Forgiving Imelda Marcos: A Novel

1

LAST NIGHT WHEN I tried again to speak to you, and all I could hear was the silence at the end of your line, your mother took the phone from you and told me that perhaps I needed to give you some more time.

Because time, I said, is exactly what I’ve plenty of.

She wasn’t irked at my sarcasm. I know it must be frustrating, she said. But considering the circumstances, maybe you should be thankful he doesn’t just hang up, that he’s still listening. Isn’t that what you wanted?

I don’t know that I wanted anything from him, I said. I just want to tell him a good story. Something he could maybe use in his career, or that might make his editors proud. Who knows, he could even make a name for himself.

I heard her laugh. She said, That’s not a few wants.

Your mother is a finer person than I am, in almost all respects. Even her English is much better, and I can detect the slightest tinge of the American in her voice, from having lived there with you for so long. She denies it, of course. She’ll do everything in her power not to become one of those people who leaves the homeland only to come back years later a foreigner. I can only picture what she looks like now. I’ve seen movies, you know, seen those wide green lawns of yours with sprinklers that pop up like mushrooms. I imagine your mother carrying copious bags of groceries from the car. She’s become bigger. Her hair is as white now as the milk that flows so freely in your land. And even if she tries to dye her hair and to jog around the streets every so often, she can’t help herself. You become the landscape you live in, they say.

Why don’t you write to him instead? she said. I’ve always thought of you more as a writer than a speaker.

I told her it would be the same thing, if not worse, since I don’t expect you’d write back. And even if you would, given our distance and the way the postal system works in Manila, it would take weeks before I’d get your letter. The anticipation alone would kill me.

The difference, she said, is that you’d no longer be waiting. Write everything that you want to say to him. And when he’s ready, I’ll make sure all the letters reach him somehow.

I told her I’d think about it.

You know, you were once very eager to hear your father’s stories. I can still remember you as you used to be, with your toes curled up on the footboard, or slumped against me with my lap as your pillow. You were like a little prince, and I, Scheherazade, whose spinning and yarning were aimed at one thing only—to hear you laugh or sigh, so that I could live another day.

Tell me about the giants! you’d say, and I’d say, Not the Titans again, and you’d say, Yes, them, because you couldn’t quite pronounce their names yet, and I’d pretend to hem and haw, so that you’d beg even louder, and your voice calling out to me would be the sweetest thing I’d ever hear.

But now you and I are much older, and it seems you’ve fallen back on that thing most natural to men in our family. We become mute toward those we are contemptuous of, especially if the contempt is so intense it starts to rival what was love.

If I may still lend you a piece of fatherly advice, it’s to not be too proud to accept help when it is readily offered. Even as I write to you, I’m surrounded by things that sustain me. Things, I’m told, that keep my heart going. I have half a mind to unplug these devices, really, but the better half insists on telling you the story first. Or perhaps this half is really the foolish one, for thinking that someday you’ll make good use of it, package it off in some newspaper or shiny magazine with your name on the cover. That someday, when I’m long gone, you might secretly thank me.

But I’ve gotten way ahead of myself.

What I meant to say, son, is that I’m sure you’re perfectly capable of achieving great things by yourself. I’ve watched you grow, you know, spied you off in the distance, until you transformed into the man so unrecognizable to his own father. And that can only be a good thing! What I’m afraid of—and this is what I really meant to say—is that I might have nothing else to leave you or your mother. Not even memories of our time together. Because, however precious they’ve become to me these days, I don’t presume you’ll ever want to recall them. Nor am I asking you to want to recall them. All I ask is that you consider with some openness what I’m about to tell you. And consider my painstaking recollection in these letters not so much a favor on my part. Rather, when the time comes, I hope that your reading them will be an act of kindness for someone who doesn’t exactly deserve it.

Where shall I begin?

I guess I’ll start my story by addressing what I imagine some of your readers might think. It’s particularly important in the beginning to establish a connection, you know, and to set up context. Why, they might ask, should they care about what happened a long time ago in this tiny island nation in the Pacific? And why should they believe in your father—a poor, bumbling, bald high school dropout? Even here, people often think that just because I don’t tend to speak my mind, I don’t have one at all. And because I’ve never finished school I can never finish anything worth telling about. I only hope for our sakes that they’re wrong.

For a long time, it used to be that one couldn’t speak about my country without conjuring up the Second World War: the Battle of Manila, the Bataan Death March, and, of course, General Douglas I Shall Return MacArthur. Many forget we were once an American colony—your colony—but you’ll never come across this term in history books there, with all their talk of anti-imperialism and being the Land of the Free. Yes, America is a liberator. But often it’s also a liberator from the problems it created in the first place. That is the truth, plain and simple.

Now, before you get offended, allow me to just say that, as with any country, America is a type of synecdoche. It is a few individuals who take it upon themselves to stand in for the views of everybody, sometimes accurately, but usually inaccurately. So when I say America, what I really mean to say is your government, at a given time, and its sympathizers. I have to belabor this point because we in the Philippines, in the last decades, have also acquired ourselves a few synecdoches.

I’m talking of course about the late dictator Ferdinand Marcos—or, maybe even more famously, his wife, Imelda: the Lady of the Thousand Shoes. If you’ve heard only a little about them, don’t be dismayed. Even some people here these days don’t remember, or choose to remember differently. Perhaps it is a testament to the indomitable will of the human spirit to move on. Dishes have to be washed; clothes to be laundered; babies to be fed and diapered. While tyrants, across the hill and yonder, rise and fall. Or perhaps it is the simple tendency of humans to wax nostalgic, to see only what they want to see of the past. In this regard, I believe, our tiny nation is not much different from yours, or any other. What has happened here could happen there and anywhere else.

To give you one idea of the Marcoses, it might be useful to invoke the memory of a particular British rock band in the sixties. Perhaps you already know this story, but it’s from about a decade or so before you were born. While on a tour of the country, the Beatles were requested for an audience with Mrs. Marcos—maybe it was to have lunch with her, or to sing or party at the palace. See, singing was one of Imelda’s great passions in life; requesting, however, was not. The Beatles, who failed to show up to the party, soon learned this lesson. Some said it was just a misunderstanding, that they never got the invitation. In any case, the security assigned to them suddenly vanished. Angry mobs, whether deployed by Imelda or simply in awe and fear of her, chased the Beatles down as they tried to depart from the airport.

There is a video out there of the four of them talking about their experience, describing how the airport escalator mysteriously stopped working as they were kicked, booed, and pelted from below. I’m tempted to laugh every time I watch this interview. I tell myself that even a TV show can’t invent such insanity. But then I become quiet and turn very, very sullen. Because I realize that the incident also stands in for how I sometimes think and feel about this country.

Forgive me the interruption. I believe we were touching upon the great snubbing of Imelda Marcos, when the nurse, who I didn’t hear come inside my room, intruded on my writing. Milo always refers to me as sir, no matter how many times I remind him not to. I’ve told him I am neither his boss nor his patron. I don’t pay a single centavo to this care home. And last I checked, we haven’t started the practice of knighting anyone yet in the Philippines. Not that I would ever qualify.

Sir, he said, we have to be careful with our heart.

Careful with our heart—that’s exactly how he put it! I know he’s just trying to be polite, using this quaint third-person-plural construction in Tagalog. But sometimes I’d like very much to think that he speaks to me in metaphors. I’d like to think he’s imagining that he and I are somehow fused together. So if I get thirsty or hungry, I could just tug my end of the artery and get his attention right away.

But Milo is straight as a spanner wrench.

Once, I asked if he drank a lot of malted milk while growing up. I was so sure he’d heard this tease many times as a kid. And maybe I regretted asking. Milo didn’t get my meaning. I’m sorry, sir, can you repeat the question? I wondered if he was feigning ignorance—people who’ve been bullied, you know, usually acquire a unique set of armor. I told him he happened to share a name with that imported brand of powdered drink—whose commercials, by the way, always feature some athletic kid, when in truth you’d likely get a fat one after feeding him all that malt. Then Milo said to me, I’ve actually never had it, sir. I’ll have to go try it out for myself. See if it’s any good.

He’s gone now, my poor conjoined twin. He’s left the room. But he’s threatened to come back and check on me again if I continue to write rather furiously. So I won’t. I promised him, upon our heart, I’d be gentler.

Speaking of promises, I told you I haven’t forgotten why I’m writing this. I do have a good story to tell you, something I’ve never told anyone before. It has kept me awake in the past and has especially robbed me of sleep these last couple of days. Between the two of us, I have my own motives for coming out with it only now. But if your editors ask—and if they’re good at their jobs, they should—you can always tell them, Isn’t it enough for a father, any father, to want to help his child succeed?

Now, I don’t know how much your mother has told you about the day you left for the United States. I won’t be surprised if she hasn’t told you much at all, since it was a painful time for both of us, as it would have been for you, too, I imagine, had you been old enough to understand. I don’t mean to dwell on this, since it’s not the focus of my story. But it is part of a bigger story. And the best way to fit one story among other stories is, I think, always wise to consider.

A long, long time ago, your mother and I worked for a wealthy couple in Manila. I was the family driver and your mother was the nanny. The couple were young and well-liked among their circles. They lived in a bungalow on a street lined with many fig trees. There were five children; the youngest was just a toddler, and taking care of her was your mother’s primary responsibility. The wife helped out, too. She mostly stayed at home and she enjoyed gardening during her spare time. The husband, on the other hand, was usually away at work. He was, shall we say, a very important person, and he surely relished it. He had big ideas and even bigger plans.

One thing we learned, on our very first day, was that the husband never liked losing an argument. He might start out all cheery—he did have a healthy sense of humor—but when cornered, instead of agreeing to disagree with you, he’d dig in and throw in everything he had. So once, when he caught me smoking in the yard, I was ready not to put up a fight.

Lito, how can you put that garbage in your mouth? he said.

Sir. I immediately threw the cigarette away. I’m sorry.

You know it’s not good for you, he said.

I know, sir. It’s just that it helps calm me down.

How? he said. That stuff smells awful.

Yes, sir.

You know I’m just looking out for you, thinking of your health, right?

Okay, sir.

We stood there for a few seconds before I told him that I needed to leave for the day.

Wait, he said. He looked around and then checked the bedroom window. Seeing nobody there, he lowered his voice. If you’re going to do something wrong, Lito, at least do it right. He reached into his coat pocket and withdrew a pack of Champions, showing me the gold label.

Thank you, sir, I said, fumbling to pull one out.

From then on, until I quit smoking, I’d always make sure to buy only Champions, even if it hurt my wallet. I preferred that to getting into a situation with him.

Another time, I remember, I’d just picked up his wife from a restaurant when a familiar male voice spoke on the car radio: If no one is willing to break the silence, the voice said, then who will? If no one is willing to act, then who will?

Ma’am, I said, isn’t that your—

I hope he treads lightly, she said.

But as we reached the next intersection, while we stopped for a car that was racing to beat the red light, the husband started a quarrel with the radio host. The thing you have to know about Imelda Marcos, the husband said, is that she’s a megalomaniac. She’s our very own Evita Perón.

Oh dear, the wife said. Oh Lord.

He was told to stop. But, as with any independent thinker—and he was fiercely independent—the more he was warned, the more passionate he became.

In those days, it was fairly common for people to suddenly vanish and never be heard from again. We used to joke that if one were homeless, one only had to say something smart about the government to be guaranteed a two-by-two pension room at an undisclosed location. Well, something like that happened to the husband. When martial law was imposed, he was one of the first to disappear. We didn’t know where he was, or even if he was still alive. Only a few days later did we get a tip that he was being detained and awaiting trial.

I remember often having to drive his wife and kids and park outside the army barracks where he was being held. Mostly, these visits would happen on a weekday, after the kids were done with school. But it was never up to us. All depended on the whim of the generals in charge and what liquor they’d been drinking the night before. Sometimes, and most inconveniently for you and me, the visits fell on a weekend, when your mother and I normally had our day off and would take you out to the city.

In any case, the husband stayed in jail for a long time. Year after year, his appeals to be released, or even just to stand trial, were turned down. He often refused to eat and the fullness in his cheeks withered away. One day, when he had fallen quite ill, none other than Imelda Marcos herself showed up at his bedside. She stood there with her tall bouffant and took pity on him. Look what you did to your pretty face, she said. And then, What do you think about putting our past behind us?

She agreed to release him as long as he made a promise. From then on, she said, he was to focus only on his health and family. Away and abroad, he was to keep his mouth shut.

Do you still remember that day we drove to the airport in a rickety van? The husband—my boss—rode shotgun while you were in the backseat, guarding all the luggage. His wife followed not far behind in their other car. The children were squeezed in shoulder to shoulder, and your mother made sure they wore their seat