Mia Alvar - In the Country - Stories

“Is safe. This”—Jim pointed at the papers on the floor—“is theater, that’s all. Intimidation tactics. Some goons were told to shake me up a bit, and this was their interpretation. He’s lost control of his men, along with his mind.”

The room tilted around Milagros. If Papa’s lost so much control, she would have said, if she could find the words, how can anyone be safe?

“My father saved this man’s life,” Jim said. “He’s not about to trifle with my son’s. In all my years at Camp, why do you think I had a private cell to read and think in? All the others, even some women, were shoved around, at least. My term was study leave, compared to theirs. Did you ever see a scratch on me? A dubious advantage, I know — I wasn’t proud of it, but I’ll be damned if I don’t use it now.”

Milagros knelt to leaf again through the pages on the floor, hoping to see something new.

“You can fill in the blanks,” said Jim, as if to save her trouble. “Stop the presses, take it all back, get my son.”

“Your son,” said Milagros. ( I repeat, she thought, as in one of those presidential speeches.) “ Your son?”

“ Our son, Milagros, of course. And we will. It’s just a matter of time. We’ll get him back without kowtowing to a dictator. You’ve always trusted me. On this I need you to trust me more than ever.”

There was nothing for her to do but to repeat. “I’ve always trusted you,” she said, her voice so faint she may as well have mouthed the words.

—

Jaime would escape, she fantasized. This was, Milagros knew, a stretch. Her pudgy boy, so easy to bribe with snacks and candy. She’d sooner believe that Jackie had broken out of her nursery lockdown. But he would miss her, Milagros knew that too; he’d miss Jackie and Soba and want to come home. People talked of how prison had changed them. They came out of Camp Crame or Fort Bonifacio stronger, out for blood. Could this be the thing, at last, that manned up Jaime Jr.? At City Hospital, she’d seen pain turn children bionic. A bone marrow biopsy so painful that a boy bent the steel rail of his bed. A girl whose high, shrill weeping could have shattered the windows. So she had to imagine Jaime in pain to imagine him free. What twisted fantasy was this? From what kind of mother?

—

In the morning Jim was at the kitchen table with his coffee and newspapers. A stranger. She could hear, in the nursery, his men unlatching the trundle bed from its hatch.

Now she’d found the words in her throat. “Where is he?” she said, sending Vivi and Jackie out into the yard. “You’re so convinced that he’s safe. How do you know? I want proof.”

Jim sighed, as if he’d wished to spare her these details but now had no choice. “A source inside the Metrocom, someone I trust,” he said, “told me he’s in a safe house outside Santa Clara.”

“A source,” Milagros repeated. “A safe house?” She imagined a windowless cabin, an armed khaki guarding it — the kind of man who had never, in thirteen years, made her feel safe. Her husband, a man who’d always despised euphemisms — why would he accept this one? “Ask your source for an address,” she said.

“I’m trying,” said Jim. “He walks a fine line too — working for them, and with me.”

“You care more about your sources,” Milagros said, “than about him. You never cared for Jaime. He was never tough enough for you. You’re happy he’s in danger. You don’t care if it’s Ateneo or a ‘safe house’ that mans him up.”

“I care what country he grows up in,” Jim replied. “What kind of man he emulates.”

“He can’t emulate you if he’s not here,” Milagros said. “Just stop the presses! Where’s the fun in being a newsman if you can’t, at least once in your life, say Stop the presses ?”

He looked up from his Bangkok Post at her, but didn’t close it.

“They will win,” she said, “if they have to drag you out kicking and screaming.”

Jim shook his head. “I can’t fear a weak man. If there’s anything emptier than his promises, it’s his threats. His own kidneys are in revolt against him, at this point.”

“Organs don’t get into politics,” Milagros said. “Trust me, I’m a nurse.”

When he didn’t answer, she snatched the Bangkok Post from him and tore it, clumsily, to bits. “We are talking about your children here!”

“Yes, Milagros.” He stood and left the newspapers splayed on the oilcloth. Before going into his study, he turned to her. “And how do you want our children to remember us?”

February 25, 1986

At midnight she wakes up to fireworks. Or is it gunfire? Even the radio can’t tell. But that must be the thrill of EDSA: partying like it’s your last night on earth, because it might be. In her suburban bed Milagros closes her eyes and sees Jaime Jr. on an ordinary New Year’s Eve, scraping watusi sticks along the ground, the phosphorus sparking under his rubber slippers.

By the time she wakes again, the party has reached her living room. Her mother on the sofa, Jackie on Vivi’s lap, and neighbors — mostly wives, Milagros notes, whose husbands must have gone into the city — in front of the TV. Someone has printed yellow T-shirts for the children: with Kuya’s face on them, for the boys; and his widow’s, for the girls. On-screen, helicopters swarm the country club in Greenhills, where the rebel leaders wait for her. A brass band plays “Bayan Ko” (My Country), “Tie a Yellow Ribbon,” and, as if remembering who’s watching, “Dixie.”

Cheers and yellow banners as the widow steps out of a van. The mothers on the sofa chant her name, teaching their children how to flash L-for-LABAN with their thumbs and forefingers. In Vivi’s lap, Jackie’s all but trembling with excitement, her quiet, serious house transformed as in some Christmases and New Years past. But when Vivi sees Milagros headed to the kitchen, Jackie’s handed off again, demoted to a neighbor’s lap. Something to eat, ma’am? All Milagros wants is water; Naz’s magic beans have dried her mouth out.

Back in the bedroom, on the radio, the widow takes her oath of office, gives her speech. Shattering the dictatorship. Grateful to the military. Rights and liberties. National reconciliation. Her first executive order. Her cabinet. Jim must be there for all of it. Milagros can imagine him, standing in but not of the crowd, as they recite the Our Father and sing the national anthem.

And so he is, sardined in the Club Filipino, watching the people watch their new President. A members-only country club, where all those 1898 heroes are said to have dreamed the nation up. Now it’s bigwigs in barong, the foreign press. Following the rebels’ lead, they’ve signed the so-called Citizens’ Resolution: out with Papa, long live Madam President. The signatures read like a page out of Manila’s 400.

Rich-People Power. Martial law, to some, was a rude interruption: now their fancy dinner party can resume.

Afterward, he rushes from the club to Malacañang Palace, where— only in Manila, says his taxi driver — the stubborn sitting President has booked his own oath and inauguration. A flash of Jim’s press pass, a pat-down at the palace gates. In the ceremonial hall, a few cabinet ministers — tourism, agriculture, public works — some soldiers, a New Society youth group. Not a barong or butterfly sleeve between them — a first, in all Jim’s visits to this palace. Entering to watery applause and out-of-sync chants of his name, the President slurs through his speech. The First Lady, in white, paces behind the podium. It’s over within twenty minutes. The room clears quickly. As Jim leaves, soldiers with rifles guard the lawns, between tanks and battle buses, all their engines running.