A Different Kind

“Dad, look at this,” I called out from my room. My left hand pulled my hair back over my shoulder as I craned my neck to the left to peer anxiously into the mirror at the right side of my neck, where angry hives marched down to my collarbone.

From his room on the other side of the kitchen, my dad yelled back, “What?”

I padded over to his side. “Look at this. What is this?”

He came out of his room holding his toothbrush. Head tilted back, peering over the rim of his eyeglasses, he examined the back of my neck. “Looks like an allergic reaction. What’d you eat?”

“Nothing you haven’t eaten,” I replied, starting to scratch at it.

“Don’t scratch it,” he said, swatting at my hand. “Is it anywhere else? Or just here? On your neck?”

“Just here,” I answered.

“Hmm…ok.”

“Maybe I’ll go to the pharmacy tomorrow and get some Benadryl.”

“Yeah, ok,” he replied, going back into his room.

Outside, a tuko gecko screamed its name, tuko tuko tuko tuko, in a seeming parody of my anxiety.

*****

The Boracay sun dawned the following morning in a wash of pinks and blues. We were staying a half mile or so from the beach below Station 3, on the southernmost tip of the island. It was a quieter part of the island compared to Station 1-3, where all of the tourists stayed and partied.

These first few days of our week-long trip, Dad and I had developed a routine of venturing into those turbulent waters for food and drinks, then scuttling back to our more peaceful, some would say boring, haven. It suited us just fine.

Dennis House, our Airbnb, was a splendid three-story split into three separate apartments. It sat atop a steep hill overlooking a peaceful neighborhood dominated by locals and diligent cocks that took their job of alarm clock very seriously.

The owners had filled every available surface of the outside patios with plants, which now seemed frozen in time, as if someone had hit pause on the remote; the air was so still. The humidity already setting in, thick as a blanket even at 8 in the morning.

“Let’s walk up the hill to the main street and take a tricycle into town,” Dad said at the dining table as he polished his eyeglasses before gently placing them on his face.

“Okay,” I replied, looking up from one of the dining chairs, where I was stuffing my feet into my sandals.

“Kasi, Mercury, I think, is almost to Station 1. Malayo pa,” he explained, referring to the pharmacy.

“Yeah, makes sense,” I agreed, getting up and fighting a losing battle as I scratched at the increasingly angry blotch of red on my neck that had now spread to the left side of my collarbone.

“We can eat something after Mercury and then walk back after we’re full,” he said, plastering a good-natured smile on his face, anticipating our long, happy waddle back home.

The neighborhood was quiet as we left the Airbnb, with most residents already gone to work. The small convenience store next to the first-floor apartment was open, though we could see no one at the counter. In fact, the place would’ve seemed abandoned if the shelves weren’t stuffed to overflowing, chip bags clipped and hung up in strings from the rafters, and a small TV sitting on a shelf blaring some soap opera.

To the left of our apartment towards the beach, the long driveway sloped down to a small courtyard where two neat lines of motorcycles waited patiently for the day’s renters. Chickens quietly pecked at the dirt around their well-kept tires. A stray dog basked belly up in the sun in the center of the courtyard. Four or five metal bowls, dried crusts of leftover food the kindly neighbors left for the various strays, strewn haphazardly across the cement ground. An old man with wispy grey hair wearing a tank top and sandals carefully swept the concrete floor around the sleeping dog with a walis tingting.

We turned left and walked briskly up the steep cement driveway towards the busy, tree-lined road. The saging-saging’s vibrant red-orange blossoms punctuated the air every few feet. Bougainvillea also jostled for space.

It took less than three seconds to hail a tricycle. It came speeding around a bend like a rock hurled from a slingshot. Upon seeing Dad’s raised hand, the driver yanked the peppy cyan blue pod over to the sidewalk, the brakes barely giving a peep of protest, testament to the care its owner provided.

The tricycle, like most in Boracay, had the driver up front, a forward-facing bench behind them, and then two benches running parallel alongside the cab in the back. Open-air, it was the best way to get around Boracay. The welcome breeze gave respite from the heat and humidity, but the best part was watching the people and scenery flash by.

The tricycle was full that morning. I shared the back with a young mom, a toddler she sat on her lap, and her young son, who carried a large plastic bag in his lap. Dad joined another woman on the middle bench. The tricycle swiftly flew back into traffic, melting into a long current of other blue tricycles.

We passed butcher shops, money exchanges, mechanics. Every other store sold food, some large corporate behemoths catering to tourists, others smaller with no places to sit and frequented by locals.

Boracay's daily life hurried by on its way to work and appointments. It jaywalked and dodged traffic, waving to friends it spotted in the crowd.

A sudden brilliant flash of light caught my eye. It was flying down the sidewalk on my left. It was a little girl.

She was maybe four or five years old. Her straight black hair was cut in that bowl shape all children suffer at least once as a rite of passage. Her dress was a ballgown, a la Disney. I imagine the expertly skilled craftsperson responsible for sewing the masterpiece was her Lola, Tita, or mom. It had a white bodice and a full skirt composed entirely of different, softly-colored plastic bags.

As the child ran barefoot, darting down the sidewalk, the sunlight trapped like a million tiny fairies in the folds of that skirt, the phone I had in my hand, which I had been using to take photos and video of the passing scenery, fell to my lap. For a moment, I was afraid I’d cry.

For the rest of that trip, as I popped Benadryl like candy, I’d think of that little girl and that fantastic dress. How it made the sunlight become more itself.

If you asked me about misery, I’d have no stories to tell. Not because nothing miserable has happened to me recently, or ever. Only that I’m now looking at trees, birds, other people’s dogs, and I’m really looking at them. They are my entire vision.

When strangers on the internet make me laugh, I let that laughter wrack my body. My silent house becomes full of sound. I’m a tuko gecko, cackling in the rafters of a quiet beachhouse in the twilight.

If you asked me about misery, I’d have no stories to tell. I suppose I’ve learned to hold the pain and let it go. I look at beauty and joy as the fleeting things they are, plastic bags gathering sparks of sunlight, and insist on holding onto them fiercely, laughing all the while. I think of that little girl and realize that’s a wholly different pain I have to learn to live with.