Inflammable [On Indefinite Hiatus]

Chapter 4: Marina

Chapter 4: Marina

***

Close your tired eyes, relax and then

Count from one to ten, and open them

All these heavy thoughts will try to weigh you down

But not this time

Way up in the air, you're finally free

And you can stay up there, right next to me

All this gravity will try to pull you down

But not this time

 - Owl City, “Shooting Star”

 ***

Summer came and it was unusually chilly. Emilio made sure that he had scrubbed his home clean, trying to memorize the creases and corners which he had taken for granted in his eleven years of living under its roof. This was his father’s sweat; these were his mother’s tears. This was still his home, even if he would be leaving it in a few hours, when his Tio Jose would show up at their door, a genteel man amidst the coarseness of Trozo district’s everyday bustle.

His mother let him be, knowing well that he simply wanted to be left alone, even as his feet were still suds-soaked a few minutes before his uncle arrived. He smelled clean as the house smelled clean; he drowned himself in chores when he wasn’t drowning himself in the daily, or scurrying the streets as his mother went about her midwifery rounds in their small town.

Tio Jose was finally at the door in a casual suit of the palest mint green. He had a thin face and dark slits for eyes that made him look slightly Chinese, but there was something owlish and gently corrosive about those eyes; this paradoxical feature fascinated Emilio many times. He was average in height, and, Emilio added, looked nothing like his mother. They were whole siblings, but the resemblance ended with their thin lips and slightly squared faces. Josefa’s eyes were nearly almond-shaped and twinkled like a tiny bird’s.

“You look more like your uncle,” Josefa told him once. “And you have more of your father in you.”

“I’ve your personality, Inang,” Emilio said sagely. He was then all of five years old.

Josefa had smiled. “That can be dangerous,” she whispered, but she never explained exactly why.

Josefa had nearly been disowned by her family for wanting to marry Mariano, Emilio’s father. Her father had been adamant that Mariano would not give her the life she deserved, even as the man worked a hard and honest living. Mariano was a bookkeeper: nothing of fancy, and he had wages that could barely raise a family.

But Josefa was young, as bull-headed as a girl who had just turned twenty can get; she threatened her parents to run away from home twice, and was willing to elope with the man she chose among the lot who had come to her door the moment she turned eighteen. After months of struggle and disobedience and nearly daily arguments with her father, she finally married Mariano.

Disappointed and heartbroken, her father refused to see her and speak to her after her wedding, until he simply did not want anything to do with her. Her mother would still show signs of attachment, but Josefa had been estranged from her family the moment she made her choice. Her brother, Jose, visited her once in a while, but when he married not long after she had, their closeness dissipated. Their sibling love, however, still hung above them, suspended, waiting for the opportune time to assert itself again.