Palanca winner

Sir Ian Rosales Casocot won Palanca 1st prize-short story (English) this year.

I first read the winning story "Things You Don't Know" (excerpted below) while I was riding a jeep to Ayala. I remember not caring if the vehicle was moving, or that I looked like an utter geek holding a few pieces of bond paper stapled together. totally absorbed in the story that I ignored those coins supposed to be passed on to the driver.

After I read the story, I just looked at it in awe. Then I racked my brains as to who could've written it. It was something I've always wanted to write, more on domestic realism, along the tones of Socorro Villanueva's "We Won't Cry Over This". It was sent as part of a batch of stories by newbies for Litcritters Dumaguete, and I was amazed at the thought of a newbie being capable of writing that.

So I emailed sir. "Sir, who wrote 'Things You Don't Know'? Wow."

Then he replied, "Me. hehe."

I wanted to clutch my hair and say, "Naruhodo ne." In English, a big Duh would've sufficed.

So anyway, congratulations again, and Litcritters Dumaguete is so happy for him.;D

After dinner, Marlon refuses to call Margot with her new angel name, Zagzagel. It is a little too difficult to pronounce, he says, and he doesn’t know what it means. “It means Angel of Wisdom, Dad,” Margot—or Zagzagel—says. She stands her ground near the staircase landing, my little girl, her hands on her hips like she means it. The scowl on her little face is radiant with sweat. But it has been four days, and she is still wearing her white toga, which is a little dirty now, and her halo and wings are a little wilted from play and the abundance of Marikina’s heat. She refuses to take them off. “You need to take a bath some time, Margot,” I had told her, angrily, on the second day of her cherubimic fancy. But six-year-old girls sometimes take their battles to heart, and she cannot be moved. “Angels don’t take baths, Ma,” she says.

“How’d you get that name, Zagzagel?” Marlon asks her.

“Don’t humor her, Mar,” I tell him. Like father, like daughter. I want to shout, but I don’t do anything.

“Well, remember that book lola bought me for my birthday last year? It has names of angels in them. There’s Valoel…Shekinah…Rashnu…Xaphan…” Margot recites them like a litany, each name a cipher, each name a sound that drives deeper a wedge between me and my days. I feel the tension rising in my throat. And yet, I also feel a desperation to have what she has.

“Xaphan?” my husband asks.

Margot nods. “Xaphan is the angel of invention.”

“I didn’t know inventions have guardian angels,” he says, a little too amused.

“But Xaphan’s bad,” Margot says. “He wanted to set heaven on fire.”

My husband sighs. “I know you’re my little angel, sweetie,” he says, “but don’t you think this play has gone far enough? Mommy tells me you don’t want to take a bath anymore. Come on, Margot. Enough of this.”

“My name is Zagzagel.”

Margot troops up the stairs to her room, dragging behind her a trail of cotton balls.

“What are you doing with my cotton balls?” I call after her.

“They’re clouds, Ma,” her tiny voice rings out before I hear the thud of her bedroom door closing.

And then, there is only my husband, and I. “She’s coping,” I finally tell Marlon.

“From what?”

“You should know.” I say this softly.

“Well, she’s your daughter,” my husband says. “You have to put a stop to this soon, you know. Jesus, it has been four days.”

“Exactly.”

“I want my old life back.”

“We don’t always get what we want,” I tell him, my eyes searching his. If only he would tell me, I tell myself. Where do you go while I try to carry on with this life full of pretending? But he turns around too soon, and he too disappears up the stairs, his sudden silence like the exquisite betrayal of fallen angels.