Did you ever feel the strange of growing up knowing that there’s something wrong with your family?...I did. And did you ever question life itself because you went through all the unknown struggles?... I also did.
There was nothing wrong as I was growing up the way I thought of it. I had a complete family- father, mother and 2 brothers, though I never got the chance to glance my parents’ wedding picture. I had a happy and normal childhood playing street games like any other child on the street. My usual afternoon games were “shato, patintero, baril-barilan, taguan, dampa, chinese garter” and a lot more. I spent my whole life in our house in Manila and I used to have curfew hours of 5:00 o’clock in the afternoon when I was younger. Both of my parents were working that time, actually they were public school teachers so the one who was attending us the whole day after school was a nanny. We had a comfortable life then. Our family was one of the early settlers in our place and the only relative we had there was my father’s cousin. Among the family of my parents, they were the only ones who decided to live in a crowded place of Manila.
Same thing happens every day until one day, an unknown lady of teenage years stepped inside our home; she was a pretty, charming and stunning lady and somehow has a resemblance with my father. She lived with us to attend her college studies. I was never close to her for some reasons not clear to me, and she was the same with us also especially with my mom. I heard from one story to another that she was our older sister and obviously, from a six year-old girl, that did not mean anything to me at all, I readily embraced it. Never was there a time I recalled my parents ever telling us straight what the situation was and what the real story was with the lady in our house. I couldn’t blame them though, maybe because they thought we’re too young to absorb the scenario and we couldn’t get it from there. When I entered the third grade (if I was not mistaken), I already got confused since I had lots of ideas in mind from watching tv, reading books and listening to radio. I began asking myself questions like “How come the lady is my older sister when I used to know that I’m the eldest yet she looks much older than I am?” Same questions crossed in my senses year after year and no answers were found.
I was an eye witnessed of how the lady behaved inside our house. She never had a single concern for neither my brothers nor I. She would not bother to carry my baby brother whenever she saw my mom rattled because of too much chores. I never had a memory of her playing with us during her off to school days. She preferred to just stay in her locked room the whole day rather than mingle with us. She even hid foods from us and go ate all them by herself inside her locked room (again). Those were my memories of her- few but significant. Fortunately and in fairness to her, I could not remember her hurting us physically; I just gave her that benefit of the doubt. I do believe she’s not that bad.
Until after I came of age, I heard my mom confronting the lady because my mom saw her (the lady) letter to a woman (her relative, maybe) telling how proud she was making my mom’s life miserable. She wrote down “ang malandi na yun, ginusto nya ang buhay na ‘to, panindigan nya, buti nga sa kanya! Hindi ko talaga sya tinutulungan sa mga gawain dito sa bahay……at kahit kelan di ko sila matatanggap na kapatid!” The lady was crying during the confrontation and so was my mom; my dad was totally out of the picture.
(To be continued...)
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