Life of Abandon

Ron, Carol and I with Sally (Quezon City, 1966)

 Chapter Two: Tadpoles into Frogs

    After the rains, there were always so many puddles. We lived in a new development, in a newly built house that my little sister, older brother, our parents, our mom’s sister and our grandparents lived in with us. Our parents were just starting out but they both made good money since they were in the medical field.

     Behind our house were open fields. These were what was left of the property of the convent. You could still run into a nun on her way to catch a jeepney to the market. They were very quiet and many times they were too shy to look up to say hello.

     Today, we saw them far away, walking here and there around the convent. We glanced at them briefly as we ran in the mud and jumped in the puddles. “Your momma won’t like you coming back so dirty.” Sally, our maid said. “I will have to hose you down outside before you go tracking mud in the house.”

     I looked down at my orangey brown legs and realized for the first time that we were indeed covered in mud. “We can take baths before we eat.” I told her. My sister made a face. She was six months old and she didn’t like taking baths. How did she even get muddy? Sally carried her everywhere.

     My older brother, Ronnie and I were busy catching tadpoles. Some we scooped up in our hands, others we found already in the water we filled our buckets with. He had more tadpoles than me. I think he must have stolen some of mine.

     “Sally, no helping her!” my brother instructed from a deep puddle that came up to his hips.

     “She can help me if she wants to.” I called back hoping that would encourage her to pick up more for me.

     “It looks like more rain.” Sally said as she grabbed my bucket and started to head home. I knew this meant the downpour was minutes away. After getting stuck in the monsoon last time, I wasn’t going it risk it again. I took the bucket from her hand so that she had a better grip on my sister. Carol must had anticipated the storm because she started to fidget and whine. Ron scooped up five more tadpoles, grabbed his bucket and started to run. “Beat you home!” he yelled to me over his shoulder. He had a headstart.

     “Not fair!” I said back. I shoved my bucket’s handle into Sally’s hand and ran as fast as I could. Even as his bucket sloshed back and forth with water pouring out, he beat me.

     When we were stripping off our clothes, Ronnie asked, “How many tadpoles?” He shook his head as I reached for the soap, ‘no soap, no soap’, his expression said. This would be a quick bath. “I got 36!” I declared proudly. “Hmm.” He pointed with his lips and nodded his head toward his bucket. “82.” I pouted. Not fair, not fair, was what I thought. Life with Ron was not fair. He was stronger, smarter, more agile. He was better at everything. It was no wonder that our parents thought he was so wonderful. The sun rose and fell at his command. Charlemaine – that’s who he was. As adults, I would find a book about a rooster who thought that he made the sun rise. That was Ron. He would have been equally devasted to learn that in his case as well, it was not true.

     Sally handed us towels, she wondered if we were clean enough for our mother. She had to wrestle the soap from my sister’s grasp. Carol didn’t have Ronnie dictating her actions so she was able to handle the soap. Only Carol wanted to eat the soap, not clean her feet and that’s what Sally was trying to prevent her from doing.

* * *

     After this monsoon, we are supposed to go see our other grandparents. They live in a village not far from here. This is our father’s family’s village. Just about everyone there are our relatives. We love it there.

     But today and the next few days, we will be stuck inside. Our maids get so irritable during monsoon season. We stay inside most days and the three of us are a handful, or so I have heard them say. Our mother likes for the maids to keep everything looking nice and that’s nearly impossible to do when there are three children under school-age.

     “Hoy, Cecile!” Moninang gestured with her hand for me to ‘come here.’ She wanted me to put a dress on. It was almost time for dinner. “Ouh” she smelled my hair. “You smell like worms.” “Tadpoles.” I corrected her. “Ey, does not matter. You stinky.” She pinched her nose with her pointer and thumb. “Don’t go too close to your mother or father. Especially your father. He’s allergic.” “To tadpoles?” I asked outloud, doubting her. “Yes, iha. He’s allergic to tadpoles, don’t you know? He gets all red-eyed, dripy nose, itch, itch.” As she grabbed me and began to scratch me up and down through my dress. “Stop! Stop!” I giggled. “Do you even know what tadpoles are?” “Oh, yessss!” she said indignantly. “Do you think I’m stupid? I know tadpoles. I know all about them and your dadda, he’s allergic!” With that, she patted me on the bottom and sent me to brush my hair.

     A few weeks later, after the monsoons and come and gone and we had forgotten all about the tadpoles we caught and captured in the buckets, we noticed a multitudinal number of frogs on our patio. Hopping everywhere, my brother and I tried to catch them. Laughing at their antics, I noticed several hopping from my bucket!

     “Oh no!” I squealed. “My tadpoles, my tadpoles!”

     Ron, not knowing what I was going on about ran over toward me and we both stared into the now nearly empty bucket. Some tadpoles were indeed dead, which is what I had feared. But the rest, I surmised in my 4-year-old brain, were eated by the dreadful frogs that were happily congregating on our patio after feasting on our little legless friends. “Shoo! Shoo! Bad frogs, bad frogs!” I leapt into action. It would be years before I realized those tadpoles were the very frogs I was so disgusted with.

     Moninang ran our mother’s house even after our parents left for the United States and well after we children joined them. She helped raise our cousins as well and only left our family to care for her own nine children.

My birthday (Ron, L) and Moninang serving ice cream.

     When my mother returned to the Philippines for a visit some 15 years later, Moninang made the long expensive trip from her province back to Quezon City to pay her respects and catch up. She longed for pictures of my siblings and me. We never did see her again, but we knew exactly who she was when we’d look at the photo albums. She, Sally, a young boy named Boy, would always be a big part of our memories of the Philippines.

     As I recall the scene, I wonder if she did know that tadpoles turned into frogs and if our father really was allergic to them? I guess I will never know.

Dadda, Carol, Ron, Boy and me on an outing