Dada's House

Frisco. Streets unpaved; people still kicked dirt to get to where they had to go. Hawks hunted the skies and free roaming chickens comically flinched when shadows flickered on the ground; there were millions of butterflies, dragonflies too; lizards and snails were everywhere; and the horizon still ran away from the eyes. There were few distractions and complications were fewer still.
Dada’s house was perched up a steep rise on the northwestern corner of the estate. A silvery gray rectangle of wood slats on wooden stilts crowned with a tent of rusted galvanized iron sheets with overhanging eaves which seemed to have ended abruptly and whimsically where gutters should have been; and so when it rains, the house was engulfed in torrents of cascading waterfalls which, over time, had carved trenches and indentations along the perimeter of the house. The house creaked and crackled with the seasons and a symphony of aural stimulants ceaselessly bombarded it— the fractious booming of frogs on rainy nights, the cantatas of crickets and other little voices lull one to sleep at night. And at dawn, the hushed stirrings of life gently nudges you out of your bed. At first light Dada would already be at her kitchen whipping up a hearty breakfast of sinangag and dilis, tuyo or pritong itlog. The pungent aroma of garlic and sweet breads permeating the bare unpainted walls.

Cheerfully austere, but unapologetic for being so, the sparse furnishings emit a faint echo of better days passed: a wound-up pendulum clock that chimed the hour; a detailed image of the Sacred Heart of the Christ; select pieces of Narra furniture with intricate rattan wickerwork and bone in-lay.

Big wide windows, of capiz shells interwoven with slivers of wood, brought in the morning sun to the two bedrooms and the kitchen; while the sunset was showcased in the sitting area at the end the day; setting everything ablaze with hues of orange and red. The sitting area opened up to a veranda that presented an Olympian view of the whole estate.
The silong of Dada’s house was an ethereal world all its own; the perpetual shade, the damp earth and the tang of animal scent and droppings conspiring to transport pilgrims to a twilight zone where time was rendered inconsequential. It was a surreal playground and sanctuary for throw-outs, wood scraps, vagabonds, strays and misfits. A fork, a spoon, a canteen with U.S. Army stamped on them would turn up once in a while as grim reminders of a war. Dada's pets populated this realm: a battalion of chickens and a rooster or two, pigeons, feral cats and a dog. Occasionally, a pig or a goat would turn up, too.
It was at my mother’s birthday when I last saw her. I wasn’t sure if her mental faculties could still muster recognition or if time had ravaged her brain to mush. She had a blank look on her face as she sat on a chair, confused like a lost child. She was precipitously at the brink of life yet there was still a bit of the old Frisco about her; the multi-layered flavors of her kitchen seemed to still swirl around her; a faint sound, much like the rustlings of leaves of a distant garden, seemed to still move around her and echo in her now feeble voice; her hearty laugh now a muffled whimper in the darkest of nights. I sat across the room and waited for a frisson of recognition, instead I saw in her eyes the last flicker of an ember.
Dada died a few days after the 50th anniversary of the liberation of Manila. Maybe death had finally set Dada free, liberating her from the bonds of a memory of an atrocious war not her own. A war that brutally took the life of her husband Thomas. Maybe in death she’ll find the half she lost and be whole again. She died where she slept— on the floor. They’ve taken out her bed. Long before Dada died, her house had been looted. Ransacked by vulturous bastards for anything not nailed down to the floor; somebody even attempted to dismantle the veranda; the house quickly fell into disrepair. Dada's house died with her. Frisco changed, too. It lost its charm. Hawks disappeared from the skies, the dragonflies, too. Frisco had become claustrophobically cramped as if the now and the unrelenting tomorrows had tramped down on it, compacted it into a tight bundle and buried it with Dada.


In Memoriam: Dada; 10 June 1902 – 6 September 1995