The smell 

My parents never taught me how to walk through floods.

I would just sit on our old house’s declining wooden stairs, specifically on the third step, and watch how my late father would submerge half of his body in this cold, brown water. Swirls of oil greasing up his stomach with swimming rats as our Easter eggs, he would hand me the ulam he was able to prepare for our family of four. Until now, I never knew how, I’m guessing it was from the luck of having neighbors with an induction cooker.

We would all Indian-sit in our shared bedroom, with the Uratex my brother sleeps in just behind me as I spread out the plates and the kubyertos under a T-shirt, an attempt for a placemat. With our toes barely a centimeter away from our plates, we’d hover down and dig in.

But the smell, it never went away. At that point, it was better to eat while pinching your nostrils in hopes of not getting a whiff of the clogged canal stench melting the walls. To be fair, my childhood home was just behind the palengke, with fish vendors renting our gateway.

Every morning, before I went to school I’d be greeted with the bloody remains of fish with its thick foul smell, which I could only describe as malansa flowing through the canals of our compound because they were cleaning them, one by one. Like clockwork, the same fish vendors, with their hands fresh from slicing fish intestines, would tap my warm, newly ironed blouse drenched in Downy and give me my baon, as instructed either by my father or my lola. But I knew not to crumple that school money with shame despite the glistening fish scales and dampness left in it because I knew that’s what feeds me.

But it was really in those stormy dinners that I knew how to eat fast. In the moments that we’d all be sitting in a cramped room, I’d swallow each bite of food with such hastiness I would forget what it even was; I just wanted to satisfy my hunger and never breathe that smell again.

We’d sleep the dreaded days ahead waiting for the water to subside and then suddenly, in a particularly gray and rainless morning after, we’d hear the complaints of my parents about cleaning the whole place anew, and yet they insist on making me and my brother stay behind. Despite the countless soaps, my senses continue to get warped with the disgusting smell the house oozes, time and time again. It lingers like a ghost.

With all sorts of trash ranging from opened canned goods feasted by flies to damp and oily basahan floating aimlessly in our entire floor downstairs, it was that distinct fish smell paired with the utter image of galloping flood that made it seem all so unbearable.

All you could really hope was to flee. It was better to dream of escape instead of emulsifying yourself with the dirt. But in the meantime while the signal was still forgiving, it was a coping mechanism and even an act of kindred to snap a picture of whatever furniture or appliance was afloat inside your house and share it with other families or classmates in the Facebook group chat. Usually, we’d have a laugh about it, but we heave a sigh either before or after pressing send.

Whenever I see floods forming, my friends would tease that I was too maarte for not wanting to walk in it. It was a no-brainer, the moment I’d see water turn blurry I’d simply walk up the classroom again. There was a part of me that lauded their impression that I was a rich kid who never experienced floods, who didn’t find joy in greasing my body with it. But the truth was, it’s because my mother told me early I shouldn’t let myself be used to floods; I shouldn’t even attempt to be comfortable because it was a sign of living in the slums, of being poor.

Year after year, I see the same old format; a typhoon hits, it floods, and suddenly it’s a circus; kids jump in underpass floods, barangay watchmen invent makeshift boats, upcoming politicians give ayuda, bystanders take pictures, and the animals get left behind. It’s tiring. Nothing has really changed, it was either this or the deafening heat. I thought growing up would make me tolerant, but then I’d remember I lost my father, how his blistered limbs walked through the brown ocean of dirt. And now, just by looking at the filthy water in the toilet seats of communal restrooms, I’d be transported back to that old decaying house and it would make me sick.

I know I sound very selfish. I’m not really certain whether I should thank them for raising me this way—as a girl who knows exactly what kind of life to dream of—but I never questioned their intent. May it be from sheer worry or plain disdain against floods, all I know is they just wanted me out of the tides and tucked in a cushiony cocoon whenever it rains.

Yesterday, I got a message from my mother back home: “Tumataas na baha ulit.” I’d stare at it for a while and feel twisted inside. Standing here in my dorm, in a city I’d never been to, I looked over the flood from three floors down and I’d feel nauseous, my perpetual guilt eating me for having the mere semblance of choice—the choice of not walking in it, of not smelling it.

But I stay frozen, I don’t think there’s a chance for me to forgive that smell.

—————-

Francesca Maria dela Cruz, 21, studies at the University of Santo Tomas.