Two Versions of the Sea
A
It’s such an easy thing, loving the sea. Even that word, loving, is inadequate.
When I first started swim class, the teacher told us: “This is only the beginning, kids. This is just the pool. Once you’ve experienced swimming in the sea, you’ll never surface again! Okay, let’s do ten bubbles, then we’ll practice floating! Go!” And she wasn’t lying.
Whenever my family and I went to the beach, Mother would always remind me: “Listen, don’t swim to the deep end, okay, there are sharks there.” I always disobeyed her.
When I got older and started watching the Discovery Channel, the ocean started to scare me. The earth is 75 percent water and now that global warming is getting worse, it’s not impossible that the polar ice caps will completely melt and water swallow all of humanity. I believe in the truth that scientists are the new prophets, the new overseers of the final judgment.
Aside from all that, no one has ever dredged the ocean’s depth and breadth. No submarine could last in the intense water pressure. Even though some submarines attempt it, they still have their limits—not one has tried to dive into the abyss and trenches underneath all that water.
Sunlight never so much as reaches the ocean’s navel. Even so, it isn’t free of life forms. Because it’s so dark, sea jellies and fish make their own light. The common blackdevil deep-sea angler (Melanocetus johnsonii) has an antenna that glows at the tip. It is mesmerizing to anyone who witnesses it, especially to the tiny fish that the angler likes to eat. This light, unknown to those who are drawn to it, is right in front of the angler’s sharply lined mouth. The light is truly beautiful; it is what feeds its owner. After it feeds, the angler swims off, and the sea is once again drenched in darkness.
After I watched that episode, I stayed on shore for a number of beach vacations.
But not all bodies of water go that deep. Once, when we went to Masinloc, a small boat carried us to some islands in the middle of the sea. As I looked over the side of the boat, I saw large sea stars covering the seafloor. I was so happy because finally I could say that it wasn’t only on tv that I had seen them. As the boat moored, I immediately went into the water, careful not to step on the sea stars. I walked away from the small island. I walked and walked until the group of islets turned into dots. But the water remained waist deep.
Papa became interested in the sea stars, so he decided to bring some home. Ah, the one who harvests the stars from the sea. When we got back to Manila, he took out the sea stars from their sack, and a terrible smell emanated from them, the stench of rotten fish. From being colorful (each sea star has its own design; my guess is none of them were the same), all of them became sickly white and as hard as cement. When Papa accidentally dropped one to the floor, it broke. It fell to me to sweep up the shards and throw them away.
I still want to go to many different seas. I want to swim in the Dead Sea, where the salt level is so high that anyone could float on it, no problem. That’s where I want to take Papa, because he doesn’t know how to swim. I also want to see the Red Sea, and at its shore, that’s where Mother and I would talk about the realities of her Bible.
(The correct pronunciation of Red Sea is reed [rid]. The Red Sea, it is said, is filled with reeds. There are times when the sea level is so low because of the reed roots. That’s the time when Moses and the Israelites crossed it.)
In Pagbilao, Quezon, I again swam as far as I could go. A storm was brewing then. The wind was strong, the rain pouring. I charged at the tall waves. When I looked back, I couldn’t glimpse the shore anymore. My breaths were getting shorter; I was swallowing water.
The sea is so beautiful when it’s angry. I understand why so many are entranced by it, so many give in, so many sacrifice their lives to it.
That same morning, I had told Papa that all beautiful things were deadly.
I made it back to shore that time.
B
“It’s such an easy thing, loving your mother,” Papa once told me. The word loving followed by blank spaces.
When they first got the news that Mother was pregnant with me, the doctor told them: “We can fix that, you know, but it could prevent future pregnancies. The womb is so sensitive.” I heard the story one time while talking to Mother. I couldn’t really resent them if they decided to go through with it, was what I told her. I assured her: “That’s nothing to me.” Papa got angry with her because of that.
Whenever Mother would get home late (while Papa was in their room, wide awake and waiting), it would fall to me to let her in. She would call me from her cell phone, whispering, “Anak, please open the gate.” Smelling of car air freshener, she would kiss me on the cheek. No matter how many times I asked her where she went, she never gave me an answer.
When I got older and started hospital duty as part of nursing school, hospitals started to scare me. I never shared this with my parents: in the delivery room one night, a woman lost her baby when the umbilical cord wrapped around the baby’s neck. I only had a year left before graduation, but when I heard that the woman had killed herself, I never set foot in a hospital again. Papa was mad because I wanted to change majors, but I told him, “The entirety of the Philippines is birthing nurses. It’s not a loss if I don’t finish my courses; the world is being swallowed by Filipino nurses!” I believed in the truth that Papa would stop paying for my schooling after that.
Aside from all that, Mother left us. One very early morning, while I was reading an issue of Reader’s Digest—the feature was about a couple who couldn’t have a baby, but when the wife took a bunch of medicine, she gave birth to sextuplets!—I thought I saw the gate open. I looked over quickly, and in the dark and quiet of dawn, I watched Mother get into a red car. The next morning, Papa made me breakfast, something he never did before. I didn’t even ask what happened—but he told me I didn’t have to feel pressure to finish nursing school anymore, he was allowing me to change majors.
Papa never so much as stepped foot outside for some time after that. Even so, he must have been feeling stir crazy one night, because he invited me out. It hadn’t occurred to me that he could still feel lust. But that night, he showed me how he hooked women. His wrinkles disappeared when he smiled, and his movements were mesmerizing, smooth as water. The two women who were drawn to us said we looked like brothers. With a loud laugh, he responded (lowering his voice a notch), “But of course, it’s more tempting to bite at the older one, right?” and he gave his chosen woman a kiss. It became obvious to me why his friends called him a sweet talker. After he left (tossing the car keys at me), the remaining woman swam off into the darkness of the club, and I was alone once again.
After that episode, I couldn’t sleep for a few Saturdays, because I kept hearing noises coming from his room.
But not all his Saturday nights were spent that way. Once, he invited me to go bowling with him, loser does all the cooking for the month. But all night, all he did was tell me story after story after story. “Do you remember when we still lived in Caloocan, we used to wake up early and I would take you near CCP? There was a giant statue of Voltes V near there, remember? You used to really like that.” Neither of us could bowl a strike. He let out a sigh. “Then we’d go home. Your mother wouldn’t be there. She never did learn how to say goodbye.” I responded by saying I’d make dinner after bowling.
Papa became interested in karaoke. “In dreams I can gather all the stars, in dreams I can rope the wind . . .” was his favorite song to belt out. Once, irritated because I was trying to read and he was so loud, I shouted, “You’re so corny!” I told him Mother would never come back to him if he was like this. He left and came back wasted. It fell to me to clean up his vomit in the living room.
Wanting to see me, Mother called several times. But when we did see each other, all she would talk about was her new husband and how nice all her new prayer group friends were. She said she was learning so much from the Bible. She said she wanted to go to the Sea of Galilee because that’s where Jesus (her new lord and savior) had crossed. But the truth was, she said, “I want to take you to the Red Sea. That’s where Moses crossed, did you know? Anak, the Bible is so amazing, you should come to our next study session.”
(“The correct pronunciation of Red Sea is reed [rid],” I told her. “There’s usually a time when the water is low over there, mother. That’s when Moses and the others would have crossed, so there is no miracle.”)
In Pagbilao, when we went one time because Papa had a plant visit, a storm came in the morning and left that night. I lit a bonfire on the beach while Papa took out a bottle of Tanduay rum, long neck. I don’t know what it was in the rum, but Papa drank a lot, and when we had drunk half the bottle, he stood up, took off all his clothes, and walked, swaying, toward the sea. At first I just laughed, asked him what he thought he was doing. But when I saw that he was about to dive in, I suddenly got sober, and faster than the blink of an eye, in between the crashing of the waves onto the sand, I dragged him—fighting me off, struggling—away from the water.
The sea is so dark on a quiet night. What would have happened if I hadn’t stopped him?
That same morning, while we were still on the road, Papa had suddenly said, “Your mother really is beautiful.” And right there and then, he pulled the car over on the side of the highway, took out his wallet and threw out all of Mother’s photos.
Papa didn’t get back to our hotel until about five the next morning. I wanted to punch him then, but I just told him, “Do what you want, kill yourself if you want to.” I kept ignoring him, even when he got into bed with me, even when he embraced me, whispering, “Don’t leave me, anak. Please don’t leave me.”