Sanctum of Solace

After bombing out of High School, I was exiled to Frisco. Dada was there to welcome me. She did not judge me; neither did she tell me what I should have done or what I should do. She was just there for me; and it was all that mattered. She was a Hippie, I think. She was cool.

Forced idleness is dangerous. Days seem long with no promise of a tomorrow. Today was the same as yesterday and the day before that and it will be the same tomorrow and the next day after that. Nothing. I played basketball with the neighbors in the afternoons until it was time for dinner; I wasn’t good at it, but sweating it out was good; but still I had nothing to do in the mornings. It was when I began to read. I started with the stacks of Philippine Graphic magazine buried under the bed. After I was done with that, I read all the books I could find; I first read the only book I could find in Dada's bookshelf, it was Edgar Allan Poe’s The Murders in the Rue Morgue. It was my first detective fiction story; in fact it was the first detective fiction story in literature. The character of Dupin is an eccentric but brilliant detective, there was a bumbling constabulary, and the story was told by the first-person narration of a close personal friend; tropes that I would later find in Arthur Conan Doyle's Sherlock Holmes. I scourged for other books and found a trove of Reader’s Digest Condensed Books wasting away in a cousin’s house (the books were sent from Guam by his father but he never bothered to read them):-- I read about Rodin, Papillon and many others. I even asked that all my school textbooks be brought over; I read through them, too. I saw a shelf half full with books in an uncle’s house; it was locked. I would later on sneak into their house and pick the lock to get at the books. My uncle's books were mostly about WWII. I couldn't stop. I devoured all the books I could lay my hands on.

In the meantime, Marcos declared martial law.

By the next school term, I was ready to go back to school. I’ve figured it out:-- I would do good at school; get grades that would be above average but not so much I’d be marked as a nerd; just enough to get me comfortably through. I would hang around just enough to be cool but not too much so I'd be labeled as a bum. Something happened to me; maybe a synapse in my brain snapped with all the whacking I got from all the fist fights I got into; and maybe when I stopped going to school, it healed but got connected the wrong way; I don’t know. What I do know was that I was more focused in school. I listened and concentrated. I took notes during class. I did my homework at the library; but I did not study at home; there was no need to, I remembered everything. I had more time to read what I want. I read through all the encyclopedias in the library-- thrice. I’d hang out at the National Bookstore an hour or so after class to read the books on the shelf without buying them.

Then I was told it was time to go back home. The sojourn is over. Dada never liked good-byes. Dada once had a housemaid who had stayed with her longer than I could remember and when asked to go back to their hometown, didn't want to go. Dada pushed her out but the housemaid hanged on to Dada's leg crying. Dada sternly told her she should go. When the housemaid was gone, I saw tears on Dada's eyes.

When the day came for me to go, Dada didn't say good-bye. She packed my clothes in a brown paper bag and left it by the door. She gave me a hug then went to her kitchen. I didn't follow because I know she didn't want me to. I sat on the stairhead with my brown bag and waited for Boy Genius to come and fetch me. After a while, Boy Genius appeared on the gate at the south end. He waved and signaled me to come; I stood up and started to walk to him, dragging my feet. Down the wooden stairs and through the concrete pathway out of the garden I walked; I glanced around and felt the images burn into my memory. As I reluctantly stepped on the stone stairhead to go down, a big wind puffed out of the west, picked some leaves from the garden, threw them up in the air and sent them flying and whirling down like paper planes. Then, without warning, pins of rain pierced through the midday sun. I stopped by the Duhat tree and touched its rough bark; I looked up and felt the thin raindrops danced on my face. No hawk was in sight. Then giving in to an overwhelming undertow, I stole a glance back at Dada’s house. And out of the corner of my eye, through a haze of developing astigmatism, mizzle and tears welling up on my eyes, I caught a glimpse of the boy I had left behind. He stood, with arms insolently folded across his chest, at the hollow that led into the silong. And just before he blended into the dimness; just before he stepped back into the black water where shadows swim, a smirk tore on his face. He ticked his head in a cynical reversed nod.

I smiled back.