Memoir

Merlie Alunan

MEMORY INFUSED WITH THE SENSATION OF ENGORGED BREASTS AND SORE NIPPLES ODOR OF BREAST MILK THAT HAD DRIED ON ONE’S CLOTHES THE ACHE BETWEEN THE THIGHS, WANDERING LOST IN THE FOG OF SLEEPLESS NIGHTS, POETRY CRYING

One feels so old at 28 but in fact, one is also beset by a lot of doubts, the future no farther than tomorrow with its call for urgent action: the diapers are running out it’s been raining the whole day better iron dry them, she’s the first babe after all, no recycled diapers nothing less than a fresh one each time she needs a change, how fast she uses up the soap-fragrant piles beside the pillows, the clockwork meals breakfast lunch dinner to be served at the exact time three times a day, the relentless schedule of feeding bathing sleep, my own rest a fugitive shying at the captivity of chores of a new household, each one more demanding than the others,

and amidst the banality of all these, this tiny young girl showing up in my life, you would not believe, seeing the fresh cloudless face, the clear eyes, hearing her gentle voice, that this slip of a girl has a heavier life story than mine to tell: she is 16, she says, she has a six-month old daughter, her blood would not clot when she gave birth, she says, because she was sick with an infection also dangerous to the infant, so they took her away, she did not get to hold her until she was completely cleared, she tells me this in her soft voice without fanfare and listening to her,

I lose all my reasons to complain, I become grateful for the mundane quality of my daily life, which are certainly more bearable than what she had gone through, only 16, for heaven’s sake, and already she’d gone through the pangs of childbirth, and walked through the valley of death, I find myself blessing my sore nipples and the fact of being harnessed 24 hours to a veritable feeding machine that my infant had become, blessing her and blessing myself for the good health and well-being of the both of us, sleepless nights notwithstanding, it is clear. It is only my mind that needs fixing, though where to find the nuts and bolts to do that I don’t know.

The mind is always missing the essentials, strange thing that it is, always going after the trail of clouds no one but itself has seen, body going its separate way pulled between repulsion and lust, mistaking one for the other converging in the one life that one owns, and the mind making its way to parts unknown the body knows nothing about, the infant in my arms squalling for food, for a dry pad next to her skin, arms to warm her and make her feel safe, but here is this girl with cool, quiet eyes, she sits in my one good chair holding a sheaf of papers she offers to me with the hope of her heart and the dream I cannot divine, her hands steady, her voice calm and sure.

“I want to write poetry. Please show me.”

There amid the household clutter, the unswept floor laundry overflowing from the basket rice boiling over the burnt smell stinging the nose milk suddenly gorging in my breast the hungry infant squalling the nth time for the day

a sudden silence, the whirr of nuts and bolts clicking into place in my head, the sun taking its place in the morning sky, the mind clearing, words finding their place in my mouth, my tongue, the humble truth.

“I cannot teach you how. You’ve to find your own way.”

She watches me feed the baby from my breast. Maybe she smells the rice burning, the enveloping scent of infant pee and milk and sweat in my clothing, the noisy clutter of trash, dirty laundry, dust, life’s terrible imperfections, and the infant catching its breath in simple satisfaction as the milk gorged into her mouth.

“You’ll have to learn how to look. How to listen. Find the feeling in your heart.

They will teach you, these things. No one can.”

“What about the words, how to use them?”

“Words are not the poem. Rain is not rain until you are drenched in it. Shivering in its cold. Your skin stung with liquid bullets. Makes you run to the shelter of a tree.”

“What if there is no tree?”

“Then perhaps the words will come. The words will come. But it won’t be shelter, it won’t be safety. The words will come. To drench you, make you shiver, double the sting of liquid bullets on your skin.”

Fifty years ago to the day. 1971 to 2021. Tagbilaran City, before Typhoon Odette blasted Bohol out of its sense of safety. The young girl is now a white-haired woman, and so am I. Marjorie Evasco has since then gotten drenched many times in the rain that is life. So have I. Out of this, she and I, once upon a time student and teacher, have written our own poems, using words as best as we can. Or vice versa, words using us to come to a life of their own. Just as I said back in those days when my mind was a useless clutter, and I did not know which way to go in the ageless confusion of life: What if there were no trees to shelter from the bite and sting of the rain?

The words will come. They have come.