BAKURAN (Yard): Part I

When I was 6 years old, I noticed how the lines of the two telephones in our house were connected. If one phone is ringing, the other rings as well. Answering from either of the phones stops both from ringing. If someone answers from tita's room upstairs, I can listen to their conversation using the phone from the living room.

           One day, a cousin and I decided to play around with this discovery. The phone rang and stopped eventually. We both knew that it was either because our tita answered the call from her room or the call was cancelled. We picked up the phone to find out.

           I can still remember how humid that day was. The summer heat was amplified by the moisture trapped by the concrete walls of the house, and we were neither allowed to go outside to play in our backyard nor turn on the TV because it was siesta time. Bored, we decided to listen to the conversation between our tita and the caller.

           The caller was a man. I thought, and my cousin might have also thought, we were going to hear an exchange between sweethearts. We were wrong. I cannot remember anymore the details of their conversation. I can only remember that my tita was anxious and crying. The exchange became increasingly intense. They were shouting. By then we have decided to stop listening.

           I became nervous after we dropped the call from our side because I knew that our tita would notice the beep that came with it. I was right. Tita came out of her room furious. She angrily walked down the stairs. The steps trembled as much as my hands shook. My sweat lingered on the edges of my eyebrows. I was, for the very first time, afraid of my tita.

           Of all my aunts and uncles, Tita Irene was my favorite. I remember when she once tasked me to write all the numbers from one to one-hundred with the promise that I will get a prize if I did perfectly. Unfortunately, I missed forty-nine. She did not give me the prize, but she kept the paper as a reminder that I almost did the task at a young age. She would also occasionally hold contests for me and my cousins. Contests like spelling quizzes or simple math drills. She would also cook snacks for us or prepare fruit shakes for all of us. She was an angel. A mother to all of us who were not her own.

           The trembling I shared with my cousin intensified into crying with every step our tita took towards us. Defensively, we apologized. We cried that we did not intend to listen to their heated exchange. We only wanted to hear how lovers talked in the physical absence of each other. Then she stopped before us and hugged us. She told us not talk about what we heard. Our trembling stopped, and the reason why were crying became obscure. I might be imagining it, but I felt her hug become tighter. It was as if she was looking for comfort in our presence --- in our innocence. We all stopped crying eventually.

           This is what modern communication technology cannot capture. The nuances of physical interactions can send signals that transcend the boundaries of language. Have tita Irene discovered that we were eavesdropping via a Skype or Facebook videocall, my cousin and I would not have trembled, cried, and hugged with her. She would not have been reminded of children’s innocence.

           Weeks later, she told our grandmother of her pregnancy.