MANGO SHOWER

The sun is different today, not the shape but the way it shines, it’s summer and it seems like the sun is in a good mood, and I wish me too, it is not too hot, I can feel the air, probably the most polluted air in Manila, touching my skin while half walking half running the street of Tondo.

People are in their usual day-to-day activity, the kids with fragments of black ashes on their faces, running the hard ground without slippers, playing langit lupa, probably taking a break from the mountain.

The gang of Mang Boyet with their shirts off, gathering around a round table with their usual Ginebra Gin and fried peanuts even if it’s just eleven in the morning, the way how they laugh after harassing a girl passing by makes me roll my eyes every time.

And also Aling Nena together with other mothers, with their usual get up, t-shirts with politicians’ name and smiling face on it that was given to every voters last election, with hat in their heads, gloves on their hands, others doesn’t even have gloves, every one of them carrying a used empty sacks at their backs, walking together towards the mountain.

Some are busy and some are just fooling around. And Tondo is not Tondo without police patrol roaming around the neighborhood but it’s different today, there are four police cars and two NBI cars convoying and I know where they are going.

While trying to run faster to catch the Jeepney and also to get away from here as soon as possible, someone called me, and my heart skipped a beat.

“SUMMER!”, someone shouted.

I still heard it even if somebody’s playing the song Baleleng so loud that it feels like there’s a music festival because Mang Boyet and his gangs are singing along, and it is nice to hear an old song once in a while in this era where all you can here is ’you got that yummy yummy yummy yum’.

“Summer!”, calling me again, so I stopped from running and looked back to see who it was and found out that it’s Mildred, running after me, and I sighed with relief that it is her.

Mildred is a friend of mine since the beginning of our life, we grew up together. She’s just an inch taller than me, you can see that she has a very long hair even if she’s wearing a cap placed in backwards, she likes doing that and I still don’t get why.

She’s wearing an oversized shirt that covers her sexy body and a jogger pants that hides her fair skin. She dresses like that because as she always tells me, she doesn’t want to flaunt her body to perverted guys here in our place.

She stopped in front of me while trying to catch her breath, maybe she’s been running for a while now and been calling me, but I can’t hear her at first because I’m lost with my thoughts. I know what she is about to say or ask.

“Did you hear about what happened to Rain?”, as I expected, I didn’t answer yet because I know she’ll say more.

“He is dead, Rain is dead”, she’s saying it that even herself can’t believe it.

“They killed him last night”, she sobbed.

She’s saying it again but this time sobbing and trying to hug me, and I let her, but my hands are still on my sideways, I can see her shoulders moving up and down because of crying. I don’t want to cry, so with all the strength I mustered, even if I don’t want to because I know she needs me right now, I pulled out from her hug.

“Yah, it’s all over the news”, I replied with my eyes matching hers, without my voice cracking or showing any emotion.

I can see all over her face that she’s hurting for two reasons. Hurting because her friend is dead, and her other friend seems like does not care about it. I wish I can hug her back and tell her it’s going to be all right, I wish I can cry with her too, I wish I could mourn with her, I wish I can but I did nothing.

“I need to go, I’m gonna be late now”, that was what I can say, and for sure none of us believed that I’m really late, it sounded like I don’t want to talk about it, and I really don’t want to talk about it. I hate myself for acting like a bitch. I hate myself for adding salt to her wound.

I walked away, I left her grieving on the sidewalk, alone.

I could have said that yes, they killed him, I saw it just in front of me, but I said nothing, I could have said that I was with him last night, that I saw everything and I wish I could forget it, I wish I could turn back and tell her all of that. Instead, I buried it all in my head for now.

I’m at the jeep station now and I can hear the driver shouting, “Siyam-siyam”. When you walk fast enough, it is just a ten-minute walk from our neighborhood which is a big help for me to save money.

When I got here, there was only one sit left at the right side. Even if it doesn’t look like I’ll fit, I still went inside, I’ll fit in anyway when the driver will hit the brake abruptly later. Most jeepney drivers do that, so that all their passengers will forcefully fit.

As I’m getting further away from Tondo to go to my university, which is in another town, I thought of our place, Tondo, sometimes when I speak it out loud it seems like it’s not a name of place, neither a name of person nor a food, but when I think of it more, it’s more than just a place, person or a food.

It is not as peaceful and beautiful as Palawan, or maybe as classy as BGC, actually it is the opposite of that two places, some are also afraid to come here, and I know why.

It does not have a beach that will take your breath away, but it has a river that will make you hold your breath because of its smell, the river had also became the easiest access to hide dead bodies, and buildings are not like very architectural worthy or as the millennials say, instagramable, and don’t forget the mountain, yes, in this town that is surrounded by concrete jungles, there is a mountain, but this is not an ordinary mountain where people hike to see and feel a peaceful scenery, instead, people hike to survive.

Most houses here are made with old plywood as divisions and old roofs found in the dumpsite. We don’t have backyards or front yards, instead we have this so called, eskenita, which serves as a right of way for every person, yes persons, not cars or big bikes, most people here can’t afford cars, but people here has pedicabs though. Garbage became the normal ornaments of every houses. ’May pera sa basura’ is the mantra of every residents here.

When you look at the Philippine Archipelago, you’ll found it in the northwest Manila, and its land area is 8.65 km2 with more or less 700,000 people which make Tondo the most densely populated district, 70, 000 people wrestle for space in every square kilometer, but they don’t know that, what they know is when you say Asyong Salonga, it’s Tondo.

Drugs, crimes, gangsters and their fights, scammers, squammies, dysfunctional families, gamblers, magdalenas, that’s what they know about Tondo. They made it sound like it is the new Sodom and Gomorrha, but this place is more meaningful than those, people who lives here are real people, as what my mama says.

Yes, people here will never stop moving just because they’re not on the mood to get up or they’re so lonely. Most people won’t care if others lose their job, most people doesn’t even take a look at you when you got tripped on the sidewalk, it is not because they don’t care or humanity is dead, it is because they have their own thing too. Some people are struggling to even wake up every single day, some are almost giving up, some already gave up, and some are happily contented for the first time.

Everyone has their own reasons why they turned that way, just like how a young boy joined a gang because for the first time in his life there are people who will actually throw punches for him and not throw punches to him the way how his father did.

Just like how a mother became prostitute or mostly known as Magdalena or Kalapating mababa ang Lipad, because she can’t let her child suck the milk from her breast forever, child needs solid food to live, so she let other men suck her breast for money.

There are also people here who are rats, who thinks that life is just about getting drunk and getting high. I don’t know their reasons, but I know that for sure, they are also as lost as most us.

I’m not justifying wrong doings; I’m just showing how life works in here.

And nope, the Universe is not against us, we are all struggling, whether you’re from Tondo or not.

Nobody in this world has ever been lived with candies and rainbows only, at some point in our lives, there will always be a toothache and a storm.

And I grew up witnessing all these the same stories happening to different people.

“Who’s getting off?!”, the driver shouted, and I came back in reality and noticed that I need to get off already if I don’t want to be really late to my class.

“Para po”, I shouted loud enough so that the driver can hear. The jeep stopped and before getting off, I handed my fare to the passenger next to me.

And as soon as I got down from the jeepney, I sighed because I’m about to enter a completely different world from where I just came from.