Work Text:
February 3, 1988
Prima,
You asked in your last letter if I was eating properly. "Properly" may be a bit generous, but the answer is yes. It feels important to say here that instant pancit canton tastes the same whether you're crying or not. I ought to publish a paper: "A Study in Sodium and Regret: The Invariant Flavor Profile of Despair."
The same is true in Manila. The jeepneys continue to shamelessly smog up the streets. The sari-sari store manang still gives me suspicious looks when I buy my third pack of Lucky Strike in a week. Mrs. Reyes from next door still blasts her novelas like it's Christmas. Maybe she thinks the actors can't hear her unless she turns it up to eleven?
I'm all right, in case you're wondering.
By the way, Vincent came by last week. That was his mistake, not mine. He stood in my doorway like a man who'd accidentally wandered into a crime scene and realized too late he'd left fingerprints. Asked if I needed anything. Money, probably. He always thinks money fixes things, which is hilarious considering he throws it at problems the way other people throw rocks at stray dogs.
I told him I needed him to leave. He did. Good boy.
The baby moves now. Did I tell you that? No, I don't think I did. It moves, Prima. It has opinions about how I sleep, what I eat, and apparently how I'm feeling because it's trying to kick its way out every time I think about the future. Smart baby. If I were it, I'd want to bail too.
I'm going to name it Marlon if it's a boy, Lucasta if it's a girl. No idea why. The names just appeared in my head. They both sound like a person who might grow up to be someone, which is more than I can say for its mother.
Write back soon. Tell me about the province. Tell me about normal things.
Camila
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March 17, 1988
Prima,
Your package arrived. The dried mangoes, the sinigang mix, that horrible bananacue your tita makes that I pretend to hate but actually dream about. It's all accounted for. Also the baby clothes you knitted yourself because apparently you think I'm going to dress my child in something handmade like we're pioneers on the prairie. They're beautiful. I think I cried for twenty minutes. Hormones, probably.
The baby is definitely a boy. I can tell. Mother's intuition, or whatever you call the nagging feeling that I'm growing a tiny version of Vincent inside me, which seems like karma for something but I can't figure out what. What did I do to deserve this? Sleep with a celebrity? Fail to extract commitment or even basic human decency from said celebrity? Decide to keep the resulting pregnancy?
I've decided to give the baby up. There's an orphanage in Quezon City. It's clean and well-funded. The nuns there look like they actually care, which is more than I can say for most I've seen. I know this because I visited last week and told them I was doing research for an article. They believed me because I still look like someone who might write articles, even though I haven't filed copy in six months and my editor stopped calling after I missed three deadlines in a row.
The babies there looked fed, changed, and alive, which are the basic requirements, right? Alive is the baseline. Everything else is luxury.
I can't do this, Prima. I can't be someone's mother. I can barely be my own person. What am I supposed to teach a child? How to smoke three packs a day? How to waste pesos on lottery tickets? How to pick men who will absolutely destroy you and then leave?
Don't worry, I'm not going to do anything stupid. Not while I'm still responsible for keeping this tiny parasite alive.
The mangoes were perfect, by the way. Sweet but not too sweet. You always did have better taste than me.
Camila
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April 29, 1988
Prima,
Short letter this time because my hands are shaking and I can't tell if it's the cigarettes or the fear or both.
I went back to the orphanage. Filled out paperwork. Signed things. Initialed things. Agreed to things I didn't read because the nun explaining them had kind eyes and I've unfortunately learned to trust kind eyes more than legal documents.
She asked me if I wanted to hold him after the birth, the cutting and the cleaning and all the medical things that turns a pregnancy into a person.
I said no. She looked at me like I'd admitted to something heinous. Maybe I have. But if I hold him, I'll want to keep him. And if I want to keep him, I'll mess it up. And if I mess it up, he'll grow up like me, a broken person. Sira-ulo. It's better to cut clean, to never attach at all.
Vincent called again. I didn't answer. He left a voicemail asking if I needed anything. I wanted to call back and scream that yes, I need you to have been a different person, I need you to have given a damn, I need you to be someone who could look at this situation and see anything other than a problem to throw money at until it goes away. But I didn't call back. Because what's the point?
Please write back. Tell me I'm not a monster. Lie if you have to.
Camila
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May 15, 1988
Prima,
It's 3 AM as of writing this. The baby won't stop moving and I can't sleep and I keep thinking about names.
I'm sticking with Marlon. It feels right in a way nothing else has felt right in months. Marlon Esquivar, M.E. Those are his initials. ME. Like he's claiming himself already, before he's even born. Good for him. At least one of us has a sense of identity.
I actually first thought about giving him Vincent's last name, Asilo. Marlon Asilo. It sounds like someone who might grow up to be someone who matters. But then I thought about Vincent's face when I told him I was pregnant and I decided no, this kid gets my name, my gloriously unremarkable, lower-middle-class, nobody-special name. If he's going to be abandoned, at least he'll be abandoned honestly. I don't want him to grow up like his father.
Prima, I've been having dreams, bad ones. In those dreams, I'm on the Quezon Bridge and I'm holding Marlon, even though I said I wouldn't hold my baby, in the dreams I always hold him, and he's looking at me with these eyes. And he says: "You're going to leave me."
And I say: "Yes."
And he says: "That's okay. I understand."
And then I always wake up crying because I know too well that I'm a wretch.
The bridge is always there in my head now, Quezon Bridge, that ugly thing over the Pasig River. I think about it constantly.
But I'm not going to do it. That would be murder, and I'm a lot of things but I'm not that.
Let me just say I'm tired, Prima. So tired. And I still have four weeks left.
Camila
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June 10, 1988
Prima,
This is probably my last letter for a while, maybe my last letter ever. I don't know yet.
The baby is due in two days. The doctor is very confident about this. I'm less confident about everything else, because I've been thinking about what happens after everything. I know I'm not going to be a good person. I'm not going to magically transform into someone who wants to live. I'm not going to wake up one morning and think, "Oh, what a beautiful day! I'm so glad I exist!"
That's not how this works. That's not how I work.
I think I've been broken for a long time, Prima. Long before Vincent, the pregnancy, any of this. I've just been really good at pretending otherwise. But I'm sick of pretending. I'm sick of going through the motions of a functional adult when all I want to do is stop.
I think about Marlon sometimes and the person he'll become. The life he'll have without me when I give him up. I think he'll be better off, I genuinely believe that. A kid raised by nuns with real compassion has better odds than a kid raised by a mother who can barely look at him without seeing her own failure. So I'm going to do the only right thing I'm capable of. I'm going to give him a chance to be someone other than my son. And then I'm going to give myself permission to stop.
You've been so good to me, Prima. Better than I deserved. This might sound corny, but your letters kept me alive longer than I would have made it without them. Tell your children I loved them, even though I barely knew them. Tell your husband he married the right cousin. Tell everyone in Libaba that Camila tried her best, which is a lie, but it's a kind lie, and sometimes kind lies make the world go round.
I need to pack my hospital bag. Need to prepare for the last thing I'll ever do right. If there's a God, and Prima, I really hope there isn't, because what kind of God builds a world like this, I hope He takes better care of Marlon than I ever could.
Goodbye.
Camila
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prima
hes perfect
they showed him to me anyway
i said no, but they showed him anyway said it was hospital policy said i needed to see him at least once
he has my eyes
vincents nose
ten fingers ten toes screaming furiously for pulling him out of the only home hes ever known
smart baby
i signed the papers the nuns took him i watched them walk away with my son
i felt nothing
thats not true i felt everything but everything can look like nothing
theyre keeping me overnight observation standard procedure
ill leave tomorrow morning
im sorry prima im sorry for all of it but mostly im sorry that i cant feel this enough to stay
if you ever find him tell marlon that his mother loved him enough to leave
thats the best i can do
camila
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WOMAN DIES IN APPARENT SUICIDE FROM QUEZON BRIDGE
June 13, 1988 - MANILA - A woman identified as Camila Esquivar, 24, died yesterday after jumping from Quezon Bridge. Witnesses reported seeing her climb the railing around 6:30 AM before stepping off into the Pasig River below. Her body was recovered by Coast Guard personnel approximately two hours later.
Ms. Esquivar had given birth at Fe del Mundo Medical Center the previous day. Hospital records indicate she surrendered custody of the infant to Quezon City Social Services before her discharge.
No note was found at the scene. Police are treating the death as a suicide and have closed the investigation.