Journal: March 18 2022 [bonus material]
*Best to read after you've progressed past Track 6
Illustration by Ardee Arollado (@kero.beroz)
Note: I wouldn’t consider any of this a major story spoiler, but there are little revelations in Track 6 that are made less impactful if you jump right into this one. Beware!
March 18 2022
Things were never the same with Mama after Pa died. For a while it brought us closer, seemed to mend scars that the younger me mistook for birthmarks: stains I thought were always there, just the way things were, not the result of years of mutual resentment and fear and abuse.
We cried together, then learned to live and laugh again together. We did our best to convince Pa up in his atheist heaven that the ones he loved would end up OK after all.
But that simulacrum of wounds closing was actually more like the teeth of some hungry beast clenching together for a momentary burp—before opening wide with newfound gluttony. After the honeymoon period (what an odd metaphor for grieving together), Pa’s death became an emboldening force for her worst tendencies. With no one else to control, her mental energy funneled into dictating her only daughter’s life. And this time around, she could scream with a full chest that she was right to worry. That she’s only playing her role as a protector so that her hardheaded baby girl doesn’t meet the same fate as the passionate professor that she once loved and lost.
So why, after such a torturous relationship with my mother, did I find myself moving all the layers of Bathala’s skyworld to find her runaway dog? Well, I love that little drool nozzle Sonny, for one, so yeah I would dig a hole through the Earth’s center and all the way out to Brazil on the other side if that’s what it took. And for another, the old woman was on her last turn of the hourglass. Losing the only child that didn’t hate her guts felt like a bit too heavy a punishment. I’m a justice girl through and through.
I’d like to take credit for going so far as to find a private investigator to help with the hunt. But the truth is he found me: he was neighbors with Ma, I guess, but more front of mind for him was this obsession he had with the Pasig river. Something about disappearances, some body with a freaky passport, ConspiracyBay type talk. We played this awkward game: him trying to not sound like a weirdo; me who knew the answers to his Pasig river riddles but was sworn to silence until the time is right. I did better than he did. Aki would be proud.
Anyway, Detective Mal was kind of cute. He also kind of stank, like how many days’ worth of whiskey and cigarettes—but I guess that’s just my type. Broken boys and girls drowning their inner voices with whatever substance is in reach.
And of course I recognized him. I was fourteen when it all went down, but I was the one fourteen year old who followed that shit, cheered from my couch as golden boy Paolo Malaya turned his sights on the President’s goons and actually, for once, came out on top. At least that’s how I remembered it.
For him though—and yeah, I eventually mustered the shamelessness to ask him—it didn’t have that same taste of victory. He told me how his partner’s death haunted him still. That in retrospect he was no hero, just another witless pawn whose theatrics paved the way for someone else to take over. And were those people any better? I stood quiet as those faces flashed in my mind, the ones I’ve memorized since that day six years ago: Jojo Frias. Angelo Liwanag, Jr. The men who killed my father and filled the void left after the dust cleared. I shoulda punched this guy and gotten some second or third degree revenge.
But that would have just been mean. It made me sad to look at him: a shell, smiling sadly with all his insides scooped out. In his mind, I think he tells himself he went too far, and that he is guilty for the damage he dealt to the people around him for the sake of a whole lot of nothing. I wish I could have told him that he didn’t go far enough.
Detective Mal knocked on my door the next day, a stupid grin on his face. He found Sonny. Better yet: he found two Sonnys. I feigned surprise, but after everything I learned from Akira about this world, all I felt was a hollow amusement. I don’t know why I told him to take one of the twin dogs… maybe because I pitied him, but also maybe because I recognized there was still a speck of that hero I had idolized, some ember hidden somewhere in his half-murdered heart that maybe, just maybe could be reawakened with a bit of warmth. And if ever that fire were to reignite—well, I could use an ally. Not that I have much time.
And then mom… Mama was gone. I wanted to surprise her, so I didn’t call on my way over. When I opened the hospital door and set Sonny down on the floor, I expected him to smell her scent and run over with excitement, all slobber and kisses.
But instead he just stood there by the entrance, and I knew. And he knew. That me and Sonny and his mysterious twin were the only ones left holding up our family tree.