Story: Steps by Vanessa Gregorio

Steps

by Vanessa Gregorio 

The last drops of the early afternoon rain made their way from the yellowing plastic cover of the tricycle to the lap of his brown corduroy pants. The first quarterly exams just ended, but unlike most seniors who chose to hang out at the local malls or play computer games, Jonathan, just as he always did, went straight back home.

As he hopped off from behind the driver’s seat, Jonathan looked up at the sky: it was dark, it was in the middle of August, and he was in his final year of high school. He paid the tricycle driver and started to walk his way home -- the one with the rusting gates and perpetually unkempt front yard.

Jonathan took a deep breath and started counting.

It usually took two-hundred and fifty steps for Jonathan to get from where the tricycle stopped to his house. Two hundred and fifty steps spent looking down at his shoes as they sloshed down the wet road, or two hundred and fifty steps looking at them get eaten by dust when the sun is up. No one ever asked him why he never looked up, or why he always counted them under his breath. Jonathan was always alone.

But on his two-hundred and thirty-sixth step that day, just as his right shoe landed on the third hump that ran adjacent to a carinderia, he looked up as his neighbor and childhood friend Ella called up to him, three steps away.

“Otan!” Her hair was damp and her smile bright despite the gloomy weather. Ella was a year younger than Jonathan and attends classes in the afternoon. They never crossed each other’s paths on school days so when they met, Jonathan stopped and smiled at the familiar face, but was thoroughly surprised at the encounter.

“Hey,” he greeted her back. She took the three-step gap between them with two strides.

“How are your exams?” she asked.

“It’s okay, hopefully I didn’t fail. Uh, you’re running late,” Jonathan told her anxiously.

“Nah, it’s still early!” She punched him lightly on the right arm, causing him to take his two hundred and thirty-sixth step back to his two hundred and thirty-fifth. His two feet shuffled nervously on the muddy road, unused to the steadiness instead of the fast steps its owner usually took. She then told him a joke about her brother, but Jonathan was too busy looking at the rusting gate fifteen steps away from him to even listen.

Ella craned her neck to the direction of Jonathan’s sight. The gate silently waited for their conversation to finish.

“Uh, I guess I better get going,” she told him quietly. The sudden shift in her voice disturbed Jonathan again, and he looked back at her. “What?”

“I’ll go ahead, I said,” she told him, giving him a sympathetic smile.  

“See you.”

He managed to extract one last smile before Ella walked away, and for a second, Jonathan did not know what to do. He was standing there, alone, under the gloomy mid-August weather, unsure of what foot to use to start the last fifteen steps that will lead him home.

***

“Ops, coming through!”

Jonathan was about to enter the gate when he heard the voice of Mang Boy, their neighbor. His count went back to the two hundred and forty-ninth as he stepped back to watch the man carry a stack of mono-block chairs and place it in a pick-up truck. Another man, a stranger, came out of the yard carrying a folded tarpaulin and a bunch of metal tubes and dumped it all beside the plastic chairs. “That’s the last pile, you can go now - oh, Otan, it’s you.”

“Hi, Mang Boy.”

“Go on in, they’re waiting for you.” Mang Boy turned his back on him as he put down the tarpaulin that had Jonathan’s uncle’s grainy photo in it, together with a name, two dates, and at the bottom – the letters R, I, and P.

***

No one usually waited for Jonathan. He would usually enter their gate, take twelve to fifteen steps towards the door, and would be greeted by an empty living room. He would eat a late lunch in the kitchen and sleep in his room for an hour or two. When he woke up he would almost immediately go for a fifteen minute bike ride around the barangay – twice around the basketball court, into the wider streets, the neighboring village, and then around his old elementary school. He would then pedal back to their street, and then back home. During the weekends, Ella usually tagged along with Jonathan.

No one usually waited for him.

That day, the yard had finally been stripped with the chairs and the tarpaulin covered stands. The clay pots of sampaguitas had been put back to place and the dried drips of white candles had been scraped away. Pieces of fallen green peas and cornick have been swept in a pile together with twigs and dried leaves. Jonathan went straight for the door, opened it wide and saw what was left of his family waiting for him. On the old rocking chair was his grandmother, who was usually asleep at that time. It would only be just her and him now. Her eyes were a bit red, but she was smiling at him. Jonathan felt guilty for leaving her alone at home while he was at school.

But somehow, on the other seat in the living room, Jonathan found the unfamiliar face of his mother, who was usually abroad – at least, for the last nine years of his life.

***

Jonathan’s mother, Arlene, took four small, unsure steps in his direction and held him by the shoulders. She kept her eyes fixed on him, from his disheveled hair to his mud splashed shoes. “My, how big you have grown Jonathan! It’s really different when it’s real and not just in pictures!” she exclaimed and gave him a quick hug.

“Ay Otan, look at this, apo! Your mother has a lot of gifts for you!” Lola Chita exclaimed from her seat and pointed to the huge balikbayan box, which replaced the small table in the middle of the living room.

Jonathan kissed his mother’s and grandmother’s hands and excused himself, putting his backpack where he usually placed it - and took thirteen sure steps to the kitchen, where he ate his late lunch. From his seat, Jonathan kept on hearing the chatter from the living room. He ate twice as fast, scraping the plate with his spoon louder than usual until he finished.

Jonathan was on the fourth step of the stairs on his way to his room to take a nap when Arlene called him from the living room. “Don’t you want to see your pasalubong, anak?”

“Maybe later.” He shook his head and ran upstairs to sleep, determined to keep the remainder of that day as normal as possible. But a few hours later, Jonathan ate dinner alone in the same spot across where Tito Mario usually sat, while his grandmother stayed in the living room, fussing over his mother and her huge balikbayan box.

***

Jonathan was seven when Tito Mario came home. He was a seaman, and he served as a mess man on the fishing boat where he worked. He was laid off from the job because he was too old and sick for the travel. When he came home, he brought a huge bike for Jonathan.

“Mario, it’s too big for him, he’s just seven years old!” Lola Chita told him.

“Nay, it’s okay, he’d grow into it and can use it for a longer time.”

Learning how to ride was very difficult for Jonathan. He was afraid of falling and he could not maintain the balance. Three weeks after he got the bike, Tito Mario saw Jonathan crying in frustration over the new bike.

“Why don’t we take a walk, Otan? Forget about the bike for now, you don’t need to be able to ride it right now,” he told him.

Jonathan stood up, wiped his tears with his shirt sleeves, and followed Tito Mario as he opened the gate and they walked out together.

Tito Mario and Jonathan usually talked about the weather (“Agh, the sky was much clearer before!”), the neighborhood (“When I was younger your mother and I usually played in that lot, now there’s a patis factory in it.”) or sometimes his old job (“It wasn’t easy work Otan, half the time you’re busy cleaning up after the crew and the other half you’re praying that the boat won’t sink.”)

Jonathan wouldn’t count his steps whenever he’s with Tito Mario. They walked until it was nearly time for the cartoons they both watched on TV, and some years later, until Tito Mario’s diabetes caught up to his left leg and they had to amputate it so it would not spread any further.

***

It had been two weeks since Arlene came home, but Jonathan still wasn’t used to seeing her. The Toblerones and the Hershey’s Arlene gave her only child were left untouched, the new shirts and the new wristwatch were left unworn. She was too busy paying for the dues of the funeral of her older brother. Arlene spent most of her time fixing papers and paying taxes, only taking a break when 1:45 in the afternoon came around: she would hear the sound of the gate being opened, and would greet Jonathan with the simple “How was school?”

Everyday she would be answered with the same three words; “Okay lang po,” even if one time Jonathan came home carrying his shoes and walked barefoot all the way home (it had briefly flooded in the streets) or when he brought back home a rejected T.L.E. project that he spent all night on, or the other day his left sideburn was shorter than the other, because it was haircut inspection day at school and his homeroom adviser trimmed his left sideburn as punishment.

It took Jonathan long enough to get used to someone asking him how was his day at school. On the first few days he would take a deep breath before entering the door, hoping that she wouldn’t be there.

Calling her name was even harder, like trying to eat with multiple canker sores inside his mouth. He avoided saying Mama or Nanay – he kept on using ‘po’ instead – which was something his grandmother eventually caught up to.

“Otan, call your mother, lunch is ready,” Lola Chita told him one Saturday afternoon. Jonathan walked up the 12-step staircase, walked eight more steps and knocked on the door thrice.

“Kain na daw po,” he said and immediately turned around, but as Jonathan walked back he found his grandmother at the foot of the staircase, her hands on her hips. “Call her again,” she told him. Jonathan walked eight steps back, turned around and knocked once more.

“Kain na daw po!” he said, this time in a much louder voice, not for the benefit of Arlene who was just opening the door, but for Lola Chita, whom Jonathan thought was just going deaf and wanted to hear his call clearly. But then when he turned around Lola Chita was at the top of the stairs already, and asked him, “Who are you calling?”

Jonathan was confused.

“He’s calling for me, Nay, aren’t you, anak?” Arlene’s voice came from behind.

“Yes, I know, but what do you call her, Otan?” Lola Chita asked.

“M-mama?” he stuttered as he forcefully spewed out the word from his mouth.

Jonathan had been too alienated to the name and its meaning, while Arlene believed she had played the title she had for so long so well, only for her only child to tell her that she hadn’t.

***

It was March, and Jonathan was twelve years old. His walks with Tito Mario were cut short by the numbness and soreness that he felt on the soles of his left foot. At first he ignored it, but as the month approached its end, after Tito Mario spent one whole night not feeling his left leg, the doctor told him they had to amputate it or the infection will spread. “I guess you’d have to walk for me, then, Otan? After they take my leg away, I mean,” Tito Mario told him as they went out the doctor’s clinic.

“Who will march with me at my graduation?” Jonathan asked sadly.

“Your mother called, she told me she would try to go.”

Jonathan looked down and said nothing.

But his graduation came, and Tito Mario made his last march (ninety-four steps, up and down the stage) with complete legs during Jonathan’s graduation. Three days later, his left leg was amputated and he rarely went out of the house since.

Jonathan could not walk those afternoon trips on his own, so on one of the first few afternoons that Tito Mario stayed home, he pulled out the bike from the small bodega behind their house, oiled the gears, and gave it a go. His legs were finally long enough, and he was finally able to balance himself on the seat. Before going out the gate, Jonathan saw his uncle smiling at him from inside the house. He turned his back and started pedaling.

Unlike his usual walks, Jonathan didn’t look down. He looked at the road and watched as his little neighbor kids grew up, as the tambays of every other block died of some kind of disease or got killed by the other tambays during a drunken fight, or as the houses got renovated or left empty by its previous owners. Jonathan was alone again, but at least he didn’t need to count the steps he could have walked with Tito Mario.

***

For nine years Arlene wasn’t in Jonathan’s life, and suddenly, she was just there, and it bothered Jonathan too much. She was in every place he usually expected to be just the way it was before she came: in the living room when he got home from school, in his room making the bed right after he went down for breakfast, in the bodega arranging his uncle’s old belongings, and what disturbed him the most - in Tito Mario’s seat across the dining table.

On the day of the Parent-Teacher Conference, instead of his grandmother, Jonathan saw Arlene at his school, five steps away from the door of his classroom. She was looking out into the school ground below filled with students and parents or aunts or siblings. He slowly walked in front of her to get her attention.

“Oh, anak, your teacher will call us in a few minutes, what do you think will your grades be?” Arlene smiled at him.

“Shouldn’t it be Lola?” he asked.

\“Shouldn’t your Lola what?”

“Get my report card. Attend the PTA meeting,” he said innocently, looking down at his shoes.

Arlene stuttered as she tried to answer Jonathan’s question. “Well, I’m here now, and your Lola is taking care of -”

“Hidalgo?” The old but gentle face of Jonathan’s homeroom adviser surfaced from the classroom door and called out to him. Both mother and son followed the teacher to her desk and sat on the two armchairs placed in front of it. She sifted through a stack of report cards placed in clear packets and looked for Jonathan’s name. “Hi, I’m Mrs. Santos, his homeroom adviser and Chemistry teacher. Are you his aunt or his neighbor?”

Arlene shook her head. “No, no, I’m his mother, Arlene Hidalgo.” She reached out and they shook hands. 

“Oh dear, I’m so sorry! It’s usually his grandmother who comes, since all the graduating students’ guardians are called to a lot of meetings. I wasn’t aware you’re back, I’m sorry!”

“It’s okay,” Arlene said.

“So, here you go -” Mrs. Santos said as she handed the card to Arlene, “He’s doing all right in class, not excellent - but some of his teachers commend his politeness compared to most of the boys in the class. We still have three grading periods left, he could use a little pushing so he can get a good average by the end of the school year, but -” she pointed at Jonathan’s hair. “Needs a bit of a regular haircut, you don’t want me cutting your sideburn again, don’t you Otan?”

Jonathan smiled sheepishly and said suddenly, “Yes, Ma’am. My lola sends her regards.”

“Thank you, I’d love to see her again soon. I love her biko!”

“I’ll make sure to save you some the next time she makes it, Ma’am.” He smiled at his teacher. Arlene looked at his son and realized that the last time she saw him smile in front of her was when he was six, when she came home from the recruitment agency, right before telling him that she had been accepted as a receptionist in a food company in Dubai.

***

“Ay naku, Arlene, you knew your son was graduating, why did you not ask for a leave much earlier?” Lola Chita was on the phone with Arlene. Jonathan was just outside the house, reading a comic book. Tito Mario was sweeping the front yard. “It wouldn’t hurt for you to get a month’s leave, anak. You need rest!” Her voice was louder than the sound of the walis ting-ting scratching the asphalt flooring of the yard. “I’m sorry Otan,” Tito Mario said as he sat beside Jonathan.

“Sorry for what, Tiyong?”

“That your mother wasn’t able to go to your graduation. Because we needed the money.” He looked down at his left leg. Jonathan looked at it too. It was bluer and sorer than the right one. He shrugged and said, “It’s okay, Tiyong.” He meant it, and he smiled at his uncle.

Lola Chita’s voice became louder. “He’s okay with it, yes, he is not angry. He’s here, do you want to talk to him? JONATHAN!” she called him, and Jonathan slowly stood up and made his way inside the house and into the living room. Lola Chita thrust the phone to his hands.

“Hello, anak?”

To Jonathan, Arlene’s voice sounded like a monotonic buzz that called him once every few months. “Hello po.”

“How are you? I haven’t talked to you in months, I’m imagining how tall you are now!”

“Mabuti naman po.” Jonathan’s generic replies were as bland as they were four years ago when Jonathan realized his mother wasn’t coming home anytime soon.

“I’m sorry, anak, I wasn’t able to go to your graduation. I have too much work here.”

“It’s okay.”

After a few more questions an absent mother would ask and after a few more answers an unfamiliar son would say, Jonathan gave the phone back to his grandmother.

***

“Well, it’s nice meeting you Mrs. Hidalgo, I’ll see you in the future.” Jonathan’s teacher shook Arlene’s hand one last time before calling the next parent and student. The two of them walked out the classroom, with Jonathan slinging his backpack in one arm.

“Are you going straight home, Jonathan?” she asked. He nodded as he looked down on the asphalt floorings of the building. Twenty steps from the classroom to the stairs, twenty six steps down the staircase, forty six steps to the nearest gate out and thirty eight more to reach the tricycle terminal that would lead him home. “Well, we might as well go home together. Do you want to eat out for lunch?” He immediately shook his head. Arlene, on the other hand, said nothing more as she copied his steps and walked beside him as they made their way out the school.

***

It was the first day of first grade, and Jonathan was outside their house, waiting for someone to bring him to school. His hair was newly-trimmed, his shoes polished, and his uniform white. Parents and children passed by their house - little hands like his clasped on to huge ones, pulling them into the direction of the school.

“Oh, Otan, apo, what are you still doing here? Where is Ella’s mother?” Lola Chita opened the door of the house carrying a bundle of clothes that she was going to wash.

“Isn’t Mama going to bring me?” he asked.

“She left this morning, remember? She said goodbye to you before she left.” His grandmother opened the faucet and put the basin under the flowing water.

Jonathan thought it had been a dream. It was still dark outside, he was still sleepy, and someone was shaking him gently. He slowly opened his eyes and the blurry image of a woman was looking right back at him. “Bye anak, take care. I’ll come home soon, alright?” she kissed his forehead and then his cheeks.

“You’ll be back for my school?” he asked groggily.

“Mama will be back, okay? Go back to sleep.” She kissed his forehead again, and left. Jonathan fell back to sleep almost instantly.

“She’s not going to bring me to school?” he asked Lola Chita again.

“No child, I’m sorry. Oh, there’s Cynthia!” she looked up at the gate as she dumped the dirty clothes on the huge basin.

“Otan, let’s go?” Ella’s mother, a very pregnant woman with short hair, was holding Ella with her right hand and her other son’s shoulder with the other. They were all standing by the gate. Lola Chita opened the gate for them.

Jonathan nodded, kissed his grandmother’s hands, went out the gate, and started walking beside Ella, her mother, and her brother as they walked to school. He followed the sight of parents holding the hands of children like him. Unlike them, all he held were the straps of the new backpack bought from Divisoria by Lola Chita. The sun was going up, and it hurt his eyes to look at the cloudless sky. So instead he looked down, down at his tiny Mickey Mouse shoes and watched them get dustier with each step.

Jonathan’s blurry, unclear dream on the morning of the first day of school was the last memory he had of his mother. It was also the day he first started counting his steps, and in the next nine years, he was all alone.

***

“Mama and I saw your mother yesterday at the market,” Ella told Jonathan as they parked their bikes in a curb to buy something to drink. Jonathan chained his bike to the post while Ella locked her bike’s pedals. It was the Sunday afternoon before the PTA meeting in school. “Yeah, she does that now too, I guess.”

“Your mother was a receptionist right? Where was that again?”

“Dubai.” Jonathan told her. They brought out their spare coins and bought soda in the sari-sari store near the plaza.

“Didn’t recognize her until Mama pointed her to me. She was gone a long time,” Ella said.

 “How’s your Kuya Erik and his wife?” he then asked.

“They’re both doing fine, Ate Lyn’s in the hospital right now. Her pregnancy’s complicated but hopefully the baby would be healthy. Lots of expenses though.” Her cheerful tone slightly went down. Jonathan frowned. “Yeah, that sucks.” He remembered a few years ago, when Tito Mario was arguing with his mother on the telephone:

“Arlene, I’m okay, I still have some money left from my separation fee, you don’t have to extend your contract again, I can find a job here – Yes, I know it’s hard  to look for one but there’s no need to – Agh! Nay!” he thrusted the telephone into Lola Chita’s hands, who was just behind him. “You talk to your daughter!”

Tito Mario stormed out of the house, while the 11-year old Jonathan sprinted to follow his uncle. “I don’t want to deprive you of your mother just because of my stupid leg, Otan,” he told him as they walk around their usual route.

Ella finished the remainder of her softdrink. “Is your mother going back to Dubai after fixing your uncle’s, uhh, papers, that kind of stuff?” she asked. Jonathan shrugged. They were sitting on the curb beside their bikes, drinking their soft drinks. “She most probably would. I mean, she’s the only one with the job,” he finally said.

“Yeah, probably, I mean even if your mother really wanted to-”

Jonathan suddenly pointed to the unpainted building with a green roof. “Hey, do you see that really tall building, the one with four floors?”

Ella nodded.

“Tiyong used to have a friend who lived there, and whenever we passed by that house that guy would give me iced candy for free.” He smiled at the memory, glad that he finally remembered something that made him forget the previous recollection, even for a while.

“But you used to pass by that house everyday, right?”

Jonathan grinned and looked at Ella. “Exactly.” Tito Mario would always make Jonathan finish his iced candy before they reach the house so that Lola Chita would not be angry at both of them.

“Your uncle was really nice,” she told him. He laughed as they finished the last of their soft drinks and started playing with the empty plastic bag. “Yeah, he was.”

“Do you want to pass by it now?” she asked. He stopped passing by the house after Tito Mario’s leg was amputated and never looked at its green doors since. He looked at the building, remembering how excited he got every time they came near the place, and thinking how it had never changed ever since the day he saw it.

“Sure.”

***

Jonathan hopped off from behind the tricycle driver, while Arlene went out from its cab. Before Arlene could bring out money from her wallet, he immediately handed the driver his fare and started walking ahead of her. As Jonathan started to walk, he felt drops of rain on his head. He was just reaching for his umbrella when his mother walked to him and opened her own umbrella.

“Here, let’s share,” she smiled at him as he took his twelfth step. He looked at her and continued walking. Arlene tried to strike up a conversation. It was the first time in weeks that they found themselves alone together, and that other time was almost a week after she came home, when they were in the kitchen and Jonathan was washing the dishes. Whenever they ate out, they were always with Lola Chita, and she was the one who did the talking.

Jonathan, on the other hand, focused on counting his steps.

“Do you know this barangay used to be just one lot owned by a single family?” she told him. “I think your lola wasn’t even born yet when her family moved here. My grandfather was one of the first people who were able to buy off a piece when they needed to sell the land.” Jonathan nodded. Thirty-fourth step.

“When you were younger,” she continued, and Jonathan suddenly looked up at her. “There were fewer houses. Do you know Mang Boy?” she then asked. Jonathan nodded again. Forty-fourth step. “He used to own the biggest bakery, and it was just right there -” she pointed to where a hardware store was standing. “Sadly his family lost their business in a fire. I think you were just four years old then.”

“And there,” she pointed at the patis factory. “that used to be-”

“An empty lot?” Jonathan said as he took his sixty seventh step. Arlene stopped, and smiled. “Yes. How did you know?” she asked him, even if she knew the answer.

“Tiyong told me you used to play there when you were younger.” Jonathan looked at the factory’s doors and felt that he had known it all his life, even though he had never set a foot in the place.

“Yeah, we did. Whenever your lola was angry, Mario and I hid there.” Arlene looked at the factory, and then back at her son, who was smiling. “I was always the first one to get caught.”

“He told me that too,” Jonathan said, and a grin was plastered on his face, as if someone had told him an inside joke and he couldn’t tell other people about it.

She then started to tell him stories of the games they played in the lot (“Oh, we used to play with makahiya! First one who got to the other side of the lot without the leaves closing on their hands wins!”), the other kids they played with (“I think three of them are still living here. Why have I not seen them?”), and how Tito Mario used to hide her slippers so she would not be able to leave the lot (“I would cry until the neighbors told your lola, and she would use my slippers to hit your uncle in the butt!”)

It usually took two hundred and fifty steps for Jonathan to get home in the two-floor house with the rusting gates. Two hundred and fifty steps spent looking at the dusty asphalt floor when the sun is up or the muddy roads during wet season. As they turned around the third corner, just as Arlene was telling him that there used to be an albularya living in the little house made of rotting plywood a street away from their house - the same one Tito Mario first went to when his left foot started to feel numb - at what was supposed to be his one hundred and fifty fourth step, Jonathan lost count. He was looking at the rugged horizon of the streets, at the tangled electrical wirings, and at the raindrops hitting his mother’s umbrella, trickling their way from the yellow fabric and falling in front of him, one by one.

It was the first time Jonathan witnessed such a sight, and it was beautiful.