This is how biko-biko is played. Get a stick and draw lines on the ground. The lines forming a house with rooms. Then, an agreement on the ways and pathways in entering and leaving the house. So you’d know where to go up or down, toss a stone, your pamato, inside the lines of the house. Where your pamato touches down, that’s where your room is.
Your pamato must be smooth. Must be the right size on your palm, must weigh just so, so when you cast it, it won’t hurtle off anywhere, it’d land exactly where you’d want it to be. It’s not easy to find this kind of stone.
When you do find it, take special care of it. Before slipping it into your pocket, give it a whisper, so it’d get hold of luck and follow whatever it is you want it to do. When it’s already right in your pocket, touch it once in a while so it won’t get lonely. This stone would then become your pamato.
The seafarer
A seafarer keeps a piece of steel, sometimes a large piece of rock, in the boat. Doesn’t matter what shape it is, the rock, as long as it is of the right size and weight. Docking, the seafarer drops the rock into the water, anchoring the boat from being carried away by the current and the waves. To speed up the boat, the seafarer pulls up the rock right before setting out to sea. But this, of course, has got nothing to do at all with the game biko-biko or with traveling by boat. You see, a story can always begin on land and end up, before you know it, in heaven.
The Mal-am in Dueñas
The town called Dueñas is known in Iloilo as the hometown of Tenyente Gimo, the famous ungo in all ka-Illonggohan. I was born in Dueñas and I also grew up there. Now, don’t you start thinking I’m an ungo, all right, not everyone is ungo in Parian or Naga, those places where the powerful live here in Sugbo.
In Dueñas, the old people are called mal-am. When I was growing up, there was Mal-am Tikyo, also Mal-am Tonyang. Now that I’m about sixty, in Dueñas I would be called Mal-am Milay. “Masakit ya akon tuhod. Mal-am dun,” is what one would say in Kinaray-a. “Sakit akong tuhod. Lagas na gyud,” is how we’d say it in Binisaya in Dueñas. In other words, “My knees hurt. Really old now.”
Mal-am Silay was our neighbor. We called her Ma-am Silay as though we had a lisp. She was not an ungo, uy, but we children always thought she looked like one. Her skin was so wrinkled, like the tobacco leaves after they’ve been dried out under the sun. She had no teeth, her cheeks were hollow, the bones in her elbows and knees poked out. She was also very thin, very bent, barely able to stand, and hardly able to walk. On top of that, she was also blind. The mere sight of her sometimes would give Idik and Butsoy the creeps, they’d run away just seeing her coming.
Love
Every day, Mal-am Silay would come down her bamboo steps and ever so very slowly make her way to the well by the spring to bathe. Her adolescent granddaughters would walk with her. Daday would be a step ahead, carrying the hungot, the coconut shell bowl holding the soap, pumice, and grated coconut for the mal-am’s long gray hair. Behind her, Talya would be bracing the poor old blind walking. The three of them would slog one step at a time through the rocky footpath to the spring.
Along the way, they often passed by us playing biko-biko. We’d be sweating. Smelling rancid, bahong adlaw, after a day in the hot sun. Unbathed. The noontime earth searing the soles of our bare feet. We didn’t have any footwear. There weren’t any of those rubber slippers back then. Mal-am Silay was also barefoot. The callus on the soles of our feet were so thick the heat didn’t bother us at all while we played, springing and skipping about. Daday and Talya’s wooden slippers clunked along the rocky path. Caring, Melinda, and I would then stop playing to stand aside and gape at the slowest procession we’ve ever known. Sometimes, I would follow the three of them to the well to watch the mal-am bathe.
At the open well, Talya would draw up a bucketful of water and gently pour it over her grandmother. Daday would rub the pumice on her back, soap her arms and legs, her wilted breasts. Both of them carefully washing the old woman’s gray hair with milk from the grated coconut pounded with lemon leaves. Water would cascade down and shimmer on her shriveled skin. Then, from the encircling trees, a cool wind would breathe on the mal-am’s naked body. Ay, it made my hair stand on end. Talya would then knot the mal-am’s wraparound. Daday, too. After washing her hair with milk, they would comb down the dried shredded coconut from her hair. Her hair would shine and smell of lemon, and would be let down for the sun and wind.
The three of them would walk again, ever so slowly, heading home. All I could do was sniff my snot and excitedly run ahead of them, understanding nothing. My eyes full of what I had just seen, I’d burst out laughing—a laughter reaching the tips of all the fronds of the coconut trees. But I had no idea what it was that made me happy. I couldn’t say anything because I knew nothing. In those days, no one could have guessed how many sacks of rice I would have yet to eat, and what pains, fears, hunger, losses I would have yet to come through before I could know what love is, and finally learn how to say the word.
Departure
One day, we left Dueñas. We packed away all our things—mat, pillows, cauldron and clay pot, plates and ladle, some of our clothes—Nanay, Tatay, my three siblings, and I. We got on a bus, taking with us everything we packed. We boarded a ship, and for days were on the sea.
Nanay cried, and my siblings. Our relatives, too, cried when we left. But I didn’t cry, see. Even if I wouldn’t get to play biko-biko anymore with Caring and Melinda. Botsoy and Idik who were champions in siyatom and tatsi. Even if I wouldn’t get to go to the well by the spring anymore, with Mal-am Silay, Daday, and Talya in their daily procession to the bathing place.
Really, I didn’t cry. I told myself, Ah, I’d come back soon. And when I did, they would still be there.
Por vida, that was so long ago, uy. And I wasn’t able to return after all.
Pamato
Across Siquijor, in the islands of the Kabisay-an, and farther still, at the smoky peak of Kanlaon, then close to Parian, and even past Naga. I reached Iligan, land of the Muslim. For years I took shelter under the Talinis, beside the waves of sugarcane at the foot of Cuernos. There were many houses I walked up into and walked down away from. Even though I was born and raised there, Dueñas, after some time, became one of the many that I turned my back on. Reminiscing on those I have loved, left, and never seen again, I finally understood love.
In my memory, the clunking of Talya and Daday’s wooden slippers is still audibly clear. And the soles of the old blind lagging and dragging on the bare ground in her daily pilgrimage to the well. I can still hear in my memory the very sound of flowing water drawn up from the deep well, the rustling wind from the groves, our loud and hearty laughing as children playing by the wayside—perduring and ageless in my memory.
Ay, one shouldn’t keep returning to the days past. Mal-am Silay has long turned into ash. The old language, now scraped away by the years from my tongue.
But whichever shore I may have found myself on, whatever I may have crossed over, climbed on, or went down through, even though those I have left behind are long gone, would I ever find the pamato—the one that I have been safekeeping in my mind, smooth, with its right weight, good enough as needed, landing where I wanted it to be, following its purpose, fighting off the waves and the currents, unfailing in its meaning?
