Prose by M. Chiao
Art by Maxine Gray
We were the eyes in the windows as the car rolled into the barangay. Peeking through our curtains and staring at the sleek metal reflecting the sun, we watched as it squeezed into our small street like a wooden block shoved through the wrong shape.
The white man stepped out of the car to the stairs of the bodega, pinstriped suit looking all too similar to the cartoon villains on our television screens. Behind us, we could hear the yowl of a cat, the giggles of a mouse, the click of a bunny’s sharp tongue. An advertisement for mamon would play in around six minutes after a newscaster described a heavy rainstorm coming from the South.
“Is this it?” His sunglasses hid his eyes, but we knew they were as blue as his car.
The driver rolled the window down. “See, a good location, yeah? Just by the city, not too far, not too close.” A familiar twang lingered in his voice. It seemed his accent was also our accent but it sounded foreign coming from him, like vegan leather.
‘Must be very educated,’ the aunties whispered. ‘Bigshots from downtown,’ the uncles murmured.
Our breaths held still, lips quivering as he gazed at us with the look of a robot. Disdain, maybe. Hunger, many would argue.
“It’s good enough,” the white man says.
He nods to one of our children and offers a sterile smile. Entering the nearest grocer, he expects an offer for the cheap land.
————
For many of us, the barangay was all that we had known, our little neverland built into the seams of the metropolitan. It wasn’t so much a lost boys’ haven as it was one of the lost ones itself.
Lola Girly ran the grocery on the corner. Ate Jeanie lived in the basement suite of one of the apartments as it was the cheapest room she could get near the university. Pogs was the youngest, still running around his mother’s ankles, chasing chickens and often forgetting to bless his elders, letting their knuckles gently press against his forehead. Kuya Ron sold dirty ice cream on days he was home, although recently he had begun to spend a lot of time around Pogs’ mother Marina after he accidentally taught the kid how to curse. No one really knew when Tito Ariel started living here. He just did.
Sometimes the electricity went out or there would be the odd missing cat every so often. But the barangay was ours. We built these homes with our hands. We made this our land. We were the ones buried here.
Pogs took one look at the white man, turned to his mother, and said quite simply, “He’s Captain Hook.”
————
“To be very frank with you,” Hook said, “this section of the city is set to be reinstated as a new set of apartment buildings. It was all in the documents sent last month. You should have received and read them thoroughly.”
The ‘should have’ was perhaps a bit backhanded and far too pointed to be anything but intentionial. Kapitan Reyna nonetheless held her tongue. This meeting was supposed to be finished hours ago. Her desk was practically empty.
The council turned to face her, like bobble heads.
“And from what I discussed, those proposals were never approved,” Reyna said.
“Technically, yes,” Hook replied. “But as you can see, the equipment is all ready and the papers are to go through any minute now.”
“And the investors?”
“Several.”
“Buyers?”
“Hundreds.”
“And the approval?”
The clock struck noon and Hook’s silence grew louder, like when a kid skidded across the curb dodging a jeepney but did not want to cry in front of her friends.
Reyna crossed her arms.
“Such a clean suit for someone so airheaded,” one of us muttered under our breaths. It wasn’t in English so it didn’t matter much if Hook had heard us at all. Regardless, Lola Girly’s glare was obvious enough that we shut our mouths..
Kapitan Reyna looked down at the eviction notice again. It was crisp and pristine, looking like unmolded clay in her dark brown hands.
“Get out,” she said simply.
Hook’s already thin lips disappeared as his expression tightened. He forced a smile onto his face and nodded. “I understand,” he said, “I will send for the paperwork again at another date. I sure hope this disagreement will not sour our ongoing relationship.”
His nose twitched, like that cartoon rabbit who did the same thing when he told a fib. Hook stood up, shook the Kapitan’s hand, and walked back to his shiny, blue car.
“I wanted to punch that eedjiot so badly,” Kuya Ron declared, a bit too eagerly.
The room erupted into laughter, and we couldn’t help but feel our worries, for just a brief moment, wash away with the humour.
————
We were under siege within the week. Bulldozers and cranes surrounded our homes and loomed like walls around Lola Girly’s grocery. Pogs thought it was just another playground. Afterall, the construction workers were amiable, hired from another barangay on the other side of the city.
They shared our skin and had the same callouses we had, the same dark bags under their eyes. We knew they were paid to smile. We, too, understood.
The rain storm from the South finally came. It continued to rain all week until Sunday.
————
“This is absolutely ridiculous,” Kuya Ron declared in the parking lot after mass. He threw his cigarette onto the ground and stomped it with his foot. “We already said no, we aren’t leaving, and we aren’t selling either.”
He gingerly helped Lola Girly carry her things and, if it weren’t for the fact he had just exited a church, we were sure he would have started cursing the dirt he stepped on.
“I don’t believe it either,” Ate Jeanie piped in. She held Pogs with one hand and her purse in the other.
“Times are changing,” Lola Girly said.
“Times are changing,” Pogs echoed. He had a tendency to repeat things he heard, hence Kuya Ron’s attempt to censor himself.
“The mayor thinks he can do fu–” he paused, “whatever he likes.” The crossing sign turned from red to green. It didn’t matter much, but there was an attempt to appear upstanding for at least one six year old boy. “And all because he got some third-party company to bulldoze the place.”
Pogs’ expressions pinched together. “Kapitan Reyna?”
“No, she runs the neighborhood, not the city,” Ate Jeanie corrected.
“She does her best,” Lola Girly nodded.
“But even still—” Kuya Ron stopped talking.
We had reached the end of the crossing, where an elderly man with an old baseball cap and tired expression stood waiting for us. Tito Ariel looked grieved; it was the most expression we had seen him wear. The closer we were, the more and more his face seemed to fold into itself.
“I sold my land,” he said.
“You what?” Ron snapped.
Ate Jeanie and Lola Girly made a noise of protest, but Tito Ariel cleared his throat.
“What else was I to do? Their trucks rerouted the water, flooded my basement and first floor. I tried to report it but—,” He had a look of finality in his eyes that even Pogs could tell had never been there before. “Pagod na ako. So tired of it all. My daughter needs that money for her studies, not a house I’ll trip and die in.”
“‘Sus Mar’ Josep’,” Lola Girly scoffed, “You’re too young to be thinking that way.”
“Too young,” Pogs nodded.
“And where exactly do you plan to go?” Kuya Ron said.
“Does it matter?” Tito Ariel said.
“Does it matter?” Pogs repeated.
It was as if the air were knocked out of our lungs. We looked to ourselves, unsure of who to blame.
By the time the rainstorm had moved on, Tito Ariel’s house was gone, washed away with a rainy season manhandled by construction workers and metal limbs.
————
“Captain Hook is afraid of alligators,” Pog said to his mother on doomsday.
Most of the neighborhood had already begun packing. It wasn’t like they would be able to keep their livelihoods here, but many were just as reluctant as Kuya Ron was to leave.
“Was he, now?” Marina hummed.
“Oh, very much so. The alligator stole his clock.”
Marina kept cooking.
Pogs was silent for another moment. “Do you think our Hook has an alligator? Something he’s so scared of that he would run away from it?”
Marina paused, her mind twisting around an idea; Hook had beautiful velvet clothes, leather shoes, and a brilliant blue car, but he sneered at the very sight of a dog pissing at a curb.
The oven’s timer went off.
“Actually, I think he does, anak.”
————
We gathered around the grocer like it was our last defense, covered in mud and dust from head to toe as the journalists flashed their cameras and Hook stood furious. Idealistic, in theory. Absolutely filthy, in practice.
“You can’t be serious, standing here like— like animals—” Hook looked just as prepared to throw himself off a bridge.
“Our Neverland is not for sale,” Reyna said to him. The journalists’ cameras kept flashing.
They were Jeanie’s friends, coming from all corners of the university and watching as Hook dirtied himself attempting to shove the Kapitan away. She would not budge, as if her stout figure had become one with the mud itself. She would not budge.
With a finality, Reyna watched as Hook gave up, turning on his heel and slamming his car door shut. Mud stained the handle.
The cameras flashed. An interviewer waved, hoping for rapid fire answers, quicker than the questions tossed at Hook’s feet..
“How do we know they won’t come back?” Pogs asked her.
“Does it matter?” The Kapitan said.
Click, click.
After a beat, he simply nodded.
“The answer stays the same.”
“The answer stays the same.”