I lean to open sliding doors and step onto the red-tiled lanai. It’s 6 a.m. A canopy of bamboo, trees, and pastel awnings portrays rural privacy. The mango Abby and I planted two years ago curtseys in a breeze, begging applause for her growth. I wonder if she’ll ever bear fruit.
Most days, I walk to work. Hibiscus and 12-foot poinsettias guide me through a barangay cut of a jungle swamp and manicured into a neighborhood. A step past the gate and Manila wraps me in pouring car horns and the feline purrrrrr of jack hammers, starting a day filled with unearned deference: choruses of “Ma’am/Sir”, elders calling me “Boss”, and 90-pound women trying to carry my 40-pound boxes.
But today is Saturday, home day, real day; so I sip another cup of chicory coffee and consider the morning before our friends arrive. Saturdays heal. No special treatment, good or bad, just people being people, together. Our citrus tree says I should go to market for fresh tilapia: the kalamansi are ready. If the sili peppers are shining red, we’ll mix the two in soy sauce for sawsawan to dip our fish.
We didn’t always have Saturdays here, though, not the healing kind. Some warned us Manila was impermeable – our outsider status permanent and preordained. So, five days a week I only worked and Abby labored for a perfect loaf of bread. On Saturdays, we walked spirals in four-story malls, holding hands, tightly, turning like screws. We lived that way for months.
After work everyday, I passed a dojo where jabs snapped and shins slammed into duct-taped heavy bags. It was the laughter, though, that drew me in. Kru Carlo was the instructor. He laughed the loudest. So, we joined him to study arnis, the local bladed martial art. Soon Kru said it was time to meet Manong, a master of the Kalis Ilustrisimo arnis system. We were swimming laps in a cultural fish bowl, staring out at the ocean; this was just what we needed. So, with Abby closing in on that perfect loaf, we hosted a dinner.
At the gate, Kru smiled and Manong greeted us with a strong handshake and easy eye contact— rare as rocking horse teeth Monday to Friday. Through dinner I saw why he was called ‘the old master,’ even having never seen a kalis in his thick hands. His story and world vision intrigued us and his manner seduced us. For hours we tuned into him like the first TV in the county.
“May I ask you to remove your shirt and stand at the wall,” he asked. If the conversation had built to this, I hadn’t seen it. But, I did it. Manong slipped a knife from his pocket.
“Stay still and follow the tip with your eyes.”
He leveled the blade, pushed it toward my right eye and retracted it. And, again. Once my adrenaline slowed. Acute intrusions of heat burned hot as the tip neared me and lessened with its retreat.
“What do you feel?”
I explained.
“Yes.”
As he worked his blade across my torso the heat signaled his targets.
“Okay, face the wall. When I say ‘now’ touch the spot I’m targeting.”
I closed my eyes. There was no sound. Then, a heat burned between my shoulder blades.
“Now.”
I reached back and placed my finger beneath the knife’s tip. Gasps interrupted my quiet.
“Yes, good. Now.”
I felt the heat at my kidney.
“Yes.”
Seven of 10 times the heat betrayed his knife.
“Okay, how do you feel?”
“Confused.”
“Yes, I’m sure. That is enough for one night.”
The tenor of the conversation changed and moved to things uniquely Filipino, that marriage of Eastern, Western, and Native, lying just beneath what Manong called the Western veneer. And as the bottle emptied, we explored our differences and reveled in our sameness.
That was our turning point here. We visit Manong every chance to learn his craft and absorb his wisdom. And he visits us, I think, for Abby’s bread and, maybe, for time with apt pupils. On Saturdays Kru, his wife and three kids, and a cast of friends come to play and visit, sometimes so late the kids sleep draped over chairs.
Now, it’s 12:30. I hear Abby greet Kru and our Goddaughter, three months old now, so I stand.
A horn blast reminds me that nearby traffic surges and pauses, surges and pauses in inky plumes like startled squid. Mosquitoes and debris churn like chum, stealing visibility. Jeepneys flash stainless through the turbid mix like feeding barracuda and pedestrians dart shad-like toward the safety of cover.
The heavy sliding doors open and a bare foot steps out onto the red-tiled lanai.
“Hey, Kru,” I say, reaching for his hand, thinking, it’s really good to have Saturdays.
Thank you for reading and commenting. Please enter the Gratitude Travel Writing competition and tell your story.
