Damayan Road

At the very end of a narrow alley stood a house that everyone in the neighborhood knew. It wasn’t just the size, though the house loomed taller and broader than the rows of shanties and cramped apartments that pressed against one another down the lane. It wasn’t even the stone façade that seemed older than the rest of the block, its windows catching the sun in sharp glints. It was the name of the family inside: the household of Abram and Valeria.

People used their home as a landmark. Directions always ended with it: “Turn left at the big house of Abram.” Even if you were a stranger, you could not miss it.

Abram was known as a gentle man, soft-spoken and dependable. He had a talent that no one else in the community could match: he could train dogs. This was the late 1960s, and in those days there were no trainers with whistles and clickers, no television shows teaching people the secrets of obedience. But Abram didn’t need them. With nothing but his hands, his calm voice, and a piece of warm pandesal, he could teach a dog to sit, to lie down, even to circle around his outstretched arm. When the trick was done, he broke the bread in half and fed it to the dog, his smile quiet, his voice soothing.

Children gathered at his gate to watch. Stray dogs that skulked down the alley, growling at everyone else, wagged their tails and bowed their heads when Abram appeared. Neighbors marveled at it, whispering that he had the gift, that he could see straight into an animal’s spirit. Some called him a dog whisperer before that phrase even existed. Abram only laughed softly and said, “They are calm when you are calm. They listen when you respect them.”

Valeria, his wife, had a different reputation. Her eyes did not always look in the same direction, a slight cross that unsettled some of the younger children, but no one doubted her strength. She was sharp with her words, disciplined, and always in command of her household. More importantly, she ran the largest sari-sari store in the neighborhood.

Her store was its own kind of landmark. Bottles of soft drinks stacked in wooden crates leaned against the walls. Jars of candies and biscuits lined the shelves, their bright colors catching the eyes of children who saved coins just to stand before her counter. Neighbors bought rice by the cup, sardines by the tin, sugar by the spoonful. Every transaction went into Valeria’s thick ledger, written in neat lines, each peso and centavo accounted for. She was not generous, not in the way people hoped she might be, but she was fair. If you asked for credit, she would grant it, though her eyes would narrow, and she would draw her pen slowly, writing your name and your debt with firm strokes.

People respected her thrift. They said she knew how to keep a household afloat, how to guard every cent. She was not warm, but she was steady, and in the end, steadiness mattered more than charm.

Together, Abram and Valeria raised six children. All were given biblical names, as if Abram wanted his household bound by the same gravity as the words of scripture: Isaac, Ezekiel, Matthew, Ruth, and Moses. The names carried weight in a community where faith was woven into daily life, and neighbors nodded approvingly at Abram’s devotion.

The firstborn, Isaac, shone brightest. From the very beginning, Abram had sent him to a private school. Abram did not believe in public education—not then, not in that era when classrooms were crowded and teachers stretched too thin. “My son must stand apart,” Abram insisted. “He must go far.” And for a time, Isaac seemed destined to fulfill that dream.

He was clever, quick with numbers, and precise in his words. Abram spoke often of him to the neighbors, proud of his son’s sharpness. He would sit outside the sari-sari store in the evenings, watching the dogs curl by his feet, and say, “Isaac will be more than me. He will be a man of learning.” Valeria, for all her sharpness, allowed herself to smile then, pleased at the promise of her firstborn.

But promise can be a fragile thing.

By the time Isaac reached grade six, cracks began to show. Other boys in school, envious of his quick mind and quiet manner, turned on him. At first it was teasing, the kind that teachers brushed aside, but it grew sharper, crueler. They mocked him, cornered him, challenged him to fights. Isaac fought back once—just once—and though he held his ground, the bullies felt the sting of shame.

They waited. They plotted. And one day, when Isaac least expected it, they struck.

A piece of 2x2 wood swung down upon his head, splitting skin, rattling bone. He was rushed to the hospital. He survived, but something in him shifted forever.

When he returned home, the boy who had once been quick and ambitious seemed hollowed. He refused to go back to school. Abram pleaded, offering to send him to another private academy, promising a fresh start. But Isaac would not hear it. He withdrew into silence, into suspicion. He locked himself in his room for hours, sometimes days. He spoke less and less, his eyes darting as if searching for enemies that others could not see.

Neighbors noticed the change. They whispered that he had grown paranoid, that he muttered about people ganging up on him, that he no longer trusted anyone outside his walls. His brilliance dimmed, replaced by shadows that no one understood. In the early 1970s, no one spoke of words like schizophrenia. There were no doctors in their alley who could name what had happened to Isaac’s mind. People only shook their heads and said, “What a waste. He was bright. He could have gone far.”

As the years passed, Isaac’s strangeness hardened. He neglected to bathe, neglect turned into stench, and soon he rarely left his room at all. When guests came to the house, he sometimes hurled water at them from the window, muttering apologies as though he hadn’t realized they were there. His world narrowed to his room, and within those walls he became territorial.

By his thirties, Isaac no longer used the family’s bathroom. Instead, he filled canisters with his own urine, lining them in corners like grotesque trophies. When his anger rose—when he believed a neighbor had looked at him wrongly, or that someone had slighted him in some imagined way—he hurled those canisters from the roof.

Neighbors no longer lingered near the big house at the end of the alley. Children who once played tumbang preso by Abram’s gate now crossed to the other side. Respect gave way to unease, and whispers of pity turned into murmurs of dread.

Yet still, Abram walked his dogs with calm steps. Still, Valeria sat behind her counter, pen scratching names into her ledger. The house remained proud, the family still respected in its way. But behind its heavy curtains, the shadow of Isaac stretched long.

He was the firstborn, the child of promise. And his tragedy became the tragedy of them all.