No Salvation

...and sometimes I drown in words, my eyes blank with acceptance as I sink into their depths. They fill my nose and my mouth and my mind until I cannot breathe and I cannot think. But I do not struggle as I slowly submerge. For this is my fate, and there is no salvation...

February

Early morning. I am getting some work done at the computer. Eli is behind me, gliding on his scooter. Woog is at the toaster, performing his morning chore of crisping the breakfast bread. Suddenly, just when I am attempting to extricate myself from an awkward turn of phrase, Eli screams loud, long, and piercingly. I turn around, ready to tell him off for crying at the drop of a hat again, but I see something that makes my blood run cold.

Woog, for some reason only known to him, has placed the butter knife inside the oven toaster and touches its red hot tip to his brother's arm. Eli's face is purple, and he is losing his breath with his screams. The rage that comes over me is inexplicable. I grab hold of the butter knife and whap Woog on the bicep, broadside. That the knife is still hot escapes my notice as I glare at him from a red film of fury. It is only when he squeals and claps a hand to his arm do I realize what I have done.

I grab my crying boys and lead them to the nearest faucet, spraying water every which way. Atch comes downstairs, demanding the cause of the racket. When he sees the raised blistering skin of his wailing sons, none of my words can pierce through his anger. He looms over me, a stranger with hard fists.

He takes hold of his first-born's arm with tears of wrath in his eyes, “this,” he accuses me “is how he will remember you by - the monster who burned him.”

I am a mother. I am a monster. The four of us stare at each other, crying. Above us, the clock ticks ever onward to my doom.

February

The days are slow in passing, and so is the depression. The word “monster” has burned its way into my mind, like a hot brand of accusation. Already, it has made its rounds within the family, and although no one speaks it out loud

“monster...”

I see the word in their eyes

“monster...”

shining like beacons to mock my dark.

“monster...”

Only my hurt sons continue to cling to me, allowing me to smooth my apologies into their burnt skin like I do their ointment.

“monster!”

February

I am a devourer of books. I stow away in frigates and sail to far-off places in my bid to escape the world I am in. I flee my unpardonable sins. I take flight from the disillusionment in my husband's eyes. I turn tail from the unbearable people I work with each day. I am constantly on the lam from this encompassing depression. But more importantly, it is because I seek desperately to evade the glistening pink and white scar that gazes piteously up at me from Woog's arm.

William Goldman, Gail Carson Levine, Audrey Niffeneger, Annette Curtis Klause. I jump into bed with them, one after the other. Diana Gabaldon, Neil Gaiman, Cornelia Funke, Christopher Paolini, Stephenie Meyer. If they offer trilogies or novels in a series, I pursue them ever more relentlessly. In the space of two months, I have buried myself alive in 15 books.

I look up and blink around me in surprise. I find that I am in need of new glasses.

Valentine's Day

I open my eyes. Atch bends over me with a kiss and a card in his hand. The card thanks me for seven fruitful years together. Happy Valentine's Day, Aifee.

Over lunch, I hie over to his office with a gift of my own. “Here you go, fruitful,” I tell him, setting a colorful fruit compote down on his desk, “Happy Valentine's Day.”

I am constantly stuffing his lunch bag with fruits and vegetables, and with good reason. He has finally quit smoking in December, and I am insanely proud of him. Food has become a compensation for the loss of his poison sticks, and he gorges himself at every opportunity. Between the both of us, after the holidays, we have gained a good three hundred tons.

Happy Valentine's Day. He sends me off with an ardent one-sided embrace. It is the only way we can hug these days. Our bulging bellies are in the way.

February

M/V Doulos sails into our part of the backwater. A real ship. Filled with books and books and more books. The last time she was here, Eli was a toothless infant with no neck. I tell the boys about her wondrous innards, and pretty soon they are badgering their Tatay to bring them on board.

“I want to go to Doulos,” Woog nags.

“Chip, ride chip!” Eli chortles.

Resigned, Atch takes his family to the port where we feast our eyes on this seafaring missionary vessel just two years Titanic's junior.

On board, the whole city it seems, is neck and elbow amongst shelves upon shelves of books. We sweat freely while the boys dump their choice of reading material into my arms.

I am surreptitiously returning a Spanish-version Scooby-Doo board book back on a shelf when Atch hands me five cd's, his idea of digestible literature. “We're going to get ice cream, Aif,” he says before taking his sweaty self and both his sweaty sons out to the commissary, leaving me to pay for our purchases.

On the way home, it dawns on me that all I have gotten for myself is a mid-sized thesaurus and a book of household cleaning tips. No matter. I have given my boys the gift of words, and it will see them through for years to come.

Speed

Faster and faster, my fingers pound on the keys. It is as if I never left. The old sensations cascade over me and I am kayaking through the rapids, riding roughshod over words, getting drenched with words, inadvertently swallowing words. Will this thrill of a ride never end?

January

All little boys explore the various orifices of their body at one time or another. Eli is no exception. He has a particular liking for his nose, and he roots around in it regularly, to our great dismay. Occasionally, he unearths a motherlode, which he then pops into his mouth, smacking his lips delicately.

We are horrified to the depths of our germophobe beings. We discourage him, scold him, screech at him, even slap his busy little hands away. We ply him with other more palatable alternatives, but he merely gifts us with his triangular smile and continues with his mining expeditions. Perhaps we should be grateful he cannot as yet reach his ass.

January

We rush my Tatay to the hospital. It is my mother-in-law's 71^st birthday, and he falls into a blank stupor at the party. Inday takes his blood pressure, and it falls at 60/40. His pulse disappears into the unknown. He blanks out twice, and each time he comes to, he assures us that he is only tired, that it is only the wind that has whacked its cold hand upon his back, that we only need to take him home so he can rest.

In the emergency room, he keeps up the protest, this man who has been smoking for the last 50 years. Deedee, Dada & I bustle about him, and the children who are away call us frantically on our cellphones: Nonoy the doctor, Dudu the medical student – they all get a chance to speak with their father. Who is still protesting.

I stand in a corner and my mind is a-whirl with the memorial plan I have set aside, just in case. And where on earth to find the money to buy a small plot of land in the cemetery. Tearless, I am steeling myself, mentally preparing for the inevitable. I am first-born, after all.

A week later, showing no visible sign of duress, my father sails with us across the strait to his hometown of Dumangas. We light candles at his parents' graves, we stuff ourselves with prawn, oysters and mud crab, we drink with him and two of his brothers. He laughs and he laughs and he laughs. It dawns on me then that I have never seen him so happy.

January

It is the year of the Ox. My birth year. I look at myself in the mirror and wonder if the way I'm constructed violates all the sacred tenets of Feng Shui. Feng Shuit, more like. I feel the dark digits of despair and depression clawing hungrily at me, as they so often did when I was young, so long ago. I snap at the husband. I growl at the boys. I go through all the self-defeating motions, sabotaging any chances of well-being.

January

One evening, we bring the boys and their Uncle Eisen to Chopsticks Alley to watch the fireworks and hear the bands play. It is a hawk and a spit away from home, and the boys are in their 'jamies. We walk the street that's been converted into a showcase of Snake, and Rabbit, and Dragon, and Rat...and all the other life-size Chinese lunar animals, lit from within.

While Atch and Manong Eisen buy beer, I take the boys to their respective animals and explain that they represent the year they were born. Horse for Woog, Dog for Eli.

I glance behind me at their Uncle Eisen and see that he is even worse of than I am, this man born in the year of the Tiger. Hasn't been home to his wife in over than a decade, and recently laid off from work. He is quiet, guzzling his beer.

The boys are thrilled with the fireworks that light up the night sky. When we get home, it starts to rain, and the downpour washes the dust from my eyes.

January

Siesta time. Woog is on one side of me, sleepy, grumbling. Eli is on the other, wide awake. My younger son is yakking his head off about nothing in particular. He is one of those children who doesn't have to raise his voice for it to resonate across great distances. Woog is growling, I am growling, Eli still refuses slumber. Apparently, only his father can make him sleep on command. I have seen it happen, time and time again, and it irks me no end.

Woog puts a pillow over his head, and I try to ignore Eli's grasping fingers, which squeeze at my arms like masticating machines, while he murmurs into my face. Outside, it starts to rain. I am about descend into nothingness, when Eli's voice takes on a different cadence.

I force my protesting lids up a gradient or two, and I hear my son singing his first full-length song:

Yeyn, yeyn, go 'way

Comma-gen, yanada dey

Yittew Eyi wansa pyey

Yeyn, yeyn, go 'way

I must get the tape recorder, I say to myself. But Eli's toneless, tuneless chanting lulls me like the sound of the breeze on the sea. I fall asleep, and this great moment is lost forever.