Creative Nonfiction by Jhoanna Lynn Cruz Essay

On our first Valentine as a couple, he gave me a bowl of white nondescript flowers. They had a distinctly sweet dear faint scent. I had n constantly been a fan of Valentines Day nor of love like a red, red rose save that day, I became a believer.He t grizzly me they were papaya blossoms from his m otherwises garden. At that moment, I knew I would one day sweep up him. We had st impostureed dating besides when three months ago, only when I knew I would be female horse to his Leon. Why, he horizontal had a younger brother the same days as Baldo And even though they didnt fuck in Nagreb stick out nor owned a carabao, the town of Itogon, Benguet was far full for me. I start out unendingly enjoyed t distributivelying the Arguilla story for its subversive take on the character that ones family plays in a trades union but having been born and increase in Pasay City, I had no idea what papaya blossoms smelled like.I imagined that my new boyfriend had read the story in his Philippine literature class and meant for me to recognize his gift as an every(prenominal)usion. In fact, I imagined we would defy societal norms and go up that love conquers all. Instead of a theme song, our relationship had a story to live up to. It was a disaster waiting to happen. In the story, Leon brings his city-girl wife, Maria, base to meet his parents for the first magazine. His surly father orchestrates several tests of Marias suitability through Leons younger brother Baldo, who is quickly won over by her papaya blossom scent.The first time I met his parents was on the wedding day of his eldest brother. By then, we had been seeing each other discreetly for seven months, somehow knowing that no one would authorise of our relationship. In the midst of the round of drinksing of gongs and best wishes, his Kankanaey father only valued to know deuce affairs near me w pre move I was from and what language I spoke. I gave the wrong answer on both points. I was a Manilena and I couldnt speak Ilocano moreover, having only recently give noticed to Baguio City to rebuild my life subsequentlyward be approach shot disillusioned with the institution that had once nurtured my desire to excel. save no love lost, I was only their sons gayyem (friend), after all. It didnt help that I was wearing a leopard print spaghetti-strapped dress, which undetermined the tattoo on my back. I reasoned that the Cordillera culture has a long tradition of body art so they should appreciate the significance of mine. None of us knew at that time that I was already carrying a half-Igorot child in my womb (which, I imagined, somehow made me an acceptable quarter-Igorot for the nonce). Against better judgment, we decided to possess married.We were under the influence of hormones, of pregnancy, of the Catholic church, of Manuel Arguilla. We would have got cardinal a quickie secret wedding if he were old enough, or I, wais enough but by law we unavoidable his parents consent. Which they refused to give. For perfectly equitable reasons. They could have said, You shouldnt marry because he is too young (and you are ten years older). Or You shouldnt marry because he is still studying (and you were even his teacher). Or You shouldnt marry because he has a occupation (and you are snatching him from God).But instead his mother said, We cant give you permission because his brother had just gotten married. In the theology of the Cordilleras, if siblings marry within the same year, one of the marriages will fail. The community will shoot us if we allow you to marry. So I called my mother, who promptly came to my rescue, writing them a demand permitter base on a fallacy If your child were the woman in this situation, you would rush to marry them Im sure she was so eager to get me married off because she knew it was a fluke.What was close to ridiculous (though I refused to see it at that time), was that I was a self-proclaimed lesbian feminist. Despite all the tragic relationships I had had with women, I still believed that it was worth fighting for the right of a woman to love some other woman. What business did I have getting married to a very young man? And for all the wrong reasons. mustiness have been oxytocin overdose sponsored by the baby in my womb. Or a planetary coalescency exerting mysterious forces on my consciousness. Or, gaspLove Whatever it was, it came to pass.My mother didnt have to bring my grandpas rifle. But I had to do it all on my own filing the license, finding the Judge, acquire the rings, reserving a restaurant, paying for everything. It was a good thing his parents didnt allow us to tell anybody near the marriage that way I didnt have to invite anyone which lessened my expenses. I had to extrapolate that they had spend all their savings for his brothers recent wedding, where they had butchered eight pigs for a traditional Igorot wedding feast. And after all, lest we forget, we were getting married against their will.But hey, at that place they were, on hand to sign the marriage certificate in the sala of the Honorable Judge Fernando Cabato of La Trinidad, Benguet. The ceremony itself was quick but peppered with omens. First, when the court clerk asked for my mother-in-laws name, I told her Constancia because I figured that was where her nickname Connie came from. When I asked my nervous groom, he agreed. When the Judge confirmed the information, Constancia objected because her name is really Conchita. Judge Cabato made the correction and lectured us well-nigh how important it is not to make errors in a legal document. accordingly, when it came to my father-in-laws name, the Judge refused to believe that Johnny was his real name. When he asked for the rings, my groom gave him the little box, but when the Judge overt it, it was empty. The elderly honorable Judge sat down and asked, Is this a prank? It morose out that the rings had slipped out of the box and were floating in my grooms pants pocket. When it was time for the wedding kiss, the Judge got even with us. He pronounced us husband and wife and then said, No more kissing, its obvious theres a deposit in there Then he laughed hearty congratulations.I wonder now how many times he has regaled a ships company crowd with our story. At the reception in a Chinese restaurant, we occupied only one metre table, with only ten guests. The pancit canton was very good. We didnt get any gifts, except for a border copy of 1 Corinthians 13 Love is patient, love is kind love does not keep a record of wrongs It wasnt the wedding of my dreams, but the whole event cost me only Php 2,500. It was as do-it-yourself as DIY could get. That didnt include the cost of the wedding rings, for which I had to sacrifice some of my old meretricious jewelry.The irony of it escaped me at the time but for a modern woman on a budget, there was no room for finesse. Thus we began our married life full of contention, confusion, and concealment. We couldnt live in concert immediately nor was I allowed to be seen in their little neighborhood, where everyone knew everyone. A very with child(predicate) stranger ambling up and down the steep Upper Mangga Road would have been a conspicuous mystery. I continued to live alone in my apartment, with my husband staying weekends, and I pretended in school that my husband is from Manila.Im not sure anyone actually believed the drama, but I was bathing in first-baby-love, so I couldnt care less. My other Igorot friends assured me that when the baby is born, my in-laws would last accept me as the mother of their grandchild. But as I said, I couldnt care less. I was a Manila girl I truly believed that our marriage would succeed even without his parents approval of me. I was used to flouting norms and not needing anyone. And for his part, my husband argued existentially that we should live by the integrity of our own little family.You see, he was a Philosophy major und er the tutelage of deuce young Jesuit-educated instructors, who had come to the mountains from Manila to indulge their fantasies about love and teaching (in that order). We, the migrant teachers, smiled at each other in the College of Human Sciences silently acknowledging each others foolishness ignoring the fact that most of the other native faculty members looked askance at the three of us. When our daughter was born, we decided it was time to move into the family home. In the innocent presence of the new half-Igorot baby, all would be forgiven.It seemed the most practical thing to do. But I soon realized how naive we were. We didnt take into account all the new wrongs that could be committed while sharing one household. Before I got married, I had a dog a minatory mongrel I had named Sapay Koma, which is Ilocano for sana. It is both a wish and a prayer difficult to fork up into English, unless in context. Koma was my companion throughout the two years I had lived in my dank, quirky apartment the close witness to the drama and dilemma preceding my decision to marry. We took him along with us in our move, of course.But the volt other dogs in the new household didnt like him all that much and they all raised such a nonstop racket, none of the humans could sleep, particularly the newborn baby. The neighbors offered to buy him for Php 500. Igorots like black dogs because the meat is tastier. I was aghast. He was my dog, my loyal friend. If anyone was going to eat him, it should be family. So my husband invited his friends over to put Koma out of his misery. I locked myself in our little bedroom with the baby, while they did it. But despite the unkindly windows, I could still smell the burning hair and later, the meat cooking.The putrid scent seemed to stick to my lever for days after, accusing me of betrayal. I wept for Koma and for all that was dying in the fire all the wishes that had no out in my new life. I decided that this was the price for wha t Filipinos like to call paglagay sa tahimik. It took two hours for the meat to be tender enough to eat and when we all sat down to dinner, I was glad they didnt suffer me to partake of the canine feast. Yet I did. I took one mouthful, which I s circumventowed quickly without chewing, so I wouldnt have to relish the flavors. I may have had the stomach for it, but I didnt have the heart.I only wanted to show them that I respected their culture, even though in fact, I would never belong. Also, I was hoping that this way, Koma would forgive me for having failed him, for offering him as a sacrifice at the communion table of my marriage. This way, we could be truly together. For weeks after, every time I overheard my husband reply Aw, aw to his father, I would shiver at the prospect that we would have dog for dinner again. They had five other dogs, after all. Luckily, it turned out that aw only means yes in their language, Kankanaey. Besides, they only butcher dogs on very special occa sions.Ordinarily, there was always the savoury chicken soup dish, Pinikpikan, which features a similar charred skin aroma and taste. I was quite relieved to look that his father did not require beating the chicken to death with a stick before cooking, as is customary in the Igorot culture. To this day, I have not been able to care for another dog. I do, however, have another child. By the same man. Accidentally. It happened on Fathers Day, when we opinion having sex was a squeamish distraction from the confusion that arose from our growing discontent with the marriage.When we found out about the pregnancy, we agreed, albeit reluctantly, that it was Divine Intervention a sign that we should keep trying to save the marriage. It was not just the food that was strange. I couldnt understand why everyday, some relatives would come over and expect to be fed. I had not been raised in an extended family, and even within our nuclear family, we pretty much kept to ourselves. In my mothers house, we were trained to share through one for you, one for me, then stay out of my bag of goodies.You can imagine how I felt the day they served my Gardenia whole wheat cover to the relatives, who promptly wiped it out, because my peanut butter was delicious. Not that I was being selfish. Aside from the fact that I didnt have any bread for breakfast the close day and the house being a ten-minute hike uphill plus ten kilometers to downtown Baguio City, I fumed about not even being usher ind to these relatives as the wife of their son. They would introduce my daughter and her yaya, but I remained a phantom of delight flitting about the house. When I confronted my husband about the bread, he explained that n the Igorot culture, everything belongs to the community. So I took a permanent marker and wrote my name on my next loaf of bread.It was a Saussurean signifier of sorts and it was unforgivable. My father-in-law was a man of few words. In fact, my daughter was already two years old when he decided it was time to acknowledge my existence and say something to me. In the past, he would use an intermediary (usually my husband) if he wanted to get information from me. It wasnt too difficult because by this time we had already move to Manila and were living in my mothers house which was another disaster and another story.It was Christmas Eve and we were spending the holidays in Baguio City. He was watching a replay of a boxing match and I was playing with my daughter in the living room. He asked, in Ilocano, Do you have a VCD player at home? I was so shocked I couldnt reply immediately. He repeated the question in Tagalog. It turned out he was giving us the VCD player he had won in a barangay raffle. That night, as the entire family sang their traditional dapper Christmas To You to the happy birthday tune, I felt I was finally getting a fair endangerment to prove that I was worthy of being in their cozy family.In our six years together, I can think of more instances in which our separate worlds collided and caused aftershocks in my marriage. But none of it rivaled what I thought was the worst affront to me. My mother-in-law is Cancerian, like me, so her house is a pictorial gallery of her children and their achievements. She had a wall with enlarged and framed wedding ikons of her children. Through the years, her exhibit grew, and expectedly, I and my husband didnt have a motion picture on this wall. I figured it was because we had not had a church wedding.In fact, when we told them I was pregnant with our second child, they requested that we hold a church wedding already. They even offered to share the expense. But I preferred to save my money for the birth of the baby. However, given my theater background, I once tried to bring over my husband to just rent a gown and tuxedo and then have our wedding photo taken so wed finally get on The Wedding Wall. But he has always been the more sensible half of our couple. One day, though, a new picture was added to the wall. It was a studio photo of his eldest sister, her American husband, and their baby boy.It wasnt The Wedding Wall anymore it was now the Our Children and their Acceptable Spouses wall. It was their var. of the Saussurean signifier. The message was loud and clear to me and to other people who came to visit. I wonder now why it so issuanceed to me to be on that wall. I guess I felt that after all those years, we had been punished enough for defying the culture. Maybe I actually believed in 1 Corinthians 13. Or perhaps I also needed to be reassured that I was indeed happily married. I confronted my husband about it and demanded that he finally stand up for me and our family.And he did he wrote his parents a letter that made his mother cry and beat her breast. We each tried to explain our sides, finally coming to terms with the bitter past. They told me that they are simple common people and didnt mean to ostracize me that when they agreed to the ma rriage, they accepted me as part of the family, no matter what. I believed them. I told them I was never going to be the woman they had probably wanted for their son but that I am a perfectly good woman, most of the time. We tried to make amends. Our family picture was up on the wall within three days.Our kids were quite pleased. But it was too late. By then, my husband and I had been grappling with our own issues for the past five years. He had gotten tired of my transgressions and sought solace with his friends. After coming home late from another Happy Hour with them, I screamed at him, What happy hour? cryptograph is allowed to be happy in this house It was then we both finally realized that we had to face the the true about our marriage. By the time his parents were willing to start over in our journey as a family, we had given up on ours.Most couples find breaking up grueling to do. It was particularly hard for us because we had to convince his parents that it was not thei r fault. On the other hand, I had to deal with the fact that maybe my marriage did fail because of the curse of the superstition sukob sa taon that maybe we were wrong to insist on our choice. Yet on good days, I am pretty sure it was a perfectly no fault divorce, if there ever was one. Kapag minamalas ka sa isang lugar, itawid mo ng dagat goes the Filipino proverb. Perhaps the salt in the sea would prevent the bad lot from following you.So today I live with my two Igorot children in Davao City fondly called the promised land. Everyone is amazed when they learn that I had moved even though I knew only one person here who didnt even promise me anything. I just wanted a chance to start over. When we moved into this house, it had a small nipa hut in the backyard. The kids enjoyed staying there during the sweltering hot Davao afternoons, oddly when their daddy called them on the phone. But it was nearly falling apart and was host to a colony of termites that had actually begun t o besiege the house as well.My generous landlady soon decided it was time to tear down the structure. When I got home one day, it was gone. All that was left was a dry and empty space in the yard yet everything looked brighter too. We missed the payag but soon the grass crept into the emptiness and we began to enjoy playing Frisbee in the space that opened up. It was a Derridean denouement of sorts. Last year, we spent our first Christmas without any family obligations. It was liberating not to have to buy any gifts for nephews, cousins, in-laws. All the shopping I did was for my children.I was determined to establish my own Christmas tradition with them. I wanted to show them we were happy. I wanted them to grow up never having to sing Merry Christmas To You ever again. I decided to cook paella for noche buena as if my life depended on it. I thought it was simply a matter of dumping all the ingredients in the pan and letting it cook like the aftermath of a failed marriage. The n ormal was so difficult I ended up crying hysterically, asking myself over and over, what have I done? My kids embraced me and said, Nanay, stop crying na. But I couldnt. It seemed as if it was the first time I had let myself cry over what I had lost.I noticed though, that the kids did not cry. Embarrassed with myself, I picked myself up from the river of schnozzle that was my bed and finished what I had set out to do as I always have. It even looked and tasted like paella, despite the burnt bottom. But next year well just order take-out from Sr. Pedro (Lechon Manok). That night, my mother-in-law sent me a text message saying they are always praying for us to get back together, especially for the childrens sake.I do not know how to comfort her, except to keep saying that we had all done the best we could at the time that we are always trying to do the right thing that despite what happened, or perhaps because of it, we will always be a family. Of a kind. We are, after all, inextric ably linked by a timeless story and sapay koma. Each of us in this story nurtures a secret wish to have done things differently to have been kinder, more understanding of each others quirks and shortcomings. But it takes less energy to wish it forward. Sapay koma naimbag ti biag yo dita to hope that your life there is good.