At three in the afternoon, after the 3 o’clock habit prayer, we’d usually hear a booming voice from a block away.
“ELA! ELA!” In short explosive baritone you’d think it was from a military staff sergeant. Everybody calls him Kuya Bak even if he was our lolo. He had a mean, tough face that has seen war and dealt death in the war zone. He survived the Japanese occupation fighting for our country’s freedom.
He is calling for his wife, Perla, for the afternoon snack, meryenda. Ate Ela, will have to stop
anything that she’s doing. Meryenda is as important as any other meal for Kuya Bak.
Most times they will invite us for snacks, when us kids are playing in the vacant lot in between our homes and theirs. There are usually 7 kids playing there then my 2 elder sisters got visited by the menstrual cycle. They stopped playing with us. I don’t know why they call it “bisita”. I don’t know why is regla or menstruation a bad word.
Aiyee and I were playing with cousins who are not really our cousins. Bayee and Rufino are aunts and uncles by bloodline and Ibet is a grandson from Kuya Bak’s other daughter from a previous marriage.
They were living with his son also from that previous marriage, Kuya Vigi. Kuya Vigi is there to help ate Ela because kuya Bak is no longer as strong as his booming voice is.
Us kids would line up, get hot pan de sal, smother it with home made cheese pimiento and gulaman. They were the best. Other times it’s corned beef and pan de sal, sometimes it’s local kakanin (various forms of rice cakes). We’d eat it outside on a makeshift laundry area facing the river or we’d cramp the table.
At the table, ate Ela and Kuya Bak would talk about news, about their daughter in the US, about the latest neighborhood issues. We don’t talk unless spoken to, usapang matanda (adult speak, if there is a cultural English equivalent). They’d talk and even if we listen in, there were so many things we wouldn’t understand and since it’s “usapang matanda”, we can’t ask questions.
I would’ve loved to ask questions during these forums of elders who can make me understand “why can’t my sisters play during days of bisita?”, “why do I have aunts and uncles young enough as playmates?”, or why do we still call them ate Ela and “Kuya Bak when we call his son Kuya Vigi?” Also, Ibet can’t be our cousin, ate Ela is the one related to us. There are so many questions to ask but I guess that’s why it’s easier not to let us ask them. We, in turn, just improved our skill in adding logical conclusions with the given data we hear.
There is a 20 year gap between ate Ela and kuya Bak. The tone and rhythm in their conversations feel like they were catching up on the 20 years between them. The topics of what they talk about might as well be less important like a couple who just want to dance and will dance to any music. It’s been told that on the day he met her, he told his wife that he must be with ate Ela or he’d go crazy wanting her… or something like that. Something similar to what Pablo Picasso did. Pablo only did it more frequently. He held on to her.
When we got to high school, there stood a new building on our playground. Ibet went to high school in Nueva Ecija where his parents were. The meryenda experience got too few and far in between and constantly only during holy week after the Wednesday and Good Friday processions. Everybody’s there for the gulaman.
A few years later, Kuya Bak died. He promised her that his death will not cause her any more burden. Any more from all the love and service she has devoted him. He took his last breath in the toilet. No cries for help, no more pain.
As an adult, I wanted to ask ate Ela does she miss him? But i reckon there is enough love shared between them to last her a lifetime.
danDAman 