Innocence lost
February 4, 2007 | 12:00am
This Week’s Winner
Monin Muriera-Navarro is retired after working for 26 years in the US. She worked as an office manager for a nationwide engineering company based in California. She went to college at the University of the Cordilleras (formerly Baguio Colleges Foundation) in Baguio City. She is married to Nestor Llanes Navarro and has four children and eight grandchildren. She and her husband reside in Baguio City.
The hacienda was 40 kilometers from the city and one kilometer from the highway. On a moonless night, such as that night, it was easy to miss the turn. I closed my eyes tight and prayed that he would. But the driver knew the area very well. I could tell because the jeep was swerving and rocking as it hit pothole after pothole. Gone was the smooth pavement of the highway. I had been on this road many times before and I knew how long the ride took. Only this time, I wished we would never reach our destination.
Our house stood three stories high. Built in 1934, just after my parents married, it was made of wood with concrete foundation. Designed by an American architect, several years later I would see similar houses in San Bernardino, California, on the way up to Big Bear. The third floor was my favorite. It was one huge room, like a dormitory, and from the window I could see as far as the next farm. On breezy days, the sugarcane leaves swayed like waves on a sea of green. I used to climb up the attic and look for birds’ nests and wonder at the tiny eggs with their speckled blue and brown color, or I would search for gecko eggs between the rafters. It was also the perfect place to hide when I didn’t want to do my chores.
On Sundays, our cook would get a couple of chickens from the coop and bring them into the kitchen still alive and cackling. She would lay the heads on the butcher’s block and swiftly chop them off. WHAM! She would then let the blood drip into a small bowl filled with vinegar so the blood would not coagulate. Next she dipped the chickens in boiling water, removed the feathers and cut them up. The best part was when she asked me to get an unripe papaya from the tree. I would take a sungkit (long stick with a hook at the end) and prod a papaya to fall to the ground without it hitting me. By the time I got back to the kitchen, the chickens would be sautéing in garlic, lots of ginger, tanglad and onions. My papaya was peeled, cut up in wedges and thrown into the concoction called tinolang manok (chicken stew).
The farm was a little more than 40 hectares in area, small compared to the big-time haciendas that could run from 100 to 200 hectares or more. Most of the land was planted with sugarcane except where our house stood and the laborers’ huts. Whenever I could, I went to our encargado’s hut and joined them for lunch, which consisted of rice drenched with coffee. His daughters were my playmates.
Our house was surrounded by trees. To the right side of the porch was a very tall cotton tree (kapok). When the pods were ripe and brown, they fell to the ground and broke open. Inside was white fluff which we took and separated the seeds from. When there was enough kapok, they were stuffed into bags to make pillows.
At the back of the house, near the kitchen, was a big tree that had fallen during a typhoon. It lay on its side like a tired soldier, the trunk broken from the roots. It was a stage on which my playmates and I sang songs popular at that time; it was our playhouse where we cooked leaves on toy clay pots, or just a place to sit and chew on La Carlota sugarcane. This variety had a softer husk and we peeled the cane with our teeth, chewed on the pulp, sucked the juice, and spat out whatever was left, the farther the better. It was an idyllic place for a child; little did I know it was to become a place of terror.
I was the youngest of 10 siblings. My mother contracted tuberculosis at a time when penicillin was still a researcher’s dream. Aggravated by late nights of gambling and partying, the disease progressed and she died when I was two years old. Since my mother already had TB when I was born, I was kept away from her, nursed by a yaya who gave birth to her own child two months before I was born. My mother had pictures with all of my brothers and sisters, taken by a professional photographer. They were dressed in matching clothes and shining black shoes with white socks folded over their ankles. I didn’t have a single picture with her.
My father, unable or unwilling to carry the burden of raising nine children on his own, went on a desperate search for a wife. With a friend, they abducted one of the prettiest girls in town but later returned her when she refused to marry him.
When I was five years old, it was decided that I should start school and without much ado, I was bundled up and dropped at my aunt’s drugstore in town. My sister, Tess, who was two years older, was already in school and staying with my aunt. My aunt and her husband were childless and were happy to have me. For once, I felt wanted, like an only child, not the last and least of 10. One day, after I learned to write my name, I wrote their last name instead of mine.
I loved being in school. To everyone’s surprise, I learned things quickly. After school my uncle would teach me to ride the bike and if I brought home a test paper with a high score, I would be treated to ice cream. My aunt had dresses made for me by a seamstress across the street and she bought me shoes just like the ones my sisters were wearing in the picture.
I made excuses not to go back to the farm. My father didn’t seem to mind and I started seeing him less and less until I convinced myself he was not really my father. Around that time, I started calling my aunt "Mama" and my uncle "Papa."
I sailed through my pre-teen years convinced that I was an only child. I even thought of Tess as my cousin. I haven’t been back to the farm for a long time and memories of it were fading fast. But that was fine with me; I was happy and content with my new life – until that night.
Tess was now a sophomore and I was starting my freshman year. Tess was seeing this boy, a nephew of our parish priest. In my father’s world, none of his daughters could be caught with a boy unless she was planning to marry him, and especially not if he was from our town. Tess and I were walking home from the movies that night when the jeep stopped right in front of us. The driver told us to get in and Tess did, so I followed her. At first I thought he was going to bring us home to the drugstore, but then he took off in the opposite direction.
The jeep stopped. The door was yanked open and he dragged Tess from the jeep, up the concrete stairs to the porch. Tess stumbled and cried out. I got out of the jeep to help her but he was faster than me. He forced her to stand and shoved her into the living room. I ran after them scared but not wanting to leave Tess alone with him. Tess was dragged up the stairs into one of the bedrooms. I went in and cowered at one corner, scared but unable to take my eyes off what was happening. He hit Tess on the face and she fell. I ran to her but he shoved me and pushed me back into the corner. Then he hit Tess on the face again, she screamed, begged for mercy, but he seemed oblivious to her cries. He hit her arms, breast, head, face, his fist landed everywhere again and again until, finally, he stopped, spent. He left the room and after a while, I heard the jeep leave. I cradled Tess in my arms. Her face was a pulp, her eyes swollen, her lips and nose bleeding. Blood was coming out of her mouth, her two front teeth were missing. I ran down the stairs to get help.
At what age does one shed the protective cocoon of childhood to confront the horrors of real life? Is there a rite of passage one has to go through, a line one crosses, to say, I’m no longer a child? At what age does a girl lose innocence? I was 12 when I lost mine that night.
You see, he was my father.
Monin Muriera-Navarro is retired after working for 26 years in the US. She worked as an office manager for a nationwide engineering company based in California. She went to college at the University of the Cordilleras (formerly Baguio Colleges Foundation) in Baguio City. She is married to Nestor Llanes Navarro and has four children and eight grandchildren. She and her husband reside in Baguio City.
The hacienda was 40 kilometers from the city and one kilometer from the highway. On a moonless night, such as that night, it was easy to miss the turn. I closed my eyes tight and prayed that he would. But the driver knew the area very well. I could tell because the jeep was swerving and rocking as it hit pothole after pothole. Gone was the smooth pavement of the highway. I had been on this road many times before and I knew how long the ride took. Only this time, I wished we would never reach our destination.
Our house stood three stories high. Built in 1934, just after my parents married, it was made of wood with concrete foundation. Designed by an American architect, several years later I would see similar houses in San Bernardino, California, on the way up to Big Bear. The third floor was my favorite. It was one huge room, like a dormitory, and from the window I could see as far as the next farm. On breezy days, the sugarcane leaves swayed like waves on a sea of green. I used to climb up the attic and look for birds’ nests and wonder at the tiny eggs with their speckled blue and brown color, or I would search for gecko eggs between the rafters. It was also the perfect place to hide when I didn’t want to do my chores.
On Sundays, our cook would get a couple of chickens from the coop and bring them into the kitchen still alive and cackling. She would lay the heads on the butcher’s block and swiftly chop them off. WHAM! She would then let the blood drip into a small bowl filled with vinegar so the blood would not coagulate. Next she dipped the chickens in boiling water, removed the feathers and cut them up. The best part was when she asked me to get an unripe papaya from the tree. I would take a sungkit (long stick with a hook at the end) and prod a papaya to fall to the ground without it hitting me. By the time I got back to the kitchen, the chickens would be sautéing in garlic, lots of ginger, tanglad and onions. My papaya was peeled, cut up in wedges and thrown into the concoction called tinolang manok (chicken stew).
The farm was a little more than 40 hectares in area, small compared to the big-time haciendas that could run from 100 to 200 hectares or more. Most of the land was planted with sugarcane except where our house stood and the laborers’ huts. Whenever I could, I went to our encargado’s hut and joined them for lunch, which consisted of rice drenched with coffee. His daughters were my playmates.
Our house was surrounded by trees. To the right side of the porch was a very tall cotton tree (kapok). When the pods were ripe and brown, they fell to the ground and broke open. Inside was white fluff which we took and separated the seeds from. When there was enough kapok, they were stuffed into bags to make pillows.
At the back of the house, near the kitchen, was a big tree that had fallen during a typhoon. It lay on its side like a tired soldier, the trunk broken from the roots. It was a stage on which my playmates and I sang songs popular at that time; it was our playhouse where we cooked leaves on toy clay pots, or just a place to sit and chew on La Carlota sugarcane. This variety had a softer husk and we peeled the cane with our teeth, chewed on the pulp, sucked the juice, and spat out whatever was left, the farther the better. It was an idyllic place for a child; little did I know it was to become a place of terror.
I was the youngest of 10 siblings. My mother contracted tuberculosis at a time when penicillin was still a researcher’s dream. Aggravated by late nights of gambling and partying, the disease progressed and she died when I was two years old. Since my mother already had TB when I was born, I was kept away from her, nursed by a yaya who gave birth to her own child two months before I was born. My mother had pictures with all of my brothers and sisters, taken by a professional photographer. They were dressed in matching clothes and shining black shoes with white socks folded over their ankles. I didn’t have a single picture with her.
My father, unable or unwilling to carry the burden of raising nine children on his own, went on a desperate search for a wife. With a friend, they abducted one of the prettiest girls in town but later returned her when she refused to marry him.
When I was five years old, it was decided that I should start school and without much ado, I was bundled up and dropped at my aunt’s drugstore in town. My sister, Tess, who was two years older, was already in school and staying with my aunt. My aunt and her husband were childless and were happy to have me. For once, I felt wanted, like an only child, not the last and least of 10. One day, after I learned to write my name, I wrote their last name instead of mine.
I loved being in school. To everyone’s surprise, I learned things quickly. After school my uncle would teach me to ride the bike and if I brought home a test paper with a high score, I would be treated to ice cream. My aunt had dresses made for me by a seamstress across the street and she bought me shoes just like the ones my sisters were wearing in the picture.
I made excuses not to go back to the farm. My father didn’t seem to mind and I started seeing him less and less until I convinced myself he was not really my father. Around that time, I started calling my aunt "Mama" and my uncle "Papa."
I sailed through my pre-teen years convinced that I was an only child. I even thought of Tess as my cousin. I haven’t been back to the farm for a long time and memories of it were fading fast. But that was fine with me; I was happy and content with my new life – until that night.
Tess was now a sophomore and I was starting my freshman year. Tess was seeing this boy, a nephew of our parish priest. In my father’s world, none of his daughters could be caught with a boy unless she was planning to marry him, and especially not if he was from our town. Tess and I were walking home from the movies that night when the jeep stopped right in front of us. The driver told us to get in and Tess did, so I followed her. At first I thought he was going to bring us home to the drugstore, but then he took off in the opposite direction.
The jeep stopped. The door was yanked open and he dragged Tess from the jeep, up the concrete stairs to the porch. Tess stumbled and cried out. I got out of the jeep to help her but he was faster than me. He forced her to stand and shoved her into the living room. I ran after them scared but not wanting to leave Tess alone with him. Tess was dragged up the stairs into one of the bedrooms. I went in and cowered at one corner, scared but unable to take my eyes off what was happening. He hit Tess on the face and she fell. I ran to her but he shoved me and pushed me back into the corner. Then he hit Tess on the face again, she screamed, begged for mercy, but he seemed oblivious to her cries. He hit her arms, breast, head, face, his fist landed everywhere again and again until, finally, he stopped, spent. He left the room and after a while, I heard the jeep leave. I cradled Tess in my arms. Her face was a pulp, her eyes swollen, her lips and nose bleeding. Blood was coming out of her mouth, her two front teeth were missing. I ran down the stairs to get help.
At what age does one shed the protective cocoon of childhood to confront the horrors of real life? Is there a rite of passage one has to go through, a line one crosses, to say, I’m no longer a child? At what age does a girl lose innocence? I was 12 when I lost mine that night.
You see, he was my father.
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