It’s 11 ‘o clock in a quiet night in barangay Mabato at Ayungon town in Negros Oriental. Everyone is in the middle of their sleep after a busy day of farming. They are going back and fourth from our place – a known agricultural area in the province – to the city proper to sell various crops and other agri-products they have cultivated for months. But the silence is then disturbed by two vans arriving in our front gate.
That time, I cannot sleep and I hear the trailing sound the vehicles have produced as it is approaching our house.
Men armed with guns get out of the vans. They knock on our door and as my mother open it, they immediately enter and start searching within our home premises without permission.
They are actually looking for my father, the pillar of our home, who works even before the roosters crow until the scorching heat of the sun dispersed into the farmlands from 10 am up to 3 pm in the afternoon so he can feed us, a family of 12 members – him; my mother, a current “labandera” for a wealthy businessman in our barangay; and the rest, 10 siblings of six young girls and four boys whose age ranges from 2-14 years old with me being the eldest at 14.
Afterwards, my father is awaken by the commotion between my mom and the officers. He stands and wake everybody up, and tell us to go outside because he will handle this one. I turned back to him and with my eyes, I saw him smiling.
Tension shrouded the meanwhile quiet place as shouts are pounding the wall. At that moment, my nerves are crippling under my skin and my heartbeat gets faster. Sweat begins to drip inside our thinly-ventilated house: built from scrap woods and low quality cement we bought from a hardware store, pierced by rusted nails and anything that can make it intact.
In a blink of an eye, everything went as quick as the gunshots that we heard. The authority cannot stop us as we ran and rushed back to our home. In that little room, we witness witnessed my “Papa” bathing in his own blood.
Papa succumbed to the gunshots drilled in his now ice-cold lifeless body. Minutes passed away and policemen arrived in the scene. In the middle of their investigation, they found sachets full of white grainy substance inside, right in my father’s pocket.
“Adik! Pusher ‘yang tatay mo!”, they told us. Cries and wails echoed in the abiding turbulent setting.
It is not true. They didn’t know who my father was. He is industrious as he gives his heart in sowing the agricultural lands he farms onto.
“Paano na kami ngayon?”, I told myself as I couldn’t hold back my tears as my Papa is now gone. I’m regretful, I wish that I run to him and embrace him before that evening ends.
“Ba’t humantong sa gan’to?”, I uttered. “Kami ang namatayan pero ba’t kami pa may kasalanan?”, I added as I know that our honor and dignity is drag down by this sudden turn of circumstances we didn’t know at the very first place.
“Sana isa na lamang itong bangungot!”, I shouted as our noble image as a family of 12 with two hardworking guardians will be stained by this nightmare. A nightmare that will haunt us forever.
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