by Funa-ay Claver
Maiaw-awan
It was the third week of school already, and by this time, everyone had their own groups they gravitated to every time the bell rang. Everyone knew where to go when class was over. Everyone knew where to sit and who to share their food with. Everyone except Nini.
Nini still ate alone at lunchtime, and she always took her time doing so, chewing ten times before swallowing and pretending that she was disinterested in the taste. She wouldn’t know what to do in the remaining minutes of lunchtime if she finished eating too fast. She didn’t want to look lonely.
It wasn’t that she was ugly, as was usually the reason for becoming a high school outcast. It was more that the others viewed her as a bit dim, and dim students did not belong in this school. Only the smartest came here, or so she was told when everyone in Bahong was convincing her to take the scholarship even if it meant leaving home. Everyone counted on her to be something different from the rest of her community, but what did different mean?
She was surely different now, surrounded by all these kids her age who had the latest smartphones, branded backpacks, and new shoes. But all that difference could be mitigated with friendship and communication, the things that make people the same. The problem was that Nini could not form friendships and communicate because she could not speak Tagalog like the other kids.
Nini used words like “sapagkat” instead of “dahil”, “datapwat” instead of “ngunit”. She constructed her sentences in the only way she knew how: like the poems and stories of old, the overly formal, overly dated language only seen in the ‘40s. Her elementary school had only old books for the Filipino subject.
More often than not as well, Nini needed the help of English to fill-in her sentences. “Di ka ba taga-dito?” a classmate asked her on the first day of school.
“No,” said Nini, already cringing at the fact that she forgot “hindi”. “Ang bahay ko ay malayo pa. Mayroon akong cousin dito sa Quezon City.” Her classmate smiled politely at her and walked away. Nini tried not to lose hope, though her stomach was already hurting and her chest burning from the anxiety of the interaction.
No one else approached her that day, but Nini was determined to wow them instead with her brains. She recited a lot the next day, proud of herself for her English skills, her teachers evidently as proud. It became old fast, though, because despite being the smartest thirteen-year-old in Bahong, Nini’s classmates were still better at English– something she thought was hers. Nini’s face went red, her ears hot with shame as she realized how egoistical she was to think that she was the best in the language.
Nini could not catch up in their Araling Panlipunan, their AP subject, and in between classes, she tried her best to understand the inside jokes of the people seated around her. She stared dumbly, at a loss for words, when they asked her what her opinion was on the Pinoy drama series that aired last summer vacation, or who her favorite love team was. Nini felt like she was outside a world that her classmates occupied.
“Tagalabas,” they’d whisper in affirmation of her doubts. A cloud of blue hovered over Nini for a whole week when she first heard what her classmates called her behind her back. It wasn’t her fault her family did not own a television, or that her allowance was too meager to comfortably have data coverage to watch the Pinoy drama online.
Her mother called her hand-me-down smartphone one night. Nini had the dorm room to herself that Friday night, as her roommates went home to their hour-away houses every weekend. Nini was glad for the call from her mother, since she tried to delay her night’s rest because her dreams lately made her feel unsettled when she awoke. When she told her mother, she surmised it must’ve been because she was homesick.
“Mailiw ka,” her mother said, and Nini denied it strongly.
No, Ma, I’m adjusting well.
Her father’s voice shouted from somewhere far within the call. He asked about friends. Nini didn’t have it in her to lie, but she also didn’t have the courage to tell the truth of her lonesomeness. So she said instead, “Maiaw-awan ak lang minsan.” Lost and out of place, the first word she said held a lot of meaning and could be used in many different manners.
This time, she used it with a joking tone to negate the heaviness of the meaning. She heard her father chuckle. Her mother told her that it was alright, that it was just the third week of school. But what her mother didn’t understand was that this school wasn’t like the ones back in Bahong where everyone warmed up to everyone eventually, where you couldn’t help being friendly with all your peers because all you’ve got was each other. Here in Quezon City, Nini thought, everyone could afford not being friends with me.
Before the tears could start coming, Nini asked her parents whether Maggie, her older cousin living in Quezon City, had a Tagalog dictionary. Nini thought it was time to put more effort into learning the language. Everything seemed to be staked on it, after all.
Her mother suddenly became very excited. Maggie did have a dictionary, and Maggie apparently got so good in Tagalog because of it that she went on to bring in big prizes through her essays written in the language. Her mother told her that she’d be contacting Maggie right after the call.
It wasn’t even two days when the dictionary arrived. It was a regular-sized red thing with a worn scent and creased pages. There was nothing particularly special about it, except for the gold letters on the cover saying “Juan’s Diksyonaryong Filipino” and the sticky note at the back for Nini. “Magugulat ka,” the note said, a winky face next to Maggie’s name. Nini doubted there was anything to be surprised about, but if this book made Maggie into a Tagalog essay winner, then this book was about to solve all of Nini’s problems.
Pinikpikan
The dictionary was just a normal thing, that is, until a week passed since Nini was in possession of it. That night it happened, Nini lacked sleep from staying up, frustrated with her slow progress with learning the words she needed to get by. It wasn’t enough to translate the words she wanted to say through the use of the dictionary. She needed to know the word the moment she wanted to use it, and the high demand she put on herself caused her to fall unconscious from emotional exhaustion.
And when she slept, a voice beckoned to her. Nini had unsettling dreams in the past nights, dreams where the same voice would speak to her in a language that was an amalgamation of every word, grammar, sound, and slang that she knew, causing her to question the reality of her sleep and wakefulness. She never saw the voice, however, as it came from all around the dark void of her dreamscape. The dream gave her something else to look at: a dictionary in her hands.
It was not Maggie’s dictionary despite having the same worn pages and red leather cover. The “Juan’s Diksyonaryong Filipino” engraving was missing, leaving the front of the book blank. Despite its simplicity, Nini knew at once what she held, as though it was something she was familiar with all her life. She flipped through the pages with caution, handling it as though she would a baby, and saw that they were filled with a mix of Ilocano and English words, laid out in the typical dictionary fashion.
The voice, coming from nowhere yet everywhere, in its language of Nini’s languages, spoke. It asked her what she wanted.
The question was vague, but it was tailor-made for Nini and the thoughts she had been having for the past weeks. There was no moment of hesitation, no minute of false consideration. Nini knew the answer right away. She knew what she wanted.
I want friends, she said, surprised that the words exited her mouth in the same language as the dictionary. I want to talk to them. I don’t want to be laughed at anymore. I don’t want to be different.
The dictionary asked her what she had to offer. The leaves in her hands flipped back and forth. If Nini was unsure about what she wanted to pay for such a wish, she would have taken time to think. However, she was not going to lie to herself. In the past three weeks of school, she learned that some words were more useful than others and that some words were worth letting go. She chose a page, saw that it was filled with Ilocano words, words that she has no use for in the big city, and chose it.
The voice seemed to relish in her decisiveness. It told her that all trades were final, and that she just had to rip the page out to seal the deal.
You can wake up now if you don’t want to, the voice said. You can always just wake up.
But Nini was resolved. She ripped the page, albeit a little too timidly, and then she woke up.
Nini knew that the dream was not a false reality because a small kind of uncomfortable emptiness filled up her being, a feeling similar to when one feels like they left something at home when in fact all belongings are intact. Something had drastically changed about Nini, and Nini was about to find out what exactly it was today.
A strange hunger also settled in the bottom of her stomach, but she ignored it because of her excitement.
That day’s AP class seemed a lot easier to Nini. She didn’t have to recheck her dictionary as often, and the words from her teacher’s mouth flowed into her mind better so she could actually focus on the lesson instead of spending her time and energy deciphering what certain words meant. Her notes looked cleaner without all the indecisiveness of writing, and she ended the day less drained.
In fact, while she was cleaning the classroom with her cleaning group, she was able to tune in and join a little with the conversation about who their favorite singer was. Nini thought about it long and hard since the preference never occurred to her. The only songs she knew were the ultra-popular ones that one couldn’t avoid, but Nini did not think they made for an interesting answer. She recalled the singers her parents liked, and so she said, “Billy Joel.”
Some of her classmates made weird faces, but two of them liked Nini’s answer. Clara gave her a thumbs up, and Belle became super excited that someone also listened to old songs. Joking and taunting ensued, and Nini must’ve surprised her classmates a little when she was able to join in and give her own one-liners.
Nini already felt like she was having the best day of her high school life so far, but higher levels were reached when Clara and Belle asked Nini if she wanted to join them when they’d go to Merced to buy some snacks. Nini said yes, of course, and was careful about how she spoke during the whole commute to the shop, constructing her sentences around the limited words she received last night.
However, when they entered the shop, the hunger that gnawed at Nini’s stomach the whole day came flaring back. It was an annoying sensation of almost knowing what she wanted and then completely failing to grasp it. It made her so uncomfortable that the extreme focus she needed to speak Tagalog was broken, and in a moment of enjoyment with her new friends, she slipped into a more comfortable tongue.
“Seryoso? Perstaym mo makakita ng ganon?” Clara had said while they were in line at Merced.
“Our buildings are not that tall.”
Clara and Belle looked at Nini curiously, but not in a mean-spirited way. It was the boys behind them, classmates, that laughed and whispered maliciously.
“‘Tong si Nini maka-English… ‘Kala mo naman mayaman. Bulok naman sapatos.”
The three girls stood in silence, Nini’s silence the loudest. She pursed her lips and clenched her fists, willing herself not to cry. She did not want to look at her new friends, fearing that she would lose them just as fast as she gained them.
Belle made a fist at the boys. “Dami niyong sabi!” she shouted, making both customers and staff look their way. “Kayo nga mayaman pero pangit ugali!”
It was not the best comeback, leading the boys to snicker a lot more, but to Nini, it was the best response someone could have come up with at the moment. Clara led Nini away from the boys and out of the cafe. “Let’s go. ‘Yaw ko kumain ‘pag meron ‘yang mga ‘yan.”
The three friends left, ate at a random fishball stall, and went back to their dormitories. Nini often spoke more English during the whole time– too tired to keep up appearances and too happy to care about it– but her friends merely found it funny and interesting, not weird and condemnable. “Ganiyan din ading ko,” said Belle. “Basta nagkakaintindihan naman. Si Clara nga conyo, eh.”
Clara tried to retort, Belle unyielding, making everyone laugh. But when they parted ways, instead of the great comfort she expected, Nini just felt more desperate to change herself. The way the boys behind them had whispered… she did not want to feel the way she had felt ever again. How Nini just wished just to be like all other kids, to be invincible to such othering ridicule.
Her mother called that night, telling Nini that they cooked pinikpikan for her father’s birthday. Something scratched satisfactorily at Nini’s mind. She asked what that word was. Her mother was confused. “Hala. Pinikpikan!” she said, as though shouting the word would inform Nini of its meaning.
When the call ended, the hunger came back, and Nini knew she wanted pinikpikan, if only she knew what it was.
Mailiw
In her dreamscape, Nini once again held the dictionary in her hands. The voice spoke from all around, once again asking her what she wanted and what she had to offer, and Nini ripped several pages of Ilocano this time. She winced with every page gone, but she knew that this was the right thing to do for her, her family, everybody. When she woke up, her heart felt heavy, like it was anchored somewhere far away, but her mind was nevertheless ready for another day to show others that she was much more like them.
During AP class, Nini found the courage and competence to raise her hand during the easier-to-answer questions. Her teacher was delightfully shocked, her classmates in disbelief at Nini’s quickly developing skills. However, Nini’s soaring feeling quickly fell when the teacher announced that by the end of the quarter, they should have produced an essay written in Tagalog.
Nini took a minute to reflect, then concluded that she was nowhere near a skill level where she could write whole paragraphs of Tagalog. She felt like all the heat of Quezon City was condensing on her forehead and shoulders, and Nini just wanted to run away and lie down in her bed back in Bahong. Nini already got used to the feeling of discomfort whenever her mind lacked the tools and words it needed to describe or identify a thing or feeling, and right now, she was feeling it again: a dread and sadness she couldn’t describe; something irremovable until she could once again breathe in the air of her home community.
Lunch break came, and although Nini could never get used to the fact that she had friends to eat with– she was always giddy about it– this time, the only thing on her mind was to trade some more with the dictionary in her dreamscape. It wasn’t enough knowing just bits and pieces, pages and chapters. Tonight, she needed to know everything.
Lost in her thoughts, Nini didn’t hear Clara the first time when asked if she was feeling alright. Nini hastily replied that she was fine, just a little stressed from the announcement of the essay homework. “Madali lang ‘yun,” said Belle in an attempt to reassure. Clara affirmed the same thing, her tone encouraging Nini to be positive. But Nini only got more depressed hearing how easy the homework would be for her classmates. She was reminded of her standing, of her difference. Everything just came so easily to everyone except her. Even Clara, who spoke English nearly as much as herself, was skillful in all the Tagalog assignments if she wanted to.
Nini’s sour mood could not be hidden. Clara and Belle changed the topic of the conversation at once, next talking about going home for the weekend to their houses in Marikina and Taguig respectively. Clara missed her mom’s cooking, and Belle needed help from her doctor brother about a Science homework. It was the perfect weekend to go back home, they both agreed, and at this, Nini couldn’t help but start crying.
“Bakit?” her friends asked, bewildered. Nini did not know as well, not until the end of the day when she called her mother. “Apay?” asked her mother.
Nini sat at the edge of her bed, once again alone in her room on a Friday night. She said that nothing was up, that she just wanted to call. The way she felt must have translated well through the call, because her mother started comforting her. “Ay apo, mailiw kan nga talaga. Piman.”
“Mailiw” rang through Nini’s ear. Yes, that’s what it was. Just to know was enough. Just to remember the lost word gave her strength to end the call when it was time for her mother to prepare dinner, because Nini never would’ve let her go otherwise.
Gateng
With the quarter almost at its end, Nini found it harder and harder to spend time with Clara and Belle outside of class interactions. She turned down all their invites to eat and to spend time chatting around the school premises. Nini knew now that knowing Tagalog didn’t erase all her hardships in this foreign world, that her classmates and lessons were still significantly more advanced and more fast-paced than what she was used to. In her ili (she hadn’t traded that word in yet), no one was left behind, not even in lessons.
Alongside writing her essay, Nini found herself worn out from Science, Math, AdTech, and MAPEH as the quarterly exams came near. English was supposed to be her safe haven, but the class made her feel even more put down since it became clearer to her that she couldn’t be the best even in her favorite subject.
During breaktime, a classmate approached her to ask about the Igorots, since it was on page 213 of their textbook. He asked if she was an Igorot, too. “Oo,” said Nini, warily.
“‘Bat ‘di mo suot yung costume niyo?”
“It’s not a costume,” Nini said, accidentally sliding into English in her defensive stance. She regained her composure and explained that it wasn’t something that people wore every day anymore.
“Bakit hindi? Cute na skirt naman ah,” he replied innocently, mistaking Nini’s explanation as an expression of embarrassment towards the attire.
“It’s not a skirt,” Nini said. Then she stopped. What was it called again? She racked her brains for what it was called, but then she took too long and her classmate got bored, leaving with the knowledge that it was, in fact, just a skirt.
The next day, Nini once again turned down Clara and Belle when they found her engrossed in her review materials at the back of the classroom. “After exams, I promise,” Nini told her friends, and she tried to ignore their frowns that were either out of disappointment or concern. Nini couldn’t discern which.
Nini drowned herself in her studies for the next days, remembering that all the other students were going to be better than her. She did not want to see herself at the bottom of the ranks, a place of total difference. All the late-night reading and morning memorizing caught up to her, and very soon, Nini’s eyes threatened to shut into sleep during AP.
But then her teacher called her name; Nini’s eyes snapped back open.
The lesson was something about language. Or was it culture? Nini wasn’t sure, but her teacher asked her what languages she spoke to drive the point that the Philippines was linguistically diverse. Nini enumerated them: English, Tagalog, and… Ilocano. She added the last one shyly.
That’s one more than most, said her teacher, prompting the class to be joyfully competitive. One classmate raised her hand to say that she knew Bikol, another said that he knew Kapampangan. When classes ended, a spontaneous question-and-answer activity commenced, classmates asking each other how to say a phrase in the language that the other exclusively knew.
Nini was pleasantly shocked that so many had flocked to her side of the classroom, asking her to translate phrases such as “Good morning,” “How are you?” and “I love you.”
Those were easy enough, and Nini silently celebrated the fact that those simple words and phrases were not traded in yet. This was the first time that this many classmates wanted to talk to her voluntarily.
“What about ‘Salbahe ako?’” It was the whispering boy from Merced, and it was well-known by everyone by now that his mouth was foul, his attitude worse.
The class went silent. Nini was, too, but not for the reason everyone thought.
Insult aside, Nini thought the sentence was easy to translate. It was supposed to be. But why couldn’t she find the words?
She continued not to speak, her eyes meeting Clara’s and Belle’s who stood at the door, backpacks on and ready to go home. Anger covered their faces, anger directed just a little bit towards Nini and more towards the rude boy. Along with such expression, anticipation as to what Nini was going to say next was also present. Nini wet her lips, and said– admitted– that she didn’t know how to translate that sentence.
She stood up, ran past the crowd, past her only two friends, and went straight to the dormitory.
She called her mother. Her last call with her was a couple of weeks ago. When her mother answered, the words she spoke did not register in Nini’s head. They sounded like numbers mixed with letters, letters mixed with drawings. They were frustratingly familiar, but Nini’s mind felt heated from the wasted effort of deciphering what those words meant.
“Nini?” her mother asked, the one comprehensible word that floated out of the blabber of unknowns. “Nini?”
Nini hung up. She put her phone in silent mode in case her mother would call back, and at the early hour of 4 o’clock in the afternoon, with her uniform still on and her shoes strewn across the floor, she went to bed. She willed her heart to calm down by slowing her breathing, reflecting what to do once she was inside her dreamscape. She will demand the dictionary to give back her Ilocano words. Their absence, she knew now, was scathing, and she regretted every shortcut that she had taken.
When she finally glided into the dark scape of her dream, the dictionary back in her hands, and the voice asking her what she had for trading, she answered, I’m not here to trade! I’m here to get my words back!
The voice laughed, reminding her of the clause that all trades were final.
The dictionary in her hands started to flip open, inviting Nini to take her pick of pages to rip again. She saw that the Ilocano section was thinning out with less than ten pages left, the English section as full as ever, and the Tagalog section at the very back thicker than ever, made of some kind of material that could not be ripped out of the book no matter how hard Nini tried.
This is not fair! Nini screamed, planning to trade in those unrippable pages.
The voice said that those words weren’t hers to trade away. They were never hers, and so she had to choose other pages.
But Nini realized that she did not want to trade any more anyway, that she did not want to keep playing by the rules given to her. It was time to stop compromising a part of herself for change, change she could easily achieve outside of this dreamscape.
Now resolute that she didn’t want anything to do with the dictionary, the voice, and the dream anymore, she said, I’m waking up.
The voice became alert. It started reminding her of what she had yet to achieve, of the essay she had to write, the exams she had to ace, the friends she had to make.
But before it could persuade her to stay, Nini opened her eyes.
Pagsiyaatam
Nini apologized to Clara and Bell, telling them that she did not mean to push them away. The two had no qualms forgiving their friend, and invited her once again to Merced. Nini explained that she wouldn’t be joining them. She was going to spend her snack allowance to buy a new dictionary. An Ilocano one. Clara and Bell didn’t let her go so easily, though. “Libre ka muna namin,” they said.
When the Ilocano dictionary was bought, Nini began composing sentences using it during her down times. It was greatly disappointing to see everything she had lost, but there was a deep comfort knowing that she was reclaiming what she had once taken for granted.
And sometimes when she slept, she would be back in the dark dreamscape, and she would hear the voice trying its best to tempt her. But she always did ensure to wake up in those moments, even when the dictionary called out to her, the red leather comforting her dream-hands. Though the routine of losing sleep every time the dreamscape opened became very exhausting, she found solace in the fact that the voice became softer and weaker every time, telling of a time that it will soon be completely gone.
Whenever her mother called, Nini always had the Ilocano dictionary in her hands, and although communication wasn’t as perfect as before, Nini was able to tell her mother to wait until vacation for her to explain what had happened.
“Basta. I bought a dictionary,” she said.
“Pagsiyaatam wen, anak.”
“Yes, I’ll do my best. Haan akun nga maiawawan.”
She will not be lost again.
About the Author. Funa-ay Claver is an Indigenous youth from the Cordillera, Philippines, specifically a Bontok from Mountain Province. She is currently a 4th year BA Creative Writing student in the University of the Philippines-Diliman. She actively participates in several Indigenous Peoples (IP) rights organizations, serving as the Secretary-General of Asia Young Indigenous Peoples Network and Spokesperson of KATRIBU Alliance. Funa-ay was published in Ili Press, based in Baguio City, for her poem, “Mountain-minded” and creative nonfiction piece, “The Butatiw.” She writes with the intention of shedding light on the IP struggle as well as to reclaim narratives of the Indigenous Peoples to battle cultural, social, and economic discrimination.
