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Beneath the Bermuda Grass

They'd been calling relatives all night, my aunts - asking for prayers.

The phone was downstairs, and they'd put us to bed quite early. All five of us, in fact - my eight-year-old sister, my fourteen-month-old brother, two cousins, and I - all cramped in a room, where there was, miraculously, room for us all. I, for a fact, had never slept there before, in my aunt's apartment. That night, I was clutching this pillow right above my head, in an effort to catch sleep, and to block out the voices.

Prayers? Why were they asking for prayers? It was just my mother's sixth night at the hospital…

"I told you it was serious," my cousin Mark mumbled beside me. He was nine, and I simply refused to believe him.

It was just flu, that's what they'd been telling us. Everybody gets them once in a while. "It isn't serious," I insisted. "It's just flu."

Just. Flu.

"They'd been placing long distance phone calls all night," he replied. "It's serious."

To state the obvious. But then, as I've said, he was nine. And I simply refused to believe a nine-year-old.

I clutched the pillow tighter over my head. "Sleep," I just muttered, saying nothing afterwards. In the dark, our silence was shredding me to pieces.

Downstairs, the voices became softer, more hushed.

Were they actually crying?

=

"There's a chance that she wouldn't make it."

I stared harder into my breakfast. Nothing like fried rice, fried eggs, and my aunt's confession of my mother's true medical condition on a Wednesday morning.

Inside me, my stomach did a little flip - the way it always had whenever something was wrong. "I think I would like to take a bath now," I just said, clutching my towel closer.

And at twelve, it was just so me to think about taking a bath, while my mother lay in some hospital, dying.

=

Nine a.m., running late for school. My classes, as a high school freshman, started at ten.

I believe in God, the father almighty…

And as if by automatic impulse, I began chanting the Creed in my head, my hand feeling for the rosary in my pocket. I wasn't exactly a kid you'd call religious, but I did study in a Catholic school run by Benedictine priests, so I did know my way around these things quite well.

I believe in Jesus Christ, only son of our Lord…

"It's leukemia, Kate."

"Leukemia? What the hell's leukemia?"

"It's cancer. Cancer of the blood."

Crucified, died and was buried…

I shut my eyes, trying to stop myself from crying. Nobody would really care if I cried, I knew… but crying, I believed, was a sigh of weakness. I was not crying. Never.

On the third day, he rose again…

"Are you telling me she's dying?"

No response.

And everytime I tried to continue chanting the prayer in my head, my aunt's confession that morning kept weaving into it. What the hell's leukemia? Cancer… cancer of the blood. I had wanted to ask why they were just telling me that then, when in fact my mother had been in the hospital for a week already, but I decided against it. Too damn complicated.

They'd transferred her from Muntinlupa Med to St. Luke's. They'd promised us, she was going home soon…

I believe in the Holy Spirit, the Holy Catholic Church, the communion of saints, the forgiveness of sins, the resurrection of the body, and life everlasting, amen.

She is not dying, I assured myself. Our driver gave me a brief look before driving on, into the gates of the school. I didn't know if he actually heard me, or if I had actually said that out loud, in the first place. I didn't care.

I got out of our van. Our father, who art in heaven…

She is not dying. Surely, this God I was praying to, He wouldn't let my mother die…

=

My mother died, 10 a.m. that same morning.

That same morning I tried praying the rosary mentally twice in a row, if only to beg Mama Mary, or Jesus, or anybody up there, for that matter, to spare my mother from the clutches of death.

It was like, come on! I'm twelve, you can't do this to me. It's not… fair.

But then again, I guess it is never fair to take mothers away from their children. At whatever age. It will never be fair.

But guess what? They don't seem to care.

My aunt fetched me, lunch time. I was walking out of the canteen, and the people were telling me I was needed in the office, and that it was urgent. My name was all over the Lounge, and, thanks to the newly-acquired PA system, I had my share of fifteen-second popularity.

I did not want it.

I wasn't really a delinquent of some sort in high school. I just wasn't used to getting summoned into some office… Inevitably, the butterflies in my stomach went berserk.

I opened the door, hand almost reluctant on the door knob, and there they were, just as I had dreaded. My aunt had her shades on, despite the fact that it was dark in that office. My sister had a blank expression on her face, clutching a trophy in one hand, my aunt's hand in the other. She was eight, and she was the best goddamn mathematician I know. By the looks of it, she'd just bagged first place all over again. Two years in a row, made my mother damn proud the first time.

My mother's never missed any of her contests… except that one. My stomach did that little sick flip all over again.

"Let's go home," my aunt broke in, trying to her best to keep her voice from breaking.

"Is mommy coming home?" Of course, I knew it was a stupid question to ask at a time like that, but it was as if I just had to know. As if it was the only question that mattered right then. "Is my mother coming home?"

"Yes she is… It's over."

I bit my lip, eyes fixed on the floor. Over, I repeated to myself. I do not fucking understand… I bit my lip harder.

I was not crying. It was a sign of weakness.

=

My mother came home that night, just as they had promised. I couldn't blame them, really - after all, they hadn't promised anything about her going home alive. She came home in a beautiful white coffin - and to tell you frankly, I'd never considered describing coffins as "beautiful".

Not until then. Not until one of them actually had my mother inside.

=

The wake lasted for a week. Seven days of shaking hands I barely knew, of hearing half-meant condolences, of hugging people who probably didn't have the slightest idea of what it's really like to lose somebody like her.

"Are you okay?" they would ask. "How are you doing?"

And I, the eldest daughter, would force a smile and say, "I'm doing fine."

Like goddamned fine, I was. Like nothing happened. Like that person inside that coffin wasn't somebody I knew. You know, that kind of 'fine'.

"I'm doing just fine," I'd find myself say, over and over. Out of habit, perhaps. Routine. Oh the things we say that we don't mean, just so things would be a little less complicated than they already were.

=

"Go on, throw the flower in."

They said it was tradition. I was clutching this orchid in my hand, and I was, indeed, supposed to throw it in, on my mother's beautiful white coffin, already a few feet in the ground.

My mother loved orchids, sometimes I'd catch her singing songs to them as she watered them…

The way she never sang songs to me.

Ingrate, I chastised myself. You're not thinking of that, not now. And I threw mine in, finally, and they threw in theirs, and then, the men just started pitching soil onto her coffin. It used to be white, immaculate…

I found myself suddenly wanting to lash out at those men. After all, who gave them the right to throw dust on my mother like that? I just didn't understand. It just didn't make sense at all.

I was twelve, and I did not understand why my mother had to die.

It's tradition, I could almost hear them say. Yeah, fucken right, tradition. Like it was a rite of passage for little girls like me, to lose our mothers to cancer. Yeah, tradition. Like all girls lose their mothers at twelve.

I looked on helplessly, nevertheless - I was too weak to voice out any protest. I felt like fainting - but, hell no, I could not faint. I figured that was an even worse sign of weakness…

You see, I had to be strong. I could not fall apart, I did not have the luxury to. Funny how at twelve, I was already thinking this way - that I was the eldest, and that I had to stay together.

But then, I started crying, and it actually felt like I was betraying her.

I remember watching as slowly, her white coffin disappeared from my view, and all I could see through my tears was brown soil. Dust. Earth. My mother, underneath, cold, lifeless, never to be see again, never to be held again.

Never, I repeated to myself. The word bounced off the walls of my mind painfully.

I cried harder. I did not bother looking around anymore - if only to check on my aunts, my father, my siblings… It was selfish, I knew. But I was busy with my own pain, too.

I knew, I owed myself that much.

=

"Who is this woman beneath the grass?" I remember my six-year-old brother asking me. Five years later, here I was, waking up each morning, getting by, or so I wanted to believe. We went there often, to her grave, the whole family. Just to remember, I guess. Just to keep ourselves from forgetting.

"That's our mother," I'd tell him, with a smile. With each year that passes, that same question becomes easier to answer. Bitterness made it hard, you know.

"What's she like?" he'd ask after, and I would keep my silence. Twelve years, too short, I always hated the way I had to admit to myself how little I knew about her.

"Wonderful," I'd always reply, a play-safe answer. That's what the answer had always been, right from the start, right from the first time we went there, and he popped that same question. He pops the question every year, from out of nowhere.

He's such a brilliant kid, my brother. I don't think he forgets the answer, I think he just wants reassurance. It's the least I could give.

When I could still carry him, I would usually take him into my arms after, and then we'd take a walk. I'd read out to him the names on the other tombstones, my steps light, careful, over the bermuda grass.

And then, we'd both know, there were many other people underneath the bermuda, many people we don't know, some of whom had also been mothers of other children. Other children like the two of us.

But then, we'd also know - it's never the same.

It just isn't.
*

.. 11/20/02