Secrets

Okay. So let me get the basics out of the way. I came out of school, I was crossing the street, and then BAM! a tricycle hit me. No, wait a minute. It wasn’t actually a BAM kind of thing, it was more like a thud screeeeech and riiip. The passenger side of the tricycle hit me, my arm nudged squarely by the tricycle’s nose – kind of like when my brother nudges my rib with his elbow and it doesn’t actually hurt but just throbs a little, or like when a doorknob hits me at the back on my way out of a room and I can still manage to close the door without anger or the desire to break it into pieces. I would’ve gone all the way home feeling alright, if only this small jutting piece of metal didn’t catch the sleeve of my blouse and ripped it. It wasn’t a big rip, it was actually just a few stitches from the end of my sleeve. Truth is, it looked as if some ants just ate a tiny piece of my sleeve (some ants eat just about anything believe me) or it got caught on a small nail and I absentmindedly pulled away instead of carefully negotiating my sleeve out of the mishap (I panic way too easily). After the tricycle driver shouted “anak ng tinapa namaaaan!” he put his palm to his face and with the same palm brushed his hair away from his face, and he started to say things like “neng, tumingin ka nga sa dinaraanan mo, ‘di ka ba sinasabihan ng nanay mo kung paano tumawid, mapapatay ka sa ginagawa mo e!” and then drove away.

The truth is my mom did always remind me to look to the left before I cross the street and then look to the right before I cross the other lane of the street. And my mom knew everything. She probably knew I got hit by a tricycle before I even said it. Probably even before I even thought of saying it.

And so I didn’t say it. I walked into the house like nothing happened, trying to be as quiet as I could. My mom went out of the kitchen and walked into my room while I was taking my blouse off and she asked “what happened in school today?” and I said “nothing” and she picked up my blouse from my bed and saw the ripped sleeve, I knew she saw the ripped sleeve, but she didn’t ask and she never asked the way she asked me “what’s this?” when she saw what I wrote in my diary about hating my brother or the way she asked me “what’s this?” when she saw my math exam where I got a 58/60. I never gave her a good enough answer I guess; she always knew what was wrong or at least managed to ask around and find out what was wrong, and then finally she got tired of asking.

It took me a few weeks to notice, but I never saw any of my blouses with a ripped sleeve. At first I thought maybe it was still in the laundry, mom does the laundry once a week, but after two weeks I still hadn’t seen it – I knew I only had 6 blouses and I was bound to wear it again soon enough but I never did. Then again, I guess I should’ve known that I would never see it again, not until it was time for me to give away my old school uniforms away, it was unmistakable, it was right there beneath all the other blouses, that small almost unnoticeable rip, neatly stitched, the thread almost the same color as the blouse itself.

 

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