The History of My Skin

I was born out of love.  Many sons and daughters can claim that.  But not many can claim to have the same circumstances of the love from which I sprung from.  Mom and Dad’s love affair was a cliche  (was because mom has already gone down a path that no living person can follow).  It’s the stuff that Robin Padilla thrived on in his early years. 

Dad was one of the town’s delinquents; a leader of a local band of rowdy youngsters who call themselves the Blackhands.  His rowdy group was supposedly the bane of wayward dogs– the same dogs that would mysteriously disappear when they’re in the vicinity, and just as magically, the dogs would be transformed into asocena, served with tuba (coconut wine), the preferred pulotan of the Blackhands.

He was good at dealing with people but he’s never the best student.  He went to college only to convince the varsity football coach to allow him to tag along in their inter-school games.  I don’t know what his motivations were.  Perhaps it’s the ladies but I never did ask him.  He went home without bringing with him a diploma.  Somehow, his being a drop-out did not really bother my grandfather.  He was only glad that he had someone to work his fields.   Local town legend has it that my father’s family was one of the biggest landowners in our town.  But I never got to confirm that, when I came of age, all the land that’s left to my father’s family was the lot that the ancestral house, a huge, rotting castellan affair, stood on.

My mother’s family were tenants of my dad’s.  They lived in the ground floor of my dad’s house.  If my dad was to be believed, he first saw my mother through the cracks of their second storey floor.  I saw a photograph of my mother when she was young, and while she wasn’t a great beauty, she was a comely woman.  She was also petite.  My dad in his younger years was clad in the latest fashion, his hair massacred by pomade, his eyes giving nothing except hints of mischief.

As I said, my mom and dad’s love story was a cliche.  The son of a somewhat affluent family falling for their tenant’s daughter.   From the onset, it looked like their relationship was to be like the stories of star-crossed lovers.  My mother’s dad was totally against it right from the start.  He was a soldier and he’d be damned if he’d let her eldest daughter be with a ruffian such as my dad.

My mom was a teacher then.  She was strong willed, and she was totally enamoured with my dad’s bad boy charms.  Whoever it was who said that love is so powerful that it would cause people to forsake everything just to follow it might as well have been talking about my mom and dad.

Against my grandfathers dire threats, the two of them eloped in what was then one of the most daring elopement our town has ever seen.  With his contacts, my grandfather pulled strings to install checkpoints in the major exits of our town.  All buses leaving town were inspected, with the inspectors given a stern order to locate his wayward daughter and separate her, forcefully, if need be from the evil clutches of my dad.

As it turned out, heaven smiled on the eloping couple.  The inspector who found my mom and dad cowering in the last row of a north-bound bus was my father’s cohort who turned a blind eye and let them escape.

Nine months of hiding and skipping from one friend’s house after another, and getting married in the process, I was ushered into the world.  I don’t know how they managed to live but I became the fruit of that elopement.  I came out of my mother kicking and screaming as if announcing to the whole world that I was to be the bridge that would re-unite my mother to her grief-stricken dad.

My mother would smile everytime I ask her to tell me again how Lolo received them when they went back to their hometown, to my Lolo.  She said she feared the worst when my Lolo came out of their house in a huff, his trusty jungle bolo gripped tightly in his hand.  She said that with one look at the bundle she was carrying, my Lolo melted.  She said I cried so loud that my Lolo couldn’t help but let go of his bolo and cradle me in his arms.

She said he forgave her and instantly fell in love with me.

As for my dad, Lolo never even took so much as a glance in his direction.  He would forever look at him as the guy who stole his daughter.