The Safe House

by Sandra Nicole Roldan

And so this house seems in every way identical to all the other houses in all the
thirty-odd other buildings nestled within the gates of this complex. It is the First Lady’s
pride and joy, a housing project designed for genteel middle class living. There is a
clubhouse, a swimming pool, a tennis court. A few residents drive luxury cars. People
walk purebred dogs in the morning. Trees shade the narrow paths and the flowering
hedges that border each building give the neighborhood a hushed, cozy feel. It is
easy to get lost here.

But those who need to come here know what to look for-the swinging gate, the
twisting butterfly tree, the cyclone-wire fence. A curtained window glows with the
yellow light of a lamp perpetually left on. Visitors count the steps up each flight of
stairs. They do not stumble in the dark. They know which door will be opened to
them, day or night. They will be fed, sometimes given money. Wounds will be treated,
bandages changed. They carry nothing-no books, no bags, or papers. What they do
bring is locked inside their heads, the safest of places. They arrive one at a time, or
in couples, over a span of several hours. They are careful not to attract attention.
They listen for the reassuring yelps of squabbling children before they raise their
hands to knock.

It is 1982. The girl who lives here does not care too much for the people who visit.
She is five. Two uncles and an aunt dropped by the other day. Three aunts and two
uncles slept over the night before. It is impossible to remember all of them. There are
too many names, too many faces. And they all look the same-too tall, too old, too
serious, too many. They surround the small dining table, the yellow lamp above
throwing and tilting shadows against freshly-painted cream walls.

They crowd the already cramped living room with their books and papers, hissing at
her to keep quiet, they are talking about important things. So she keeps quiet. The
flock of new relatives recedes into the background as she fights with her brother over
who gets to sit closer to the television. It is tuned in to Sesame Street on Channel 9.
The small black and white screen makes Ernie and Bert shiver and glow like ghosts.
Many of these visitors she will never see again. If she does, she will probably not
remember them.

She wakes up one night. Through the thin walls, she hears the visitors arguing. She
can easily pick out one particular uncle’s voice, rumbling through the dark like
thunder. He is one of her newer relatives, having arrived only that morning. All grown-
ups are tall but this new uncle is a giant who towers over everyone else. His big feet
look pale in their rubber slippers, a band-aid where each toenail should have been.
He never takes off his dark glasses, not even at night. She wonders if he can see in
the dark. Maybe he has laser vision like Superman. Or, maybe-like a pirate, he has
only one eye. She presses her ear against the wall. If she closes her eyes and listens
carefully, she can make out the words: sundalo, kasama, talahib. The last word she
hears clearly is katawan. The visitors are now quiet but still she cannot sleep. From
the living room, there are sounds like small animals crying.

She comes home from school the next day to see the visitors crowded around the
television. She wants to change the channel, watch the late afternoon cartoons but
they wave her away. The grown-up’s are all quiet. Something is different. Something
is about to explode. So she stays away, peering up at them from under the dining
table. On the TV screen is the President, hisface glowing blue and wrinkly like an-old
monkey’s. His voice wavers in the afternoon air, sharp and high like the sound of
something breaking. The room erupts in a volley of curses: Humanda ka na, Makoy!
Mamatay ka! Pinapatay mo asawa ko! Mamamatay ka rin P%t@ng*n@ ka! Humanda ka,
papatayin din kita!The girl watches quietly from under the table. She is trying very hard
not to blink.

It is 1983. They come more often now. They begin to treat the apartment like their
own house. They hold meetings under the guise of children’s parties. Every week,
someone’s son or daughter has a birthday. The girl and her brother often make a
game of sitting on the limp balloons always floating in inch from the floor. The small
explosions like-guns going off. She wonders why her mother serves the visitors dusty
beer bottles that are never opened.

She is surprised to see the grownups playing make-believe out on the balcony. Her
new uncles pretend to drink from the unopened bottles and begin a Laughing Game.
Whoever laughs loudest wins. She thinks her mother plays the game badly because
instead of joining in. Her mother is always crying quietly in the kitchen. Sometimes
the girl sits beside her mother on the floor, listening to words she doesn’t really
understand: Underground, resolution, taxes, bills. She plays with her mother’s hair
while the men on the balcony continue their game. When she falls asleep, they are
still laughing.
 The mother leaves the house soon after. She will never return. The two children now
spend most afternoons playing with their neighbors. After an hour of hide-and-seek,
the girl comes home one day to find the small apartment even smaller. Something
heavy hangs in the air like smoke. Dolls and crayons and storybooks fight for space
with plans and papers piled on the tables. Once, she finds a drawing of a triangle
and recognizes a word: class. She thinks of typhoons and floods and no classes.

The visitors keep reading from a small red book, which they hide under their clothes
when sheapproached. She tries to see why they like it so much. Maybe it also has
good pictures like the books her father brought home from, China. Her favorite has
zoo animals working together to build a new bridge after the river had swallowed the
old one. She sneaks a look over their shoulders and sees a picture of a fat Chinese
man wearing a cap. Spiky shapes run up and down the page. She walks away
disappointed. She sits in the balcony and reads another picture book from China. It
is about a girl who cuts her hair to help save her village from Japanese soldiers. The
title is Mine Warfare.

It is 1984. The father is arrested right outside their house. It happens one August
afternoon, with all the neighbors watching. They look at the uniformed men with
cropped hair and shiny boots. Guns bulging under their clothes. Everyone is quiet
afraid to make a sound. The handcuffs shine like silver in the sun. When the soldiers
drive away, the murmuring begins. Words like insects escaping from cupped hands.
It grows louder and fills the sky. It is like this whenever disaster happens. When fire
devours a house two streets away, people in the compound come out to stand on
their balconies. Everyone points at the pillar of smoke rising from the horizon.

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This is the year she and her brother come to live with their grandparents, having no
parents to care for them at home. The grandparents tell them a story of lovebirds:
Soldiers troop into their house one summer day in 1974. Yes, balasang k4 this very
same house. Muddy boots on the bridge over the koi pond, strangers poking guns
through the water lilies. They are looking for guns and papers, they are ready to
destroy the house. Before the colonel can give his order, they see The Aviary. A
small sunlit room with a hundred lovebirds twittering inside. A rainbow of colors. Eyes
like tiny glass beads. One soldier opens the aviary door, releases a flurry of wings
and feathers. Where are they now? the girl asks. The birds are long gone, the
grandparents say, eaten by a wayward cat. But as you can see, the soldiers are still
here. The two children watch them at their father’s court trials. A soldier waves a guru
says it is their father’s. He stutters while explaining why the gun has his own name
on it.

They visit her father at his new house in Camp Crame. It is a long walk from the
gate, past wide green lawns. In the hot surrey everything looks green. There are
soldiers everywhere. Papa lives in that long low building under the armpit of the big
gymnasium. Because the girl can write her name, the guards make her sign the big
notebooks. She writes her name so many times, the S gets tired and curls on its side
to sleep. She enters amaze the size of the playground at school, but with tall barriers
making her turn left, right, left, right. Barbed wire forms a dense jungle around the
detention center. She meets other children there: some just visiting, others lucky
enough to stay with their parents all the time.

On weekends, the girl sleeps in her father’s cell. There is a double-deck bed and a
chair. A noisy electric fan stirs the muggy air. There, she often gets nightmares about
losing her home: She would be walking down the paths, under the trees of their
compound, past the row of stores, the same grey buildings. She turns a corner and
finds a swamp or a rice paddy where her real house should be.

One night, she dreams of war. She comes home from school to find a blood orange
sky where bedroom and living room should be. The creamy walls are gone. Broken
plywood and planks swing crazily in what used to be the dining room. Nothing in the
kitchen but a sea green refrigerator; paint and rust flaking off in patches as large as
thumbnails. To make her home livable again, she paints it blue and pink and yellow.
She knows she has to work fast. Before night falls, she has painted a sun, a moon
and a star on the red floor. So she would have light. Each painted shape is as big as
a bed. In the dark, she curls herself over the crescent moon on the floor and waits
for morning.There is no one else in the dream.