I don't like waking up early in the morning. In my personal opinion, it should be completely banned. What if I one day invented a machine that would wake people up at exactly nine in the morning, and if one woke up earlier than that or later than that (even by a millisecond!) the machine would have an extended hand to go out of its core (like the ones we see in cartoons, with the gloved hand) and slap the person awake. If I'm feeling a little more sadistic, it would be a hand with leather that feels just like human skin, with a tiny little fake pulse on both thumbs, so it feels much more realistic.
I would love to make a machine like that, but here the chickens with their tiktilaoks would wake us up anyway. It was infuriating when this one Saturday morning I was sleeping in, dead tired from school, when my neighbor's freaking chicken did the tiktilaok so loudly I jumped out of bed, in position to fight someone. I'll have you know that I studied martial arts for about three weeks two years ago. Sure I was absent 3/4ths of the time, but you get the idea; I knew how to fight.
I'm getting a little carried away, so let's continue.
There are a lot of things I don't like. My psychiatrist, Dr. Perez, once said that I have a lot of pent up anger and emotion, which I think isn't very true. Don't we all have pent up anger and emotion? So why am I being singled out here? I'm not shooting up schools or anything like that, obviously. Dr. Perez said that I should list down ten things that make me mad on this little piece of paper she found on her desk in the clinic.
"Only ten?" I asked her. "What if the things that make me mad are more than ten?"
"Just your top ten things that make you mad, then."
"Would ten be the worst or one be the worst?"
"Beatrice, don't ask me pointless questions."
"It's not a pointless question if there is a logical answer to it."
Sigh. "Ten would be the most tolerable then."
I don't like it when she sighs. She makes me feel like I made a big mistake, and I feel that all the time since Mom died. Feeling that way makes me feel like I'm wearing heavy shoes. I like that term, heavy shoes. I feel like I wear them every day.
Here is the list of things that make me mad. After that session with Dr. Perez, I took the slip of paper from her table when she wasn't looking (I don't think she saw me but one can never be sure) and here it is.
TEN THINGS THAT MAKE ME MAD
By Beatrice Sumulong
10. People who chew with their mouth open.
9. People who push other people in the LRT.
8. Things that are useless (like novelty items or Happy Meals, obviously)
7. Traffic in the highway after school.
6. Teachers who give homework on Fridays.
5. Overpriced items, like watercolor pencils (that aren't even Faber Castel!)
4. People who don't take care of their pets.
3. People who blow smoke on your face.
2. People who steal money from the poor.
1. People who kill innocent journalists.
Dr. Perez pointed at the number one thing that made me mad. "Still not over it, are you?" she asked me. She had long, filed red fingernails and she tapped her left hand on the wooden table in that tiny room and they made a strange sound, like klak klak klak, and I didn't like that sound because it sounded like the rain on the windows the day Mom died, and my shoes felt heavier suddenly.
"It's not something you can get over so easily, like a speed bump, or something."
"Death is more than just a speed bump, Bea."
"Obviously."
She nodded. "Yes, obviously."
She wrote scribbles and shapes on the paper she called a prescription paper thingymajig and handed it to me. "Give this to your dad," she said, with that Barbie smile I didn't like cause it looked too much like Mom's smile. I asked Tatay later what was written on the paper and he said my antidepressant dosage will go up. Yippee, I thought to myself sullenly, looking out the window. The rain made klak klak klak sounds on the tinted glass, and it made me think of Mom, and it made me sad.
Anyway.
I don't like waking up early, especially today. I stayed up late last night searching up on the Internet the pictures from that day, the Worst Day. I knew that I'm not allowed to look up those pictures (especially since I'm not yet eighteen, and the pictures were blurred with a 'Are you sure you're 18 or over?' sign on it before it became clear, kind of like saying the secret password before they let you in) but I liked to look at them anyway. Did you know that when humans are chopped up or they have dislocated parts sticking out from their bodies, they looked like crushed cockroaches? I remember them always because one time when we first moved here, Mom and I went on a special expedition while Tatay was out. We went through all the rooms, both hiding and seeking one another, and we both wound up in front of the bathroom underneath the stairs. We laughed and laughed and then Mom said, "Let's open the bathroom door. I've never seen this one yet."
"Why didn't you?"
"Because when your papa and I were overseeing the building of the house, we were too busy with other rooms so we left the architects and the plumbers to take care of this one." She said that all in one breath. She was so amazing, and always beautiful, like a sunny day in spring (or what I imagine spring would be like, since there's no spring here).
"So how did the toilet and the sink and the medicine cabinet and the tub get in here then if you have never seen it?"
"We let the interior designer take charge of that."
"How did the designer know whether you liked this style of a toilet or not?"
"All toilets are the same, Bea."
"No, they're not. What about the ones outside the beach houses? They're tiny and they don't have that thing in the back where the water comes in."
She sighs, but it's the sigh I liked the most. "Let's just look inside."
We open the door together and peek in, and as soon as the light from the kitchen filled the room like silence in a classroom, the walls came alive. Not literally, obviously. But the lines we saw on the walls moved and turned out to be long, black worms and fungi. Both the ceiling and the floor were filled with cockroaches and they scattered around like a mob.
We both screamed and I fell backwards. One of the cockroaches went towards the light, lost and wandering, and then my mom crushed it underneath her bedroom slippers. With a half scream half laugh kind of sound, my mom, the superhero of the day, closed the door and locked it. She sat down next to me (I was sitting up by then, obviously) and we had a good laugh.
That was a little bit before the Worst Day. Mom's stuff was still packed in the room. The crushed cockroach and his friends aren't there anymore. They flew away, just like Mom.
Anyway.
Did you know that when one dies, the blood in their veins and vessels and capillaries and all that settle, so when you raise the arm of a dead person, the skin on top of their arms is a ghostly pale color, while the skin underneath is dark, cause all the blood is there? I looked at the photos taken on that day, the Worst Day, and I zoomed in on the bodies so much that they looked like colored blocks of nothing.
What if humans are actually just colored blocks and squares put together, just like when you zoom in on someone's face in a picture and they're just pixels? If humans were like pixels, created the same way, then when one body-made-of-pixels dies, what happens to the body itself when the pixels are no longer there? I zoomed in on them so much they didn't look human anymore. It made my shoes feel heavy so I rolled up my shirt and pinched my skin until there was a mark, and then I quit the browser window and went to bed. That night, I dreamt of a flow of red blocks, like the ones you see in playgrounds, falling out of Mom's body, when they shot her.
It's all a dream, of course. Except the shooting part. Obviously.
It was Tatay who woke me up. He looked at me, the sleepy, drowsy me with my unmade dark hair, and then he looked at the computer which I stupidly forgot to close. He walked over to the computer, opened a browser window, and looked up the history.
"Hey!" I said, sitting up, suddenly very much awake. "You're breaching my privacy!"
Too late, he saw that I searched the pictures up. He sighed and closed the browser window, and then shut down the computer, all in silence. Has my Tatay always had this much white hair on his head? Did his eyes always look this sunken? Was he always this thin?
"I will have you know that I can sue you for breaching my privacy," I told him, my arms crossed. He walked over to me, standing at the side of my bed, and made this sort of half laugh half grunt noise. He had never looked so tired before. "You better get dressed," he said, completely ignoring me. "Today's the one year of..." he trailed off. I didn't have to continue.
"Oh."
"Yeah, it's been quite some time, huh."
"Are we going to meet those people again?"
"Do you mean, the religious people or the family support group?"
"Both."
"We'll meet the support group first and then the religious people afterwards, in the cemetery."
"Do I have to dress up?"
"Not necessarily. Just look nice, like in Sunday mass."
"Okay, papa."
"Okay."
"Are you okay, papa?"
"No. Are you?"
I reached out and held his hand. They were cold and clammy. I imagined that's what holding a dead person's hand would feel like.
"No, I'm not that okay either."
"Let's get ready, Manong Jhon would be here soon."
"Okay, then."
"Okay."
I got dressed and Tatay got dressed and just as we finished Dressing Up and Eating and Acting like a Normal Family (which we weren't, obviously) Manong Jhon arrived in front of our house and like clockwork, got into the car and started it up. He rolled down his window and waited for us expectantly. He was wearing a black shirt today, which surprised me, because he always wore white. I like Manong Jhon because of our one similarity: we only wear white clothes. Today I wore a white t-shirt and jeans and rubber shoes, and if you opened my closet, it would all be white clothes. He also liked to clean things, like me. I clean a lot when I'm stressed or when my shoes are very heavy. Right now, they're a bit heavy, but I can still drag my feet and make it look normal.
I got on the front seat because Tatay took too long to close up the house. I wondered if Tatay would get mad at me for staying at the front seat, because since Manong Jhon was a boy and I'm a girl, a "young girl" at that, it would be dangerous; but I trust Manong Jhon and Tatay trusts him too (he wasn't around yet when Mom was alive but I'm sure Mom would trust him as well, since she trusted everyone) so I'm sure he wouldn't do anything odd with me. I looked and watched Tatay's face expectantly as he entered the car, wondering if he would tell me to go to the backseat. Instead, he acted like I wasn't there, and that a box or something was on my seat. He sat in the backseat with a heavy sigh—I didn't like that, so it made my shoes heavy—and told Manong Jhon to go to the center where the support group thingymajig would happen. Tatay and I used to go there regularly like the other families after the Worst Day (not directly after but it was established a few weeks after that day, obviously) but then Tatay kept getting heavy shoes so we stopped for a while.
There was traffic midway through, and Dad was vacantly looking outside, Manong Jhon was staring at the car in front of us, and I was bored out of my mind. I poked Manong Jhon (let's call him MJ, like the singer, or was it the basketball player?)'s shoulder. When there was no response I poked him again. The skin underneath his black shirt was warm and squishy. "This is not a simulation. Aliens have invaded the Earth." I said, in my best robot voice. He said nothing, and Tatay remained silent. "I. Am. Beatrice. Sumulong. What. Is. Your. Name." I said, one poke per word. "Bea," my dad finally piped up. "Stop annoying him."
"I'm not annoying him," I said defiantly, though I knew I was. I was also lying, which I knew made Mom angry, and so I got heavy shoes.
I noticed then that my Tatay's hands were clenched in fists on his lap, though he looked serene and peaceful. "Papa," I said to him softly. He didn't say anything. He seemed so far away. I didn't like that.
"Papa," I said again.
"Hmm?" he said, not looking at me.
"What are you squeezing?"
"Huh?" he asked. Now he looked at me with those sad, brown eyes that were also mine.
"What are you squeezing?" I repeated.
He looked at me, blinked, and then looked down at his lap. "Ah," he said. He opened his hands and showed me his palms. "Nothing."
"Just squeezing them shut?"
"Yeah."
"Okay then."
"Okay."
A bit of silence. It was starting to rain again; klak klak klak, tiktilaok goes the chicken in the distance. "Papa?" I asked, turning around to look at him. The seatbelt held me back, which I didn't like, but then I knew it was for a good purpose so that Tatay won't be alone too soon.
"Yes?"
"Do you want me to go to the backseat so I can hold your hand?"
He was quiet and he looked at me, his eyes vacant and empty, and my shoes felt so heavy I felt like I was going to be dragged into the earth. He said something, but then the car came alive, as the traffic began to move, so I didn't hear him. I took it as a no, and looked in front of me, and the rain that fell around us like bodies from a burning building.