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My Father’s Noose

When my father was a boy, his mother hung him.

Enter Tondo, a notorious and densely populated area of Manila, and stand in the kitchen of his childhood home. Look up. The crusty knot is still there, tied around the light fixture.

I imagine my father, Totoy, at ten. He hadn’t graduated yet to long pants and shoes; his shorts and T-shirt were faded and soft from the wear of three older brothers.

Totoy had done something to make his mother Inang angrier than she’d ever been. And now, he was balanced on a stack of vegetable crates, a rope connecting his neck to the ceiling. He wore one rubber slipper—after slapping him on the ears, his mother tucked the other under the strings of her apron. If Totoy became dizzy and lost balance, or if Inang kicked the crates away, he might save himself by curling his fists and pulling on the noose as if it were the mouth on a drawstring bag. But his mother planted his palms to his hips and looked up at him. She didn’t say a word, but Totoy clearly heard, Don’t try to save yourself. Don’t you dare.

Without moving from that height, he noticed his mother was balding. Her gray hair was loosely bunned, and there were triangles of white flesh between the comb tracks. Her body was thick and intimidating, fleshy rolls layered onto fat that testified to her eleven pregnancies. When angry, she made noise and broke things and stared until you looked away.

One by one, Totoy’s siblings returned from school and work, stepped into the kitchen, and stepped right back out without a word.

With a pestle, she pounded garlic in the mortar bowl. She raised the butcher knife to her shoulder and chopped heads off fish. She’d fry the bodies for dinner and save the heads and tails for soup the next day.

What did Totoy think as he stood there watching his mother prepare dinner? That he’d never get to taste it? That she’d watch him suffocate as the knot tightened and then keep him there, hanging from the kitchen ceiling, a lesson for his siblings?

His brothers and sisters were hiding, staying far away from the kitchen. Even if his father could have been found—perhaps he was playing pool in a neighborhood bar or was earning money by pedaling a passenger from the market to their home in the sidecar of his pedicab—Totoy’s father would not have saved him. Mother knows best. She told him, “I’m doing this because you’re my son. You need to learn right from wrong.”

Enterprising basketball players in Intramuros, the historic section of Manila. As a child, Grace’s father, Totoy, sometimes skipped school to play basketball like these boys. Photo: Alonso Nichols.

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Totoy didn’t know it yet, but he would survive. Thirteen years later, he would have his firstborn, a daughter. But he would never forgive his mother. Half a century later, he would not attend her funeral. He would try to resist the urge to hit and yell at his five children. He would do his best to protect them. But he’s his mother’s son—he would fail.