Stuck in a sequence

MEMORY IS such a funny thing. It makes you remember things you want to forget, and sometimes in the most unguarded moments—while washing your hands, say, or tying your shoelaces.

Memory escapes the recesses of your mind like an engine used after months in storage, waking with loud, broken sounds that sting your ears. You stop washing your hands or tying your shoelaces. Your mind freezes your body and transports your consciousness back to that moment you don’t want to return to. Yet you close your eyes. Yet your breathing gets heavy.

When that happens, maybe you wouldn’t tell someone about it.

I didn’t. I never have.

Picture this. A family trip to Rizal. 2001. A van carrying at least 12 people singing a song by the Carpenters.

A little girl, age seven, sits by the window. She’s plucking petals from a daisy while mouthing the possibility of an accident, or not—“Maaaksidente, hindi maaaksidente” (deviating from the usual romantic projection “He loves me, he loves me not”). Maybe one of her aunts tries to shush her. She doesn’t remember now. But she keeps going. She stops at the last petal: “Maaaksidente,” and she says it out loud. The rest of the passengers say nothing.

Several kilometers from them, another van crashes into a bus.

This is the story of the day I killed people.

I remember it sometimes, like when I’m in the shower or when I’m about to go to sleep. I don’t tell anyone about it. Maybe if I don’t give it substance by acknowledging it out loud, it will go away.

* * *

Two years ago, my mom’s dad died of tuberculosis. His wife, my mom’s mom, died in that car crash when I was seven. On the last day of my mom’s dad’s wake—it was a Friday—my parents picked me up at the bus station on Buendia. As we parked the car outside the funeral house, my mom asked me very casually if I remember it. Of course I remember it.

My dad reminded her that I was just a kid then. Bata pa siya noon. So I said nothing.

I stepped inside and felt the thickness of the atmosphere. If anything, grief is a place with high-powered air-conditioners and lingering cigarette smoke. The air clung to my shoulders like claws. Hindi ko siya pinatay, di ba? I said to myself. I didn’t kill anyone. As if I needed convincing.

* * *

Picture this. Funeral house. Flowers—at the door, the floor, below the lights against the wall. Then the dead and the pictures of them smiling, the frames carefully placed on top of the caskets. Four persons—all of them her relatives. One is her grandmother, one is her cousin, two are her aunts. She stares at them in disbelief. She says nothing. She stares, and she can’t figure out how she killed them. What were you playing with in the van?! Why?!

Later that night, they talk about it over dinner.

Bakit mo yun nilalaro?

Hindi ko alam…

They were in the van. They were singing. She was sitting by the window plucking petals from a daisy, saying words she never meant. Maybe one of her aunts tried to shush her. She doesn’t remember now. Maybe the petals actually ran out at Hindi maaaksidente—There will be no accident—but her sister whispered in her ear to say the opposite, and she complied. She doesn’t remember now.

She was asked where she learned it and she said she didn’t know. Saan mo natutunan yun?

Hindi ko alam.

Eh bakit mo sinabi?!

Hindi ko alam!

We learned about the accident the next day. It turns out that we were on the road at the same time the crash happened—at midday. It was also midday when I was plucking the daisy’s petals.

We were in the van. They were singing a song by the Carpenters. I was sitting by the window plucking petals from a daisy. It looked nice, yet I plucked its petals out. I ruined its beauty step by step, phrase by phrase.

I remember that the sun was shining at noon in the month of May, and we were on our way to a rest house in Rizal.

Unbeknownst to all of us, the van carrying my mom’s side of the family collided with a bus on its way home to Pasay. Maybe it was moments, or minutes, or hours, after I said “Maaaksidente” out loud. The exact time doesn’t matter. They died. And I said something ominous that day.

Maybe one of my aunts tried to shush me. Maybe my sister whispered something in my ear. I don’t remember now.

* * *

Picture this. March 2010, nine years after the accident. The girl is 16 and she’s inside a confession room, telling the story of how she played a game of life and death on a little flower. She tells the priest what she remembers. The priest listens intently, nodding his head from time to time. He says it was not her fault: Hindi mo kasalanan. Wag mong sisihin ang sarili mo. And that helps the girl feel better. There’s a renewed sense of comfort inside her. A thorn plucked out of her skin.

But in August 2013, three years after that confession, after that temporary feeling of closure, she stands by the coffin of her grandfather who died of tuberculosis, and she feels a lump in her throat again. The memory rushes back into her mind like an old engine used after months of storage, stinging her ears with broken sounds.

When my parents picked me up at the bus station on Buendia on the last day of my grandfather’s wake, I didn’t say anything to my mom other than my usual nonsense. Hell, I didn’t even ask her how she’s doing. In retrospect, on the day of the car crash, I didn’t ask her either.

I remember hearing her say, as she put the urn containing her father’s ashes on the shelf, Pwede mo nang makasama si Nanay. It was the first time that she made herself vulnerable to me, and for the first time in months, I really looked at her.

* * *

We were in a van on the way to Rizal. They were singing a song by the Carpenters and I was sitting by the window plucking a daisy’s petals one by one, ruining its beauty piece by piece as I muttered Maaaksidente, hindi maaaksidente slowly. I don’t remember if one of my aunts shushed me or my sister whispered something in my ear to change my mind, but it doesn’t matter. It already happened.

When you remember something uncalled for while you wash your hands or while you tie your shoelaces, making you stop and close your eyes and breathe heavily, tell it to someone afterwards. Or write it down.

I live with the memory. I endure it until it will slowly wear away.

Paula Macatangay, 21, describes herself as “a college student trying to crawl her way out of her last semester.”