A Visit

Fiction by Roger B Rueda

While in a college in town I lived at the dormitory. It was so lonesome a place that I had time to write my poetry. Early in the morning I would open our room window and look beyond the school wall to the sugarcane field. I found solace with the scenery, it seemed I had been lying on sea-like waving blades of sugarcane.

When boredom struck me, I’d go to the cafeteria in a nearby building. While sipping at my coffee one afternoon I noticed an announcement, Dakaldakal, a college publication, was now accepting applicants to fill the editorial staff.

I went back to the dormitory and asked a roommate for a copy of Dakaldakal. Inside our room we opened the cabinet in which he had stuck some back issues of all sorts of magazines and journals. In between compilations, I read. Anthony Losaria was the editor in chief. He had been a fellow at a writer’s workshop I had been to.

In the middle of the night while I was trying to sleep I groped for my poetry notebook. I remembered how Anthony Losaria, skinny and longhaired, had critiqued my work in that same notebook.

It was one o’clock in the morning when I slept. I lay on a bed scattered with papers. When I woke up at eight the small of my back ached due to discomfort and the disorder of my bed. Anthony was on my mind. And I tried to recall his appearance.

As a transfer second-year student, I made a try for Dakaldakal. Unnoti­ceably, I was in front of the Administration building. I went up the stairs. The office was very quiet. I knocked, then pushed the door open.

‘- Applicant?’ a student asked. ‘Come in.’
‘Should I personally hand this application to the advisor?’
‘What’s your course?’ he looked at me. He was Anthony.
‘Fisheries, where’s the advisor?’
‘Just sit here. She’s a visitor as yet.’
‘Are you Anthony Losaria?’ I asked him. He was no longer skinny and long-haired. He looked handsomer than before.
‘Do you know me?’ he asked me while trying to recall my face. ‘Francis!’

I sat and we talked. At his table the newly released copies of the delayed summer issue of Dakaldakal were sorted out for distribution, he told me. I borrowed one and read the editorial. Near to end I paused and went to the advisor’s cubicle as her visitor pulled the door open, on his way out.

After a month of waiting I read my name in an announcement on Dakaldakal’s bulletin board. Immediately I proceeded to the office and we had a meeting the following day. The advisor informed us of our respective position and assignment. The folio would have to be due for publication by next month.

Anthony Losaria was the editor in chief. The nine of us were members of the editorial staff. When Anthony asked us about the theme of the folio, I suggested feminism. Anthony hinted about politics and impoverishment. Others’ suggestions were gays, sex, religion, and Filipino language.

After considering the importance of every topic the group decided to come up with a folio focused on gay writing, for there had been no attempts on this before. Anthony objected to work on this topic but he had to, as the editor in chief.

I was chosen issue editor. I rejected the position for I had to learn more writing. I had walls in my writing which I had not passed through yet. But the advisor trusted me. Perhaps I was challenged by their expectations as I willingly accepted the editorship.

In my room, I read a lot, my resort to invite the Muse, for there were no ideas coming to my mind. Suddenly I remembered Anthony’s suggestion to buy a copy of Ladlad, an anthology of Philippine gay writing from the National Bookstore. Anthony was a wide reader and that was the reason he could write and talk about anything–from vegetables to basketball.

Last year he too had been chosen editor in chief. He was tall, fair-skinned, and handsome. He did not look scholarly but was like a matinee idol.

I liked Anthony’s company. When we were together, he enjoyed talking about literature. No other things. Sometimes he would visit me at the dormitory and invite me for booze at Tiko’s Bar and Restaurant. He would carry a rough draft of an unfinished short story. However, never did he show it to me. He had had a bad experience of showing his work to a friend. His work had been blue-pencilled for the friend had thought it was a mere draft.

Tiko’s Bar and Restaurant was just a tricycle ride away. It was made of nipah and bamboo. The moon was lucid through the window screen and we were like shadows. The dama de noches were in bloom. I often went to Tiko’s. I liked its garden of exotic plants and flowers: the purple cogon and petunia. There were plenty of bromeliads by the pathway. I also liked the tables and chairs made of beach-combed wood.

I was a little bit drunk. I told Anthony it was time to go home. He ordered another bottle. He was a bit of a boozer. Nevertheless, he wrote finer pieces when he drank.

‘I hate gays. But you, Francis Belgira, are different from them,’ he told me.
‘Perhaps because we are both writers,’ I replied.
‘Do you think so?’ he looked at the ceiling.
‘Why? Is there another reason - ?’ I looked him straight in the eye. There was silence between us for a moment.
‘No,’ he muttered. A waiter brought his order.’ –That is the last,’ he looked at the beer bottle being served.
‘Help me, Francis. I have a problem,’ he wiped the mouth of the bottle clean with his hand. I knew he wanted to divert my question.

He had deep problems. Only he knew how to handle them. One time I had read his poem in Home Life. It was about a martyr mother. In Panorama, about a father who left home. He never told me his problems but I knew.

He laughed like crazy. I was surprised by his actuation. I didn’t know how to react.

‘Excuse me, Anthony.’ I told him. ‘Are you crazy?’
‘No.’
‘Why did you laugh like that?’
‘I’m just happy.’
‘Happy? Laughing like that for you is an expression of being happy? Oh, C’mon.’
‘I’m sorry. By the way did you receive my poetry submission?’
‘Yes,’ I answered. But I didn’t tell him I hadn’t read it yet.

In my mind I was composing poetry. My mind was out of Tiko’s for the moment. I liked the moon and the celestial diamonds. Then the dama de noches, it seemed, had been gracing us both at Tiko’s. Only the two of us were left drinking when I glanced around.

‘Just write and write,’ he advised me.
‘Do you think I will write for long?’ I asked him, to know how he considered me as a member of Dakaldakal.
‘ I believe so. I read your poems in a literary anthology,’ he told me. No wonder he had read me; he was a bookworm.
‘This is the last,’ he took the bottle from the waiter.
‘How many last bottles are those? I need to go now,’ I glanced at my watch. ‘The matron of the dormitory is strict. You know that. You told me you had stayed at the dormitory before,’ I reminded him.

He listened to me. He stood up and signalled the waiter for our bill.

‘Thank you. You’re a friend,’ he whispered to me but I didn’t bother to ask what a friend meant to him.
‘Where will you go from here? To your boarding-house?’ I asked him.
‘OK,’ he stood up and I followed. ‘We’ll hire a tricycle.’
When we left the nipah house I signalled the driver to start the tricycle.
‘I’ll drop you at the dormitory. I’m sure your matron will be angry with you. Did you ask permission from her? You can sleep with me in my boarding-house.’ He was worried for me.
‘Don’t worry. Eddie, my roommate knows about this,’ I assured him.
Our room was brightly lit still. It was very quiet that evening.
‘See you tomorrow,’ I told him in a low tone. I felt lonely when I alighted from the tricycle.
‘OK, take care.’

Dakaldakal didn’t call a meeting for weeks. I didn’t see Anthony on campus. Usually from the gate I could casually see him sitting on the bench under the talisay trees. A neighbour of Anthony informed me that he had caught dengue fever. He was home in Lambunao.

I made up my mind to go to Lambunao and was absent from school in the afternoon. I arrived at Anthony’s house without his knowing. He was recuperating. At the living room he was fastening an empty bottle of Tanduay and a spoon to a cracked plate. I was amazed by his art. As I sat on the sofa thinking over what he was doing I began to appreciate his work and like him. He offered me banana cake he had baked by himself and a can of Pepsi.

I stayed for the night. I slept in Anthony’s room. It was air-conditioned. But his books were scattered on the floor. The old computer was beside his bed and there was an organ in a corner. I saw a roach while I was sipping a cup of native coffee his mother had prepared. I pretended I hadn’t seen the insect. I was sitting on the books on the floor.

‘Why don’t you change your computer? Yours is very obsolete,’ I suggested, while smelling the strong aroma of kape barako.
‘I like my computer. It is lucky for me. I have won prizes in poetry with it.’
‘You have many books here.’ I changed the topic.

I picked up a book in science. Anthony collected all kinds of books. In my case I collected books on limited topics. Only literature.

‘I collect the books of Saul Bellow, Kurt Vonnegut, and William Carlos Williams,’ he told me while I was crawling for the scattered books.
I never said anything.
‘I also collect the books of John Updike,’ he continued.
‘I have Rabbit, at Rest but it’s part of my collection.’
‘Really! I would have the complete set if you sell it to me.’
‘It’s my collection. But for the sake of our friendship I will barter it to you with your book here.’
‘Which one? Ah, the book of Ricardo de Ungria. I acquired it from the UP National Writers Workshop.’
‘You have a copy of Ladlad here. Can I borrow this? I’ll bring you Rabbit, at Rest in school.’
‘I’ll swap that with you and de Ungria’s A Passionate Patience.’

I was supposed to sleep in another room; however, I decided to sleep in Anthony’s. His mother brought me bedding and I spread it on the floors. I placed the books under his bed.

Anthony was an insomniac. The whole night long we conversed about literature. I told him to sleep but it was very difficult to dominate him, even his mother could not. His father, a doctor had left them when they had been young. His mother, who was also a doctor, was a martyr. She had stopped her work to tend her family. Her children were drug addicts. Anthony too had been rehabilitated before. He had been a medical student in a university but was kicked out. Now, he was an English major, my friend, and our editor in chief. And I was no longer shocked by his unusual reaction to certain things under normal conditions.

‘Do you have a girlfriend?’ I asked him.
‘No. I don’t like girls,’ he replied.
‘You stole my line,’ I smiled gamely.
‘I just want to write.’
‘Write?’
‘Writing is my girlfriend.’
‘Why, couldn’t you write when you have one?’ I frankly asked him.
‘I’m weird, Francis. I am afraid a girl will not understand me. There are times, you know that I want to be lonely. And girls are jealous,’ he reasoned out.
‘How about a gayfriend. Someone who will understand you–like a girlfriend.’ I asked him. I felt pity perhaps. Or I didn’t know. It seemed I was falling in love with Anthony. Or his art.
‘I hate gays.’
‘Which means you hate me?’ I looked at him.
‘No, you’re different.’ Then he paused. ‘Yes. I hate you, Francis. Are you really a poet?’ he asked me bleakly.
‘I can’t understand you.’ I stood up. ‘Is there something you hate in my being a poet? I can’t understand you, Anthony.’

When Anthony woke up in the morning, I had already taken a bath. I went back immediately to the college. And on the bus it lingered on my mind that Anthony was homophobic. He went with me and I was a friend to him because I didn’t wear a dress and makeup. I was decent looking.

He was mysterious and my feelings toward him were inexplicable. Did I feel pity, love, hate, lust, obsession, what?

At the office, one morning when I opened the lower compartment of our steel cabinet, there were brown envelopes addressed to me. I never got to read them when I received them from a staff member. So many submissions flooded my table.

Anthony’s voice reverberated on my mind, ‘Are you really a poet?’ I opened one of the envelopes. I read:

‘A Visit

Visit me in my room/
If ever you have time./
My room is dark/
And we can/
Play hide-/
And-seek./
Or you can turn on/
The light and I/
Will bring you to my/

World.

Then you’d/
Sculpt me into David/
As if you were/

Michelangelo.

–Anthony Losaria’

It was Anthony’s submission. I had been so busy that I hadn’t been able to read it.

After a month, I went to his boarding-house. The house was airy. A poet like me could perhaps write volumes of poetry there. It seemed the Muse was always there. So much that Anthony was very prolific.

He was in the balcony. He looked serious.

‘Anthony,’ I called out to him. He opened the gate. ‘Are you alone here?’ I asked him. I was curious whether he had other companions in the house. It was far from other houses in the village and it was difficult to ask for help in case of emergency.

He opened the main door, ‘The other room is occupied by my two friends. They are from Bacolod,’ then he looked back at me smiling. He took the key from his pocket. ‘Just stay here. I will change my shirt.’

I sat on the sofa and skimmed through some magazines and books scattered on the table.

‘Can I get inside your room?’ I asked him curiously.
‘Just stay there.’
‘I know. But I want to see your room.’

There was silence for a moment. I didn’t assert my intention. I continued reading.

‘ Where did you buy Amina, Among Angels by Merlie M Alunan? UP Press?’
‘ Come in here,’ he shouted.
‘ Is it OK with you?’ I asked him.

I went to the room slowly. I grasped the doorknob then twisted it open. The room was dark. As I entered he turned on the dim lamp. I found him. He was lying in bed. I didn’t know what came into his mind. Naked he invited me to sculpt his torso as though I were an artist.

He looked so naïve and I felt such a thrill while I was doing my masterpiece. I touched his dimple tenderly.

‘I love you, Frans,’ he whispered and started to sculpt me, too. We were Michelangelos. Also Davids.

When I rode the tricycle on my way to the dormitory I could not reconcile my experience with Anthony. It was a real visit.

By the room window overlooking the sugarcane field I put my pen to paper, this time for fiction. The Muse had been swaying together with the blades of sugarcane over there and my submission for Dakaldakal folio was almost done.

[First saw print in The Sunday Times, 24 June 2003]

Boroboníka

Fiction by Roger B Rueda

They’ve spent ages looking for Lucy’s body, but they've only found Boroboníka, a big smuggled girl mannequin her aunt from Manila gave her. Lucy would cuddle the mannequin, which was as big as she was, and carry it to their rented rice farm, which was a mile away from their house and to which there was a path through the grazing land. There, they would play Wendy house with the neighbourhood children.

A wealthy family from Iloilo City, who own all the plots of land in the barangay, built a manor house in the middle of the farm; they visit here once in a while. Some superstitious locals think that a sasquatch, commonly known as kapre, lives there. So, no one would go there save us, who then were mischievous children, and some student pastors who would do missionary work for a Baptist church. Only once did I see the whole family at the manor house when their father, a famous fiddler, performed. His wife was perfectly made up and fashionably dressed. She had a fruity voice. Her hairstyle looked simply great. The two daughters behaved beautifully.

Lucy’s only brother, Amorsolo or Solo, all of three, saw Boroboníka’s head sticking out from the mud in the thickets. They thought it might be the corpse at first, but soon realised it was only a mannequin.

I certainly don’t remember how Boroboníka came to be with me. Perhaps, Lucy’s mother loathed it and squawked that she wanted it hidden from sight, because my brother found it in a dumping ground near our house. My brother salvaged the mannequin from a bonfire. Its dress got burned, so now Boroboníka has to dress up as angel or fairy or princess sometimes, and not as ordinary girl she used to be.

Twenty-three years later, Boroboníka lies latent on the ledge. It has been there ever since we cleared out my mother’s house.

Every so often, Boroboníka scares me. During the day it is just a tarnished old mannequin with lustrous eyes and a fading face. When viewed in the night, things change considerably. Night has a way of warping truth, taking everyday things and twisting them out of angle. I’d become a child again, a feeling of unclear dread turning my front as I stared through at it.

I recall the manor house as it had been before Lucy got lost. We would play Wendy house and I would ask her and her brother to gather hibiscus and okra from the garden near the thickets. But she went back and wanted to stay in the balcony. I got angry and pushed her and she fell off the balcony with her mannequin. Then, she fainted dead away. She cracked her head on the pavement and was bleeding. Uncle Raff was drying rice not far away. I was too nervous to speak and I went home, running fearfully. He saw me run away, scaring away the sparrows and the chickens coming to his grains of rice in bamboo mats.  The next day, Lucy went missing. Her parents and the police subjected me to lengthy interrogations. Uncle Raff would look at me, his eyes were as if pinning the blame on me. I developed nervous problems after Uncle Raff began repeatedly blaming Lucy’s disappearance on me. I tried to commit suicide on several occasions. I was taken to casualty at a government hospital several times, too.

I had been watching it that morning, surveying the mannequin with bored rigid and weary eyes. Since leaving work, I spend most of my mornings in the same seat, watching the four walls about me. I had almost drifted off when I heard the phone. Its continual ringing quickly drowned my grisly thoughts, and I went out to the lobby to answer it.

A moment later, I picked up the handset. ‘Hello?’

The voice on the other end was an unfamiliar one. My cousin Virgie, who I met just once then and is my age, had a favour to ask. Her father, Uncle Raff, once a druggie, needed somewhere to stay while she went and pleasured herself with a five week trip with her church friends, in Kuala Lumpur. Virgie has little time for men because she’s married to her job at a sequestered TV station in Iloilo City. Five years ago when he had a minor stroke, which left him partly paralysed, Virgie went home from London to take care of his father. When Virgie were studying in Manila, Uncle Raff spent all his time working on the farm. Now, both of them live with a help who keeps house for them. Virgie’s mother died when she delivered her.

‘He says he’s OK to be left on his own,’ she said ‘but we all know he isn’t. We’d be so glad if you could.’

I shyly accepted. I’d never warmed to Uncle Raff, for reasons I can neither recall nor truly recognise. He’s a lone figure that walks through my childhood memories, with no ropes of sentiment or feeling binding him to me. I hadn’t seen him for decades, a state I remained entirely in two minds. Much as I opposed the idea, I didn’t want to seem standoffish, so it was decided he would come and stay. Pretending to be happy about this, I put the phone down.

Boroboníka, slumped as usual against the wall, stared at me. Mannequins can’t look at people, so I suppose I mean that I was staring at it. Either way, our eyes met. I know as much as the next sound person that she’s just a lifeless object, but there’s still something human about her that appeals to me. I suppose she makes me feel sentimental.

Uncle Raff arrived a few weeks later, and it was clear he had succumbed to the pitfalls of age as much as the poor mannequin on the mantelpiece. His face was mapped with creases and dips, brown eyes sunk back into their sockets. His hair has been reduced to smoky grey tufts between canyons of bare scalp.

‘Randy -’ his greeting was unkind, aloof. ‘Nice of you to have me.’

‘A pleasure -’

He’d brought a stuffy grey lounger from home, and I seated him in it prudently. Dust clung to it like Bermuda grass. We seated him few feet away from the TV. Boroboníka was almost hidden from view, tucked away in the corner of his eye. I saw him turn, glance at it, and immediately pull out his stare.

We seldom spoke, quickly adopting the template of an embittered married couple. I brought him his food and helped him to the toilet, carrying out boring tasks that required no talk. Every now and then I’d close the door and eat my food in the kitchen just to avoid talking to him. I’d sit there, listening to him watch the TV. There was a tacit awkwardness between us, one neither of us could properly place. I couldn’t anyway. Not at first.

At the end of his first week, he mentioned the mannequin. I felt as though he had wanted to since arriving, I envisage the words had been nagging at his lips all day and night.
‘What’s that?’

He knew faithfully what it was. I glanced coolly upwards from vacuuming. My hand gripped the side of his lounger.

‘Did you forget what happened?’

‘Yes, I do remember,’ he said inaudibly, anger stirring in his face. “But I thought I’d have to be seeing things.’

I sighed through gnashed teeth. ‘What do you mean?’

‘It’s glowering, is what it is. Why on earth would you put something like that up for everyone to see?’

‘It reminds me of her,’ I replied meekly. ‘Does it cause you a lot of trouble?’

‘It’s very strange, Randy. Very strange.’

That stayed with me for days.

One night, we were watching TV. He’d dozed off in the chair, and I was about to join him. As my eyelids fell dense over my vision, I suddenly caught sight of the mannequin, its face turned pryingly at me. As I stared at it, half asleep, my uncle’s words from floated back in my mind.

‘Why on earth would you put something like that up for everyone to see?’

I had shrugged, continuing my tidying. But the words returned to me, each one chiming with a chilling new meaning. I bolted straight, the shackles of sleep falling fast away. My eyes glided from Beleleng to Uncle, and back.  Speedily realising I was almost totally in the dark, I leapt to my feet and made for the light switch.

Uncle Raff stirred in his chair.

‘Hey! What are you doing?’

‘It’s nothing to worry about.’

***

The following day, I took the mannequin from its fair perch and marched it upstairs with me while Uncle Raff had fallen asleep watching Eat Bulaga. In my bedroom, I took a damp cardboard box from the wardrobe and spilt the contents over the mattress of my bed.

Curling at the edges like fusty rolls, yellowed newspaper clippings tumbled onto the sheets. I searched through them, spreading each one out in search of a pattern.

There were pictures too, snapshots of the two of us standing together in matching dresses. We were both smiling, innocent smiles. I remembered how we would play in the forests.

I made a sour face in his direction. I wanted to fight the thoughts that were creeping back into my head, but instead I let them flow over me.

What if it had been him? I knew I was acting on irrational impulses, namely the evidence of a child’s mannequin, but I couldn’t stop myself. He had always been unusual, never having married or held a steady job. I’d eavesdrop on my mother and aunts talk pityingly of him, wishing he’d find a nice girl to settle down with. Strange that he didn’t. Stranger still was his strained and awkward relationship with me.

I tried desperately to make something of it, trawling my memories for any hints or clues. My recollections of her death are hazy in the extreme, and I’ll only occasionally remember the odd scene or snatch of dialogue in passing. I could possibly have repressed some of it, perhaps because of him.

One thing I do recall is the day of her memorial, with everyone clad in black and crying in the family room. I had been sent to play with my cousins, and when I returned everyone was sitting in the chairs, eating sandwiches and drinking Pepsi.

I asked what was wrong, and my question hung in the room for infinity. Then Uncle Raff had looked at me, giving me an aloof and hard-hearted look. I felt as though he’d taken a cold, bony finger and prodded it into the back of my spine. Then I had started to cry.

Thirty-two years later, and I was still crying. Crouched over my collaged papers, I failed to prevent a steady stream of tears rolling down my cheeks and into my mouth.  If these cloudy speculations formed into a hard truth then the repercussions were huge. It also meant I was sharing a house with a child murderer. My blood boiled, chilled, ran in cold streams through my tones. I ran to the door suddenly and bolted it.

I picked up our photograph again, the snapshot in the lives of two little children. I was wearing a smug smile, my thick black hair bound in clumps. She presented a gap-toothed smile to the camera. Boroboníka hung from her hand, lopsided head and also looking inattentively into the lens.

I stroked it, a combination of faith and dreadfulness sluicing in the pits of my stomach.

***
I dropped the tray of food onto his lap and broke it on the floor. He winced with pain, and looked up at me with a flash of anger.

‘Do you mind not dropping it on me like that?’

‘I’m really sorry -’

I opened the draperies in a rush, and unwelcome light scattered into the room. That morning I decided that I should probe Uncle Raff about the subject which had irritated him so much the previous day.  I sat down on the sofa opposite his armchair, and our eyes inexorably drifted towards Boroboníka.

‘Why didn’t you want me to have that mannequin up there?’

He grumbled into the hollow globe of his teacup. ‘It’s morbid, that’s all.’

‘How so?’

The wrath snuck up on his voice. ‘Because it’s the mannequin of a dead child. And it was used at the debriefing.’

I pounced on a particular word he had chosen. ‘Dead? You contented yourself by assuming she’s dead then?’

‘Of course she’s gone. We held a funeral.’

‘I know, but they never found her body, did they? You don’t think she - ran away?’

He turned, his wrinkled face taking an age to incline towards me. He raised his eyebrow slowly.

‘Do you think she ran away?’

I stopped his gaze. ‘Maybe -’

We both returned to watching the TV. A myriad of colours were thrown onto the face of the mannequin, which became animated under the rapidly changing lights. We sat in silence for a few hours, and then I helped him into bed. I returned to the living room, and watched the mannequin. It seemed unusual to find the pieces falling into place so long after the jigsaw had been thrown away, but perhaps things had been overlooked or rushed at the time. Uncle Raff had certainly been questioned by the police initially, but released due to lack of evidence.

Sitting alone with my thoughts, I quickly fell asleep and began to dream. I was walking through a farm, and everything was in sepia. Uncle Raff was calling to me from somewhere, but I only saw flashes of his face through the trees. I’m not sure whether he moved towards me or vice versa, but his white, wrinkled face was suddenly leering into my face behind a mask of branches and leaves.

Suddenly back in my house, we watched the TV and I told him not to scare me like that again. He chuckled stridently and his laughs mutated into knocks at the door. As I got up to answer, I shot a casual glance at the ledge. The mannequin was gone, and in its place a little girl. A dead girl. With empty eyes and a blood-spattered mouth and pale as a funeral parlour slab. I remember trying to yell.

When I awoke, the sitting room was cold and my mouth was dry. Dirty hair jutting out over the face, the mannequin was slumped forward. I heard shouting, vague and mimed, and ran to Uncle Raff’s room. He was sat in bed, looking helpless and weak. His whimpering face stared up at me like a scared child.
‘Where have you been?’

‘Sleeping. I’m sorry.’

‘I can’t get out of bed by myself.’

‘I know -’

I felt a pang of sympathy for him, a brief interval that quickly dissipated. I jerked him upright suddenly, and his face winced in pain.

‘What?’

‘Nothing - just my limb -’

I wasn’t thinking rationally at this point, already starting to satisfy myself that he had been held up in her death. I felt drawn to the mystery surrounding her, as though a shard of my own life was trapped there too. The two of us were inseparable as children, and it’s possible that he was involved with both of us. I realise now how twisted and perverted these thoughts were, but they seemed so vivid and real at the time.

‘Will you wash me and change my clothes?’

There was a painfully long silence.

‘I told Virgie I could manage by myself - but I’ve realised I can’t. I need a wash - could you help me in and out of the bath?’

The initial thought filled me with disgust, but then something got on at the back of mind.

‘Yes - no problem-’

It seemed perfect. A time for questions.

We agreed to have a bath the following night.

This gave me time to decide my questions, to confirm that I was doing the right thing. All that time, one empty mind spinning with fresh ideas. Within days I had decided he was the murderer. It felt like such a fitting assumption, and I wondered how it had not occurred to me before. After all, it was fact that murder victims were very likely to know their murderers.

My own childhood was also particularly dim. There were so many gaps, patches of white that I desperately wanted filled in. I suppose I can see now that I was searching for myself as much as I was her.

The following morning, I placed a ham sandwich on his lap. He murmured thanks, our conversations having slowed to bare minimum. Looking up at me, his eyes conveying an uncertainty.

‘About that bath?’

‘Yes, tonight.’

I began to walk away, casting a casual glance towards the back. He was doing exactly the same to me. Our eyes met in an awkward stare, and we both quickly returned to our separate activities.

I drew him a bath that night. I watched as the cool ceramic was filled with piping hot water.

Mist rose to the air and into my eyes. The mirrors turned silvery as they steamed over.

The temperature of the room rose inch by inch; the sweat running down my arms and mingling with the bathwater before I could stop it. I heard him coming.  I heard the deep thuds of his walking frame as he made his way across the landing towards me. When he did finally emerge, our eyes refused to meet. Walking slowly to the bath, his cane fell from his grasping hands and hit the cool white tiles of the floor. The sound it produced made me feel like I’d been smacked in the teeth.

I had to take his clothes off him, working through each layer of clothes until we reached his bare and wizened flesh. Watching him standing in the cold sent a shiver down my spine. Age was a cruel, circular thing and in Uncle Raff’s spotted, stretched body I was seeing the worst it had to offer. I lowered him into the tub, the clear water making his body sway and ripple as though it wasn’t actually real.

‘I’ll just come back in a few minutes.’

I descended the staircase, entering the living room at an angle so that the mannequin was looking right at me. I walked over, lifting her from the seat she had occupied for almost forty years. A ring of dust remained as I raised the mannequin into my arms and carried her out of the room. Her head lolled in my lap, decaying face nodding against my heaving chest. I stroked the dress, stared hopelessly at the optimistic curve of her lips. For one awful moment I felt I was holding her, the dead child in my arms. It’s difficult to describe, but I felt the mannequin needed so desperately to be there, to hear whatever he had to say for himself.

I opened the bathroom door once more and saw the look of terror shadow his face as I brought her over the edge. His eyes darted about gracelessly.

‘What the hell are you holding that for?’

I ignored him, and placed the mannequin on the ridge. He was watching it, rather than me, as I stepped back to the bath and knelt down beside it. His head turned to me unexpectedly, still waiting for an answer.

‘Well?’

‘I want answers, Uncle Raff.’

‘I don't quite know what to say in answer to your question. Answers about what?’

‘About her.’

The muscles about his mouth twitched, his tongue stroking empty words.  He spoke cautiously, each syllable sensibly vocalised.

‘What do you want to know, Randy?’

I felt my confidence failing. The sheer idiocy of the situation knocked me sick in the stomach, and I almost laughed with embarrassment. I almost stopped dead, but then I saw her face. The face that has always lived on in my memory, long after the death and decay of the original.  I paused for what seemed like endless time, before finally soldiering on.

‘I think there might be something you’ve not told me. I think you may have been involved in her death.’

His eyes widened in what appeared to be genuine shock. Then, his face sunk back down. He didn’t answer my accusations, but rather directed a question back to me.

‘Do you remember her, Randy? Do you really remember her?’

I was puzzled by the question. Rather than bringing him back to my point, I decided to answer.
‘I remember her about as well as anybody else. Obviously, there are gaps.’

‘Really? And how much do you remember about her?’

A yearning smile wet my lips. ‘Ooh, a lot. Her crimped hair, her cute little garbs, her giggle - I really loved her -’

He sneered. Gooseflesh hove across my arm.

‘Are you - laughing?’

His clawed hand reached from the bathtub and grabbed my hand. Water ran from his skin to mine. His eyes were afire, more life burning inside of them than I had seen in many years.
‘You loathed her. Hated. You went out of your way to make her life a misery, didn’t you?’
I balked at the idea. ‘You’re lying! None of that’s true.’

‘You pushed her, you kicked her, and you tore her hair because it was nicer than yours. You were an absolute bitch to her, Randy, and only I ever seemed to notice…’

I shook my head in utter disrespect, pulling away from his limp grip on my arm.

‘You’re just taking attention away from yourself! You’re making all this up!’

‘And that mannequin - , you were so envious of that thing - you used to actually pull it out of her grasp, poor thing -’

A change had fallen over Boroboníka’s face. Before I had viewed it as a living being, the personification of her killer’s guilt. Now I saw only a child’s mannequin, an empty thing.

‘Can you really look me in the eye and tell me you’ve forgotten?’

I met his exasperated stare. ‘I don’t know what you’re talking about.’

‘You were a horrid, malevolent little boy,’ his lip curled over with a strong and biting hate. ‘I always said that something would happen - ’

He was leading me somewhere with these questions, down a dark and dusty path. I let him take me there, dragged into his poisonous re-imagining of our past.

‘You’ve got some nerve - accusing me of something! We both know what happened to her - ’
I spat out an unspeaking reply, mouthing only the ghosts of the words I had planned to say. Memories were slowly coming back to me, developing like darkroom photographs. Everything coloured, memories were bright and vivacious again.

His face was soured, lips snarling.

‘I knew, I knew it all along - I knew you were a spiteful child - but the police wouldn’t listen - they thought I was deranged - I tried - I tried to tell them that it was - you - ’

My hand slipped against the wet surface of the bath and I lost my balance. My head missed the porcelain by inches. I tried to steady myself again, trembling.

‘No, I wouldn’t - I would never -’

I would and I had. I remembered the childhood possessiveness stirring inside me, the plans hatching in my mind, and the day where I told her we were going to play a little game in the forest. She had laughed, and skipped behind me as we entered the woods.

‘There were so many of those old mines in those thickets - so old people had forgotten they were there - ’

He described the story as a despairing teller of tales, carelessly retracing my own gory steps.
‘I don’t know what occurred, I wasn’t there. My speculation at the time, and my speculation now, is that you lead her into the farm - and -’

His eyes were shining with tears. I gagged and my mouth filled abruptly with warm and cloying sourness. I spat it out against the cold, grey floor.

I wanted to shout out my disowning, to screech at him that he was a dirty little liar. I couldn’t because I knew he was telling the truth. Everything was clear now, all the vivid memories forcing themselves against my skull. It was like peeling off layers of my skin, revealing a rotten inner self. I wasn’t a murderer. Randy Aguirre was not a murderer. Certainly not.

I remembered my delightedly merciless behaviour towards her. I loved to tease and torment her; it gave me some simple sense of power over frailer beings. All the compassion, all the anguish had been a creation of my own guilt-ridden inner self. Even my rumination of leaving her entombment crying had suddenly been altered, I remembered it properly now. I had been told to leave because I couldn’t stop laughing.

‘Only now you’re remembering?’ Uncle Raff said, reminding me he was still in the room. ‘I don’t believe you.’

I didn’t answer because there was nothing left to say. My whole life I had let her bloody murder scab over with concocted memories and thought up stories, trying to fool everybody so dreadfully that in time even I fell for it. He rose from the bath, and the water ran in snakes across his body.

I turned about and stared at the mannequin, shaking my head. Running towards it, I picked it up and held it against the light. I remembered burying her, covering her pretty white face with trickles of dirt. It had stuck under my nails, and I’d cleaned them in the pool.

A cry of horror broke from me. Boroboníka looked at me blankly, giving me the same blank look it had for the past thirty-two years. It had known all along.

A look of disgust came over his face. ‘You clearly disgust me!’

I ran from the loo. My head seemed to vibrate fast, and I felt as though my whole body was pumping with pain. I stopped, closely laughed, and remembered that all this was truly happening. I tried to make it fiction, but truth was screaming in my skull.

I didn’t know what’d happened to him. I’d left him in the bath. Perhaps he’d get out or perhaps he’d just give up and go under. I didn’t know. I couldn’t care.

I was burying myself in the broadsheet clippings in my room. In my one hand was Boroboníka, and in the other I clutched my mobile, ready to call the police. I had to drop one of them. I didn’t know what to tell them if I should. Randy Aguirre didn’t murder anybody, at least not the Randy he had thought he was. I’ve changed so much. I’m not the same person any longer.

Very thin streaks appeared on Boroboníka as she fell flat on her face on the floor.

I could hear Uncle Raff crying in the lavatory. I ran to him and cuddled him and eventually he stopped crying. ‘I raped Lucy - and smothered her with her own scarf and her body dumped in the thickets.’

Relief saw the light of day. A siren went off at a distance. When I answered the door, Solo, in police uniform, and a barangay squad greeted me.

A taxi drew up in front of the house. A woman got off the taxi and reached forward and gave Uncle Raff a slap. Virgie is fully recovered from amnesia. Solo gave her a cry of recognition. They were sort of crying for joy and embracing each other.

‘Virgie was raped and smothered with her own scarf and her body dumped in the thickets. I buried her in the ground I had made in her room. Her untimely death had a catastrophic effect on me. I kept Lucy for several days and sent her to a boarding school in Manila.’ Uncle Raff slumped to the ground in a faint, as he was being led away to gaol in handcuffs.

Nana(y)

a poem by Roger B Rueda

in her vegetal garden, tipping

the discoloured bucket:

well-water outflows

in the verdures, like soup

into lime boules. Over-filling:

water drips through soil-

holes, once more into stone well

where it waits for him, who

will not come to change

the thick cover. I clasp her

tissue-hand in, was it?, magic.

Gecko

a poem by Roger B Rueda

        

A tense gecko briskly hunting for food

looked beneath him

and saw a man bend down,

pick up a rock

and throw it onto the tree

above the trunk

where the gecko was climbing

smoothly up.

He looked above him

and saw the gleaming moon

watching him

in the lacklustre, gloomy sky.

As the clouds started to glide

and cover the moon

as a blanket would a babe,

the watchful little gecko,

spotted a creepy-crawly

on the trunk.

He was thinking of bringing it

to his lair as rainy days

had already arrived, but he

noticed four trees standing tall

when everything else is flat.

Two trees wore long dresses

like women at a pageant

and two stood as bare as a cob

with all the corn eaten up.

All of a sudden,

the gecko overheard something

when the whole world was still,

a kind swishy noise

rung loudly in the gecko’s ear.

A soft tip tap

rebounded all at once

in the gecko’s head.

Swiftly,

the gecko disappeared

into his lair,

and the whole world was

silent again.

When the gecko

looked about in his lair,

he noticed

that he was in the planet of geckos.

[First saw print in Philippines Graphic, 12 September 2011]

Wesley

Fiction  by Roger B Rueda

I was browsing through a newspaper to find some interesting articles when I noticed the news splashed in a headline in a Philippines newspaper: MAN KILLED IN QC FLAT IN POSSIBLE ROBBERY. I then picked a copy of the newspaper from the frame and began to bury myself in it.

Manila—The body of a man who had been stabbed to death was found inside the lavatory of his flat in Xavierville Avenue, Quezon City, before dawn Sunday, the police said.


Chief Inspector Ricky Aguila, head of the Quezon City Police District homicide investigation unit, identified the victim as Wesley Bayona, 27.

At its most terrifying, the news sent shivers up and down my spine. I couldn't believe my eyes. I felt quite emotional while reading it.

I continued reading rapidly down the foot of the page, not pausing until I neared the two last paragraphs.

Aguila said investigators who went to Bayona’s flat in the Sunset Apartments in Palma Street, found it in complete disarray.


He added that police have yet to determine what the victim did for a living and the motive for his killing, although their initial theory was that it was robbery.


Aguila said police investigators were also still trying to establish if anything had been taken from Bayona’s flat.


'We have not started the inventory of what [items are] missing as we have yet to talk to the victim’s family,’ he told the Philippines Bulletin.


Bayona’s body was reported to the police by his friend, Reynald Bernardo.


Bernardo told the police that he went to the victim’s flat after the latter failed to reply to his phone calls.


After his repeated knocks on the door went unanswered, Bernardo said he went to the building administrator and asked him to let him into the victim’s flat.


They later found the victim in the lavatory inside his flat. His hands and feet were tied while his body bore two stab wounds.


Police said that based on the body’s condition, the victim could have been dead for hours before he was discovered.


Police said that based on the body’s condition, the victim could have been dead for hours before he was discovered.

I bought the newspaper to show it to Macy, my colleague at the university, but while I was heading the faculty lounge, Macy grabbed hold of my arm to stop me from walking into the room and dragged me to her classroom. I knew then that it must be serious.

‘Alexis, have you got a second? I'd like to have a word with you,’ she said.

‘Where are we going?’ I asked.

‘Wesley…died. A certain Rhea, who sounded boyish, finally made contact with me informing that Wesley died in his flat in Quezon City.’

That confirmed that Wesley was, without a doubt, dead. I handed her the newspaper and she read it, our hearts sinking, her voice being down in the dumps. (Macy was the only Facebook friend of Wesley from Iloilo whose information especially his mobile was not between themselves.)

All of twenty-seven, Wesley, who had a PhD and was a well-known author of poems and essays and instructor from the De La Salle University, was one of the thirteen children from a poor family and hadn't got many blood relatives in Manila, so we knew that it’d be better if we’d have charge of his corpse during the week and have it for a while as help and donations of food and money were facilitated by his friends at the university where he was an instructor. His mother didn’t know what happened to her son and was shocked to see us arrive at her stall piled low with some local vegetables and fruits pretty nearly turning yellow, after hours of searching the public market for her mother’s stall as nobody knew where faithfully Wesley’s house was in Barrio Obrero. The next day, we flew to Manila with her mother.

As soon as we arrived in Manila, the next day, her body was cremated and was brought to Iloilo City. It was buried in a cemetery in La Paz. A lot of professors from the West Visayas State University and his friends attended the service.

We seemed not to run out of conversation, mentioning his name. He’s dead now, but his name really brings back memories.

Macy and I talking, Leo, Wesley’s ex-boyfriend, attracted our attention as he entered the chapel briskly and stood near the door. He said nothing but gave us a sly grin that made us feel terribly uneasy.

At our approach Leo walked away and hid subtly. He was wearing a lot of black.

***

Then, when we were together we could hardly hear ourselves think. Wesley was a lively, talkative person, and this would render me speechless. He was witty and very charming, too. I enjoyed speaking to him because our meeting made me think creatively. With Wesley, death was an illusion. It was barely existing.

Wesley was labouring under the illusion that he could find the right man for him. It'd always been his dream to become a woman. And he said he'd never cared very much about what his appearance would be. He didn't care whether he was born having eyes that looked in towards the nose, so long as she was a woman, or whether she was born with a cleft lip. He was so funny, he really made me laugh.

Our casual meetings would always contain some very snappy dialogue. He was good at speaking Philippines gay lingo. He was smart and not bad-looking, and he could be funny when he wanted to.

He was busy typing his poems in their organ office. While still at school he was clearly a budding genius. His Filipino was terrific.  All those who knew him admired him for his work. For me, however, it was a little difficult to read his writing, perhaps, because he had a deep admiration for Virgilio Almario, so he always stayed within the rules of rhymes. Wesley was astonishingly prolific and some of his ideas about life and gayness were entirely his own. 'Bakla, neo-classical?'

'Wiz.'

'Escuerda tayo sa Vision.' Vision was an old cinema showing unknown films, but it was our favourite hangout. It was too dark inside to see properly. It was the gays' lair in Iloilo City.

'What's on at the flicks this week?'

'Nota,' he said, jokingly. 'Bakla, dakota horizon talaga.'

It was so funny, I burst out laughing.

'Have you got a fifty-peso note?' He used to borrow money and not bother to pay it back. But I fully understood him. Sometimes, he didn't have allowance which I couldn't have managed at college if I hadn't had.

What I liked about Wesley was that there was no secret about his homosexuality. He had an honest, open face. The only secret was our going to Vision sometimes. What he was afraid of was that Leo, his boyfriend, might catch a glimpse of him going there. To him, it could be his ruin. I suppose we were quite promiscuous in our youth. But of course, we knew our limit, though that couldn't possibly be the right way to do it.

What was funny was when Wesley puked all down the guy's shirt. It was too dark inside to see much. So, we went out of Vision together. Surprisingly, he was the stranger I was dreaming I'd be whisked off my feet by, because all of a sudden, I had a crush on him. I was completely mesmerised by his psychology. I wiped his hands on my pink hankie.

Later, we went to a coffee-shop. I walked from Vision arm in arm with the guy. Wesley wandered along behind us. The guy was warm-hearted and kind to everyone and everything. He was handsome, but he was not aware that he was. When my nylon bag fell, he helped me picked it from the floor and slowly zipped and locked it. His behaviour touched me.

I didn't know that it'd bring me into conflict with Wesley. Since then, I thought he was avoiding me for I wouldn't see him all day. I heard he would go to Vision alone or with some gays from lower years.

***

When we graduated and left the university, we hadn’t seen each other anymore. I would just hear that he won a contest. One that made him popular in Iloilo City was when he won the Palanca. He was editor, too, of a journal. We were not even Facebook friends.  I would know something about him from Macy.

Macy and Wesley were co-editors in their college. Wesley was Macy’s senior.  Because of Wesley, Macy knew how to speak Bekemon. And it was him who made her act like a real gay.

They were both talkative.

I remember their closeness started when they attended a seminar in Bagiuo City. Macy helped Wesley meet the guy who Wesley really liked and who later became his boyfriend. The guy liked Macy but she did something so that he would agree to become Wesley’s boyfriend.

The guy was a student of a maritime university in Iloilo City. He was not so handsome, but to Wesley, he was the perfect guy he had ever seen. Since they became a couple, Wesley was so busy, and he would only meet his boyfriend and Macy during weekends.

Of course, we only met at school and we would just say hi to each other.  He seemed aloof and detached. I also had an air of aloofness about him. We didn’t keep in contact. I seemed to manage OK for the first year or so, and I bore no grudges against him.

One time, I saw Leo and Wesley in a restaurant. ‘So, this relationship is gonna be forever?’ The question got a big laugh, which encouraged me to continue talking to them.

‘Of course,’ answered Leo. Since then I’ve never met Wesley anymore.


***

The killer stabbed him in the stomach. A cry of horror broke from him. He shouted him with anger and frustration. He tied his hands behind his back. Wesley cried for mercy but his pleas were met with abuse and laughter.

The killer grinned, delighted at the situation.

After punching him on the chin the killer wound up hitting him over the head. Wesley was writhing in pain, bathed in perspiration. His bottom lip quivered and big tears rolled down his cheeks.

Wesley mumbled a few words.

‘No, I'm sorry, I can't agree with you.’  The killer red-cheeked with rage, he kicked Wesley in the shins. It pained Wesley to think of him doing it to him.

Giving a violent shudder, Wesley tried to untie the ropes binding his ankles.

It was a light flat with a tall window. Standing in a chair, he opened the window and looked out. He watched the frantic flow of cars and buses along the street. By now all logic had gone out of the window.

The killer stuck the cigarette between his lips. He pulled over a chair and sat beside the floor on which Wesley was lying helpless. He looked at him, apparently enraged.

The whole flat was ringing with music.

The killer sat on the floor and gave Wesley a glimpse of disappointment. Wesley looked at him earnestly. He clamped his hand against Wesley’s mouth and kissed him hard on it. Wesley looked at him as if he was defying him to do it.

‘I love you,' he whispered. He stabbed him in the chest. He got up and dragged Wesley towards the loo. He was bleeding profusely. He was dying. ‘Help me, Leo!’

The killer quietly slipped away and left Wesley to his tears. The whole flat was ringing with music of Bruno Mars.

***

One lazy afternoon, while crossing my legs and resting my chin on my right fist, as if lost in deep thought, in front of an eatery near my new boarding-house, I suddenly saw Leo in the distance. I stood up and followed him up the steps into a dilapidated building.

A cry of fear broke from him. He threw his arms round me and we embraced passionately. I could smell the beer on his breath. He invited me out and we talked a great deal in Deco’s. His lover, who has significant similarities with Wesley, was sitting at the other table taking his time eating batchoy, after Leo messaged him.

At another table, a fat, chubby policeman was sipping his coffee thoughtfully. He spun round, a feigned look of surprise on his face. He called out, ‘Alexis!’ I had no idea who he was, I seemed to recall. But I just smiled and waved. Later, I remembered he was the guy Wesley and I met at Vision.

‘All right, I promise.’ My eyes filled with tears, as I smiled and gave Leo a sincere handshake.

Names of Months in Hiligaynon

an essay by Roger B Rueda

Those twelve months that make up each and every year on our calendars are very familiar. Even most children by the time they are enrolled in kindergarten or first grade can name the twelve months of the year. There are even cute little poems and rhymes designed to help us keep track of each month. Yet, at one time there were no names for these calendar periods, only the seasons themselves were marked by those living in the West Visayas.

Ulalóng, It is the first month of the year in the Hiligaynon calendar; January. Probably because it was formerly the month for cotton-spinning. It means 'rough,' 'botched,' 'bungled,' 'careless,' 'coarse,' 'not well done,' applied to all kinds of work. Ulalóng (Inulalóng) nga trabáho. (Rough or careless work.) It means a task that has been badly performed. This month opens the year. The Fireworks Display is in the month of Ulalóng.

Dagangkáhoy, The month of February. Some trees turn scarlet in this month. The Candelaria Fiesta is in Dagangkáhoy. It is the biggest and most opulent religious pageantry in the West Visayas with the blessing of candles and a procession of the Nuestra Señora de Candelaria and the Fiesta Queen and her court.

Dagangbúlan, The month of March. The moon turns scarlet in this month. The Paraw regatta, a race amongst seafarers on colourful sailboats called paraws in the straits between the Guimaras Island and Iloilo City, is held  in Dagangbúlan. The Pintados de Passi is in the second week of this month.

Kilíng, The month of April. The ring attached to the traces and through which ring the rein or nose-rope is
passed is called kilíng. It is also a steadying device put on a kite, so that it may fly straight and smooth. The Semana sang Iloilo (Week of Iloilo) is on the second week of Kilíng.

Himabúyan, The month of May. Himabúyan is the time when each day is bursting forth in full bloom across much of the country. We might consider Himabúyan to be the opening of the growing season, or an open door to a new growing period. Iloilo City celebrates its Heritage Month in Himabúyan. Various activities are lined up by the city government of Roxas City for its Charter Day celebration in this month. The Katagman Festival (of Oton) is on the first week of Himabúyan.

Kabáy, The month of June. Typhoons sometimes leave hundreds of thousands homeless and cause a lot of damage in Kabáy.The Biraw-Paraw Festival (of Leganes) is on the last week of Kabáy. The Feast of St Anthony de Padua (in Toboso) is held in this month.

Hidapdápan, July. It is a kind of tree with red flowers. Its wood is worthless even for fuel. The Molo district fiesta in honour of St Anne is held in Hidapdápan.

Lubádlúbad, The month of August. It was removing of the string or rope that held them or that had been tied round them. Iloilo City culminates its charter day in Lubádlúbad.

Norólsol, September. The Tumandok Festival is celebrated in Norólsol. Talisay City celebrates Minuluan Festival in this month.

Bágyobágyo, The month of October. The Masskara Festival, the annual celebration in Bacolod City, is held in Bágyobágyo. Typhoons drench much of the country in this month.The Tigkaralag Festival (of Pavia) is held on 30 Bágyobágyo.

Pánglotdiótay, November. The district fiesta of Mandurriao celebrated with a mass procession and carnival is in Pánglotdiótay. The Kawayan Market Week (at Robinson’s Mall) is on the second week of this month.
The Hablon Moda (at Robinson’s Mall ), too.

Pánglotdakû, The month of December. The cold winds usually build up and blow into the country in Pánglotdakû. The coldest part of the day will be the early morning between 4 and 5 AM just before sunrise. It could get warmer around noon and the afternoon, but not by much as there is less humidity during this month.The Pantat Festival (of Zarraga) is on the third week of Pánglotdakû.

Some Hiligaynon Words

an essay by Roger B Rueda

You live a new life for every new language you speak. If you know only one language, you live only once. - (Czech proverb)

When you move to the West Visayas, learning the local language will help you to communicate and integrate with the local community. Even if many of the locals speak your language, for example if your first language is Tagalog and you move to the West Visayas, it's still worth your while learning the local language. Doing so will demonstrate your interest in and commitment to the new place.

If your partner, in-laws, relatives, or friends speak Hiligaynon, learning this language will help you to communicate with them. It will also give you a better understanding of their culture and way of thinking.

Here are some of the Hiligaynon words I want you to know.

abá, Ah, oh, alas. Abá, ang íya sinâ nga katahúm! Oh, the beauty of it! Abá, kanógon gid inâ! Alas, what a pity! (Synonym: abáw).

ábi, For instance, for example; to envisage, ponder, say. Hunâhunáon ta, ábi, nga—. Let us imagine, for example, that—. Kon magmasakít ikáw, ábi, ánhon mo? If you should get sick, say, what would you do? Anó, ábi, ang mahanabû kon—? What do you think will happen, if—? Also used ironically and sarcastically, especially in the phrase: Abi mo? Do you really think so? implying that he who thinks so is quite wrong, very imprudent, foolish, and the like.

agogóling, The humble-bee or bumblebee.

aháw, Spoiled, crumpled, rumpled. Aháw nga báyò. A crumpled dress.

alagílang, Old, yellow leaves, attached still to the plant, but about to fall off; old, withered, dry, sear, sere, said of leaves. Ang alagílang nga dáhon madalî madágdag. The dry leaves will soon fall to the ground.

arík-ik, aríkïk, To laugh heartily; a merry, good-humoured laugh, merriment. (Synonym: arók-ok, talángkaw, halák-hak.

bikâbíkà, To open and close the legs a number of times in succession.

bilíbod, To sprinkle, strew, scatter, as grain, flowers or the like. Bilibóri ang manók  humáy. Scatter some rice grains to the chickens. Ibilíbod sa mungâ ang isá ka púdyot nga maís. Scatter a little corn for the hen.

bóg-oy, bógöy, A toss-up; to toss up sea-shells, marbles, stones, coins, etc. at the beginning of a game to decide who gets the first innings.

caldéro, A large metal pot for cooking and/or boiling over an open fire, with a large mouth and frequently with an arc-shaped hanger; cauldron. (Synonym: kaldéro).

cabilóso, Cavilling, carping, pettifogging; plotting, intriguing, scheming, cheating.

dáb-ot, dáböt, To make a long arm, stretch out one’s arm, to reach something hanging on a peg or the like. Dab-otá ang báyò sa lánsang. Reach down the jacket from the nail.

dáet, Peace, friendliness, amity, concord, harmony, amicableness, good social relations; to be at peace with, have good social relations, be on good terms with, etc. Kon magdaétay kamó masádya kamó. If you live together in peace you will be happy.

estiwítis, It is used to produce a yellow to orange food colouring and also as a flavouring. Its scent is described as ‘slightly peppery with a hint of nutmeg’ and flavour as ‘slightly sweet and peppery;’ annatto.

fusíl, Musket, rifle, gun; to shoot with a rifle. Fusilá siá. Shoot him. (Synonym: lúthang).

gániya, An insect and seed-eating, ground-nesting birds with featherless heads a distinctive black crest. It has a dark grey or blackish plumage with dense white spots; guineafowl.

habál, Inflamed, reddish, yellowish, swollen and red; coloured, ripe, ripening, turning red or yellow. Habál na ang hubág. The tumour is - red and swollen, -  nearly ripe. Habál na ang maís. The corn is - yellowing,- getting ripe. (Synonym: pulá, dalág, lútò, gúrang).

hágap, To look for, forage, go in search (of eatables, etc.). Nagahágap siá sang íya pagkáon. He is looking for something to eat. Hagápi akó sang ákon panyagáhon. Get me some  dinner. Look out for some dinner for me. Ihágap akó ánay sing ísdà, kay igasúd-an ko. Please look for some fish for me; I want to eat it as a side dish. Ginahágap ko ang ákon ginháwa. I am trying to get back my breath (after a swoon or fainting fit, etc). Ginahágap ko lang ang pagtahî, kay walâ akó sing anteóhos. I am sewing by touch, because I have no spectacles. (Synonym: lághap, sághap, ságap).

hámyang, Exposed, in full sight or view,laid out; to be laid out, be exposed to view. Hámyang na sa lamésa ang mga pagkáon. The eatables have been placed on the table,- are spread on the table. Ipahámyang mo ang pagkáon sa látok.Put the food on the table. Nagahámyang siá dirâ sa salúg. He lies there on the floor in full view of everybody. (Synonym: kúyang, butáng, áy-ay).

ibán, Other, another, the others, some, someone else, the rest. Dí akó súbung sang ibán. I am not like the rest - or - I am different from others. Dí akó mangákò siníng trabáho; mangítà ka sing ibán. I am not going to undertake this work; try to find somebody else. Dí ákon iníng kálò, kóndì íya sang ibán. This hat does not belong to me, but to someone else. Ang ibán nagapaísug, ang ibán nagapatálaw sa íya. Some are encouraging, others are discouraging him. Ang ibán nagapakamaáyo siní, ang ibán nagapakaláin. Some approve of this, others are against it. (Synonym: laín, túhay).

idíngan, A young pig. (Synonym: idík, odók, orók).

ihibaló, The faculty of understanding, intellect, mind, reason, thought. (Synonym: hibaló).

kapasláwan, kapaslawán, Failure, setback, drawback, fiasco, disappointment, want of success. (Synonym: páslaw).

karitót, A small lobster. (Synonym: koritót, kiritót).

kasamwáran, Progress, continuity, prosperity, solidity, stability. (Synonym: sámwad, kauswágan).

latóláto, Half-empty, showing many gaps, not full (of corn-cobs with only a few grains on  it, etc.). Latóláto gid lang ang maís nga pinatubás ko karón. The corn I have harvested this time is mostly halfempty cobs.

láyas, To flee, run away, bolt, make off. Nagláyas ang makáwat. The thief fled. (Synonym: lágio, lágyo).

malolóy-on, malolóyön,Merciful, compassionate, pitiful, having pity on, condoling, commiserating. (ló-oy).

mangitó-ngitó, Dark, obscure, black, dusky, ebon, sable, opaque. (Synonym: ngitóngitó, maitúm, ilóm, átà, áta, ágtà, madulúm, pitípit).

mantíw, An invisible spirit that inhabits the earth and influences mankind by appearing in the form of humans or animals; jinnee, jinn.

nanarî-sárì, nanarí-sári, Various, divers, diversified, diverse, different, assorted, all kinds of, all sort of, all manner of, varied, heterogeneous, mixed. Ang mga búlak may nanarîsárì nga duág kag kahumút. The flowers have all sorts of colours and scent. (Synonym: sarîsárì, nanuháytúhay, tuháytúhay, laínláin).

ngangá, To open one’s mouth. Ingangá ang bábà mo. Open your mouth. Ngangahá ang bábà mo kag padiwalá ang dílà. Open your mouth and put out your tongue. Ngangahí ang manugbánsil, kay usisáon níya ang ímo ngípon. Open your mouth for the dentist, for he is going to examine your teeth.

óklò, To hide or conceal oneself, sidestep, evade, to lower or hide one’s head, to bend down, dodge, to duck or drop the head suddenly, so as to avoid a blow or escape observation. Nagóklò siá sang pagkakítà níya sa ákon. He ducked his head when he saw me. Sang paglámpus sa íya ni Edmond walâ siá maígò, kay nagóklò siá. When Edmond struck at him he was not hit, for he dodged (the blow). Indì ka lang magóklò sa pihák sang bintánà, kay nakítà ko na ikáw kag índì ka na makapanágò. Don’t take cover below the window, for I have seen you and you cannot hide. Okloí siá, agúd índì ka níya makítà. Duck your head, so that he may not see you. (Synonym: sálup).

pitó-ádlaw, pitoádlaw, A week. (Synonym: simána, pitó, ádlaw).

poróy, Knee-breeches, shorts, knickers, knickerbockers. (Synonym: sárwal, bahág, delárgo).

pugaáng, Very red, bright red, conspicuous from afar. (Synonym: pulá, pulagáng, dagáang, dagángdang).

querida, A woman who lives and has sex with a man she is not married to, and has a lower social rank than his wife or wives; concubine.

rabútyal, To run about freely, to run loose as horses, carabaoes, etc., if they escape from an enclosure, or if their tether breaks.

ringkádol, To rattle, clatter (as wood tumbling down a staircase, or the like; rattling, clattering. (Synonym: linagápok, linágot, lungkágay).

sínghot, Smell, odour, aroma, scent; to smell, scent. Singhotí iní, agúd masayóran mo ang báhò. Smell this so that you may know how it smells (what its smell is like). (Synonym: panínghot, panimáhò, síngo).

tágsa, Each, every one, every individual. Ang tágsa ka táo. Each man, everybody, every man. Ang tágsa ka baláy napunihán sing matahúm. Every house (All the houses) was (were) beautifully decorated. Ang ginámot sang tágsa ka bánwa -. The contribution of every town -. (Synonym: káda; tanán, pulús - all, without exception).

taháng, A space most often between the two upper front teeth; a gap in the teeth; having a gap in the teeth; diastema. May taháng siá. He has a diastema. (Synonym: bingáw).

timó, timô, To put into the mouth, feed,live on a little, have little to eat. Walâ siá sing itimó sa íya bábà. He hasn’t a mouthful to eat. (Synonym: húngit, hungít, bókod, bokód).

utúd-utúd, utúdütúd, Broken, interrupted, with interruptions, faltering; to break, be broken, falter. Sa utúdutúd (nagakautúdutúd) nga tíngug (pangatingúg)—with a broken or faltering voice. Pagpahimúynga (Pagpahimuyúnga) na lang ang ímo bátà kon amó inâ nga utúdutúd man lang ang íya pangeskwéla. You had better keep your boy at home, if he goes to school only by fits and starts. Kon amó inâ nga utúdutúd ang íya pangóbra índì ka sa íya magsóhol sing inádlaw, kóndì sa tágsa ka galamitón nga íya mahumán. If he so often stops in his work, don’t pay him daily wages, but pay him by the piece. (Synonym: utúngutúng).

wásdak, To crumble to pieces, demolish, wreck, shatter, fall down in a heap, collapse (of buildings in an earthquake, etc.); to fall, drop (as fruit from a tree, etc.). Ginwásdak sang línog ang ámon baláy. Our house was shattered (ruined, destroyed) by the earthquake. Hinápit sang líntì ang íya sululátan kag nawásdak (nagkawásdak) ang íya hulút. Lightning struck his office and wrecked his room. (Synonym: busáag, wásag, gubâ, láglag, ránggà).

wasí, To lose, drop (something inadvertently); to disappear, get lost, fall down (out). Usisáa sing maáyo ang pinutús mo, kay básì nawasí ang kahón nga tabákò. Examine your parcel well, for maybe the box of cigars has been lost. Amligí ang sensílyo, agúd dí mawasí ang ibán. Take good care of the change (coins), so that none may be lost. (Synonym: wígit, dúlà, dágdag).

yánghag, Staring, gaping; to stare, gape, be surprised, be taken aback, be astounded, to startle. (Synonym: pamalúng, búlung, tingála, kibút).

yáwyaw, A spoken or written attack full of angry criticism; scolding, chiding; to scold, chide, shout at, vituperate, use strong language, curse and swear at. (Synonym: buyáyaw, púyas, sínggit, pamúlag, timoláng).

yúpyup, A whiff of smoke, of opium, etc.; to inhale, suck in, imbibe. Isá ka yúpyup sang asó sang tabákò. A whiff of tobacco smoke. Palayúpyup siá sang ápyan (apyán). He is an opium smoker. Indì kamó magyúpyup sing ápyan, kay maláin inâ sa láwas páti sa kalág. Don’t smoke opium, because it is bad both for body and soul. (Synonym: súyup, sópsop).

Splendour

a poem by Roger B Rueda

You hold the world in cupped hands, its silence
pierces finger tips. Your eye embraces -
turns out to be the sun. You as onlooker.
Sleeping in the silvery house is splendour -
she is harmony. Her gown grown alive
each ethereal thread a life; the lifeless plucked
by a harpist, dishevelled like the crow’s nest
with things gleaming and piercing entombed
in a bramble - a grove grown wild and wicked
that enfolds  the house long gone dark.
You don’t know how it came about, or why,
this apparent  eternal slumber. Where is
the one, you wonder? The peck, the realisation?
You as the one; - all God's creatures in your hands.

Earthbound

a poem by Roger B Rueda

It isn’t miserable not to be human nor is living utterly
within the earth condescending or void:
it is the nature of the mind to shield
its prominence, as it is the nature of those
who walk on the top to fear the depths
of despair –
one’s point fixes one’s feelings.
And yet to stride over a thing
is not to pull it off –
it is more the antithesis, a masquerading need,
by which the dogsbody completes the peer of the realm.
Similarly the mind disdains what it can’t control,
which will in turn quash it.
It is not excruciating to return
without semantics or visualisation: if,
like buddhas, one declines to leave
rolls of the sense of self,
one emerges in a cosmos  the mind
cannot think of, being completely corporeal, not
allegorical. What’s your term for it?
Infinitude, meaning that which cannot be honourable.

Pin Your Ears Back

a poem by Roger B Rueda

Pat yourself: how it speaks to you in lines
that are not lines, the way
the sound  of rushing rainwater
finds the ear of the shoreline,
or a cast of narra leaves taps
against the silence
of the coppices. In a jiffy, your rump
is conversing quietly
about the curvatures  and crests
of a Kenneth Cobonpue.
Your shoulders tauten and release,
as they whirr about the tiff
you had after lunch.
And the back
of your foot is becoming friends
with those bits of grits  that tripped
inside your Rusty Lopez.
Pick up the singings
in turn, or pull their tongues
together like the rant
of a pathway. This time,
I’ll be silent, so you can pin your ears back.

Transience

a poem by Roger B Rueda

I found the avocado one on the base of the birdcage,
lifeless in the way that simply feathered friends
can be, a feathered integument. It weighed no
more than the reminiscence of a modest time.
I might have had it on a strand, an embellishment
of blue and unhappy bent feet. Effects croak. We’re
such unnoticed foundlings, reflexions at best.
Our antiquities are hardly rises on the earth’s
irrepressible rear. Our fictions find no bookworms.
The nights devour the mind, the immensity
of carcase, the light that somebody might have
prised. We are handfuls of plumages, so
slight we fear the current of air and the press
of manoeuvres. It’d take so little for us to tumble,
to be enfolded  in a piece of connexion with only
an idea of avocado to mark an aeon once was alar.

Cobweb

a poem by Roger B Rueda

from other ways the thread
look thin, but not
from the spider’s, relentlessly
hauling rough riggings,
tethering strips to the best
poles possible. it’s unwieldy
work wherever, fighting
fall, heaving up give.
it isn’t always elusive to live.

Under An Umbrella Tree

a poem by Roger B Rueda

my heart rhythms like a snare drum
in flames my body is
smoulder that liquesces
into you the sky is a famished
mouth that moans the misgivings
through dog's oesophagus
stars shriek as they descent
to sands the colour of rancour
& on the walls of the museum
our shadows wind & twist
like two serpents twirling to the death

The Moon Purrs the Peak

a poem by Roger B Rueda

down to the deep as the sun stoles itself round the skyline.
The wind goes like a big hand frivolously
across the body.
Singings spin like sounds coming back
in a wisp of rolling tongues.
We trace the descent
of dragonflies
flicking through the water,
their watermark light as cinders.
We clasp pod
with its fragrant pulp,
sweet sheath
fitting the palm perfectly.
And it is time to snog the soil
and count freshly painted stars
running oceanwards
here where there is
only peace my love.
I wish upon you this magic
the moon still blossoming
as we exchange watery looks,
time, tranquil and buoyant, and, ooh,
to get up stark-naked in the hedging
and fall in love yet again, definitely, so certainly.