Imelda Comes Home – Part Two

Laoag, Ilocos Norte

By now it was just a few kilometers away from the small village of Burgos, in the far north of the Philippines. 

The SUV had already been traveling along the dirt and sandy roads of the village for some time. 

Imelda looked out the window. It seemed as if time had stopped. The same palm trees, the same half-timbered half-brick shacks, the chickens, the children in shorts playing, and the tricycles parked outside the houses.

All the same as when she was a little girl climbing over the palms.

She felt her bones creaking, among plane and car must have been two days of travel.

The two children to her right did not take their eyes off the telephone screen.

“Here we are, Tita!” Oggie exclaimed.

Imelda leaned between the two front seats and saw at the bottom of the white sand a square building like a poor castle on the sand. Around a green net to delimit the courtyard, totally symbolic – even the hens passed through it.

 

 

As the SUV slowly approached, a myriad of children rushed to the sides and behind the vehicle, shouting and clapping their hands enthusiastically on the bodywork.

Imelda was already weighing her head.

From the door came out men and women with children in their arms, all smiling.

They got out of the car as Oggie sent away the crowd of partying children as if they were flies, interspersing cursing in the Ilocano dialect.

Jacinto was already hauling the two bags into the house, wheels dusty with white sand.

Imelda was surrounded by people asking a lot of questions as they led her to the door. She could not understand what they were saying, too tired and dazed by the sudden change between the calm of the journey and the hustle and bustle of their welcome.

But her wide nostrils smelled with pleasure the wet and salty scent of the nearby sea.

 

Imelda entered the great room with a huge table in the middle. She looked around; once this was a small hut built by her father, with exposed bricks and a roof covered with dry palm leaves and metal sheets.

Nine slept there.

Now, the hall itself already as large as the whole house it once was.

The walls were green, one on the left side was still with bricks unplastered. Some framed photographs of madonnas and her grandparents.

Benches in a chiseled dark wood, plastic chairs of various colors, one of which without a leg leaning against the wall.

There must have been about twenty people, including children: she recognized the nephews, a brother with his wife and children, the husband's sisters, and the nieces of Oggie and Jacinto who had placed the large purple suitcase on the table, with all the children and young girls grandchildren around, like when the big roast pig is spread out on the palm leaves for despedida.

Imelda was looking for her husband.

“Tita, nasaan ang mga susi?” they excitedly asked her for the keys to open the locks on the suitcase. Everyone knew that opening it was the same as winning the lottery, you just needed to know the prize.

Imelda looked into her purse for the little keys and gave them to a tall niece with swollen breasts that rounded the tight shirt and dark thighs that seemed to tear her denim shorts.

 

As soon as the suitcase was opened, the screams intensified. T-shirts, bags, phone cases, chocolate, it all popped out like popcorn on the pan. They were already fighting among themselves to get the best gifts while Imelda went to find their room, in a side corridor, behind a faded green curtain.

When she entered, she saw their bed on which a small child was sleeping all naked. On the walls some posters of the boxer Manny Pacquiao.

Imelda didn't understand, she was confused.

She noticed that Luzviminda, the younger sister of her husband, had entered. The baby woke up, Luz chased him out of bed. “Go!” pushing him out of the room.

Imelda looked in each direction slowly, confused. 

“Nasaan si Romulo?” She asked the sister-in-law about him again.

Luzviminda put her hands on her shoulders and made Imelda sit on the edge of the bed, then she sat down to her right.

“My brother Raul sleeps here now with his family,” she said as she wiped the lenses of her glasses with the tip of the finger.

“And he? He's ill?” Imelda asked worriedly as she looked around for some clue.

“No, ate, on the contrary!” exclaimed the sister-in-law as she stroked her sweat-dampened back with her hand.

Then she became serious in the face, even her voice heavier than hers. “Imelda, listen. You know how sick my brother was...” 

She could not finish the sentence when the young niece with swollen breasts appeared at the door, brandishing a black cotton bag with sequins.

“Tita, isn't there another bag like this? Did you only get one?” She asked in an annoyed tone.

Imelda, still thinking about what Luzviminda would say, looked up at her niece, “I'm sorry, I think I only bought one.”

In the meantime, another niece of her same age with very dark skin and long straight blond hair snatched the bag from her hand. “Give it to me! I had taken this first!” she roared in her face. 

While the other, furious niece, yelled at her, “Tanga! Stupid!” running behind her disappearing behind the green curtain that closed the entrance again.

Luzviminda still glared at the door. Then she heaved a sigh. “Forgive them, they are young. We said...” And she wiped the lenses of the glasses with the fabric of her striped dress.

 

“My brother was really sick when he got here, we were all worried. Luckily you sent us the money every month for his medications. Then – what do I have to tell you – it must be the atmosphere of the house, the sea, the food, that he began to feel better. He drinks and smokes always in a reckless way,” she said with a smile.

Imelda listened in silence and nodded.

“He started going out, he came back late at night. And who can control them at that age!” She exclaimed in a tone of feminine solidarity with his wife but also of understanding for her brother.

Then she turned her dark eyes, behind the lenses, on Imelda's, as if to read the thoughts inside her, while her left hand gripped her right thigh tightly.

“Romulo is still strong, he is old but vigorous, you know... He's got blood boiling and you haven't seen each other for a long time. When was the last time you came here?” she asked her in a serious, almost accusatory tone.

Imelda looked at her and tried to stammer something.

“Leave it! For years now. You don't even know your grandchildren's children! But that's okay.” Her voice modulated again in a sweet tone, “Thanks to your effort, look at what a beautiful house we have now, we are envied by everyone!” Luzviminda exclaimed aloud looking around.

“It goes without saying that the last year we have seen him return home less frequently... Rumors go around, you know, tsismis*...” 

The sister-in-law said with a complacent smile. “Now Romulo lives with another woman, a few kilometers from here.”

Luzviminda cut it short.

Imelda had already figured this out, but those words hurt her anyway.

“But now he's fine, healthy! Even the doctors have said that it looks like a miracle of Saint Nicholas!” She continued frantically, reading the displeasure on Imelda's face, so as not to give her a time to think too much.

Imelda nodded as she rubbed the hand over the mattress slowly.

 

 

Jacinto looked out the door with the round face, sweaty and smiling as ever.

“Tita! What are you doing here? Come on, we want to show you something!” He sounded like a child in the way he spoke with enthusiasm.

Luzviminda hoisted her by the arm. 

“He's right, come on let's go. We have waited so long for you,” she told her as she pushed to walk, smiling.

“How long have you not eaten dinuguan*? I made for you the best dinuguan in Ilocos Norte and Sur!” She screamed in her ear.

Imelda looked at her as she walked back into the room. “I ate it in Rome too, we have it there. They cook it.”

Luzviminda looked almost offended. 

“You don't want to compare my dinuguan with that in Rome? Hay Naku!” And she went to the kitchen cursing in dialect.

Imelda entered the great room where an apocalyptic scene opened to her eyes: the suitcase lay on the table open completely like a gutted goat, there was almost nothing left inside, even her clothes and underwear were on the table; the children sat on the ground, each intent on munching a whole bar of chocolate, with their fingers and muzzle dirty with chocolate melted from the heat, other children had also entered and tried to get chocolate like cats at the fish market. Her brother and her brothers-in-law had gone out into the yard with the bottles of rum she had brought – she knew they wouldn't last half a day. The older girls and grandchildren also wore two T-shirts one over the other so as not to have them taken away; the two grandchildren were sitting with one leg on the table texting the phone.

Oggie made room for her aunt to sit on the carved wooden bench. “Omopo, tita. Sit down, we need to show you something.”

She sat between two children who were eating candy after candy as Luzviminda returned to the room with a steaming dark red plate of meat.

She handed it to Imelda with a proud look. “Tell me which one is better now!”

Imelda began to eat some as she watched Jacinto make room in front of her, roughly pushing the children sitting on the dark floor away.

Jacinto stood in front of her, he had already taken off his shirt, he was all sweaty but with an enthusiastic face.

The sister-in-law sat on the far end of the bench folded over the dinuguan plate, eating with appetite as rivulets of cooked blood trickled down her chin.

“Tita, we want to thank you. Thanks to you, we were able to enlarge our house,” he said, spreading his arms to the right and left. He ran to the still fresh brick wall, clapping his hands on it: “Tita, this is another room, it's almost done. With the 500,000 pesos you sent us in a year, we built two rooms and a shed behind the house, plus the garage.”

Imelda listened to him in silence, looking at her relatives, each busy in their own way, from the smallest doll of flesh and sweat to the men arguing drunk outside the house.

“But... But..,” Jacinto said with eyes wide with happiness and the intonation of a seasoned actor, “... now we show you the most important thing we managed to buy. Wait up!”

He said and he ran and disappeared into a side passage.

Imelda thought about how much of the money she had sent for her husband's medications had taken a different direction, from the enamels on the nails of the two nieces to the panties of the woman who was now sleeping with her husband.

Imelda thought that, of course, Romulo knew that she would arrive today and he hadn't even come to say hello, maybe that woman had tightened her thighs strongly to keep him from going away. She realized that most of those little children had never seen before, and without anyone telling her anything she would never know who they were – her sister-in-law was right.

 

All those thoughts were interrupted by the sound of wheels on the floor. She saw Jacinto return pushing a huge flat-screen television onto a wooden cart. He positioned it right in front of her as he wiped the sweat from his forehead with the chubby arm.

Imelda looked at it with her mouth open. The flat, shiny black screen was at least four times the size of the television in her little room in Rome. On the floor below the cart were two menacing vertical speakers that took up all the space.

Jacinto was over-excited, he leaned sideways and pulled out from behind the television two black microphones long as scepters, full of buttons.

“Videoke and Magic Sing!” he exploded as happy as when at Christmas you discard and find the gift you have been waiting for a lifetime under the tree.

Imelda did not know what to say, she looked at him petrified with a smile that seemed more like a stupid grimace of pain.

“Now you have to sing, tita!” Oggie said as he turned on with the remote control the huge blue screen like an aquarium without fish.

The two grandchildren bent busy over the mixer, fumbling with the remote control, while letters and numbers skipped on the screen; the children began to sit comfortably on the floor in front of the television and the men came back into the house with red eyes, smoking incessantly.

A sister took the empty plate from her and went into the kitchen.

“Here she is! This!” Jacinto yelled as he pointed to Imelda Papin's face on the screen.

Her brother said in a hoarse, rum-fogged voice, “Papa called you Imelda for that, di ba? She was his favorite singer...”

Jacinto had already started the song and was holding the microphone with both hands, standing with his stomach out and his shoulders back.

“Ako ba or siya?
Sino ba sa aming dalawaaaaa?”

He sang at the top of his voice as if it should have heard him in Manila, while Luzviminda looked at him a little angry at the choice of the song, as if he must have guessed that she had just told her about the husband.

Meanwhile, Imelda felt her phone vibrate in the trouser pocket. She carefully pulled it out and holding it pressed close to her side tilted her face to see who had sent the message.

It was Luisa. She opened it.

She had also lost the sense of time, taken by the jet lag and the turmoil of emotions of that first day.

Luisa had sent her a selfie, under the sheets, with only her face sticking out, on top of the pillow and her lips shaped in a little heart.

“I miss you so much, aunt, I love you, come back soon.” With many red hearts and basins.

Imelda smiled and answered her with a big red, beating heart.

Oggie had just sat beside, his left arm holding her so tightly to him that she could feel his sweat soaking the shirt.

The microphone was already close to her mouth.

The choice of that song sounded rather grotesque to her. But that's the way it goes.

Imelda thought that she might as well have been crying at that moment that no one would notice. 

She remembered Luisa's message, so stopped torturing herself and grabbed the microphone under the hand of her nephew.

They began to sing together as the hall filled with villagers who had come to see tita, the balikbayan.

“Ako ba o siya?
Sino ba sa aming dalawa?
Ako ba o siya?
Sino ba ang mas mahalaga?
Sa damdamin mo't pagsinta...”


“Am I the one or she is?
Who between us?
Am I the one or she is?
Who is the more important?
In your feelings and affection...”

They went on singing until late at night, lighting up the whole fishing village with all the lights on in the little castle, like a jukebox in the dark.

 

* Tsmisis, in Tagalog, is the gossip and rumors about people.
* Dinguan is a Filipino savory stew usually of pork offal (typically lungs, kidneys, intestines, ears, heart, and snout) and/or meat simmered in a rich, spicy dark gravy of pig blood, garlic, chili (most often siling haba), and vinegar.

 All the photographs were taken by me in 2005, in Manila, Burgos and Laoag.

Italian version