THERE’S a woman in the office who’s always crying.
I can’t see her but I can hear her. If she were like other women, who’ve learned to cry in silence so total they can pretend to themselves they’re not crying, it might be so much better.
The way this woman carries on, though, I’ve begun to think of her crying as her natural voice, the only way she has to let us know she’s around.
Like the women who weep mutely but talk volumes through their denial of sound, the woman can turn the dark and the silence of an office abandoned by workers for the day into any number of things she chooses: a hammer shattering the fog of preoccupations or a sliver of cold whetted against the nape, slowly, cruelly, with a lover’s strokes.
I am here, that sobbing declares in a room that’s just chairs, tables, cabinets.
Listen to me.
I once found it odd that to the guards and other male tenants, she is an altogether different woman. She is petty, quick to take offense, spiteful: the flushing of toilets in the middle of the night; the restless treading echoing from a dim, empty stairwell; long black strands of hair stopping up a men’s toilet.
The night shift guard steps out of the building into the cold of the night when she carries on too loud or too long. This must goad her, this masculine reflex at self-protection. Light a cigarette. Raise a wall of smoke between one and the spitting creature. Wait. Wait for the ill humor to consume itself.
An engineer saw her, in uniform, walk between him and the guard who was guiding him around the basement. The two men did not stop in their talking. Only when they went up to the office and the engineer looked around for that rude employee did he realize that he didn’t see her face. His basement companion never saw her walk between them.
I compare the men’s delayed acknowledgment to the women’s. Working to finish some documents in a near deserted office, a secretary is transfixed by a weeping stranger, her crouched figure framed against the library walls. An applicant, waiting for her turn in a late evening interview, hears keening rising from the pool of dark in front of her. When she emerges out of the building, the woman breaks into tears.
Do I do her a disservice by thinking of her only as damned to wander in the wilderness of her desolation? In life, a woman cries for many reasons: in ecstasy, pain, relief, exultation, anger, exhaustion, inarticulateness, helplessness, bliss, acceptance, fear, loss. Why oversimplify tears when these cannot be touched or tasted?
What we can’t explain, we stereotype. We poke around the building’s history, sifting for some tragedy, a calamity on the scale of the human that can explain the thread of woe that stretches this woman between our plane and the other.
Was she a victim? Perhaps this explains her low regard for men, the tinkering with the anal, the tricks, the sudden crashes that drive the men to seek refuge behind a glowing cigarette and a screen of macho cool.
A woman’s tears make a man nervous, goes the popular wisdom. I knew someone so reduced by a weeping woman, he had to succor every lady crying on his shoulder by taking her to his bed. Or so he said in our company while his wife smiled, a thin brittle line that reminded me of dots you had to connect to find the secret escape.
On days when I cannot hear but sense her, I ask her if she sometimes tires of crying. All that overflowing must drain any source. As one woman to another, I coax her to leave the unwashed dishes on the pantry, the unflushed toilet, the desk with the unfinished deadlines.
Go out. Have a life. There’s more than one reason to cry.
(mayette.tabada@gmail.com/ mayettetabada.blogspot.com/ 09173226131)
*First published in Sun.Star Cebu’s Feb. 13, 2011 issue of the Sunday column, “Matamata”
Saturday, February 12, 2011
Saturday, February 05, 2011
Know, choose, live
THANK you, Father, for your text last Thursday. I didn’t know today, Feb. 6, is Pro-Life Sunday.
Your invitation to read the Pastoral Letter of the Catholic Bishops’ Conference of the Philippines (CBCP), “Choosing Life, Rejecting the RH Bill,” was just in time. I had seen the CBCP full-page ad in a national daily, but had skipped it.
Rather than download the Pastoral Letter from www.cbcponline.net, I retrieved the Feb. 3 issue of the Philippine Daily Inquirer to hear the side of the bishops, as expressed by Nereo P. Odchimar, D.D., Bishop of Tandag and CBCP president.
Scanning the Pastoral Letter, I found shoals of assertions I can rest on after floundering in the reproductive health (RH) controversies that divide this country. “The conclusion is unavoidable: for our country to escape from poverty, we have to address the real causes of poverty…”.
The three words that complete this sentence, though—“… and not population”—pushed me off my ledge and back into the deep where I will have to tread water until I decide to become part of “the great multitude of lay people all over the country… (who) defend and promote our position”.
For while I agree with the bishops that we should uproot the evils aborting our development—“misguided economic policies, greed, corruption, social inequities, lack of access to education, poor economic and social services, poor infrastructures (sic)…”— I am stumped by the assertion that “contraceptives are hazardous to a woman’s health”.
The CBCP asserts that contraceptives are “anti-life”. These “may cause cancer”. “Condoms provide a false sense of security”. “’Safe sex’ to prevent HIV/AIDS is false propaganda.”
The quoted assertions are refutable through science and logic. However, these are nearly impregnable as a miasma of blame and contempt preventing the vulnerable from seeking the medical information and services that could protect or save them.
How many unmarried women resort to tight bindings to prevent their baby bumps from revealing their “shame”? How many children have their physical, mental and emotional growth compromised because their mothers were cowed by conventions: good girls don’t learn about sexuality; good girls trust their partners to know and do what’s best; good girls don’t get pregnant without a ring on their finger?
Nothing threatens life more than ignorance. The ignorance that blinds a person into stumbling on the consequences of acts by trial-and-error. Or damns someone for precisely seeking to avoid this comedy of errors.
I remember being struck by the contrasts after a young woman told me she was expecting a child. My first impulse was to congratulate her. Both of us, though, were somber, far from celebratory. Had she been older and “settled down,” I imagined we would have sat down and swapped stories and tips about infanticipating, giggling how we mustn’t do this over coffee as caffeine would have to go for the baby’s sake.
As it was, we were weighed down by the unexpected and unresolved. She and her partner had not foreseen the pregnancy. She would keep the baby, but was unsure about her partner’s role in the future awaiting “the two of them”. Not three but two: hard wisdom bought by a few weeks of menstrual delay.
My second impulse was to urge this young mother to go for prenatal check-ups at a health center or government hospital. She had not told her parents; her confidante was a younger sister who would know even less on what to do with maternal exigencies.
Please get a doctor to prescribe supplements, I asked. The baby will draw on your calcium reserves. You don’t want to lose your teeth.
From a great distance, the child-with-child looked at me: I cannot afford to buy vitamins. I’ll do my best for my baby, but I can’t afford to think now of myself.
Choose life, preach the bishops. I agree: Know. Choose. Live.
(mayette.tabada@gmail.com/ mayettetabada.blogspot.com/ 0917322631)
* First published in Sun.Star Cebu’s Feb. 6, 2011 issue of the Sunday column, “Matamata”
Your invitation to read the Pastoral Letter of the Catholic Bishops’ Conference of the Philippines (CBCP), “Choosing Life, Rejecting the RH Bill,” was just in time. I had seen the CBCP full-page ad in a national daily, but had skipped it.
Rather than download the Pastoral Letter from www.cbcponline.net, I retrieved the Feb. 3 issue of the Philippine Daily Inquirer to hear the side of the bishops, as expressed by Nereo P. Odchimar, D.D., Bishop of Tandag and CBCP president.
Scanning the Pastoral Letter, I found shoals of assertions I can rest on after floundering in the reproductive health (RH) controversies that divide this country. “The conclusion is unavoidable: for our country to escape from poverty, we have to address the real causes of poverty…”.
The three words that complete this sentence, though—“… and not population”—pushed me off my ledge and back into the deep where I will have to tread water until I decide to become part of “the great multitude of lay people all over the country… (who) defend and promote our position”.
For while I agree with the bishops that we should uproot the evils aborting our development—“misguided economic policies, greed, corruption, social inequities, lack of access to education, poor economic and social services, poor infrastructures (sic)…”— I am stumped by the assertion that “contraceptives are hazardous to a woman’s health”.
The CBCP asserts that contraceptives are “anti-life”. These “may cause cancer”. “Condoms provide a false sense of security”. “’Safe sex’ to prevent HIV/AIDS is false propaganda.”
The quoted assertions are refutable through science and logic. However, these are nearly impregnable as a miasma of blame and contempt preventing the vulnerable from seeking the medical information and services that could protect or save them.
How many unmarried women resort to tight bindings to prevent their baby bumps from revealing their “shame”? How many children have their physical, mental and emotional growth compromised because their mothers were cowed by conventions: good girls don’t learn about sexuality; good girls trust their partners to know and do what’s best; good girls don’t get pregnant without a ring on their finger?
Nothing threatens life more than ignorance. The ignorance that blinds a person into stumbling on the consequences of acts by trial-and-error. Or damns someone for precisely seeking to avoid this comedy of errors.
I remember being struck by the contrasts after a young woman told me she was expecting a child. My first impulse was to congratulate her. Both of us, though, were somber, far from celebratory. Had she been older and “settled down,” I imagined we would have sat down and swapped stories and tips about infanticipating, giggling how we mustn’t do this over coffee as caffeine would have to go for the baby’s sake.
As it was, we were weighed down by the unexpected and unresolved. She and her partner had not foreseen the pregnancy. She would keep the baby, but was unsure about her partner’s role in the future awaiting “the two of them”. Not three but two: hard wisdom bought by a few weeks of menstrual delay.
My second impulse was to urge this young mother to go for prenatal check-ups at a health center or government hospital. She had not told her parents; her confidante was a younger sister who would know even less on what to do with maternal exigencies.
Please get a doctor to prescribe supplements, I asked. The baby will draw on your calcium reserves. You don’t want to lose your teeth.
From a great distance, the child-with-child looked at me: I cannot afford to buy vitamins. I’ll do my best for my baby, but I can’t afford to think now of myself.
Choose life, preach the bishops. I agree: Know. Choose. Live.
(mayette.tabada@gmail.com/ mayettetabada.blogspot.com/ 0917322631)
* First published in Sun.Star Cebu’s Feb. 6, 2011 issue of the Sunday column, “Matamata”
Sunday, January 30, 2011
The flood: excerpts
I ENVY water. It can be whatever it wants to be. Or, paraphrasing a grade-school science lesson: liquid assumes the shape of its vessel.
- Basilica del Sto. Niño spokesman Fr. Tito Soquiño, OSA, on the heavy rains and flash flood during the Jan. 15, 2010 Saturday Grand Procession:
“These rains can also be a calling for us to purify ourselves. The small flash floods are an indication that maybe the government should put more attention to solid waste management and the drainage system.”
- From M, who waded in the Grand Procession:
“Morag nag-riot na akong imagination, thinking of all the possible things to be found in that flash flood… I'm amazed nga our footwear held out (during the procession). We came upon some soles and heels left in the procession route.”
- From the Jan. 17, 2011 email of J, a Cebuana now living in New South Wales, to her sister M in Cebu:
“Pit Senyor! I've seen in Facebook that D. and his family went with the procession, and basa kaayo sila (they were drenched). But it looks like his son is enjoying it.”
- From the Jan. 14, 2011 email of J to M:
“Did you hear about the Queensland flooding?... there was a report of horses being saved because they just kept swimming until they reached a house whose roof jutted out of the water. Somebody saw them and dragged them one at a time to land… when they went out (of the water), puro samad na sila (they were covered with wounds). The owners really bawled their eyes out when they saw their horses again kay ila sad laging panginabuhi (because it was their livelihood).”
- From the Jan. 28, 2011 email of E., who once lived in Cebu and has returned to Melbourne:
“Down here in the state of Victoria, we have had a lot of rain, too, and up in the north-east (the grain food basket of the state), which has been through drought conditions for 12-15years, they are slowly being inundated with waters that fill long dried creek beds, rivers and eventually lakes... small miracles for children and teenagers who have never seen such water... the temptations to swim and play were just too great and they have ended up quite sick.”
- From M, stranded by the flash flood submerging the North Reclamation Area last Jan. 25:
“I stood for three hours, waiting for the waters to go down. Others were more urgent about crossing the dirty, turbulent waters encircling this mall. The tambays pulled out all the pushcarts, bicycles with sidecars, even the floating carcass of a junk fridge, anything that could be used to ferry workers and customers to and fro the mall. They charged P10 a head, carried four or five passengers each way. They worked fast because the waters would not stay high forever. Two half-naked entrepreneurs drove by, whooping, “Balik unya, baha (come again, flood)!”
- From a Jan. 28, 2011 Sun.Star Cebu article on Cebu Governor Gwendolyn Garcia’s views about relocating informal settlers to partially solve the flooding of Cebu:
“The problem with the informal settlers is, the governor said, ‘you can't touch them because they belong to the urban poor’ and city officials seem to be coddling them because they ‘mean thousands of votes.’… She said the informal settlers should be going back to their towns.”
- From M, watching the reactions of people confronted with the unusual phenomenon of a mall rendered inaccessible during mall hours:
“Not everyone readily forked over P10 for the chance to arrive, dry, at the mall. It wasn’t just because keeping one’s balance in a rickety sidecar and avoiding the waves set off by passing vehicles was tricky. For the service crew working for mall locators, P10 was too steep. Many workers only paused long enough to remove the parts of their uniforms they could still save. Women rolled off stockings; men, rolled up their pants. Shoes were carried. A few wore the flipflops they brought with them. Most were barefoot when they waded into the waters. They were still the lucky ones. School children, dismissed for lunch, tried to carry their bags above the waters but many were just too short. The students apparently lived in an informal settlement located near the mall, where the flood went as high as an adult’s chest.”
(mayette.tabada@gmail.com/ mayettetabada.blogspot.com/ 09173226131)
* First published in Sun.Star Cebu’s Jan. 30, 2011 issue of the “Matamata” Sunday column
- Basilica del Sto. Niño spokesman Fr. Tito Soquiño, OSA, on the heavy rains and flash flood during the Jan. 15, 2010 Saturday Grand Procession:
“These rains can also be a calling for us to purify ourselves. The small flash floods are an indication that maybe the government should put more attention to solid waste management and the drainage system.”
- From M, who waded in the Grand Procession:
“Morag nag-riot na akong imagination, thinking of all the possible things to be found in that flash flood… I'm amazed nga our footwear held out (during the procession). We came upon some soles and heels left in the procession route.”
- From the Jan. 17, 2011 email of J, a Cebuana now living in New South Wales, to her sister M in Cebu:
“Pit Senyor! I've seen in Facebook that D. and his family went with the procession, and basa kaayo sila (they were drenched). But it looks like his son is enjoying it.”
- From the Jan. 14, 2011 email of J to M:
“Did you hear about the Queensland flooding?... there was a report of horses being saved because they just kept swimming until they reached a house whose roof jutted out of the water. Somebody saw them and dragged them one at a time to land… when they went out (of the water), puro samad na sila (they were covered with wounds). The owners really bawled their eyes out when they saw their horses again kay ila sad laging panginabuhi (because it was their livelihood).”
- From the Jan. 28, 2011 email of E., who once lived in Cebu and has returned to Melbourne:
“Down here in the state of Victoria, we have had a lot of rain, too, and up in the north-east (the grain food basket of the state), which has been through drought conditions for 12-15years, they are slowly being inundated with waters that fill long dried creek beds, rivers and eventually lakes... small miracles for children and teenagers who have never seen such water... the temptations to swim and play were just too great and they have ended up quite sick.”
- From M, stranded by the flash flood submerging the North Reclamation Area last Jan. 25:
“I stood for three hours, waiting for the waters to go down. Others were more urgent about crossing the dirty, turbulent waters encircling this mall. The tambays pulled out all the pushcarts, bicycles with sidecars, even the floating carcass of a junk fridge, anything that could be used to ferry workers and customers to and fro the mall. They charged P10 a head, carried four or five passengers each way. They worked fast because the waters would not stay high forever. Two half-naked entrepreneurs drove by, whooping, “Balik unya, baha (come again, flood)!”
- From a Jan. 28, 2011 Sun.Star Cebu article on Cebu Governor Gwendolyn Garcia’s views about relocating informal settlers to partially solve the flooding of Cebu:
“The problem with the informal settlers is, the governor said, ‘you can't touch them because they belong to the urban poor’ and city officials seem to be coddling them because they ‘mean thousands of votes.’… She said the informal settlers should be going back to their towns.”
- From M, watching the reactions of people confronted with the unusual phenomenon of a mall rendered inaccessible during mall hours:
“Not everyone readily forked over P10 for the chance to arrive, dry, at the mall. It wasn’t just because keeping one’s balance in a rickety sidecar and avoiding the waves set off by passing vehicles was tricky. For the service crew working for mall locators, P10 was too steep. Many workers only paused long enough to remove the parts of their uniforms they could still save. Women rolled off stockings; men, rolled up their pants. Shoes were carried. A few wore the flipflops they brought with them. Most were barefoot when they waded into the waters. They were still the lucky ones. School children, dismissed for lunch, tried to carry their bags above the waters but many were just too short. The students apparently lived in an informal settlement located near the mall, where the flood went as high as an adult’s chest.”
(mayette.tabada@gmail.com/ mayettetabada.blogspot.com/ 09173226131)
* First published in Sun.Star Cebu’s Jan. 30, 2011 issue of the “Matamata” Sunday column
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