Patron Saints of Nothing: Chapters 31–42

I killed time by copying and pasting those captions from GISING NA PH!’s posts into Google Translate. Most came out as garbled nonsense, but some of it made sense.

A wave of guilt washes over me as I yet again think about never writing him back, about how even now I’m failing to find any tangible way to bring his memory justice.

The word "quaint” pops into my mind, replaced a beat later by "forgotten.”

I was looking forward to seeing my kinder uncle, and to his presence serving as a buffer for the weirdness between Tita Chato and Tito Maning.

She nods. "Oasnun. It’s the local dialect of the Bikol language.”

The same couches, coffee table, fans, and boxy TV. The same framed, sun-bleached photos on the walls. The same dusty Santo Niño figure presiding over it all from atop a bookshelf in the corner.

I feel a flush of warmth. Pride, maybe. My own inaugural participation, however slight, in the balikbayan ritual.

I help myself to a lot of rice and just enough of everything else so that I don’t seem like a snobbish American, but I end up enjoying most of the dishes, especially the Bicol Express.

I remember the soft feel of my feet sinking into the muck, and the earth sour scent of stagnant water.

"Kuya Jun had a way of making people pay attention, of making them realize that others existed outside of themselves and getting them to care. But I don’t...and I failed him. I stayed quiet whenever Tatay yelled. I left the room whenever they argued. I never asked Nanay to let him live with us again. I never even protested when they told us there would be no novenas, no vigil, no lamay, no funeral.”

“I stopped writing him because I got a girlfriend,” I say, admitting it for the first time. And it sounds as trite as I knew it would.

As Tita Chato and Tita Ines rush to my side, I look up and see the reason for my release: At the end of Lola’s arm, Tito Maning is bent and writhing in pain as she pinches and twists his earlobe between her thumb and forefinger.

It’s warm inside the car, so I roll down the window and let the wind rush through my hair as we careen down the province roads.

Eventually, we come to a stop in front of an enormous stone cathedral illuminated with recessed lighting that looks like it’s been plopped down in the middle of the block from another century, some hybrid of Spanish and Roman architectures.

Maybe four or five stories high, it’s all columns and balustrades and arcades, statues of saints and stained-glass windows.

In the rear to the left there’s a bell tower with a dome topped by a white cross, while in the rear to the right is a peaked spire, stone stained dark with soot.

“Wait here," Grace says. “I’ll check the rectory.”

He tries making small talk, but I’m not here for niceties.

He’s silent for a long, long time. So long that I start to think it didn’t work, that this information, this story, will not serve as the catalyst I hoped it would, will not inject him with the courage to stand up to his big brother.

I search for an excuse on Jun’s behalf, desperate to justify, to exonerate.

A bird flits across the rafters to a nest high in the corner.

But Tito Maning stands on the porch with his arms crossed and a smug look on his face, probably because he knows he’s been vindicated by what Tito Danilo told us.

They seemed, in the view of the foolish, to be dead; and their passing away was thought an affliction and their going forth from us, utter destruction.

For if before men, indeed, they be punished, yet is their hope full of immortality; chastised a little, they shall be greatly blessed, because God tried them and found them worthy of Himself.

They deliver good-byes in Tagalog and end with a "We love you, Kuya” that leads to a fresh bout of tears all around.

I had to admit when I did not know. But his challenges were never out of malice. He was not trying to disprove my faith, but to understand it.

She has to pause over and over again when her words give way to cries and wails that rend my heart.

Our sadness swells one more time before finally subsiding.

It’s easier to keep holding her right now if he’s nothing but an abstraction in my mind.

Anyway, assuming this is all real and you were canonized someday, what would you want to be able to help people with?

I think of all that I faced down in the last few days and come out with it. "I'm going to defer my enrollment at U of M.”

He faces forward, eyebrows still furrowed. "Why?”

“Fine,” I concede. “It’s not the only reason.”

At first, Dad seems shocked at the sheer volume of it all because I don't think I’ve ever spoken so much to him at one time in my entire life.

My family, myself, this world—all of us are flawed. But flawed doesn’t mean hopeless. It doesn’t mean forsaken.