hippos in the rain

Our house was in the middle of a barrio - a big, blue, two-storey structure that stopped people in their tracks. We had a two-car garage, an outdoor gazebo with a wine collection, and a spacious, tiled terrace half-covered in ferns and a variety of comfortable couches. We even had a small stream out back.

At night, when the sky was clear and the moon looked almost pitiful as stars disappeared one by one, our house loomed like a giant amid the rolling fields and unpainted houses of our unknown neighbors.

Inside, the silence was deafening.

I was almost thirteen years old then. My younger sister and I fell into the habit of sneaking out late at night to the terrace to stare at the sky and talk. Night after night, my eyes stayed open to the darkness, save for the moon shining through the window of my room. When I heard the patter of Angela’s feet as she moved in the shadows towards my room, I went out, took her slightly smaller, chubby hand, and silently led the way outside.

I opened the screen door and plopped down on a soft couch. "Gel, let’s not stay up too late, okay? It’s cold tonight," I said while adjusting my position so that I could clearly see the full moon. I craved calm, still nights.

Angela nodded. "It’s going to rain tomorrow." She hugged herself as she sat on a corner with knees drawn up - incredibly child-like between the ferns.

I turned to her and asked, "How did you know that?"

"Because I’m praying for rain," she said with childlike earnest. "I asked God if he could make tomorrow exactly how I feel today so the kids over there won’t go out to play and have fun," pointing her chin in the direction of our ostensibly foreign neighbors. "Do you think God will listen to me, ate? It’s cold now anyway, that’s how I feel. Cold…"

She shifted, then continued. "I thought you begin to feel that way when you’re older. You know, like Mama does when she’s in bed alone in her room. Can someone feel dark?" she said looking at me with big eyes and her worried look. "I do."

I sneered as I met her eyes. "Darkness and this family have something in common. The shadows burrow deep, so much that we can’t even understand the whole picture anymore. We hide when something good comes along as if we don’t deserve a break, as if the sun would blind us after all the misery. Sometimes I think days like these happen to make us remember we need some form of god or religion to stay sane, to have hope, to think there will be a difference…" I trailed off.

I looked at my motionless sister. "Where did Father go this morning? I woke up and he was gone."

Angela sighed, closed her eyes, and said, "I woke up when Mama called us for breakfast. But when I got there, they were quarrelling again. I would have thought they’d stop when they saw me, but they didn’t seem to notice I was there." She looked off far into the rice fields.

"What were they arguing about this time?" I asked anxiously.

"It was more unrelenting than usual. They were going on and on about Father’s gambling again."

I let out a breath I didn’t know I was holding, and slumped further into the couch. I looked at Angela square in the eye and asked, "Are we going to lose the restaurant?"

She fell silent. We both felt dark.

Last year, my parents had put up Kakanan, a restaurant that opened from eight in the morning to eight at night. We served heaps of fried chicken, bowls of Chinese fried rice, and grilled pork barbeque everyday. Mama was a wonderful cook. I was there when Father drew up the plans; I was there when the construction started, and the equipment and kitchen paraphernalia were bought. Angela and I were the youngest waitresses on board, working doubly hard to prove to ourselves that we could do it. We loved it.

I shook my head. "What did Father do this time?"

"He went to Manila last week, stayed there for three nights, and gambled the money to pay the meat packers. Remember when we found Mama asleep on her desk with papers everywhere? I think he left during that time. Mama was so frustrated and furious," she laughed mirthlessly. "Manang and the rest of the cooks and waitresses were complaining about the delay in their wages yesterday."

She paused for a while, stretched her legs, and looked at the silent window of my father’s room.

"So what are we going to do now?" she asked.

"I do not know."

And silence once again followed.

We listened to the buzz of crickets for a while. The wind was humming a song. We were just two sisters in the night, shattering its stillness with deep, long sighs. When the day had finally taken its toll, we both left as quietly as we entered, and went to bed praying for sleep.

I had weird dreams back then for a thirteen year-old girl who had no friends in school and didn't blend with the crowd. There was no one else but Angela to turn to. The shadows in my room would have been my only friends if not for her.

That night I dreamt. Clear images at first of me walking on the edge of the woods, then the picture grew more and more distorted. I heard a cry for help, a low, guttural moan of agony. I turned on my heel, and ran in its direction. Then, as I came to a clearing, I looked at my legs in surprise. They had turned gray and coarse, heavy, big. Then my arms, my face and the rest of my body. I had turned into a hippo, and it was raining like Angela prayed to God it would.

The rain possessed its own music - a steady, thumping beat, with more drops falling on the leaves of the trees surrounding me. The song was green, soft, refreshing. And instead of feeling desolate at my fate, I stopped in my tracks, and took the rain in, lifting my arms to catch the drops, feeling weighed, damp.

Then I began to dance. I forgot all about the call for help as I lifted my right leg and jiggled and stretched my forefeet and made a generous curling wave all the way to my toes. There was someone watching me as I sang words I barely understood. I looked into the direction of that someone. I didn’t know who it was. I stopped dancing and singing. The rain stopped its music.

Then I woke up. The sun was streaming in through my gray curtains, and hurt my eyes. I felt the warmth on my skin. I felt hot and tired, disoriented.

"Why are you doing this?!" I heard from down the stairs, breaking my early morning state of befuddlement. "Didn’t you realize that we had to pay for debts last month? The problem with you is that you seem to forget your responsibilities! I am the one they call for our loans!"

It was of course not the first time Mama shouted and got angry so early in the morning. It was as if mornings did not do anything to soothe her, with the sun rising high, the rest of the world just beginning to wake.

I got out of bed, and tiptoed to the top of the stairway. I looked down, and saw through one of the mirrors their fighting reflections. Mama was standing by the dining table, one hand on her hips and the other holding a plate of beef mechado that she cooked, sporting that look of contempt on her face she always has when she fights with Father.

The anger evident in his voice, Father said that Mama shouldn’t have shouted at him in front of the cashier yesterday after she found out what he did to the money. "You seem to have forgotten that I am still the padre de familia in this house, Jane. Do not make me ashamed of you." Father spat at Mama.

Father was sitting down, his bulging stomach barely fitting the space between his carved wooden chair and the glass table. I could tell he was getting tired of Mama’s tantrums. He was pursing his lips, scowling in that fury-controlled way of his that always scares me.

She faced him, her face red, all frowns, pointing fingers, the mechado placed carelessly on the top of a nearby refrigerator. "Because I know something will go wrong! Like during the time you bought a jet ski, and neglected to pay the rent for Kakanan for three months. You’ve done this a dozen times in the past, Eli." She took a deep breath. "You have really screwed-up priorities."

Father looked as if he’d been slapped. I didn’t know why. This has been my mother’s constant complaint for months. He tensely stood up from his chair, reached for his racket and duffel bag, slung it over his shoulder, and stomped off to his car without another word to Mama to vent his anger on a game of tennis in the local court.

I flew down the stairs to find my mother in her bed crying. I felt tired but I had no choice. In an instant, I became a dutiful daughter listening and trying to comfort Mama.

I couldn’t stand Mama crying. I thought I could help by listening, by trying to understand both of them. I go to their rooms but all the while, I could barely breathe; I didn’t help anyone at all. No matter how hard I tried to smooth things out, I couldn’t. For Mama, for Father, for Angela. For the thing we call our family. I was caught in the middle, and I was weary of another fight.
And yet, here I was.

"Are you okay?" I asked her, concerned and tired of it at the same time.

"Yes, of course," she said wiping away her tears and breathing deep. She smiled falsely and hugged me tight. She whispered, "Don’t worry about me, Kim. Everything is going to be alright." Mama had this look on her face; it was so determined yet so sad.

I looked at her with questioning eyes.

Her eyes filled up again. "You do know that I love you so much, right Kim? You and Angela are the only people I really loved. You two make me so proud, so happy." She looked at me deep and hugged me so tight I could barely breathe.

"Mama?" I could only notice her tears.

"You be good, okay? Find your own dreams, live your own life." She said seriously, clutching my arms tight. "Don’t be sad if life is not perfect, because it will never be. Just have faith. Have faith in God, in yourselves, in your family, and in the people you love. You take care of Angela and your father. Love them so much like I did."

She stopped crying, and then hugged me tight as she let out a sad, hopeless sigh. After that, I left her room, woke Angela up and cried quietly on her shoulders.

Father returned in the afternoon to find Mama gone. Angela and I didn’t even know how it happened.

He called us to her suffocating room, now with only half the clothes. The room felt so bare, so sterile, so clean. I instinctively moved closer to Angela.

"Did Mama say anything to any of you?" Father said harshly. I remember their fight that morning. I shook my head, and Angela cowered behind me.

"She has left us," he said finally. His face became so devoid of meaning. The smooth floor was cool. We could hear the spring gushing through mossy stones, wetting the banks. Soon our tears fell.

These are my memories of a place I was supposed to forget. Mama left us after much more fights through the telephone, and the months that followed were all dark. The house is still silent.

I don’t live there anymore. I haven’t set foot in that house since Father sent me to Dumaguete to study, far away from him and his bitterness.

I prefer to think I have salvaged what was left of my childhood. I discovered, experienced, and lived a life. But sometimes, like these moments when I am just alone sitting in the university’s Amphitheater, looking at the magnificent spread of the acacia trees around me, I surprise myself by wishing out of the blue for Father’s hand to hold as I walk along the deserted Boulevard, or Mama to talk to when I feel like I am not doing anything right.

I was just about to leave when I heard someone behind me softly say, "I knew you would be here." I looked up and saw my best friend.

"Are you okay Kim? Why are you crying?" Jeremy said. He sat down and inhaled the fresh air then turned to me questioningly.

"I didn’t even notice," I said, brushing a tear away, and looking down again.

I took out a picture and said haltingly, "Do you remember when friends sometimes asked me about my parents, and I always replied they’re dead?"

He nodded, curious, surprised.

"This is a picture taken of us when we went to Baguio City. We used to spend Christmas there. That’s me in purple and the man behind me is my father. We have the same smile, right?"
Jeremy smiled, looked at me and at the picture, and nodded. "I didn't ask you any questions about your home because you avoided the topic a lot. But I really want to know… Who are the others?"

"That’s Mama, that’s Angela. When I was thirteen, I dreamed I was a hippo, and it is so uncanny that I remember it until now. It was raining and someone was listening to my song. Does that mean anything to you?" I asked him but he just studied my family. "I dreamed that the night before Mama left us, and I never figured it out."

I looked up at the sky, as I so often did on our tiled terrace years before, and saw the silhouettes of birds against the brightening sky. The sun was rising through the portals of the university as gnarled acacias grew majestic in its wake.

I took the picture, and tore it up so severely until I couldn’t recognize our faces anymore. My family, my darkness, my rain. The torn pieces stared back at me, and I threw it to the wind.
I faced my friend with a smile, and said softly, "I don’t want the rain anymore, Jeremy. So many things in life are not perfect, like a marriage, a relationship, a family or a home. But I’m still grateful for them all. Remind me to keep my faith, okay? That’s what Mama said before she left. For faith is not meant to change your circumstances, but to change you."
And with this, I was free to dream.