Creative Nonfiction

Many Mansions by Exie Ebola

Small World

Ledesma St., San Juan

It probably was a small house, but size throws off a child. What seems modest to an adult is extravagance to a little one. It was the world to me.

It certainly seemed ample then. There were three bedrooms, which we called blue, green, and aircon. Children's names, these; one bedroom was painted blue, one green, and one had a new air-conditioner. I don't remember what we called it before the air-conditioner arrived, but it was yellow, with a parquet floor and a deep dressing area. It was the room of my parents, which is why the new Sony color TV and Betamax were there. The old TV was in the living room downstairs, a Zenith in a large cabinet with doors that slid open. In front of it was a coffee table and the blue sofa where Tito Bing, when he was visiting, would sit shirtless, leaving a deep, sweaty impression on the vinyl.

My mother sent most of us to piano lessons, and soon enough, a piano took its place in our living room. We went to a music studio in northeast Greenhills, a short walk from the Greenhills shopping center. To us that whole complex was simply Unimart, where my mother bought groceries; then came Virra Mall, a modern marvel, not yet a seedy haven of smuggled goods. This was my small, well-traveled universe: Ledesma Street to Unimart; further down Ortigas to Meralco, where my father worked and where we played tennis on Sunday afternoons; and then on to Ateneo, where I had studied since grade school.

San Juan seemed pretty much the whole city then, because even my relatives were there. On M. Paterno Street, adjacent to Ledesma, lived Tito Pepot with my father's parents. Tito Tito and the Litonjuas lived in another part of Greenhills, with Tita Letty and the Mendozas nearby on Mariano Marcos Street. Sundays we heard mass in Mary the Queen, where I would marry my wife years later.

The big round dining table was new, and I suppose like a lot of families, we experienced that moment of bliss when, having changed from a long table to this round one with a novelty called the lazy susan, we were liberated from the forced courtesies of asking people to pass this or that dish. I wonder though if something was lost, if the convenience of just turning an inner platform set on marbles until what you wanted was right in front of you did away with the learned cordiality, the togetherness with one's table mates that taught you the give and take of community.

There were orange glasses and a matching orange pitcher, and at meals we'd have it and a blue one on the table. Tito Bing would pour orange juice into his coffee, forgetting that the water was in the orange pitcher, the orange juice in the blue one.

Ledesma Street was a short one, and quiet. Our house was unassuming, with walls of a modest height and a green gate. The gate opened to a long three-car garage. We'd play football there, and Bombit, the eldest, once fell on his wrist and broke it. On birthdays there would be parties, with folding tables from one end to the other, balloons, spaghetti, hotdogs, ice cream, and our painfully cute posing for pictures.

Our next-door neighbor made coffins, or so they said. I don't remember seeing any. Actually, I don't remember seeing anyone in that tiny gray house on our left. My mother says that some of the people there had gone insane. Somehow, coffin-making and insanity come hand in hand, as we've learned from old horror movies.

* * *

In high school I discovered the perilous thrill of chasing after girls. Going to soirées, meeting them, getting their phone numbers, calling them up – how crazy it all was, to daydream an entire afternoon away, my books on the living room coffee table, my head in the clouds. The studying could go to hell as my mind floated in its hormone-induced bliss. It was a heady time, reveling in the rush of taking risks, then wallowing in the crushing despair of rejection.