A man who reeked of brandy and gin drove his seven year old daughter between a busy intersection of a highway and the narrow road leading up to the residential homes. Thin metal sheets on top of loosely stacked cinder blocks. He stopped his motorcycle across a barber shop. I hung on the edge of the door. I spun in a red and white helix— a dessert on Christmas Day.
“Holdon’ tight.” His word a clamorous slur. “Hawakan mong mabuti.”
There was no indicator to let the girl know what to hold or how tight her grip ought to be, if it mattered at all to prevent her from falling off.
The man clung one hand onto the bike’s handle. The other adjusted his sloppy chin, perhaps, for the invisible strap which would have connected his helmet. The light I radiated reflected off his eyes, fixated on me, tunneling into a single vision of red-white. They were the colors of a warning sign.
The man cried, “I love you! Putangina mo! Papatayin kita!”
Across the street and having heard it all from inside the shop, the barber only laughed. He knew there was some twisted irony in all this. To be in front of a barber is to allow a part of you to be cut. And historically, to be in front of me was to allow blood to circulate away from the body.
The many bystanders who walked past the man or his roaring moans knew if he meant what he said, or if he was talking to the barber or his daughter. He spoke in oxymorons, one person said to a beloved. Colors in contradictions.
“I love you,” the man continued, “Tangina mo! I’ll kill you!”
He pulled his daughter's hand, two wiggly white noodles, around his waist. Two white lines grabbing onto his red sleeveless shirt. The daughter's face was blank, a white sheet of bond paper. I didn’t know whether it was the girl’s natural complexion or a face that knows all too well that all red-white apples fall from their tree. The man— her father— a bubbling red face. Together, one holding another, botanists would call them deadly.
Soon, his wobbling legs finally gave way and they both tumbled into the asphalt. The daughter's face soured and she started to wail. Cars and motorcycles pass them by. An agitated beep. A cuss. Another vehicle passed. Even a police car drove with screaming blue-red sirens, white headlights turned into shadows as they went by.
The daughter hammered her father with pale knuckles. Pearly arrows onto a bloodied broken shield. Together, they were at war.
“Mahal kita! Tangina mo! Papatayin kita!”
No one knew if the man or his daughter was speaking.
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