La Vida Loma

It was the first of a long series of apartments we would live in; in Santa Mesa Heights in Quezon City but we came to know it as La Loma. The apartment was the farthest from the street in a row of three in a compound. It was a two-bedroom apartment; I shared a room with a brother (-- the resident boy genius; he would accumulate medals for academic excellence that would be more than a foot long laid side by side; he played basketball reasonably well; played the guitar, too; me? I made him look even better for I was simply stupid and mediocre) while everybody else slept in the other room. We shared a wooden bed with a tattered banig for a mattress. Ours had a big window that had a bird's eye view of the kitchen cum laundry area of the adjoining apartment. The window had an iron grille on it but the top grille was missing which allowed us to climb out unto a nearby branch of a guava tree.

The window also allowed moonbeams to flood the room on certain nights and it was simply magical. Moonbeams fascinated me. Its unnatural glow rendered everything in gray scales; depth and space reduced and simplified in a palette of two-dimensional shadows; reality distorted. Moonbeams taught me misdirection and to blend in and be inconspicuous like a cat in an un-catlike pose. I discovered that I could hide in plain sight just by standing in a way that would make me look like something else. Sometimes I would sneak out of bed and explore the surreal two-dimensional world while everybody slept. And, in really bright nights I’d raid Boy Genius' comic book collection while he slept and read them under a stream of moonbeam; Boy Genius kept a stack of pre-owned Lagim komiks and a few DC Comics. A moonbeam is a constant that is with me wherever I am; and it would be the same anywhere; anytime; sometimes, I would lie on the floor and I was transported back to Dada's house.

I saw a lot of firsts in this place: chicken pox; mumps and maybe three of the seven plagues. It was here too that I first encountered mortality; blood spurting out of a brother's eyebrow as a wire clothes hanger stuck out from his eyebrow. And our very own first Christmas tree; even if it was just an outline of a tree rendered in twinkling lights Scotch-taped on the wall. It was here too that I would become aware of the beginnings of cracks on the foundation of our family home; there would be flare-ups for the flimsiest of reasons. And when I stayed home after having been made to stop from going to school, I became the witness of several of these violent eruptions. In the calm of the storms, I would see a muttering caged animal pacing the floor; and then, without warning, violence would erupt again.

I would spend much of the day setting up tin can traps for guppies on an open sewage canal out front. Needle thin dragonflies would hover on the water surface and I would catch a bunch throughout the day. Otherwise, I would climb the Duhat and Caimito trees that lined the fence. Sometimes, the girls-- teenage daughters of the apartment owner, would let me in to watch television. There were lots of things to do and after a while I wouldn't cry as much when I see Big Sis and Boy Genius coming home from school.

We didn’t have television; not even a radio, but we had lots of fun; one of the best times I’ve had was when we sneaked into the playground of a nearby school. The school’s facade had little iron crucifixes on its wall and we used those as footholds to climb over the wall; from there it was just a jump away from the seesaws and swings. One time a security guard saw us; we scampered in all directions, but big sis can’t climb over the wall fast enough. When we got home we got a mouthful of scolding, a whack on the butt and for the finale: a Swirlee-- a head dunk on the toilet bowl.

There was a lesson there somewhere but it got flushed down the toilet.