After the death of my sister Irene one misfortune after another fell upon our family.
We were eating lunch one day when a young girl came to our house and sat in the living room waiting for my brother Macario. She had brought a large trunk with her, which I helped my mother carry into the house. I rushed to the schoolhouse and told my brother.
He commanded me to wait. When classes were over we ran to our house. The girl was still waiting. My mother and I went to the kitchen and pretended to be washing clothes. My brother and the girl were arguing in English. After dinner, while my mother was busy washing the dishes, they began arguing again and kept it up far into the night. My mother blew out the oil lamp and lay on her mat.
I sat in the darkness watching my brother and the strange girl moving in the room. Then I went to sleep quietly, but was awakened by the girl’s soft weeping. My brother accompanied her down from the house and out to the gate. I went to the window and saw them waiting for a caromata to take the girl away.
But it was not long before the girl came back. She brought all her possessions with her: a large trunk of clothes, a green lamp, two pairs of shoes, and a little cat.
“Why did you come back when we had already agreed that you should wait for another year?” asked my brother Macario, casting furtive glances at my mother.
“I like this house,” said the girl. “I shall never leave it again.”
And it was true. She stayed on. One day my brother threatened to throw her out, and she defied him. When he struck her, she struck back. My brother was furious. The next day he moved to the house of a cousin. Then the girl went to the school principal, and before we knew it my brother was asked to resign his job. There was only one alternative for him: to marry the girl. But he did not want to marry her. He went to the presidencia every day and played dominoes or checkers with the policemen and other men who had no work.
Macario had one important reason for not marrying the girl. He knew that if he married he would have to give up helping us pay the installments on our land. He took the civil service examinations hoping to get a place in the tax department, but there was no opening for him. My father was becoming desperate. He came to town and stayed on for weeks, neglecting his growing corn and other farm duties.
Then my mother began to grow big in the belly again. She could hardly walk about any more. I could not go alone to the public market. It was then that my brother Amado came back from the sugar cane plantation in Bulacan and got a job in the public market. It was an easy job, collecting tickets from the traders. He was helping toward the next installment.
It was also at this time that the copra industry came to Binalonan. Several agents of the copra companies in Manila came to the provinces, and one of them came to our town. I began climbing the coconut trees for other people, cutting the nuts with a compay, or sickle, so that they fell to the ground with a solid thud. One out of every five that I cut was my share. It was a very dangerous job, climbing the tall coconut trees. Sometimes they were one hundred feet high; sometimes their trunks were too big for my short arms.
A nut sold for five centavos, so I usually made one peso a day climbing the tall trees from six to six. I would give the money to my mother, who was now recuperating in bed with the new baby.
“What is her name?” I asked.
“Francisca, son,” said my mother.
I had a sister again.
At last the day for paying the installment was drawing near. I tried to climb the coconut trees faster, hoping to have a greater share. I was naked to the waist. But one afternoon, when I was working unusually late, I fell from the top of a tree.
I was carried off to our house. When I woke up my mother was crying. One leg and one arm were broken.
“Be brave, Allos,” said my mother.
A week afterward my father came to town with the cart filled with straw. He put me on the warm straw and drove to an albolario, or chiropractor, on the other side of town. The man was a primitive doctor, little better than a witch doctor. He burned many leaves of trees and rubbed the ashes mixed with oil over my body, uttering unintelligible incantations and dancing mysteriously around me. His face was deeply stained with some kind of juice. His hands were rough working hands, but gentle and kind to my body. They crept over my leg smoothly and soothingly, pressing and rubbing gently.
“There you are, son,” he said when he was through. “Come and see me when you can walk again.”
“Yes, sir,” I said.
He patted my legs with his gentle hands. My father gave him three chickens and a sack of fresh tomatoes. They carried me back to the cart.
“Good-bye and good luck,” said the albolario.
I knew that I would get well and walk back to his house. There was something about him that made me feel sure. My bones began to knit together and in two months I was able to move my arm and leg. I looked forward to the day when I could visit the old man.
One day my brother Macario told me that when I got well he would take me to school. He sat with me near the lamplight and read the Old Testament. He read the story of a man named Moses who delivered his persecuted people to safety in another land.
“When did this tragedy happen?” I asked.
“A long time ago,” he said.
“Who was Moses?”
“He was a wise Jew. His moral code was obeyed by his people for centuries.”
“Do we have a man like him in our country?”
“Yes, Allos,” he said. “His name is José Rizal.”
“What happened to him?”
“The cruel Spanish rulers killed him.”
“Why?”
“Because he was the leader of our people.”
“I would like to know more about Rizal,” I said.
“You don’t realize what it is to be like Rizal,” Macario said, looking curiously at me.
“I would like to fight for you, our parents, my brothers and sister.”
“You will suffer,” Macario said.
“I am not afraid,” I said.
“You will know more about him someday,” said my brother, going back to the Old Testament and reading solemnly.
It filled me with wonder as he explained the significance of the great men who had died for their persecuted peoples centuries ago. But now he had to go away. We could not read any more in the lamplight, could not travel through history into other lands and times.
Macario would be allowed to teach again without marrying the strange girl provided he would go to Mindanao.
“Where is Mindanao?” I asked.
“It is in the south, but not so far away,” said my brother.
“Are you afraid to go?” I asked.
“I will be brave like you, Allos,” he said. “And maybe when you grow up, I will ask you to visit me.”
“I will come,” I said.
“Good-bye, little brother,” he said.
Mindanao was a dangerous land because the native Moros still resented the presence of Christians. They were Mohammedans, although their religion was already fast disintegrating. The faith had been brought by the mercenary Moors from Spain through India during the eleventh century. The Moors at that time were at the height of their power and glory, having conquered all the Christian lands in Europe and Asia. They had ransacked and pillaged all the civilized countries of the world as far as the Euphrates River, following the trail of another insatiable conqueror and vandal before them, Alexander the Great, who was alleged to have reached Mindanao in search of fine horses and gold.
When the Spaniards discovered the Philippines in the later part of the fourteenth century, war with the Moros began and continued for centuries. It was both a religious and an economic war, for in those early days of global vandalism the sword and the cross went together. But foreign aggression only made the Mohammedan Moros more ardent defenders of their faith and their land, and even the Christian Filipinos became their enemies when they attempted to impose their customs and laws.
When Macario went to teach in Mindanao, the Moros had not been entirely pacified. But some of their young men and women were already absorbing Christian ideals and modes of living. In fact, the better families were sending their children to America for a liberal education. The sudden contact of the Moros with Christianity and with American ideals was actually the liberation of their potentialities as a people and the discovery of the natural wealth of their land.
My brother Macario sent his monthly earnings from Mindanao to my mother so that we could pay the installment on our land. Then suddenly he stopped writing and sending money. We had one more payment to make.
That year a new presidente, or mayor, was elected and all the employees in the presidencia and public market were thrown out of office. It was always like that in Binalonan. When a new presidente was elected all the old employees, unless they supported him, were dismissed, and immediately his own family, relatives, and supporters were employed.
My brother Amado, who was a ticket collector at the public market, was also dismissed. He tried to look for a job in the local dance hall, where the businessmen and teachers found pleasure. But there was no opening for him, so he worked his way on a ship to America.
It was the last time that I saw Amado in the Philippines. Immediately afterward Macario wrote from Manila that he had not been teaching for some time. The strange girl had followed him to Mindanao, and he had escaped to Manila. Now he too was contemplating going to America.
My father knew then that it was the end of our family. He was not sure where to get the last payment for our land, because the rice was only a foot high and it would be at least five months before it could be harvested. The last payment was only two months off and none of our family was earning any money. And my mother was big with child again.
I limped to school every day carrying my boiled rice and salted fish. I walked three miles to the schoolhouse. When I went home in the afternoon people looked out of their houses and pointed at me.
“Look at that Igorot boy,” they said. “He is going to school with his long hair. Hey, Igorot!”
I did not listen to them. I was too absorbed with my book. The other children taunted me in the school yard and threw stones at me, laughing at my long hair and bare feet. I sat attentively in the classroom, listening eagerly to my teacher. I knew that my schooldays would not last long. I tried to learn everything I could in a short time, because I knew I would soon have to stop and go back to work.