If you give a damn

Change. It's what happens while you are a region away, amidst disguised muggers and Havaiana-shod friends and frenemies, while you juggle two packs of cigarettes, your fucked up academics and your as-fucked-up emotional maelstroms / personal relationships. Surprise, surprise, the world doesn't revolve around ye.

The walls of my house are now in a color whose name I'd only plucked out from my well of arcane knowledge after a couple of days of mindless staring. There are two ways to describe it. One is that dark orange hue when the Cheez Whiz dries on your pan de sal after a day or so. But I like the second better: our walls are the color of kare-kare. Kulang na lang, sitaw at bagoong. Oh, gnaw at the walls now, g-naw.

My brother John, 11 going on 12, has just graduated from grade school. He's in high school, my mother told me, the room in general, herself, out of nowhere. My other brother Joshua, 14 going on 15, is taller than me. And he has boyman-muscles. And a rather deep voice that I often mistake for my father's. My father has a new haircut again and, like always, he keeps asking us whether it looks good on him or not. My mother has taken all my clothes so I am wearing my brothers' and my father's. I am butch, baby.

At least two people I know are pregnant or popped out a baby. My ex-umfriend Dahrell got his girlfriend, Ms. Steelbrush, with child. This boy is the only son of my former principal who once called me to her office to tell me not to let myself get pregnant by my first boyfriend Warren. Interestingly, Warren ditched me for a girl named Catherine, who then became Dahrell's girlfriend before Ms. Steelbrush. Still with me?

The other person with a bun in the oven is Ms. Queenie Rodriguez, my former Physics teacher / palm-reader. Homegirl got pregnant by a student of hers, who is, I think, a classmate of my younger brother. Ms. Queenie's husband joined the cult known as My Former Principal's Religion.

One is pregnant, pending. She's not sure but she's told two people, who, in turn, have told li'l ol' me. Said girl was a former frenemy, as I fell in love with a boy who was part of our Best Friends Forever trio. Oops.

Brian and I, after we contemplated whether his girlfriend was a virgin or not, reached a conclusion why all this fertility is happening: there are no condoms in our gigantic multi-cluster subdivision. Brian went to at least five drugstores in the area and there were no contraceptives of any kind. Sa labas mo na lang ibuhos, iho. Okay, kiddos: trot on over to the newly-built Mercury Drug or the ever-present 7-11 in the corner and buy yourselves a boxful.

Wait, Brian has a new baby sister, Daphne. Daphne's mother asked Brian's mother's laundrywoman to hold the baby for a moment but then she never came back. So the laundrywoman, short of funds, gave the heartbreaking li'l cutie to Brian's mother.

Oh, and the twins are in amusing fixes. Eunice broke up with her boyfriend of four years, the one I hated with a passion but then eventually warmed up to, but only after his entire batch (including Warren) gave me bitch-fits for my not-so-concealed disapproval. Esther has a boyfriend, who courted her for four years and now we all learn that the more reserved half of the twin set is actually a rather jealous and physically abusive girlfriend.

The dama de noches are in full bloom. Wistful and cloying when you sit atop your father's car's hood, swatting mosquitoes away. They want to make you want to write stories but you say, Oh fuck it all, nothing's of interest in the world.