Odrei's Disarming

    A girl’s mind is baffling.  A teenager girl’s mind is impossible.

    On a drive to UP for our hear-mass-then-food-trip Sunday routine, my temper-handling mechanism has its hands full.  The sunlight lie quietly on every leaf, pebble, and edifice.  The birds, which are invisible to my absorbed mind during weekdays, suddenly become apples of my eyes as they fly conspicuously low and slowly.  The wind slithers on my cheeks as I fix the arm of the speedometer at a nonchalant 40 KPH.  The acrid smell of grating rubber on asphalt pervertedly indulges my olfactory sense.  The spell of the Sabbath has arrived, making everything a vessel for sobriety, save for my stirring temper.      

    Odrei decides to be mute again.  It’s the inanimate passenger seat cradling her that does the speaking with its occasional squeaks.  Her silence is the silence from hell.  Utterly irritating, the hush caresses the death instinct slumbering in my unconscious pulling it to wakefulness.  She’s got the pose of apathy perfected.  Her feet are tuck under her thighs, arms are crossed, cheek is turned towards the passing world outside, and her poker face is accented by smoked glasses.  No wonder people found Nietzsche obnoxious during his vow of silence.      

   

    Time is relative.  It is a twenty-minute drive from Morato to UP, but it feels like forever.  Manalac bellows over the radio, Kasalanan bang humingi ako sa langit ng isang himala.  It will take a miracle now for her to talk. 

   

    Traffic lights change from red to green.  Cat’s eyes are asleep, but not the sun, which is getting more labile by the minute.  Even the sun is irked by Odrei’s stoicism.  The nearest star now starts to beat down on creation.  The earth’s temperature rises together with my temper.

   

    My car’s velocity threads along the passing of time, which seem to be in super slow motion because of the deafening silence.  The wheels continue to turn with valor on the now-searing asphalt.  The engine grinds still but with vendetta in every pump. 

   

    This is the calm after the storm, which is a silly argument about a fucking pizza.
An hour ago, while waiting for her to finish her rituals in front of the dresser, I lay slouched on her couch, tinkering her mobile phone.   “Honey, there was this student of mine who brought me pizza yesterday.  Isn’t that sweet?”
    “Was she pretty?”
    “Not really. She was hot though.”
    “Hmp.  Maybe she was flirting with you.”
    “Possibly.”
    “And you accepted the pizza?”
    “Of course I did. “
    “But why, if you knew she was flirting.”
    “It’s presumptuous to think that way.  Maybe she simply felt like giving her prof         pizza.”

   

    Silence. 

   

    Summer was around the corner and so the antiquated electric fan, with its cobwebs and all, was most valuable among the few appliances in the room.  It even doubles as a sound effects machine with its dreary mechanical hum interrupted by snarls every time it jerks its head like en epileptic. 
    I was anxious to take off to UP and chomp on its best delicacy, the isaw.  Apparently, Odrei’s mind was on a different place and time.
    “She was flirting.  You know that.”
    “But honey, I had to be grateful.  Besides, I was fucking famished.  Ten more               minutes and I’ll be famished again.  Can you hurry up a bit honey?”
    “But you shouldn’t have accepted the pizza!”
    “Gosh.  Are we having this argument right now?  Forget about it, come on let’s         go.”
    “But you’re not listening.”

 

    I gazed through the window.  A gay ten-year-old boy was playing taguan with two lesbians in their puberty.  Gayness exuded from their faces.   Ella ella eh eh, hollers the radio from the sari-sari store.   

    “Honey, who was the chick who sang this song?  It’s a pretty good song.”

 

    One minute.  Two minutes.

 

    “Honey?”

 

    “Maybe you like her that’s why you accepted the pizza.”
My ears felt hot.  The singer’s serenading over the radio couldn’t prevent what happened next.

 

    I stood up and barked.  “Where the hell did you get that idea?  Will you please be reasonable!  Can’t you understand?  It was a platonic gesture from a student!  Do you want me to be rude to people?  Up until now you’re still so immature!  I don’t care if you’re only 19.  You’ve got to understand things!  Fuck.”

    The electric fan rumbled apathetically.  The kids played on.  The DJ jabbered.  I barked on.  “Do you really think it was wrong for me to eat the fucking pizza?     Huh?  Answer me?”   

    She sat motionless facing her dresser.  I heard a sob, a tiny silent sob. 
“No.”  Then she decided to be mute.

 

    What she gave me next was more torturous.  Her silence.

    As we now pass by the oblation, her posture is unnerved, her silence, unbroken.  Over the radio croons the songstress again.  You had my heart.  We’ll never be worlds apart.  I was itching to ask her the name of the artist, but kept the query to my self.

    I’m wondering when she would speak.  My sanity is in the brink of disintegration.   

    Acacia trees loom over us casting moving shadows over the windshield.From a distance, green turns to yellow, then to red.   My foot gently steps on the break pedal.  On a full stop, the silence is magnified to an unbearable level.       

    You can come into my arms.  It’s okay don’t be alarmed. Come into me.
“Who the fuck is this chick?” I kept thinking to my self.
Then like a ghost’s whisper, a voice brushes over my ear.

 

    “Huh?” I turn my head to her in confusion.
    “Rihanna.  Her name is Rihanna.”

    I stared at her, agape.  My mind froze in profound confusion and disbelief.She takes off her smoked glasses.  Red turns to green.  A car burns rubber pass us.  Brooooom!   

    Her gaze disarms me.  “Baby, we’ll be late for mass.” 
I shake my head slowly once.  Then I nod a thousand times.   

    “Okay honey.  Okay.”  My foot on the gas pedal.

Comments

[AnGe LiQuE]

God, I would LOVE to be at the backseat with chicharon in hand. Sloooowlly... cracckklling... HAHAHAHAH!!!

aish, yknow im kiddin'... torturous, ainnit? I did the world good when I decided to stay quasi-single whilst in my teenage years. *nods*

...missed you, dude!

[Joanne]

i was captured by the title so i read on. i envy you. i haven't written a freaking thing for the longest time. is it lack of inspiration, i wonder. but it could not be for it seems that everyday something miraculous just happens--benjo giving me a good night hug without having to ask for it; papa and mama allowing me to go to cebu with sieg alone (finally!); sieg reading my mind that, on a week of nothing but normal food, i wanted a restaurant which put lemon in my water. surely these all could have been something to write about, right? so why not. i wonder if i still have it.
that's why i envy you. i wish i could still--or muster up the courage to--write :(