Fever Dreams
In the middle of a raging fever, my world is still. Passing days are measured in ritual cycles of housekeeping, slight shifts in temperature, and sudden bursts of rain. The hands of the kitchen clock have stopped moving and nobody cares to fix it. My family’s house is a bubble, in all its fragile, delusional stability.
The internet becomes my only tether to any sense of temporal linearity. One of those luxurious necessities, accessibility has never been so obviously stratified. “Timeline” has taken on a heavier significance, and my thumb scrolls with manic urgency. To the algorithm gods, I offer myself in exchange for a sense of connection.
There is no more body between me and this house. There is no more body between me and this endless, anxiety-riddled stream I willingly drown in, if only to assuage the guilt that comes with comfort and survival.
Burning in this un-body, I am touch-starved. I cling desperately to words in blue bubbles and white boxes – from friends, from enemies, from family, strangers. Virginia Woolf lays forgotten on the floor beside my bed, and I force myself to consume the steady flow of bite-sized catastrophes: a murder in broad daylight, our sovereignty offered on a silver platter, the cold indifference of men in power, a black screen and white noise.
My dad brings home two boxes of 1 liter alcohol. It is not the medical kind. They have the names of Spanish kings: Alfonso I and Carlos.
My mother turns red at the sight of it, smoke coming out of every orifice. My dad brings his buddies over for a round, and I raise my arm to cover myself from the splatter of her exploding head. “Sana mahuli kayo ng pulis!” Wishful thinking always has an angle of violence. Sana wala ng krimen, sana wala ng drugs, sana may disiplina.
But my father is a hero to all the other fathers and young men on our street. The second coming of the messiah, bearing brandy instead of wine. A necessary purification ritual. I could only hope it cleanses like acid on the way down. With the law against them, there is no one to turn to except my dad and his 450-peso-per-bottle. They show up at our gate with both sheepish and wolfish grins, masks on their chins. I curl my lip at the sight, one provocation away from a snarl. At my feet, the dogs start growling.
My father thunders down. He makes it a point to take up as much space as possible in this house full of women and animals. “Ay abaw! Ano pare? Nakuha ba ni misis yung SAP?” He nods, both mirror-images of that shit-eating grin all comfortable men have. “Swerte tayo ah! Nanalo sa lotto si boy
I hear my mother screaming back, “Sige isigaw mo pa! Lakasan mo pa na nagbebenta ka!”
They come back almost every day, handing me their backpacks over the gate so I can shove in one or two bottles. They would not dare enter the home. The dogs have learned to fear men more than I do, becoming doubly aggressive. They will not hesitate to bite. Men whisper that dogs take after their masters.
The men in our neighborhood drink that amber poison like water. I can almost see them spitting it back out as venom to their wives and children, if my dad, the hero of them all, is an example to go by.
So, I whisper an apology for every bottle, to those whose shards it might cut in my complicity as a daughter chained to her father’s house. These soft nothings would not aid them in any way. I bear the weight of guilt and throw the loaded backpacks towards eager hands with more force than necessary. My dogs’ teeth barely graze their skin through the gaps of our gate. I finally return their smiles as they jump back in fear.
With shaking hands, I place my smartphone facedown. The sound of gunshots from the video echoes sharply, piercing the quiet of suburbia. A ringing doorbell harmonizes along with it. “Gel, heto mga mangga oh, galing kela mami.” This is the third basket we received today, and I sneak a look at the sweet, golden hearts on the dining table.
“Thank you,” I smile. Pasok ka muna, kain tayo. Ah, wag na! Okay lang. Okay lang talaga! The sour-sweet smell fills the air.
A golden-green haze sits heavy on our street, tendrils inching into our house. My lungs are filled with this laughing gas. I howl with my neighbor; whose smile splits her face like shattered porcelain. While the gun fires two shots behind my eyes, I lift one mango to my nose, inhaling deeply.
Ma, ano niluluto mo?
I follow the smell of cinnamon and bananas. My mother, arm cranking tirelessly over a mixing bowl, is making bread. I sit down at the kitchen counter and watch her mash a hand of bananas. Around us were piles and piles of them, fingers interlaced. She says they were going to rot soon, so it is best to cook them now. Para ‘di sayang.
Scrolling through instagram all I see are pictures of banana bread. My cousin made some yesterday, an aunt just posted hers this morning, and a distant relative overseas will take a picture of hers tomorrow. A torrent of banana bread in a world bedridden and dying. Bananas, strangely, can have a sour, putrid scent.
I feel uncomfortable, I tell my older sister. She turns to me with burning eyes, “you should be thankful to have so much!” Yes, I am. But have you heard the news about —
BAKIT KA BA GANYAN PALAGI? She drops her spoon on the plate with a clang that made me flinch. I think she might have said it in a joking way, so I force out a small chuckle. Pressing her fingers to her temples, she says she does not want to debate with me so early in the morning. Partida nasa bahay ka lang naman, ‘di mo kailangan lumabas para magtrabaho. Hindi ‘ko na kayang ika-stress pa ‘yan kasi papasok pa ‘ko.
The loud DING! of the oven snaps me out of Sunday’s afternoon daze. My mother takes out freshly baked banana bread. I pinch the corner to taste: it is sweet and moist. She beams at me. “Kain ka pa! Madami pa ‘yan.” Grabbing a fistful, she holds it to my mouth. Eat.
My cheeks are stuffed, and my mouth could barely close as I chew. The bread had dried out my throat. Bits of it are falling from my lips, and I see the brown, caramelized crumbs turn into white wriggling maggots. There was so much buzzing. Swarms of rainbow-hued flies around the hands of bananas turned black.
Watching my mother nibble on her own little piece, I swallow all of it.
My family and I still have a semblance of functional ease, and I sit on the couch with them to watch the news. My stomach churns violently as the new President makes the first of his many jokes. The opening lines to a stand-up tragicomedy act on a stage built with bones, blood, and planted bags of cocaine. “Dapat ang mayor ang mauna!” He jokes. My dad, his 4th beer bottle in hand, laughs heartily. My mother and sisters smile along. The walls behind the television shake with a violent force, and I scream in shock
Unfazed, my dad continues to laugh and cheer him on, my mother chuckles peacefully. The walls begin to crack, oozing dark red blood that pools at our feet. In the back of my mind I wonder if we would drown in it, with my sisters smiling and unmoving. But cockroaches are scrambling all over my paralyzed body, forcing themselves into my mouth. I force myself to gaze at the thing that frightens me the most. Dad, paano na lang kung ako na-rape? Tatawa ka na lang din ba?
With apple-red cheeks, he flashes all his teeth. “Langga,” he says fondly, “hindi ka mare-rape. Mga magaganda at sexy lang ang nare-rape.” A keening noise fills my ears as my mother and sisters laugh. I choke on the cockroaches stuffed in my throat.
My feet are tree roots clinging desperately to the ground; on them I run to my room, retching. Yanking the door open, I am met with pitch-black darkness. Hearing the peals of laughter and the light chiding of my mother, I drown myself.
I am a dog who bites the hands that feed. Ingrate, yet they choose to love me still. Wouldn’t it be so terrible of me not return that love? Drinking from that fountain of filial devotion and sacrifice, I write out a bite history that should have sent me to a high-kill shelter. They choose to keep me, albeit leashed.
Do you think you are better than everyone else? You think you can survive without your family? The face in the mirror morphs from my older sister, to my mother, to my aunt, to our matriarch. Family lore trickles in my ear, into my brain. The pressure makes me squeeze my eyes shut.
My aunts and my father grow up in Tapaz. Tatay is a farmer. Since my dad and his brothers are the youngest children, it is my aunts who till the land. Mami is the force that pulls them. She grits her teeth through Manila and drags her siblings from poverty, one by one.
In their journey from land to city, they vow never to let us experience the distinct pain of mixing corn with rice, of having salt as viand. Of being dirt-poor. Anong mangyayari sa inyo kung wala na kami? Saang kanal na lang kayo pupulutin?
Bellies full, they arm us to the teeth. Our children will be from Manila, not Tapaz. They, of all people, will know that to be cutthroat is to survive. Family is all you have, and all you will ever need
“Could people like me really cut off their family over differences in politics and principles?” I say into the mic in a sweet, Disney-innocent tone, “Survival is family, but could I really live with myself for choosing to survive?” Little miss princess bougie bitch howling about the meaning of life. How pretentious. Privilege is a body odor I cannot hide, no matter how many times I bathe myself in knowledge and awareness.
Too fat to breathe through my ivory collar, I choke at the moment of rupture. Well-fed, well-groomed. Fattened livestock ripe for harvest. Dumb in my luncheon stupor, I only let out a soft whine as others run past. Mindless and comfortable, a small part of me is content when they feast on my flesh. Ghosts of ideals and principles long dead whisper I deserve it. I reason that I did this out of love.
At the moment of rupture, I am emaciated enough to slip from my collar and run to the streets. The horror on my father’s face makes me triumph, and the disappointment in my mother’s eyes kills any scrap of identity I have left. I do not look back at my sisters, eschewing a weak-willed Orpheus. Instead, I am lady truth, running down the street of guavas naked and screaming, a switch on one hand and a fist raised on the other. I reason that I did this out of love.
Paralyzed between sleep and consciousness, I try to breathe and ride it out. My body will wake in time, separate from this house. For now, I attempt to regain the feeling in my fingertips.
(c) Kirsten Ganzon
VALS, 2021