A Different Day

She can't remember how long she was staring at the door. The white washed wood with traces of age and old graffiti is opening to her, beckoning her to come in. But she feels like there were stones on her feet. She looked around the façade of the old house. How long has it been? Seven? Nine? No, it’s more than a decade. But everything was coming back like it happened yesterday.

“Tomorrow will be a different day,” her father told her. He was looking at the newly-painted white door. He painted it yesterday. “Tomorrow we will be standing in the waterfront waiting for a ship that would take us to Manila,” her father continued. “You do not have enough time to say goodbye to friends or to your nanay.”

She wanted to say goodbye to nanay. In the middle of the night she silently climbed the window and visited the cemetery. She was whispering to her mother’s tombstone, a whisper as soft as the wind touching her hair. “Nanay, tomorrow is a different day. We will be in the waterfront waiting for a ship. Nanay, can you come with us?” She was whispering so low that the wings of fluttering night birds can be heard clearly. She was waiting for a reply but none came. After a moment, she decided to stand up and go home. She kissed the ice-cold tombstone before running home.

She slipped into the window and under her thin blanket. She looked over her father’s profile. He was still snoring. She smiled secretly and thanked her stars for watching over her.

It was only after a few minutes of closing her eyes when she heard loud banging on their door. There were voices of men outside calling her father’s name. Her father quickly got up and shook her. He looked at her hard, “Hide in the silong. Go through the kitchen. Wait for me. Never leave the silong until I fetch you.” She nodded and quickly went to the kitchen. She lifted the trapdoor under the rice can. Beneath the floors, she fearfully hid behind the rice sacks and stacks of firewood.

She could hear her father opening the white door. She could hear voices but nothing was clear. Her father was angry, so were the voices outside. The chickens behind her clucked, she saw a pair of combat boots walking around. She held her breath. She will not come out until her father comes for her. The muddied combat boots stepped on a cigarette butt before moving on.

She heard her father’s voice again, now she could hear clearly. “That’s not true and I am not going with you.” She heard something falling, maybe a picture frame. Then she heard a loud bang. Another bang. A moan. Heavy feet leaving. A moan. Then, silence.

She was still huddled behind the rice sacks a few hours later. A neighbor found her there when the chickens would not stop clucking. She refused to come out. “My tatay will come. I promised tatay I will not go out until he comes for me.” It took three men to remove her grasps from the rice sacks and wood. Police approached her and asked her if she saw anything. She does not know. All she remembered was visiting her mother and the noisy and angry people from last night. "Was it my fault?" she asked the policeman. "I sneaked out of the house last night to visit nanay, " she whispered.

She was standing under the mango tree when she heard. “Such a pity. The father was killed by armed men last night. Nobody knew who killed him,” said her neighbor that owns the store a block away. Another lady whispered, “He should have seen it coming, going against Don Domingo was never a good idea. The Don is a close friend of the military general here." The lady who owns the store whispered back, “I don’t know, it was not just his land he’s fighting for, you know. I heard that they were suppose to go to Manila today to bring the farming land problem to a government department there. He was fighting for the rest of us.”

That is when she realized that her father, a peasant leader, was killed by armed men. She looked around and saw the rice fields, the palay was dancing against the wind. The palay was no longer green, in her five-year old eyes, they became red. “Today is a different day,” she whispered to herself.

Her aunts took her in. They took turns taking care of her but she does not know what happened to her. Everything was in red. Different hues of red. Even the faces are all in red. In school, she was always made fun of because she keeps on mixing up the colors of the flag. Later on, she took pains in learning to read and memorize the different labels of the crayons so she will know their color and what color should go for each part of the flag.

It was two years after the death of her father, when people from Manila arrived. There were women and men who brought toys, books, food and clothes for the people in the community. They look so smart to her because they were all wearing eyeglasses. They gathered little children and asked them to draw their families.

She saw what the other children were drawing, tombstones, a crippled man, a burning house. A nice lady asked her where are their parents, there are many who said at home while a handful who said they were killed. She looked around the group of children and the nice people. She is not alone anymore. She is no longer under the silong. She started to see colors again.

She touched the old white door. There were already holes on it. Maybe termites, maybe bullet holes. She looked at the nearby palayan. It was no longer in red like that faithful day. It was in its usual color green. She took a deep breath and went inside. It was exactly fifteen years since the last time she put her foot inside. Everything was dark inside. She opened the nearest window and saw that everything was the same. The mantelpiece still has the pictures but was missing one. She climbed the short stairs and went to the bedroom and saw that the pillows and the banig are still on the papag. Dust and dirt coating the things inside the house.

She started to move towards the door when she noticed a black patch on the earth. She knelt down and touched the dark stain. It felt wet on her hands. She closed her eyes and whispered, Today is a different day Tatay. Somebody called for her outside, “Hey, the children are already in the hall for the group counseling.” She stood up and whispered to the wind, Padayon, tatay, padayon.