She never told me.
In retrospect, the grocery warehouse back home and the mall have the same floor-to-ceiling aisles that fill up the entire space like evenly-spaced out dominoes. They contain the same products with the same brand names and neon packaging. They all look alike …
She never met up with someone even once during these trips.
I can even smell the same lingering scent depending on where I’m standing, from the detergent of the newly mopped floor or the tendrils of chocolate aroma reining me in from the aisles of candies and everything sweet. I realize that they all smell alike, especially when I’m zooming past them from an instinct stronger than the grip that follows from my aunt when they finally caught me.
Of course, my aunt was furious. Of course, the man she was with was flustered. But the far more interesting thing is why did I run? As I grasp for my memories on that day, I wonder if it was fear that drove me to take that first step back and to never stop unless they forced me. I counted the men or boys whom I lived close by or have known growing up before we lived with my stepfather: My grandfather that sleeps in the room adjacent to ours who knows beetles, thunders, and soil; My older cousin who I grew up with as a neighbor, and believe it or not, doesn’t have a father until his mother met someone for him to call a stepfather, too; My uncles Junior, Rey, and Willy who I know only through brief glimpses and short inquiries every time I take their hand to place on my forehead. My other cousins, whom I have bonded as siblings as we built forts, chase each other within lines of chalk on pavements and hide in our grandparents’ house. I ticked them off one by one on my fingers now, and as one joins the rest, the index following the middle, ring, and pinky, I can see that they’re as real and breathing as I am.
Was it really fear? Or is it another living, breathing thing that has grown inside me without stirring anyone’s attention until now just because I haven’t met the man who was never supposed to leave in the first place?
Pangyayari?
I turned eighteen without ever knowing what it’s like to hold my father’s hand. He and I hadn’t talked for months, and the girl who used to pray that her father will dream of her with a picture of him tucked under her pillow like a talisman was almost gone. Nevertheless, it was a day that marked the precipice of adulthood and where norms dictate a day dedicated to dancing and roses. But to my family’s dismay, I vehemently refused this possibility months ago, not wanting the attention, the spectacle, and the expenses.
However, on that night, I was also surprised by them as they still threw me a party that was supposed to be good, and beautiful, and touching. But my brain has twisted in blinding anxiety that saw it as a lack of control, putting me on the spot and them not understanding me. As the caterers pinned up textiles on chairs on our lawn and the neighbors were preparing all sorts of dishes, my mother and aunt were the ones to console my breakdown. I could not fully comprehend why I lost control that day, why I broke down in quivering sobs and yelled at my mother and aunt. I have spent years conjuring up an image of discipline and composure which shattered at this moment. This is the one memory that I hoped I could burn, deteriorate, and destroy, for it is as humiliating and painful to remember.
I recall myself unable to stop from shaking. I can still feel the terror of seeing my mother heave her breaths as she found it difficult to breathe. And I remember my aunt’s tear-stained face as she explained her love and care for me as one of her own, the reason why the whole family especially looked after us and uttered these words, “…kasi wala kang tatay.”
Oo! Hindi, hindi! Pwede.
I’ve never met you except in my mother’s stories and mementos. I looked for you in the same ways that I learned. I see you in the photos we kept in an old protective lunchbox that used to contain my mother’s important papers. I hear an echo of you in your beat-up Yamaha guitar. But I can never look through you between your clipped answers and the dead air that characterized our phone calls.
It was an infinite guessing game of what’s in our heads – infuriating attempts to finish each other’s thoughts that never came. My family, neighbors, and the people who have known me have seen me weathered by the effects of not ever knowing you.
The red giant numbers on the screen were closing in on zero. We never got close to each other’s thoughts – our grammar clipped to one-word inquisitions that never reach fruition. I am furious and tired and on the brink of giving up. And as the lights went down and the cheers have ebbed, I can finally turn my back on your image made of shadows from where I stand.
However, your imprint remains. Just like any game, here comes the easter egg:
My connection to you can be traced back not from my last name but the first. Spelling out my existence in hints of your name, you can never go away. You can never leave, Joel. Even if I want you to.
I still lose.
Featured Image credits:
Living Room from: Spratt, Annie. “Vintage 1960s living room interior.” Unsplash, 4 Feb. 2020, https://unsplash.com/photos/sqf3bKmUK7w. Accessed 9 June 2021.
Receipts 
Very compelling read of longing and searching for something you know that’s there, like a phantom hand you can never get back, and ultimately giving in to your emotions and letting it all out. Almost like a catharsis. The way you described growing up is extremely immersive. The grocery warehouse, the mundane TV-watching, the surprise birthdays—I’m sure many Filipinos could imagine themselves in a similar scenario and yet what’s captivating about these moments is that though everyone’s been in them at one point in time they’re filled with multitudes of stories that are so deeply personal like yours.
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This is such an intimate chronicle on longingness. Having known the author for basically all my life, I know the vein of the story but this essay takes it further in a tender, raw way. From the first sentence to the last, earthly and immersive pictures are painted through her words. It’s so interesting when she lets me read her works, she always finds a way to bring something to the world that is so personal and truly her.
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I didn’t think a short length of text would bring an unexplainable pool of nostalgia within me in the middle of everything I have on my plate at the moment. This piece brought memories of childhood, the simpler times, and the innocence everyone once had. In every word weaved to create this beautiful piece, the longing was deeply felt, seems like I, myself was looking for something I am not even aware of. They say a sense of self of an individual could be traced back to their roots. People deduce it as simple as the DNA that binds a family. However, it shouldn’t be limited to the flesh and blood of an individual’s ancestors but the bond they created with people they met through their lifetime and the ones who stayed.
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