If you were born and raised in Tata Kiko’s home, you would have cultivated a love for gardening. If you were raised here, you would have memorized the shape of the horizon at only four years old, even if it is not until twenty-eight years later you learn the mountain whose shadow is seen from Kuya Toto’s kubo is called Mt. Kemalugong. The Paasa Peak. If you had grown up here, you would know that Tata Kiko leaves at around five in the morning. He pulls the steel windows, creaking them open, already all dressed in his raven pants and the white polo with the stain on its left lapel that no bleach can ever get rid of. This moment is always the time when I awaken. This moment is also the time when he sits on his tumba-tumba by the terrace and just watches. If you were there, you would never be certain if he saw anything in his gaze across the palayan. Or even if he was aware that you were awake. If you were there, you would watch him for the half hour that he stays and then wait for him to slip out his slippers and into his shoes to leave.
When he finally does leave, you get up and put on your favorite trousers and boots and grab the shovel from the tool kit in your mama’s room. You ring Tita Kora’s doorbell with dirt smearing your face. And when you hear the locks being turned, you smile an all-too-sweet, toothy smile so that when she sees you with her still-messy hair, she waves you away as if to say, “O siya, sige, just don’t drown them ha?” Then you would see her turn away, muttering under her breath, but you don’t care and so you also walk away. Tita Kora has this big space in front of their home that is filled with plants and colorful flowers. She was never really your favorite aunt—nor is anyone your favorite really—but suffice to say, you adored her garden.
Tata Kiko comes home every night at thirty past six. He would usually arrive home in a Jeep that Kuya Poli drives. It was always filled with sacks of palay to the point that Tata Kiko had to take several minutes to get out of the cramped space filled with several other farmers. They were always so raucous with laughter when he was being dropped home. Those moments are one of the few moments that I see Tata Kiko smile. When they drive away, I see him from my place on the ground in front of the orchids and gumamelas and birds of paradise that don’t seem to dim—they even glow under the moonlight—and I anticipate Tata Kiko’s sigh. I think I understand why he must be so sad leaving his friends after a day of spending it with each other. I would know because I get sad when I leave my friends’ houses even if they only lived, like, two kantos away. But I was only a kid at the time. I thought he was just sad.
When he arrives alone that night at six forty-five, he is smiling. I stand up from my place by the gumamelas, the too-big boots swallowing my legs, shovel and gloves in hand, and wait for him to notice me like he always does. He turns his head first, smiles wider, waves, then walks toward me. I think he will ask me to come inside so that he can cook and we can eat dinner already. Instead, he drops to the ground and sits beside me. I don’t ask him why we are staying there, I just sit beside him too, after which he starts talking. He tells me about his day and how they had a good day on the field. He tells me they ate barbecue for lunch but of course, it was not as tasty as the ones he makes every year for my birthday. I ask him to promise me to make barbecue for my birthday again. He promises. He continues telling me about the things they did on the farm, about the rooster they have to chase because Kuya Mags left the pen open, about the wife of this one other farmer who brings them the barbecue, about the pain in his back and his bones. The way he continues talking and talking, then, with eyes that though sunken seem ablaze, reminds me of that time he told me about heroes.
It was nine in the evening and we were eating dinner. We had lumpia, my favorite, because he came home late. Earlier, he saw me crying by the steps in the terrace, and I only stopped when he told me he would make any meal I wanted that night as pambawi for his coming home late without telling me. He didn’t actually make the lumpia because we didn’t have enough ingredients to make one. Instead, we walked down the block to Ate Cecil’s Lutong Ulam to buy. When we were at the table, my hunger seemingly insatiable, Tata Kiko suddenly spoke, “Do you know where my name came from, apo?”
I thought for a moment then shook my head, “Kiko po, right? From Francisco po?”
Tata Kiko laughed and said, “Not quite. Francisco Juani is my real name. Pero everyone calls me Wani, even your inang at itang. Do you know the meaning of Wani ba?”
Once again, I shook my head, so he continued.
“Ang Wani, sabi nila, an exchange of the words magani, bagani, or bayani.“
“Bayani as in like a hero, po?”
“Yes, apo.” He reached for my cup and poured water on it. When it was almost full, he stopped and pushed it towards me. “Did you know that we have a different meaning here when we say bayani or hero in English? Ang alam kasi natin, it means those who have died for our bayan at—o sige, alright, that’s true also, heroes do die for their countries and their people and some of our heroes died for our freedom, too, noh, pero before, noong wala pang halong dayuhan, when the idea of bayani wasn’t influenced by the foreign yet, what it really meant was kasama.”
“What is da… dayuhan po ba, Tata Kiko?”
“Are you familiar with ‘porener,’ apo? Poreners?”
I was blank for a brief moment but then a sudden memory called to me, “Ah!” I lit up, “you mean po, like the ones Tita Kora talks to on their telephone palagi? She sometimes calls them…uhm… what does she call them… kano?”
For some reason, Tata Kiko shook his head, the seriousness of his face earlier becoming tinged with what I could only assume was amusement. “Yes, apo. Porener, porenjers—we Filipinos made a slight play of that word, foreigner, in other words, kano, dayuhan.” As he talked, the mirth seemed to fade from his expression. “They’re people from outside. Hindi taga-dito. Before they came here many years ago, our meaning of bayani was different, it meant kasama.”
I started to grow curious. I set my utensils on my plate and leveled my gaze with him as much as my twelve-year old posture could allow. “And kasama? Isn’t that like someone who is with you like a… like a companion?”
“Oh but yes, apo. That’s the beauty of it! Actually, not only kasama, apo. To us, bayani is normal na tao lang, they have no grandeur, kumbaga. They are the people who work day and night sa community nila, those who accompany you everyday sa pamumuhay, sa livelihood. And most importantly, apo, sila rin daw ‘yong umaalis pero laging bumabalik. They may leave but they will always come back, apo.”At that, he paused and smiled at me. I could not have explained it then, nor can I now, but the way he did made me feel then as if I had all the love I needed for my whole life.
“But how can that be a hero, Tata Kiko? Isn’t the point of being a bayani to die for your country? That’s what Jose Rizal did, ‘di ba po?”
“See, that’s the thing, my little ningning.” He booped my nose and grinned even more. “It doesn’t always have to end with death. Minsan, the greatest sacrifices come from living.” He picked up his spoon and fork again and sighed. “Mahirap… it’s always been difficult, our lives here…so that’s how we understood bayani before, apo. That’s how I choose to understand it still.”
For a while, I just stared at the unfinished lumpia in front of me, the only noise the voices of Mr. Mike Enriquez and Ms. Mel Tiangco on the TV and Tata Kiko’s occasional hum in appreciation of the sinigang he bought alongside our meal.
“I get it now, Tata.”
Tata Kiko’s gaze snapped back to me, as if he had forgotten I was there. He’s like that some days. I wonder if he was simply in a daydream world like I am when I daydream about having my own garden.
“I think our heroes are heroes—or I mean, bayani—bayani po sila because of what they did while they were living, and not simply because they died.”
We let it hang in the air for a moment. A simple truth I think he already knows but what does my young brain know?
Though he didn’t speak, he did smile, and seemed proud of his little ningning. Then his eyes softened. “I’m sorry I was late, kanina, my apo. But remember this, kahit gaano ka-late pa ‘yan, maaasahan mong uuwi ako. No matter what, Tata Kiko—Wani—will always come home.”
One who leaves and comes home.
Tata Kiko leaves but he always comes home. He always has. And for that, he is my bayani.
After that night, the concept of hero changed forever for me. It was simple. And in its simplicity, it was perfect.
Since then, I have relied on the meaning of bayani every time I wait by the garden. It is the thought that Tata Kiko will come home that I find comfort in. Mind lost in gardening, I forget what it is like to look over my shoulder and wait for the familiar silhouette of a man who calls himself Wani. I tend the plants until they are greener than green. I water the flowers until their petals fall and grow and fall and grow again. I chuck out the weeds and load them in one great heap in a sack that used to contain palay fresh from the harvest. And every time, Tata Kiko comes home and for that, for me, he is already a bayani. Until one day, it is five a.m. and I am still in the garden waiting, wanting to go home.
I now remember my birthday later that year.
I remember that I had take-out barbecue and I remember that I didn’t like it much. Too sweet. Too salty. Too burnt. I couldn’t decide which was which. I just knew that something was too much.
I remember my friends coming, too, and I remember them telling me You’re thirteen now! You can do whatever you want! and I remember feeling the opposite of that, as if I was getting smaller and smaller the more they crowded at me.
Too much.
That day, when finally the last of the guests began leaving, I was by the steel windows, watching their oner jeeps and tricycles pull out of the garage one by one. From my view, they passed by Tita Kora’s garden like a procession of all things coming to an end.
“The garden was much prettier when you were taking care of it, hano?”
“That was before, Tita.”
She heaved a great sigh, as if having expected me to bring it up again. I fear she may be tired of me and will soon leave me. Like everyone does. “You’re damn right, mija, and this is now. It’s been months. You will have to get over it soon enough.”
If I wasn’t so little, I would have talked back to her then. And it’s not like I had any place to go to.
I caught sight of the flowers in the garden just then. I looked at them, watched how they seemed to turn away from me, how shameful, how ashamed. When the seconds stretched in silence, and when it looked like I would never utter a word again, Tita Kora said something that seemed to anchor me back to the harbor, away from wherever I was, lost and adrift, these past several months.
“The garden misses you, mija. Don’t you miss it too?”
If I glanced at her then, I would have caught the salience of her melancholy—a feeling I never really thought I could associate with her—and felt it to my bones so hard it cracks. But I didn’t. Though in her voice, I heard it just the same.
And for some reason, I felt something so hot in my chest I almost choked it back down. Instead, it lurched, “Ako rin, Tita. Of course, I miss it too.”
And for the first time since he became foreign to me, I let myself cry and be comforted.
At thirteen, I may not have been of much help in the greater concerns of life and the neighborhood yet, but I made a promise then. So I put on my favorite trousers and boots and grabbed the shovel from my mama’s tool kit and came home.
That is to say, I came back. To the birds of paradise. The gumamelas. Waiting. Waited.
Years after that, you saw me there, by the garden, doing what I love doing, and you decided you loved it too, decided you loved me too. But if you had been born and raised in Tata Kiko’s home, you would have cultivated this love as naturally, as unfortunately, as I did. If you had grown up in that home, you would have known the Filipino concept of a hero. You would have known immediately that when I called you my life, my love, my bayani, that it was okay for you to eventually leave. It was okay as long as you returned. As long as you continued to come home. To me. And to our own little ningning. As long as you remained just like Tata Kiko and everyone I may have loved and thought a bayani once. Even if you did not grow up in the shadow of Mt. Kemalugong nor bled from your finger pierced by a thorn, you are a hero in your own right. Maybe even both hero and bayani personified.
But now, as you are no longer capable of returning to me, at least not physically or in this lifetime, you are more a hero than you ever could have been a bayani.
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Y.L. Domingo (they/she) is a 22-year-old psychology undergrad being sustained by her desire for new experiences with a predilection for literature, art, and the hows of the mind. When not battling with yet basking in the Manila commute, they are suspended in a limbo of watching and rewatching sitcoms, obsessing over musicals, and making endless lists. Their work appeared in the first issue of the Filipino sapphic zine Paraluman.
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Sarah Phillips is a senior at Portland State University majoring in English with a writing minor. Her work appears or is forthcoming in Blue Marble Review, The Blue Route, and Pathos. You can find her on Instagram @poetrytoot.
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