Everything

Tita Lacambra-Ayala

EVERYTHING and nothing.

Everything at morning wakes me up.

The sun burning away the mountain gray, burning with the sun the morning breaking my
sleep. But I delay getting up and I pretend I am Gulliver tied to the posts of my bed
imprisoned, little thoughts walking all over me as if I were nothing but a welcome mat
until there is music, someone has turned on a neighborhood radio and the sound of
Tchaichovsky sends the flame tree petals falling and the ground too is burning, the
cacti must be dry and the lawn will soon be Liliputian forest fire.

There’s no hot water for coffee?

Is there at all coffee?

Who forgot to buy milk?

Get me a carton of Tide.

No bath soap!

Who’s using the water?

Mummy, my chinelas got broken.

Damn puppy has chewed up letter W of Dinky’s alphabet blocks. He’s scattering little
w’s all over the place.

Remind me to call the barber.

Who stole the chewing gum from the pocket of my robe?

You owe me exactly P 3.17. I need to buy scotch tape, a wooden ruler, a box of
thumbtacks, and a natural sponge.

Who told you you’re lying? Nobody. You’re just lying, that’s all. It shows all over your
face.

Stop playing with the toaster. What do you think it is, a mailbox?

Don’t defrost the refrigerator now, later when all the children are out of the house and
when everybody’s finished reading the newspaper you can use it to mop up the floor.
Stop that, will you? That is my pair of pants.
So what if Ellen is in Winsconsin? I’m going to Siberia.

Daddy, Jake has a new Batman book. It’s bought at Mercury. It’s very cheap, cheaper
than a James Bond book. Cheaper than going to a movie.

NVM Gonzales interpreted the seven last words at the UP chapel. What’s he going to
be? A priest?

Lay off NVM, will you? He should know what he’s doing.

Instead of asking us to join cursillo, the cursillistas should ask us to the band to play in
the Jazz Mass.

Yeah, and what will you play -- you’re desfinado even with your violin. And with all the
drums and bongos your violin won’t be heard.

I could do a solo, like in the concerts, you know.

Oh shaddup -- you join with a comb and a piece of cellophane!

What’s taking the sausages so long to cook?

The chocolate just boiled over. Don’t you just love the smell of burning chocolate and a
burning range!

Stupid cook!

Stupid everybody.

Stop quarreling or I cut off your allowances!

Hurry up with the comics, I’m going to the bathroom.

You know what, chocolates are supposed to be eaten right after you’ve had an affair so
you won’t have a baby.

Shush-- who told you that?

I read it in a back issue of a magazine, the Saturday Evening Post or Look, one of those
Daddy keeps in the bodega.

You’re crazy, how can a piece of candy…

The ancient tribes in South America nibbed raw cocoa or drank like breakfast get
extinguished or extincted.

You should have told me that before I had you people.

Aw, Dad!

Give me some of that burnt chocolate. Tell the maid to make some more.

Davi and Fred - you’re not fooling around, are you?

Aw Dad, you know we’re just kidding.

Kidding? Why, that’s worse! You can’t have kids at this age!

EVERYTHING, and the daily sounds of this daily life recur like the familiar passages of
Tchaichovsky and I in my bed turning over like a pancake when the bubbles appear, I
given the privilege of not participating in this ghostly, ghastly troublesome world, I
floating in my own private Cloud 9 let alone to drift as I please until.

When’s the tv coming?

I’ll call up the shop from the office and if it’s ready I’ll pick it up this afternoon. Any good
programs?

A documentary on Red China taken by an American correspondent on the sly. I want to

see I again.

Well, I haven’t seen it.

Until, I get adjusted I get adjusted off my insomnia. Otherwise…

And finally, it’s midmorning and the neighbor’s radio which is almost always turned to
DZFE is playing marches and the maid comes into my room and tells me the dining
room is clear now all the adults have left the house and the children are out at aunt’s
across the street and how will I want my eggs, two sunny sides up or scrambles and I
say I just want my pill please and she says I can’t have a pill unless I eat something so
I say soft boiled and she goes out and leaves the door open and I get a little mad, just a
little as I’ve been getting mad for over a month now since the doctor told me to stop
smoking, and no reading books and newspapers and no turning on the radio, and I can
only look at pictures or the the children’s comics and I sometimes suspect he’s trying to
use me as a specimen for some kind of medical experiment.

Telephone for me the maid call out. I know who it is again, Martha. Martha black and
blue with her asthma, Martha changing identities with her numerous wigs and
minidresses so short she has to wear something underneath, minidresses in plaids
reminiscent of whisky ads with those inevitable bearded Scots playing bagpipes, their
kilts blowing in the wind. Martha pure and chaste and frustrated. Martha my only and
faithful friend. Tell her I’m writing my decrees on toilet paper and I’ve to finish one new
roll so she’s got to hang until I’m finished as my subjects await my commands
anxiously. Tell her I’m in the bathroom.

Where are those damn rubber slippers so I won’t slip over this Johnson-yatayan cement
floor? They’re gone, somebody must have used them again. That’s one thing about
these rubber slippers, you can tell whether they’re for males or females, they’re so
neutral and comfortable they get spirited away by most anybody. Even the dogs chew
them up instead of chewing gum and you can cut off a piece and use it as an eraser for
pencil marks on paper or on the walls.

Hellow, Marthay?

What took you so long? Cough, cough. Are you alright?

My nightgown took so long.

Hahaha. Cough, cough. Don’t make me laugh, you tease.

Who’s playing the piano?

Amelie. Her mother’s right beside her like a lion tamer.

That’s Bach she’s playing?

Bach! Of course not - that’s her daily Hanon. Would you like some bangus?Julita sent
some by air form Iloilo. Smoked and fresh.

You’ll bring them over?

Send your maid here!

I’ll send her after lunch when the children are asleep. Have you seen Etna? She passed
by yesterday to show me the new pair of shoes she bought. They’re patent pumps from
Marikina.

Is she really and truly going?

I told you she’s going. All right - I’ll repeat the facts for you; she’s leaving the coutnry
and she’s going to Virginia and bye-bye to her beautifully furnished apartment and
newly landscaped garden, bye-bye- to you and me. She and her three children are
leaving the country with her younger sister. And she’s going next month, remember? Or
do you also have amnesia now? What would like to believe her to be doing?

Oh, just bringing her children to a summer resort for the summer. But perhaps she
prefers to go where there’s a winter. No objections from Pete?
And objections can be overruled.

Hahaha, cough, cough.

Marthay?

Mmmmmm?

Bring the bangus over, will you? So you can bring me a stick of cigarette.

You’re not allowed to smoke yet?

No, You can’t give a stick of cigarette for me to the maid, she’s under orders not to give
any. Even the ashtrays have been hidden I don’t know where.

I can’t promise to come over. I’ve to sew on covers for the matresses.

Silence and Hanon and Bach running into each other. The beginnings of a Chopin. The
maid eyeing me holding my soft-boiled egg in her hand like some kind of silly statue.
Put that egg down the table!

Who was that!

The maid holding my soft-boiled egg in her hand like she were getting ready to play
ping-pong.

Hahaha, go ahead and have breakfast, it’s almost lunchtime!

Hand the bangus, come and see me and give me a cigarette.

You get the bangus today and I’ll come and see you tomorrow, okay.

And give my regards to Nick, Marthay, you should marry my doctor.

Oh good gracious! Goodbye!

Okay, goodbye…

Silly soft-boiled egg sitting on a plate. Touch it and it rolls over. Like an overtame puppy.
Hit it on the head and it runs all over, all over , all yellow and white, sprinkle it with salt
and slide it on a piece of toast and you’ve just eaten the sun, breakfast is over and with
the pill in my system the drowsiness overcomes me and I must float back to Cloud 9 on
tiptoe, a wee willie winkie walking on my nightgown and out of town.

THE CHILDREN come in at half past eleven. The smell of the sun is acrid in their hair,
their breaths smelling of brownies and Coca Cola, their corduroys dirty at the seats,
their pudgy hands grimy.
Mummy, I got your slippers.

Mummy, Mocha boxed me because she does not like me to ride on the wagon.
Mummy, Bikini spilled coke on my pants.

Mummy, Tita Marie cut her hair very short she looks like a man already.

Mummy, Dinky has a wound on his foot.

Mummy, Eddie bumped the red car and the post got wounded.

Mummy, there’s a dead kite in the duhat tree.

Mummy, the carpenter at the other side looks like Uncle Nelson.

Mummy, Dinky went to the other bathroom and I flushed down the soap.

Mummy, I want dede.

Mummy, I want my name to be Emily already and Bikini she will be Jeniffer. Mummy, I
want also new shoes.

Mummy, mummy, mummy. And no one will tell me who tore pages away from Daddy’s
book or who lost away the needle from the arm of the turntable or who disconnected the
refrigerator or put it on defrost when it did not need defrosting or who left all the
bathroom faucets open and who put hamburgers in the linen closet or who pasted all
the toothpicks on a piece of paper and other such deviltries unknown to womenkind
before families were invented. It is nice to be a mummy.

Children’s choral singing Bacarolle and in all things great big summer world of
disenchantments and growing up and neuroses that can be plaqued and unnerved
away by the restrictions of a doctor with the help of scientific little pills, I am most glad
to be alive, to wait the afternoon through and eat my meals if only grudgingly, suffer the
coming of nightfall and view through the kaleidoscope of domesticity the face of Nick,
lover-child-father of my children, husband, pillar and foundation, circus strongman,
eternal enemy and beloved, and promise never again to take rat poison in my cup of
coffee when I get tired of
Meanwhile, according to Queddeng (2013), the following are the contents of a written
analysis for narrative prose. Below can serve as guide to the flow of the discussion:

1. Discussion of the type

2. Summary of the story

3. Background of the author

She is a writer, poet and multimedia artist. Tita Lacambra Ayala was born in
Sarrat, Ilocos Norte but grew up in Antamok, Benguet. She earned her Bachelor
of Science in Education (BSE)Major in English, minor in History, at the University
of the Philippines in 1953. Tita is one of themost celebrated Filipino poets in
English with her work receiving numerous awards. She hasauthored many books
in her distinguished career, among them Sunflower Poems (1960), Friends,The
Confessions of a Professional Amateur (prose) and Camels and Shapes of
Darkness in a Timeof Olives (poetry).

4. Focus of narration

5. Setting

While the sun is burning away from the mountain gray, the place happened inside
the housewhere there is chaos in every part of it. Everyone in the house are noisy
and all are having a crazy,routine-less mess of morning

6. Characters delineation
7. Subject matter and theme

8. Stages of conflict

9. Traditions

10. Literary devices.