One by one, they leave marks
Beautified by the beats of drum rolls
Coloured by the chants of tribesmen, eager.
Splashes, moisture grows, with my sob
Dews by finger strokes on leaves revealed an image
Not of a face, but of two hands unclenching.
By the parachute of rain, with the parade of horse clouds.
Two hands set apart, bidding farewell.
***
On the middle of the road, over the white fading parallel lines of the pedestrian, one of the things I hate in my life happened again. The sudden single break of the jeepney going to SM got my hair untidy, and I, of course, have to brush it up.
It wasn't a good break, not for the driver either. The old-looking wiper brushes the wind shield, yet leaves it undried, just lines of scratches mocking the passengers. The road ahead wasn't even a vivid one, pounds of rain stung the hard muscles of the Oblation, the man who never showed a bright face, or a gloomy one, but all he did was to offer himself to the heavens.
Back to the bad break. It wasn't just the old-looking wiper that impeded the take off, but also its colleague, the elderly driver in his sixties, who seemed to need his glasses to see the blurry image of the avenue. Doesn't he even have a retirement plan on his own? He's getting older and older, and still, he keeps on inhaling the smog. He chooses to forever be a jeepney driver; But who cares for he must have good wives, and that is probably his edge to other guys out there. Loving your job would lead you to happiness. So true.
However, funny thing it is to see something like this: a hand reaching out saying, "Bayad po, ma, senior," and giving out the 6-peso coins, while in turn, shaky wrinkled arms take them, and answer back, "Nasa Maynila ho kayo. Oh, Bakit 6 lang ito?!" I now doubt if change is really a permanent thing.
I nearly fell off with that hard break with nothing to grasp on. The rails on the jeepney's roof were no-no's to me. I could remember my childhood days when my dad told me not to hold at something in public places (knobs, rails, rods, etc) for I might catch something I would forever regret. Well, see, I learned, but that didn't bring me good. I tried to touch it a little, only with one finger with a face of disgust. But a single finger wouldn't save you, and with that break, I almost toppled down.
What's with that break? I thought it was because of the unclear road ahead that made the driver follow safety precautions. I thought it was because of the disastrous Low Pressure Area seen miles away from Manila. I could never imagine how little rains before, those ITCZ-things, LPA's, and cold fronts, cause deep floods, shipwrecks, losses, and even deaths nowadays. The little things before are now regarded as big ones. Well, that's global warming, as Al Gore explained in an hour of film viewing during our Bio 1 class. By the way, I love how he stepped on that stretching device used on threatical plays to show the increasing levels of carbon dioxide over time.
The pourdown of rain hasn't stopped, there were drops of water leaking through the transparent window covering and wetting the back of my Penshoppe shirt. I inched my body forward to keep it from getting wet, although my bag had already enjoyed the splashes of the rain. A smile relieved me of thinking about the hectic days coming in when a little girl handed the 100-peso bill to the driver, uttering in her impish voice: "Bayad daw po." That girl might probably be 4 years old, a Cha-cha-look-alike, seated beside her youthful mother still fresh from her shell. I wonder how the driver felt when her tiny fingers touched the rigged palm of his to hand in the fare.
There was indeed something in the face of the child that made me smile, that made me put out a heartfelt grin. But what faded it were two things, things that made me raise questions.
"O, eto sukli sa 100, oh," the driver said holding out bills of 20, and coins of 5.
Nobody responded, all but the young girl were staring out and counting the droplets of rain. Once again, it was the child who reached out planning in her mind to take those bills and coins, and fit them inside her clenched fist.
Just as she touched the driver's hand, he angrily said, "Hoy, huwag iyung walang isip, yung may isip!" Whatever it meant to the passengers, her mother instead took the change and handed it to the other.
A minute of silence followed, an eerie one, until... "Para ho sa tabi."... somebody urged the jeepeney to stop. It was the child's mother. But what changed my good impression on the mother because of how I perceived the child was how she acted, so rubblishly insane. Instead of carrying the feet tall child down the jeepeney, she did something REALLY different. She, in herself, walked to the jeep's door, and went down. In the knowledge of the driver, the two were already outside and the jeepney made a slight move. But the lady shouted furiously, "Wait lang po!" And the jeepeney made a break, halted. The girl, unconscious of her surroundings who cannot make a cry, was left there on the seat with a blank face, while her mother made all the way down, keeping her poise, and her body shape.
With that, I just can't keep myself from saying thanks to the office worker on trousers and sleeves who held the girl and guided her as she followed her mom out of the vehicle.
"Tignan mo 'to. May isip nga pero hindi gumagana!" That was all the driver had said.
Oh, where am I again? Those scenes were highly noticeable ones -- little but meaningful. Okay, let's have a roll down... the rain, the jeepney, the Biology class... oh yeah, it's about the biggest break midst the road. Well, good thing there weren't any other cars passing by. Points of rain drops bombarded the windshield, and the driver simply stopped the motion of the wiper for it was entirely useless, it just makes everything more vague. I found myself regaining my composure, sweeping back my hair to a tidy image, and holding on the jeepney's rails.
I took a deep breath, and made a smile -- not the same heartfelt smile but a sarcastic one -- followed by a sigh -- not of relief, but a sigh of annoyance. We stopped with a strong break ending everything, not because of the blurry road, not because of the blurry eyes of the driver, and I just realized, it was all because of the 'para' of the stressful-looking UP stude, clumsily holding a Trigonometry notebook that she reviewed as she made her way to her next class.
And she got off the jeepney, whispering to herself, but heard by others, "Ang layo na ng AS, lampas na ko. Haaay."
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