Uprooted
By: CJ; Makati/Batangas, Philippines
My father found a snake in his backyard and killed it with a metal pipe scrapped from one of his Sunday afternoon projects. Despite burying it under a pile of leaves and despite the sun’s best efforts to disinfect everything that its light touches, the lot filled with the putrid smell of rot in no time.
A pom-Japanese spitz mix and another mutt double his size, whose breeders claimed was a full-blooded beagle, occupied one kennel each nearby. The family lovingly called him an aspin because he looked nothing like the Hush Puppies mascot. Like many others suddenly confronted with all the time in the world to do absolutely nothing at all some four years ago, my brothers bought the wild things online. The dogs spend most of the day in their cages and roam the back lot freely in the late evenings.
Unaware of this routine when I spent my first night at the spare room in the garage on the lot, I awoke at three in the morning to what I could only describe as a chorus of death growls that I was certain belonged only to the otherworld. I felt sorry for doubting all the stories and felt convinced, in that moment, that a real aswang was upon the sleepy and unassuming port town of Batangas City.
In such a slow-paced city where lights out can start as early as seven in the evening, life can feel plain, almost trifling. Mornings announce themselves with the crowing of roosters on the lot. Before the sun could rise I’d hear my parents fussing over chores or breakfast or my ailing grandmother who has dementia and now stays in what used to be my bedroom. My youngest brother, who works the graveyard shift, would often play a round of basketball with his older brother once he’d woken up. They were born a year apart and have since been inseparable.
At breakfast my father likes to have soft-boiled eggs and a bite from a stick of butter. Over the past year he’s taken on this interesting approach to eating that has, yes, helped him manage his weight among other things, but also leaves me concerned for the things he sees online, especially from people claiming to be “medical professionals.” He’s on a low-carb diet, he says, but then confusingly still eats food like potato chips or a more than occasional sweet treat.
No one really corrects his more interesting takes on food, like deriving his protein intake even from fattier cuts of meat, or, yes, the thing with the butter again, which I fear leans far too closely into the carnivore diet rabbithole, but I digress. The short of it is that the family doesn’t really have an appetite for proper conversation; been that way for as long as I could remember.
Whenever I’d describe our table manners people look at me all confused: what do you talk about? But you’d be surprised at the many ways you could talk about nothing at all and just poke at your food.
One morning after my mother had finished her home appointment to get her pedicure done, I spent the time talking to her nail technician. She was fifty-two and put all six of her children through senior high school over the last thirty years that she’d spent working her vocation. Most recently she’d received a washing machine and a brand-new TV as gifts from her children, which was welcome after she’d taken a break from work in the past year because she had dislocated a wrist.
She’d mentioned thinking my parents only had the two children, because this was the first time she’d seen me. I remember her tearing up while she talked about the setbacks she’d faced, and the awe I felt for how strong she’d been to overcome them regardless. How people could walk around with all of this torment and still keep their footing.
I think of Makati, my now home of close to ten years, its racing pulse and towering skyline, all of it larger than life. I think of its empty streets in the holidays, when people who’ve uprooted themselves to take a chance at making a living have finally earned enough leave credits to visit their families, grateful for the privilege my own work affords me that I could do the same.
Now a stranger in my parents’ house, feeling like a traitor, I find myself wondering whether my city misses me, too.
CJ Peradilla lives in Makati with her roommate and their two cats. Her work has appeared in GARLAND, Haikuniverse, LIWAYWAY, Mountain Beacon, Katitikan, petrichor, and elsewhere.
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Wordpress: https://makeshiftbeds.wordpress.com/
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