Adios, Mi Barbero

I was trying to untangle myself from the mess that I had managed to attract around my body, like metal filings to a magnet, when I received a call at the Hilton that Racquel, had vanished. I sat down on the ever so luxurious purple chair, overlooking a surprisingly quiet street below and sobbed uncontrollably- to the extreme bewilderment of Pah.

What was the matter with me, he had asked. Who died now? I couldn’t answer coherently. There was so much to explain to him about who Racquel was to me. I continued my massive display of emotion. Swirls of thick water coating my eyes, and Pah was shaking his head. Not here, even a day, and she is homesick. Where did he go wrong? My dear Pah, who is actually, my mother’s brother. My dearest Pah, my second father, my “stepdad .”

More theatrical sobs from me, like a character in a tele-novela. Complete with rhythmic blowing of nose into a handkerchief, shoulders rising and falling in perfect tempo to sorrow. Keys were scattered on the floor, my sunglasses, the black Fendi scarf I recently purchased with Pah’s card and other shopping bags from the gypsy stalls at the afternoon bazaar in disarray. More rising and falling of shoulders. Pah was dialing for Mommy back home. Maybe she knew why I was crying, again. Not even the lovely F on inverted F that I never can resist in any shop could stop the annoying sounds that I was making.

Dios Mio, Eleonora. What is wrong with our marequita? Going home is out of the question.

Mommy didn’t know, either. Only Amah Nila knew, and she had already gone for the day.

Racquel was born as a Ramon Santiago. She had been cutting my hair since I was in nine. From ages two until Racquel and I were introduced, Mommy would put an enamel bowl over my head and snip away the hair that peeped from under the edges with a rusty pair of surgical scissors. She used to say that the scissors had some sentimental value to her. It was that process each month, or Mommy would put a line of Scotch tape as a sort of margin or cursor over the part of my hair where she would have wanted me to have bangs. Then she would use the same pair of scissors to cut away with much gusto and a determined look on her face. The scissors hurt. The metal’s movement over my skin was extremely abrasive. It left such a scalding sensation, each time. Those scissors made me cry. And those scissors, are still alive.

My grandpa Nicanor, was stricken with paralysis c.1985 and he was brought home to the RP. Racquel started coming to the house to maintain my grandpa’s good looks when I was about to reach the fourth grade. Grandpa had the perfect head of silver hair, and was always ever so handsome after Racquel’s visits.

Racquel’s beauty salon was located on the other side of our avenue. One Saturday morning, instead of piano lessons at our neighbor’s house, my Papa Oliver brought me to Racquel’s. My hair was too long for him and I already abhorred Mommy’s enamel bowl from PEGLAMACO-AIPENG (PACIFIC ENAMEL AND GLASS MANUFACTURING CORPORATION). Papa and Grandpa were legal consultants for the factory behind our house, and year after year, Mr. Yu would give us boxes and boxes of glassware, and enamel ware during Christmas. Enamel plates, cups, orinolas, and those horrid bowls of Mommy. The factory has long been silent, and I still have no idea as to what AIPENG was supposed to mean.

I sat down in front of a mirror, and I realized that I was not beautiful. I was going to be in the fourth grade after summer, and I was chubby, dark, and ugly. I wasn’t going to be beautiful like Mommy or my younger sister. I looked like a pig. I was an oink-oink with wavy hair. I was a Miss Piggy.

What could Papa be whispering to Racquel. Racquel was frowning. I didn’t know that Racquel was a man!

I was still looking at my despicable reflection on the mirror. I have a dimple on my forehead, it looks like a scar. Why wasn’t I born with cute dimples on each cheek? Why on the forehead, and two tiny ones under my lips that only appear when I say something with the letter F in it? Why am I turning out to be hideous, when Mommy is beautiful and Papa is handsome and Sister is angelic? What is Racquel doing with my wavy hair?

I closed my eyes. I didn’t want to see my face on the mirror any longer. When I opened my eyes, I had become a chubby, dark, and ugly boy. I still looked like a pig. I was still an oink-oink sans the wavy hair. I was Miss Piggy’s brother, if Miss Piggy had a Muppet brother.

Great. Papa Oliver always wanted to have a little boy with Mommy. He would have to do with this ugly little boy sporting a haircut to the topnotch lawyer’s liking. The notorious siete. The sevens cut. A soldier’s do. Because the ugly pig of a fraudulent boy’s sideburns were each shaved and shaped to look like the number seven. I marched home with Papa, and Mommy didn’t say a word. My sister didn’t laugh at me. She wanted the same hair cut.

Having the sevens as your hair style in St. Paul’s would earn one a demerit in conduct. I never had a demerit for it. Papa was a scary lawyer. The nuns, homeroom advisers, homeroom chairmen, and other parents didn’t want to mess around with him. He also held an officer position for the Parent-Teacher Association each year. Hence, no demerit for me. Definitely a signifier of his personal history. Papa was almost the vice- mayor of our city, had he not called Erap: a mosquito-brained komang during the miting de avanse of 1980 to Erap’s face. Papa’s fraternity brads and Grandpa’s money couldn’t bail Papa from his “indiscretion” and he went MIA. That explains my sister’s birth nine months after. Papa was going to miss Mommy while MIA, a period they estimated to be about a year, minus one month.

During the four years of having the boy’s cut, girls in my class called me many names which I collected. I was called fatso, baboy, piggy-piggy (this-even my sister called me), ugly know-it-all, and the most prosaic of them all: yuckiedieyuckducduck. Yuckiedoo, for short.

The Code of Yuckiedoo

How did I come to know of being Yuckiedieyuckducduck aka Yuckiedoo?

I was a quiet little person, and a model student, of sorts. I was cleaning the oratory located at the ground floor of our gradeschool building. I saw a piece of intermediate pad paper, picked it up and read what was written on it. I went home, gave Mommy the paper, and wept. The oratory did serve as the holiest place for revelations, about the wicked.

Every month, during those four years, I would be taken to Racquel. Racquel would open the door, and I would huff-puff to the red linoleum lined chair and roll my eyes. Racquel’s hand was not light and the scissors used on me were also painful, hitting my ears so violently sometimes I was afraid that Racquel would make a mistake, and cut a little bit, off my ears. Racquel’s scissors were still much better than Mommy’s Scotch tape or enamel bowl. Go ahead, make me uglier.

By the time of my first monthly period, Mommy was becoming very sad. Her eldest, who was a beautiful baby, wasn’t growing up to look the way Mommy had dreamt eldest baby to oscillate as. Papa already had a pattern of one year MIA, one year going home just to sleep in his own room, one year MIA, and so on.

My mother forced me to enroll for RAD(Royal Academy of Dance) affiliated ballet classes and told Racquel to stop giving me the siete. It was the first time that Racquel ever smiled at me. I was to have, just a regular trim, from now on. Racquel’s hand became lighter. And I was becoming thinner.

On the first day of second year high school, as we were lining up to go back to our classrooms after flag ceremonies, most of my batch mates were asking who, I was amongst themselves. I rolled my eyes.

St. Paul’s was a good school and so the next day due to homework there were more whispers echoing out to the corridor halls. I was gliding softly in a native costume to my classroom, dressed as a Muslim princess. I was going to demonstrate the dance of water jug bearers to my classmates.

I could hear what the whispers said: “ Si Osang ba iyon? ”

From Where, A Name

My birth certificate has a blemish on it. My Papa gave me another Christian name as a pre-fix to the one I prefer everyone to call me. Rossalyn. After Rossalyn Carter, he used to say. A big lie. He called one of his mistresses, his little rose. Rossalyn is Sayn in his dialect. That is what the other side of the family calls me. I like Sayn better. The man I was going to marry had the courage to learn to call me that. He learned to pronounce it properly. No one else, except Ahmed’s best friend calls me that, with love. Not even the man I am in-love with today. My love can never be reciprocated, that is why I am on the other side of the world at this moment. So very Howard’s End. Perhaps, after going around the world, I will cease to love him in this way. But I do not want that to happen. He doesn’t know that I am in-love with him. Maybe he knows, and refuses to see it. This makes him, very kind.

Some bored Paulinian, wishing to be creative, started calling me Osang. She defiled my name that means “red rose.” We were feverish, that year. Jose Rizal was inspiring the women- to-be. Then there were three. Upeng, Osang, and Aring.

If someone shouts “Osang! “when I am window shopping or going to the cinema , I would know at once that the someone is from SPCP’96.

A former suitor once tried calling me Osang while conversing with me on the telephone. I said good night and went to sleep.

From Where, A Name v.2

My very first love was one hundred percent Filipino Chinese. I asked him to be my escort to the Junior prom. The only ball I have ever attended. Racquel gave me Elizabeth Taylor curls from Raintree County, to match my flapper-style gown, and the white wrist corsage young Chinaman gave me. Racquel looked at my baby-fingers (stunted growth since I started playing the piano at a very young age, three years old) and short nails. Teacher Laura didn’t like me to have fingernail tips. They would lessen the speed of my hands and quarrel with the black keys. I was going to compete for the NAMCYA soon. She was urging me to perfect Francisco Buencamino’s Mayon. I wanted to play Chopin’s Revolutionary Etude. I was jealous of my rival. I wanted to play her piece. Teacher Laura found this unacceptable. I should play Mayon, then I would win. Sarah was just for show. This, I found, acceptable.

Racquel brought a bottle of platinum Caronia nail lacquer into the room. Racquel didn’t do nails. But for me, an exception to that rule. I couldn’t go to my own prom without painted nails, no matter how short.

My gleaming nails, and myself went into the car. With young Chinaman, Sister, Mang Melanyo (the driver), and Mama.

Young Chinaman also gave me a dozen red roses. He is now married with two boys. Both, who inherited his comely dimples on each of their cheeks. That is why, I cannot write his name. His wife would mind.

I finally had my chance to be Ms UN Queen in a school pageant when I was in fourth year. I was, Ms. France. It wasn’t because I was the prettiest in my class. Everyone else who was eligible for the contest had already been a contestant. You could only join once. I was the only choice left, out of necessity. Racquel woke up at four in the morning to make me look like a beauty queen. I didn’t win. I didn’t even get to reach the question and answer part of the program. I chose the wrong talent. I should have gone for a stand-up comedy act, instead of an interpretative classical ballet routine to Dave Koz’s Lucky Man. Sometimes I imagine being on that stage again and mouthing,” l’ puno es puno of buko.oui? Merci, can you see? No? faux pas, vous kuha, l’suha ah oui. “ I might have been a bonafide contender for the scepter and the year’s supply of the feminine hygiene wash, Lactacyd. Yes, that was the prize.

I did, however, get a letter. It said: you will always be, my UN Queen.

From my mother.

On the day of my debut, it rained. Hardly anyone from my long list of guests, attended. RSVPs were in the affirmative, it was a very lonely debut. Racquel ironed out my very long hair and colored my eyelids the darkest of midnight blues, and my lips, the reddest of reds. My debut’s motif was light blue and my cake was decorated by a single white shoe. Cinderalla, with no curfew, missing a shoe( a metaphor for the absent revelers) , who shouldn’t have chosen the color blue…as not to be blue.

Years went by, and Racquel was always around whenever I wanted to feel pretty. I went to another stylist for my college graduation picture. The stylist made me look like an elaborate mural of a dumpling. I paid for another take. I apologized to Racquel and now my framed graduation photo, has me looking eerily so much like a certain movie actress. If I weren’t so lazy to religiously maintain a gorgeous body, I could, at best, be a face model.

Racquel was a man. He was Ramon Santiago. Racquel saved enough money over the years to have a sex change operation. From then on, I would chat with her like a gal-pal, while undergoing my pinching pennies beauty rituals, under her very light hands. She even had a boyfriend, I didn’t have one. I still don’t have one. I don’t think that I will ever have one again. But I dream of having one.

Racquel, who gave me my first sunny highlights after my ex-future left me. Racquel who dyed my hair red. Racquel who dyed it stray-dog orange to match the green colored contact lenses I wanted. Racquel who dyed the ends of my hair in the fashion of the Sugarbabes, because I wanted to look like one. She, who painted my nails, a delicate pink, when I first met the man that I am in-love with now, to match my pink Celines , has vanished.

Are you sure? I ask my Amah Nila on the hotel phone. Can’t you ask somebody? Doesn’t anybody have an idea?

I should have gotten her a mobile phone for security, my security. She always misplaces hers. Loses them, actually.

How will I survive this month? This month, with my mission to forget, to cease loving someone who does not wish to be loved by me? Someone who has no interest in knowing of my love or receiving and feeling it. Yet another one of those.

Where could she be? The one who was to be waiting for my return to put the color back, in me?

I will never see her again. I am desperate in this certainty. Nineteen years, gone.

Has beauty ended for me? Has it began for her?

Pah is telling me that I should not waste this vacation. Alright. Fine, Racquel. I will give you this Houdini of yours.

How could you?

You were, my barber. So…

Adios, mi barbero. I’ll be singing you a song, one of your favorites, by Perry Como.

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