Chapter Text
In the beginning, there was only a voice. It was big—enough to fill an entire high school gymnasium. His timbre shook the dust off the high ceiling and sent a grumbling vibration across the hardwood floors that were hidden beneath sheets of rubber covers. Ironically, Mikha thought that her father’s voice reminded her terribly of God. The way it rose mightily, a command arriving with each sentence as if his words were eventually to be etched on stone. The syllables came in slowly, like they were weights being dragged off the edge of his tongue with nothing but a string. The heaviness of his voice often made her wonder if God was also like her father—filled with resonance of disgruntled rage. (If God was real, as Mikha had trouble believing, then he must be angry as well, right? He should. He should be. Someone had to be malevolent enough to answer for Mikha’s suffering. Someone had to demand her punishment. Or else, as she often feared, she was suffering for nothing.) When he spoke, his voice crashed into Mikha’s ears like a deliberate collision.
His voice boomed with unadulterated pride, “Anak ko ‘yan!”
Beside him, Mikha tried not to flinch at the burst of applause erupting in the crowd around her. Instead, her eyes were fixated on her older sister, who was walking up the stage. Meredith had the same lumber as their father, always close to tripping over her own feet but not quite; salvaging herself at the last possible moment, standing tall with a faux self-assured posture that masked the hesitation beneath the hereditary hazel eyes. Even from the height of the bleachers, Mikha could still see her wandering nervous gaze clearly. Perhaps it was something akin to sibling intuition, the way she could sense the way her pupils shook around the roaring audience. Despite the evident anxiety, Meredith’s eyes were still bright. Bright enough for Mikha to read right through her. When they were younger, she often wondered what made her miss the inheritance. It was unfair that she did not receive the same bright vibrant eyes as her father. Growing up, she soon realized what she inherited was his rage. Her eyes were left blank, untouched, and vacant. Even on that April afternoon, Mikha had sat with the same empty stare for the entire ceremony.
It was Meredith’s high school graduation, and Mikha was somewhere far removed. She was someone far removed. Oftentimes she felt like she belonged nowhere. Certainly not there, visibly out of place in the court that she had thought she memorized like the back of her hand. The gymnasium was her territory. But the lines drawn across the four corners were hidden underneath sheets of gym floor covers, and they took out the volleyball net in exchange for a large stage with an assortment of close-to-wilting plants lined around the edges. The entire court floor was made up of rows of seated graduates in varying states of attentiveness. And Mikha, dubbed the star of the court, was pushed to the sidelines. Logically, she knew it was an irrational thought to bear resentment for the event. She felt like a trespasser in her own territory, the presence of her parents only brought in a complicated addition to her internal conflict. In all her years of playing—and winning—in that very court, it was the first time she had ever truly seen both of them inside the gymnasium. For some reason, there was a dragging sense that they should not be there. That, much like Mikha, they were out of place.
Nothing is ever hers. Not even this.
Mikha was nothing but this: resentment. If there was a family heirloom that was passed out specially for her it was the bitter grudge of resentment. It was a weight that she carried with her at every waking moment, a weight that was the chains locked around her wrists; the reason that she did not even dare to join in on the celebration. Mikha wanted to convince herself that it wasn’t deliberate, nor was it a sign of rebellion. Her inability to applaud her sister’s achievements was something brought upon by the phantom cuffs restricting her limbs. The entire stadium roared, and the crowd was in prolonged ovation, but she was simply sitting there—frozen in resentment. In the middle of the overflowing bleachers and beside the passionate pride of her parents, Mikha could do nothing else but sit in her own empty silence. The emptiness in her veins was convulsing, the paradoxical mystery of how the vacancy inside of her had spread quickly into her entire system. Mikha had joked once about how if she were to be cut open, the inside of her chest would be hollow.
Her eyes flickered to the medal around Meredith’s neck. She wondered if the small piece of imitation gold brought upon any weight over her sister’s chest; she wondered if she also felt a similar heaviness: subtle, consuming, thumping.
She never liked the metallic bitterness upon her palate, but she bites down on her tongue anyway.
Hours later, there was a sense of déjà vu at the sight of Mikha leaning against the decaying walls of the football field’s old wooden shed. She reckoned that there were probably stray splinters digging themselves into the delicate fabric of her dress, but that was the last thing on her mind as she took deep regulated breaths. The April humidity had caused her dress to stick uncomfortably to her skin, the clothing around her ribs tightening itself that each inhale she took felt increasingly difficult. Mikha wasn’t sure what was wrong with her—the prickling weight wrapped tightly around her lungs had followed her the entire day. It was already on top of her the moment she woke up, like water slowly filling up her chest. Her entire being was in a constant state of unease. Or perhaps something more sinister. A state of welcomed disarray. Squinted eyes were looking up at the summer sky, but even the blinding sun provided no answers.
Still, Mikha always had trouble looking away from things that burn.
“Hanap ka,” Meredith walked over with caution.
“May hinihintay lang,” she spoke without sparing a single glance at her sister, “Tapos na kayo mag picture?”
Meredith nodded.
Nevermind that her next words had to be dragged out of her throat, Mikha coughed it out anyway, “Congrats, by the way. Valedictorian. That’s big.”
“I think you’re more interested sa salutatorian, ‘no?” then she added, “You’re waiting for Aiah?”
“Yeah. Ewan. I don’t know. Sabi lang niya na she wants to talk to me.”
“Kayo ba?”
Those were the words that made Mikha snap her head and finally look at her older sister, “Baliw ka ba? We’re friends.”
“What?” Meredith simply laughed at her reaction, offering a subtle headshake to signal her cynicism at her sister’s words, “Lagi kayong magkasama, can’t blame me for assuming.”
“Lagi ko rin naman kasama sila Jao.” Mikha pointed out.
“Fair enough,” she shrugged, “Pero, Mikhs. Look, I’m not even sure if Aiah likes girls, but I will say this, hindi siya gano’n makitungo sa’min during council meetings. Or even pag kausap ko siya outside of it. She acts differently with you, everyone can see that.”
The sentences reached Mikha’s mind with a deep inhale. Truth be told, she wasn’t sure why this was their topic of conversation of all things—granted, she knew where it sprung from—but Meredith’s sudden observation was something that caught her off guard. Honest to God (if there was one), complications surrounding her and Aiah’s relationship were never a thought that entered her mind. They were Mikha and Aiah, whatever that meant. In the same way that the two girls who were hiding in the back of the field that day were Mikha and Meredith, words were simply not enough to summarize their bond.
Mikha had a habit of avoiding eye contact with her sister. Meredith didn’t carry the same sharp eyes as her younger sister, but they trod through the world with the same bloodied burden. The burden was an inherited fear; for Mikha, oftentimes she was afraid that looking into her sister’s eyes meant seeing Meredith at age ten. When that occurred, she would see herself at age nine. They are playing hide and seek inside the school campus, tucked away in a corner for the field no one dared to search for. They are nine and ten, all innocence and hushed giggles. It almost feels like that bad has happened—nor does it feel like anything bad would. Mikha would look at her sister, and the silence that often surrounds them would start to feel like the quiet hum of love. But after love comes violence, so the two sisters learned to fill the silence in any way they can.
That day, Meredith seemed to poke at her feelings for Aiah. Mikha had convinced herself that they were nonexistent. It was as straightforward as that. Aiah was a friend. Aiah was her best friend. (Actually, maybe that was Jaz. Or Jao. Or maybe Meredith herself.) Aiah was Aiah. Aiah was her Aiah. If there was one person in the entire vastness of the universe who would know Mikha Lim right down to the intervals of her heartbeat, that would be Aiah Arceta. It was simple.
But it was also not.
Aiah, in the most simple—and tender—terms, was her friend. Though, so was Jaz, and Jao, and dare she even say Alas. Mikha could’ve wallowed in her self-inflicted ill-fated isolation all she wanted, but even she knew for herself that she was never truly alone. Not until Aiah was always at an arm’s length away from her, hand outstretched and palms open with the sort of gentle readiness that managed to convince Mikha of one gospel truth: that everything will turn out fine in the end. Aiah was her friend, and so were many others. But neither Jaz, nor Jao, and certainly not Alas, had ever woken her up in the distracting comfort of the student council room’s couch with the softest touch Mikha’s ever experienced. No one else had ever held her face in such careful hands, delicate fingers sweeping away the stray strands of hair that had fallen over her face. No one else smiled at Mikha in such a way that God seemed almost benevolent and loving, no one else had ever said her name with such softness in her voice that it made Mikha become human. She was not exactly sure what it meant other than Mikha had spent most of her life holding her breath and Aiah was a breath of fresh air on a bright summer morning.
That day, when Mikha faced her sister’s teasing gaze, they were sixteen and seventeen. At age sixteen, Mikha prided herself in knowing everything. But this was something she couldn’t entirely make sense of. Then again, she insisted that she didn’t have to.
“It’s called being friendly.”
“Friendly my ass,” she snorted, “Your Aiah is different from our Aiah. The same way na the Mikha I see with her is different from the one that I’m talking to right now.”
“Bakit? Who exactly is the Mikha na you’re talking to?”
“The Mikha who was the only one not clapping when I was on stage, nakasimangot pa.”
The remark caused Mikha’s eyes to fall downcast, “Kita mo pa ‘yun?”
“Yeah.”
“I’m sorry,” she breathed out, “I’m proud of you, you know that, right?”
Meredith smiled sadly, “Alam ko. I’m sorry too.”
A beat of silence, then Mikha spoke:
“First time ko sila makita do’n, it was weird.” When Meredith didn’t respond, she took that as a sign to keep going, “Five years, I tell them naman about all my games. Pero isang sabi mo lang, pumunta agad sila.”
(Everything about their father was big, especially his anger. When you grow up with an angry man inside your home, there will always be an angry man within you wherever you go.)
She bit her tongue before she had the chance to say anything else.
Two sisters stood on an isolated corner of the place they both grew up in. It has been years since they diverged paths, but nothing will change the fact that they were born from the same womb. That is where the tragedy began.
Mikha Lim is no stranger to the story of Cain and Abel, it was a drabble that she learned at a very young age. She first heard it in the four corners of an elementary classroom where her gaze was more interested in the cross above the blackboard than her roaming teacher; Mikha had yet to know what the term ‘algebra’ meant, but she had already learned of betrayal. The story was then repeated to her over the years by peers, teachers, nuns, and the rotating faces of priests that presided over her reluctant trips to Sunday mass. Though, no matter how many times this particular story enters her ears, the ending remains: Abel is dead, and Cain is the brother who has to live with the consequences of his sins. The timeline remains as is: first comes creation, then comes death.
The glory of creation does not last once the land has been tainted with the sin of disobedience, and Adam and Eve’s punishment does not end in banishment. No punishment ever ends in mere exile. True retribution haunts, much like the wrath of a god whose fury was concealed underneath a layer of authoritative disappointment. The consequence for the original sin was not rejection from paradise, it was childbirth. In exchange for the forbidden fruit, Eve bore Cain and Abel. Thus, birthing another sin—murder.
Mikha had always thought that it was unfair to brand Cain as the first murderer. Abel, the younger of the two brothers, had practiced execution long before God’s call for offerings. Abel was the slaughterer. Cain was only an agriculturist. He didn’t take life away, he preserved it. Cain tended the gardens, he watered the crops, he cultivated the soil. Cain was a friend of nature, his gentle touch grew forests out of trees and coaxed the flowers to bloom with confidence. Cain brought forth life and beauty, though prosperity sometimes came in different forms. Love is violence, Mikha had learned at a young age in the midst of all her catechesis classes. God had a certain thirst for blood. Abel, the keeper of the herd, took the best from his flock. His favorite lamb. Abel ignored its cries as he watched it bleed, just as his brother would soon do to him.
The same bloodied hands that bashed a rock over his younger brother’s head were the same gentle hands that were responsible for the existence of bright carnations. Sat in the deafening silence of Sunday’s reflection, a young Mikhaela Lim stared at her own palms. They were scarred and bruised from the rigorous activity of sports and the primitive thirst for escape. She wondered, if the gentle could kill, what more of her own tainted hands?
Still, she knew that it was Abel who died. The youngest, despite his divine-approved sacrifice, was dead. Abel had slain the lamb because he loved it, Cain had slain Abel because he loved him. Meredith and Mikhaela Lim are not Cain and Abel. Meredith was not born destined for envy, Mikhaela was not born favored. She had lost the moment she was last to be born. Then again, hadn’t Abel also lost the moment he was struck by the weighted resentment of his keeper? His brother, his executioner. Cain had succumbed to God’s tragic will and Abel is dead, there is no winning in the war between brotherhood and fated faith. Mikha is Cain’s envy and Abel’s ambition. She is Cain’s guilt and Abel’s death. Mikhaela Lim bleeds both Cain and Abel’s blood that trickles from her bitter veins. In her story, there is no Cain and there is no Abel. There is only Mikha, and no one emerges triumphant.
There was a moment of contemplation from the older Lim before she pointed out, “Graduation ko, Mikhs. Of course, they were going to attend.”
“I know.”
“It’s not my fault.”
“I didn’t say that it was.”
“Kahit today lang, can you be happy for me?”
Mikha frowned, “I am.”
“Ate mo pa rin ako. You don’t need to compete with—”
“Can we just drop this? Look, I’m sorry na I brought it up.” Mikha let out an exasperated sigh, running a hand through her hair in bottled frustration. It was a paradoxical phenomenon between them, the silence was tragedy’s tender premonition, and the conversations will always lead back to the prophetical doom. Whether the two siblings were stuck in a denial-filled ignorance or a weighted conversation, there was no changing the revelation of disaster. For Mikha, loving her sister means having a knife in her hands. She was the wound and the knife, but both of them were the bonded sacrifice.
If there was one thing Meredith knew, it was defeat. Mikha knew this from the observation that her older sister had immediately retreated once she had snapped. Much like Mikha, Meredith had learned at an early age when to bite her tongue. When the silence had filled the gaps of tension, the younger sees her sister glance at the faint screen of her phone.
“It’s been fifteen minutes, pareho na tayong hinahanap nila Daddy.”
It was Mikha’s turn to look at her own phone, nothing from Aiah.
She sighed, “Ten more minutes?”
Meredith said nothing, instead walking over to join her younger sister in leaning against the old shed’s exterior.
“Samahan na kita,” she declared, “I’ll go naman if Aiah gets here.”
“When.”
“Huh?”
“When Aiah gets here. Not if.”
“Okay,” Mikha could hear her sister beside her stifling a laugh, it was something she chose to ignore until Meredith continued to speak, “What do you think she has to tell you, anyway?”
She shrugged, “Baka she’ll say goodbye lang.”
“Ang OA naman.” Meredith chuckled, “She’s going to college, not migrating.”
Mikha rolled her eyes, “Ikaw, when are you going to migrate? Baka mas tahimik buhay ko if kinuha ka nila Lola.”
The older of the two shoved her shoulder lightly, “Bitch.”
The summer air fell upon them after the short familiarity of light banter. They stayed like that for ten minutes—situated in the white flag of temporary silence. For a moment, Mikha thought that the worst was over. Until those ten minutes had passed and there was still no sign of Aiah’s presence striding along anywhere near them.
The air in her lungs began to feel an awful lot like water.
Mikha hadn’t seen Aiah after the ceremony, but she did hear her voice that night. The moon was a friend, or so it typically was. The summer moon was a bit different, still ever-so-present but it was less forgiving. The April moon was ruthless, where the glow shone down bringing along the heat of the sun that came before. She still wore the same knee-length dress and the ankle-high boots with heels that brought her discomfort. It was still a miracle how she walked for several kilometers while the soles of her feet ached terribly, and sweat had already begun seeping through the fabric of her clothing. However, she supposed that whatever calvary she had just endured to arrive at a stray sari-sari store telephone was better than the impending destruction that she had walked away from.
Her hands shook as she held the phone in her hands, “Aiah?”
“Mikha? Is this you?” Mikha still didn’t know how to feel, considering the events that transpired earlier that afternoon, but her legs were tired, and the side of her face was throbbing. To add, the girl behind the store’s window was staring at her with a mixture of curiosity and horror. Hearing Aiah’s voice had managed to somehow soothe the rapid beat of her uneasy heart.
“Ace?” She rasped through the line. Despite her light tone, the slight quiver in her voice made it evident that all was not well, “Hi, sorry. Busy ka ba?”
“Is everything alright?”
“Yeah, it’s just—Fuck, I’m sorry.”
Mikha was a ticking time bomb. Nothing was done out of rationality. Her sentences were thrown out without caution, much like the pained laughter that slipped past her lips. She didn’t even know why she was calling.
“Sorry. I’m sorry. Number mo lang kasi kabisado ko. I forgot my phone.”
Even through a muffled telephone line, she could sense Aiah’s voice becoming increasingly worried, “Asan ka?”
Mikha was about to answer—even if she wasn’t sure where she was either—but the girl at the store spoke loud enough to disrupt their conversation.
“Ate,” she called out to Mikha, offering sheets of tissue paper, “Kunin mo na ‘tong tissue. Nagdudugo ka talaga.”
It seemed that the store owner's voice was heard through the line, because Aiah expressed almost immediately after, “Mikha? Where are you? Pupuntahan kita.”
“Shit. Sorry, I’m sorry. I’m really sorry.”
“Mikhs? Are you bleeding ba?”
“It’s just my nose, I think,” she sniffled, wiping the blood off her face with her own hands.
“Can you tell me where you are?”
When Mikha didn’t answer, she heard an inhale from the other line, “Mikha.”
“Aiang,” Mikha responded in a voice uncharacteristically small.
“Can you tell me kung nasaan ka, please? Then I’ll come to you.”
She released a deep exhale, “Okay.”